Please note: the question of the existence of god(s) is not at all relevant to this thread, so please leave arguments for or against the existence of deities out. I’m also using the terms “god” and “religion” as pretty much interchangeable, since in my experience, humans can’t distinguish between the two any way - at least not as far as this problem is concerned.
From what I’ve seen in recent debates on religion(s) there are multiple arguments that an objective moral “truth” exists and is necessary for humans to behave in a moral fashion. I content that even if that is true (and I’m not at all certain that it is), a god figure cannot be an objective source of morality for humans.
Argument 1: if the only objective morality comes from (or is) god, there’s no way for us humans to distinguish an evil god’s whim from an objective morality. In other words; the god may claim that it’s his wish to kill some other tribe of humans, and even though we personally don’t think those people deserve to die, we are morally compelled to kill them. We only have god’s word for it. How do we know that we are “objectively” right in doing so?
Argument 2: if the objection to argument 1 is that God owns us, made us, or has more power than we do, then how do we distinguish god from a possibly evil slave owner, parent, or bully, respectively? In other words; how is owning, creating or being more powerful any moral justification?
I can probably come up with some more stuff, but it’s late here, so I’ll leave this debate to you people for now.
I’m theistic. I agree with you. If that which is “God” speaks to me in a way that is emotionally incomprehensible, God doesn’t get my cooperation. I need to understand it, to “get” it.
There is no distinction to be made - that’s why you cannot distinguish it. If by “objective” you mean “true” or “valid”.
If, in other words, it is objectively true that it is moral to kill someone, then it is objectively true that it is moral to kill them. If A, then A. That’s just a tautology. If something is true, then it is true, and one’s subjective feelings about it don’t matter.
It appears that you are saying “if A is true, then how can we be sure it is true?” We know it by definition.
It is certainly the case that we can be wrong about what is true, and it may be the case that our feelings are correct and what we think God has said is not what He really said. But that is a mistake about what God has established, not a reason to think He didn’t establish it, as your premise assumes is the case.
I think I agree with Shodan. Our inability to comprehend doesn’t mean there can be no objective morality arising from a god, just that we can’t understand it. It would mean that we can’t say whether or not it is true, assuming that we aren’t accepting that as a premise in the first place. The factual situation would still be the case, we just wouldn’t have trustworthy access to it, and we can take no practical action on the matter. You could define the god in question as one which requires that understanding, but that would mean adding qualities to a generic god.
Ok, fair enough. But that just means that it doesn’t matter that we might have to just accept an evil god that proposes an (evil) morality - since that’s how we define objective morality. In other words, we’re just doing what we’re told and if that causes immeasurable evil, that’s not our problem.
Well, I don’t want to get into the question of whether we can actually know the will of god (though the evidence leads me to conclude that we can’t - and not just because I think gods don’t exist), but even if we could, we cannot justifiably say that whatever a deity wants is “objectively moral” just because either we define it that way or that deity claims it is so.
In this definition, we cannot ever tell a moral god from an immoral one. Or alternatively, gods - all possible gods - are always - by definition - objectively moral.
I agree completely with this. But I think you’re then forced to reject the apologetic argument that (usually Christian evangelical) religion has, in fact a moral objectivity that’s somehow better grounded than any possible secular moral system that may or may not be relativistic to a certain degree.
It might be the case that there is a platonic moral “best way” to deal with any scenario, but if so, we’d have to measure god’s will against that ideal. We cannot automatically assume that they are in fact the same thing.
The notion that morality is determined by God (or gods)—that a thing is right, by definition, if God commands it and wrong if God forbids it—is known as “Divine Command Theory.” There’s plenty of good stuff on it out there, at, for example, Wikipedia, PhilosophyOfReligion.info, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and infidels.org. And it was (as many of those sources note) pretty well refuted by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro. Your Argument 1 is one of the most common criticisms of the theory, and IMO a sound one.
I think this argument is less successful. None of those analogies are necessarily apt: unlike God, neither a slave owner, a parent, or a bully is our ultimate source of being: they didn’t create us and they don’t have legitimate ownership rights to us. Why isn’t God’s relationship to us more like that of an author to his characters, or (to use a Biblical metaphor) like that of a potter to the clay pots he makes? (I am not here arguing that it is—just that, for your argument to work, you would have to at least address the possibility.)
My own opinion (however tentative and undeveloped it is at this point) is that morality is grounded in God, but not in the arbitrary, God-says-so way of Divine Command Theory.
One of the responses that Wikipedia lists is “Saint Thomas Aquinas claimed that God creates moral norms that reflect his own essence, meaning that his demands are not arbitrary.” I think there is something to this. It is reasonable to me that this world would have, woven into it, the nature and values of its Creator, not unlike the way the world of a novelist reflects the beliefs, ethics, and values of its creator.
And, I think that God can serve as a grounding for morality somewhat along the following lines:
It’s morally wrong to murder, rape, torture, etc.
Why?
Because people are valuable; they have inherent worth.
Why?
Because [among other reasons, perhaps] they are valued by God. God loves them; God cares about them; they are precious to God.
An analogy: Is it wrong to kill a cat? I won’t attempt to answer this question completely, but it seems obvious to me that it is more wrong to kill a cat that is someone’s beloved pet than it is to kill a feral cat whom no human even knows of. Is it wrong to kill a human being? Yes, because human beings are valuable. If the human being is the beloved friend or family member of some other person, it’s obvious how/why they have value, but even a bum with no family or friends is loved by God.
I think I can understand your argument. My objection to it is that we humans cannot deal with morality in any way if it’s not directly stated as relating to us as “creatures”. Personally, I’d probably go a lot further than that and say that a useful and comprehensible morality has to be “about” the relationships of and between humans and other organisms to be a morality at all. If we are characters in a book, then for the writer it’s probably true that he’s got the right to do with us as he pleases, but that doesn’t mean that any scenario described in the book is equally moral.
If I had the talent and inclination, I could write a book about an impossibly agonizing eternal suffering for all life in the universe. Would that mean that that scenario is morally good? In my view, no. Would it mean that the book itself is morally bad? I think it depends. But if the described creatures in that book would consciously experience the reality I described because I described it as such, I would say I’d have perpetrated a horrifyingly immoral act.
Even if that’s all true, why would that make it morally good? We might agree with its conclusions instinctively or emotionally or even possibly rationally, but the argument denies our own understanding or emotion. If morality is grounded in God and God alone, we won’t be able to object if God’s will is for all of humanity to die as painfully as possible with no afterlife (or even worse, an eternal afterlife of suffering).
And another flaw in such an analogy is that, though a writer (or a potter) may have the right to do as he pleases with his creations, it doesn’t really make sense to talk about those creations having any sort of duty or responsibility to their creator (whom they’re not really aware of at all).
But would you ever do such a thing, being the person you are?
Now that raises other questions in my mind: Can authors write stories that go against their own moral sense? Do they? What does it mean, or say about them, if they do?
Could (a) God act or create in a way that goes against his own moral sense?
And, to those who believe morality is somehow grounded in the nature of God: Does that mean that, if God were different, morality would be different? (And I myself am not sure how to answer that question, or even whether God being different might not be somehow logically impossible; but it’s worth thinking about.)
I can easily write a story describing stuff that’s horribly immoral. Horror writers - and journalists - do it all the time. The difference between me as an author and god as a creator is that god - if the analogy holds - creates conscious creatures that will experience everything he describes, while I as the author of a story have only described possibilities with no consciousness at all.
I think that would have to follow for anyone who holds the position that god is the grounding of morality. But then, that’s one of the less explicit assumptions I made when starting this thread. On its face, at least, it appears to be true, so it would require a good explanation how it’s incorrect.
The main idea that a religious morality is better is that it is an agreed upon morality amongst a large group of people. Basically, the consensus morality always rules. Having one that’s already defined is considered a plus, not because it comes from God, but because it is communicable.
The advantage of it coming from God is that God (supposedly) rewards those who follow it.
I don’t think that works. I don’t believe in God, so I do consider my parents my creators. That doesn’t mean they had unlimited rights to command me or that their every pronouncement was morally correct. It isn’t the fact that he is their creator that gives an author or a potter rights over his creations; it’s that they are things, not people. In other words, creating an intelligent species wouldn’t give a god (or scientist) moral license to do as he pleased to it, or make him morally superior to that species.
I don’t immediately agree with this idea, but this is not the concept I’m arguing against. To state the original religious concept again; the idea is that secular morality has a less rational or objective basis than religious (Christian) morality, because religious morality is “grounded” in the deity in question.
Your concept of consensus morality or social morality probably has merit, but it’s not a necessarily religiously motivated concept.
I think we’re in agreement here. There are objections to the idea of taking morals on faith, but I don’t want to go there in this thread. Thanks for your attention and thought.
The OP glossed over the distinction between religion and God, but you are helping to clarify it: Religion is our mistaken beliefs about what God has established.
One standard theistic argument to this, is that god has given us an internal sense of right and wrong.
So we have a morality antenna, if you like, and we all know deep down that, say, homosexual relationships are wrong, even if we try to convince ourselves and others otherwise.
There are many problems with this line of reasoning of course.
Off the top of my head, there’s the problem that it’s circular: we know god is moral because of our internal sense, and we know our internal sense is correct because god is moral and would not deceive us.
Also, when it comes to the crunch, most religions demand that we take whatever scripture says to be moral, and ignore our internal sense where it contradicts scripture.
Another argument is of course that omnibenevolence falls out of god being the creator. That to create the universe god must be perfect / eternal / whatever and being perfect implies acting morally.
I don’t think this works either, but it’s the best bet for a theistic defence because people find it difficult to wrap their minds around concepts like eternal and the omnimaxes.
I think both alternatives are proposed by apologists, but I think the second one is the only one that makes god “necessary” for morality. It’s also in my opinion the most fundamentally flawed since it completely denies us a way of determining its truth.