# The moral argument for religion/god is not "grounding" anything at all **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 20, 2010, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296 "2010-11-20T02:40:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2010, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/21 "2010-11-22T20:22:21Z")
I am theistic, but I don’t really believe in an absolute morality, per se; rather, I believe that God has set aside some general goals for the direction of growth for humanity and, thus, the moral choice is that choice which best furthers those goals. As such, there are some rules of thumb that will almost always align with these goals (eg, don’t murder), but it is possible that a particular action may be moral in one situation but not in another (eg, lying). As such, I view God as the absolute source of morality only in that he sets those ultimate goals. > [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > 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? In my opinion, this fails for a couple reasons. First, what exactly is evil? If a god is the source of morality then, unless he’s setting the rules up then deliberately violating them, he can’t be evil, but that seems pretty contradictory to me. In other words, he’d just set the goals to be whatever he wants them to be, then morality would simply appear different to us. Further, morality isn’t something that should be taken as a question of faith. When humanity was young as a race, it made sense akin to how parents would simply say “because I said so” in response to a young child asking why they shouldn’t do something. However, now we have grown up some and we’ve set many of our own goals by learning how to set them while we were growing up, and so they should be in close alignment, and thus the morality of a particular action in terms of fulfilling those goals should be inherently obvious. > [@](#): > > 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? More powerful or owning, no, but I do think omniscience follows from omnipotence (being all powerful either inherently includes being all knowing, or provides you with the ability to figure out whatever you want to figure out). As such, God is not a moral authority in the sense that “he says so” but rather because he inherently knows best what choices to make to reach those goals. 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. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2010, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/22 "2010-11-22T20:26:00Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > 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. There is no such thing as an “evil morality”, if I understand you correctly. That implies that there might be a valid morality other than an objective one, which your first premise rules out. Regards. Shodan ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2010, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/23 "2010-11-22T20:28:35Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > I think both alternatives are proposed by apologists, This doesn’t really make any kind of sense tho. For both to apply, you would have to be able to name an action that was both 1) moral independently of god, and 2) moral only because of god’s approval. > [@](#): > > 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. I think it’s flawed because rather than any kind of ultimate authority, it’s actually completely arbitrary. Which god? Each one has their own rules on what is moral and what is not. The choice of which god to follow becomes a matter or opinion, whatever fits best with what you want. It’s interesting how the things people say god hates always seem to coincide with what they hate. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/24 "2010-11-22T20:41:30Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > There is no such thing as an “evil morality”, if I understand you correctly. That implies that there might be a valid morality other than an objective one, which your first premise rules out. I’m not saying the ideas are correct; in fact I’m quite sure they’re not. I was just trying to give a short explanation of what the apologetic arguments were as far as I understand them and then give what I consider to be good objections to the idea of god as a way of “grounding” morality in some objective standard. > [@hotflungwok](#): > > This doesn’t really make any kind of sense tho. For both to apply, you would have to be able to name an action that was both 1) moral independently of god, and 2) moral only because of god’s approval. Sorry for the confusion. I meant to say that both arguments are proposed but obviously not usually by the same people. > [@](#): > > I think it’s flawed because rather than any kind of ultimate authority, it’s actually completely arbitrary. Which god? Each one has their own rules on what is moral and what is not. The choice of which god to follow becomes a matter or opinion, whatever fits best with what you want. It’s interesting how the things people say god hates always seem to coincide with what they hate. Sure, but to keep my objections focused I’m rhetorically conceding the existence of a single creator-god who we can also perfectly know the mind of, and the existence of some objectively “best” morality, and then show how the argument still doesn’t hold. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2010, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/25 "2010-11-22T21:43:44Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > I’m not saying the ideas are correct; in fact I’m quite sure they’re not. I was just trying to give a short explanation of what the apologetic arguments were as far as I understand them and then give what I consider to be good objections to the idea of god as a way of “grounding” morality in some objective standard. The objection doesn’t work because you state a premise and then contradict it. If 2+2=4, then how do we know that 2+2 doesn’t really equal something else? We know it because 2+2=4 is objectively true. There is no “evil morality” available where 2+2=5. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/26 "2010-11-22T23:10:11Z")
If there is objective morality, how complex is it? We have libraries full of law books because, in part, the Constitution, an objective document, keeps getting interpreted many ways. We have libraries full of books on theological morality because the Bible keeps getting interpreted different ways. So, given that there is an objective morality set forth by God, we have no way of knowing for sure how it applies in many cases. Most, in fact. I can imagine a couple of explanations. One, God thought it was clear enough for us to interpret, but we are too dumb. But he’d know that, right? In fact the Torah has many very explicit directions for all parts of life, and we still argue about what to do. Second, while God may define objective morality, he made us as moral creatures because he cares more about us figuring it out for ourselves than getting the right answer. That would explain contradictory moral objectives in the Bible. If we are smart, we’d do what we’d reason as being right, not follow one of several directions. Or, he might be aware that it is logically impossible to write a moral code which does not take an almost infinite number of cases into account, and he is too fed up with us to be a judge in this sense. Thus he gives up the idea of objective morality as being something we can follow as infeasible. I don’t consider the possibility that he inserted a moral sense in all of us, which we should follow, since some people are born with defective moral senses, and following these leads to disaster for them and those they are around. ---
**Author:** ![smileybastard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@smileybastard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smileybastard)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/27 "2010-11-24T20:01:33Z")
I suggest that morality does not flow from any deity. If a deity dictates rules to us then this is a legal system and not a moral system, especially if we will be judged by it. Morals are human created regardless of of the existence of deities or not. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/28 "2010-11-24T23:04:36Z")
> [@smileybastard](#): > > Morals are human created regardless of of the existence of deities or not. I agree, as long as we aren’t saying that morality is _arbitrary_. We’re social creatures and we have social instincts. Morality is the attempt to formalize these instincts, and extend them to more complex interactions than we experienced in our evolutionary past. People disagree on the morality of certain actions, but that doesn’t make them arbitrary, and people can change their mind on the morality of an action. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/29 "2010-11-26T12:51:59Z")
No one knows the mind of any God nor do they know or knew, what God wants they are just taking the word of some human whom they believe is telling what God wants,says, or does. God is unknowable so no human can know God(or any) for that matter. It is strictly a personal opinion of who one wants to believe. ---
**Author:** ![smileybastard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@smileybastard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smileybastard)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/30 "2010-11-26T14:46:23Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I agree, as long as we aren’t saying that morality is _arbitrary_. > > We’re social creatures and we have social instincts. Morality is the attempt to formalize these instincts, and extend them to more complex interactions than we experienced in our evolutionary past. > People disagree on the morality of certain actions, but that doesn’t make them arbitrary, and people can change their mind on the morality of an action. Certainly morals are not arbitrary, but they certainly are not absolute. Different cultures have very different morals. ---
**Author:** ![smileybastard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@smileybastard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smileybastard)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/31 "2010-11-26T14:49:51Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > No one knows the mind of any God nor do they know or knew, what God wants they are just taking the word of some human whom they believe is telling what God wants,says, or does. God is unknowable so no human can know God(or any) for that matter. It is strictly a personal opinion of who one wants to believe. It is far more convoluted than that. First one needs to have faith in one or more deities based on basically no concrete evidence. Then one needs to sort through all the writings or traditions about this entity. And then one needs to deal with interpretations of these elements. And then one needs decide on their own. All of this again still makes it more of a legal system than a moral system. These are generally rules to gain favor or avoid punishment. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/32 "2010-11-28T01:48:07Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > The objection doesn’t work because you state a premise and then contradict it. > > If 2+2=4, then how do we know that 2+2 doesn’t really equal something else? We know it because 2+2=4 is objectively true. There is no “evil morality” available where 2+2=5. I’m beginning to regret my choice of words in the OP. “Objective moral truth” is a meaningless phrase - or at least an empty concept. The problem I’m hinting at in the OP is that whatever a god may want us to do might be some kind of moral anchor, and it may even be the best moral system we can come up with, but even if we take that as a given, we have no way of _knowing_ it’s actually good at all. All we’ve done is define good as “whatever our god wants”. We can’t say we’ve solved anything when we refer the arbitration to a god - unless we have some other way of judging that god’s morals. In other words, I’m accusing people who put forward a god-based morality of playing word games instead of thinking about the problem. I hope to provoke you into an argument that is more than word games too. ---
**Author:** ![JZesbaugh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c67d28/32.png) [@JZesbaugh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JZesbaugh)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/33 "2010-11-28T02:16:24Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > 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 would suggest that this far seeing creative force would have some guiding reason for doing so, maybe he looked into his future scope and saw that that tribe if left to propagate would produce 10k years down the road someone who conceives of a great disaster for mankind. But of course he could just choke on a cherry pit before he does the act. That becomes a question of terrestrial power of said “god”. Another far out point I’ve heard made is that world was made as a place for souls to grow, and have a myriad of experiences, both seemingly positive and negative. Instructions might be sent out to better foster a world of more diverse terrestrial experiences. Tribe 1 dies, because tribe 2 is on the verge of doing something more interesting, and tribe 1 might stand in the way of that. A third point is human morality can be short sited and self serving, leading to odd blind alleys. It could simply be a more far sighted corrective force. My final point being perhaps a test, maybe will go against our free will if a booming voice tells us to do something we know to be wrong. Interesting question. Hope i interpreted it correctly. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/34 "2010-11-28T12:57:26Z")
> [@smileybastard](#): > > It is far more convoluted than that. First one needs to have faith in one or more deities based on basically no concrete evidence. Then one needs to sort through all the writings or traditions about this entity. And then one needs to deal with interpretations of these elements. And then one needs decide on their own. > > All of this again still makes it more of a legal system than a moral system. These are generally rules to gain favor or avoid punishment. It is also just a human thing, no God involved. One believes a Human’s writings teachings, or their own thoughts; because some human said God told them something doesn’t mean God did. It is a matter of who or what one wants to believe. ---
**Author:** ![smileybastard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@smileybastard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smileybastard)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/35 "2010-11-28T13:18:04Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > It is also just a human thing, no God involved. One believes a Human’s writings teachings, or their own thoughts; because some human said God told them something doesn’t mean God did. It is a matter of who or what one wants to believe. I agree. I used the term faith and didn’t talk to any deities’ reality. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2010, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/36 "2010-11-29T00:20:13Z")
> [@JZesbaugh](#): > > I would suggest that this far seeing creative force would have some guiding reason for doing so, maybe he looked into his future scope and saw that that tribe if left to propagate would produce 10k years down the road someone who conceives of a great disaster for mankind. But of course he could just choke on a cherry pit before he does the act. That becomes a question of terrestrial power of said “god”. Well… maybe. We can’t tell if that’s true. > [@](#): > > Another far out point I’ve heard made is that world was made as a place for souls to grow, and have a myriad of experiences, both seemingly positive and negative. Instructions might be sent out to better foster a world of more diverse terrestrial experiences. Tribe 1 dies, because tribe 2 is on the verge of doing something more interesting, and tribe 1 might stand in the way of that. Basically, this kind of argument is that all terrestrial life is amoral. It’s a logical argument, but that’s not what any religion I know of espouses, and I personally am convinced that terrestrial morals are the only kind of moral that we can have any idea about. > [@](#): > > A third point is human morality can be short sited and self serving, leading to odd blind alleys. It could simply be a more far sighted corrective force. Yes and how? Respectively. > [@](#): > > My final point being perhaps a test, maybe will go against our free will if a booming voice tells us to do something we know to be wrong. Which, I’m arguing, even if it’s true (and it probably is) doesn’t prove anything except that people are easily cowed. That is not a moral argument at all. ---
**Author:** ![JZesbaugh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c67d28/32.png) [@JZesbaugh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JZesbaugh)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2010, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296/37 "2010-11-29T06:46:54Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > Well… maybe. We can’t tell if that’s true. > > Basically, this kind of argument is that all terrestrial life is amoral. It’s a logical argument, but that’s not what any religion I know of espouses, and I personally am convinced that terrestrial morals are the only kind of moral that we can have any idea about. > > Yes and how? Respectively. > > Which, I’m arguing, even if it’s true (and it probably is) doesn’t prove anything except that people are easily cowed. That is not a moral argument at all. I may still slightly misunderstand your point in full. Well in some manner of thinking morality is a cognitive growth, an adult may have more to base his morals on then a young child(experience), humanity now collectively can derive more from its history, then previous generations. Perhaps that would lend to some higher moral potential. At base most animals seem amoral, at least they have not communicated out any morals to us, that we can extrapolate. They(animals) lack our massive powers(bombs ect), and have never had to check their possible amorality against self destruction. We learn important lessons like don’t set the neighbors house on fire because he might attack me. Then maybe later we learn don’t set the neighbors house on fire because we identify he is like me, and I would not like my house set on fire. So I think or suppose there is a moral progress. Is that a guided moral progress? That I cannot say. People cowed by authority would probably act in a manner contrary to their morals, I suppose that would be bad for moral progress. This is all speculation on my part, nothing I would call dogmatic. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moral-argument-for-religion-god-is-not-grounding-anything-at-all/561296.md?page=1)