Over the years I’ve come to believe that it is unproductive to debate about the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. There are simply too many details for those outside of the small circles of experts to responsibly juggle in a debate format. This opinion led me to look for non-evidential arguments for or against the resurrection.

My initial findings were that the Christian faces insurmountable odds in having to explain why God would (of all things) resurrect Jesus (of all people). After all, supposing that we have in our possession a sound cosmological argument, a cogent teleological argument, and, let’s say, an outstanding axiological argument, what we know about God is frankly very little, and certainly not nearly enough to make us privy to whether or not he would go and do something like resurrect someone from the dead! Moreover, there really isn’t anything non-question begging about Jesus – even by the most credulous historical standards – that would incline God to resurrect him: it’s not as if God would, in seeking to approve of the truth in Jesus’ message, and the importance of his movement, think “I better show my approval…let’s see…I could miraculously prevent his crucifixion…or if I don’t, I could miraculously resuscitate him afterwards…or if I don’t, I could just assume his body into heaven afterwards…no, no…I got it! I’ll resurrect him!” I hope my Christian friends take the point in good humor: it’s only to illustrate the fact that God could have shown his approval of Jesus in any number of ways, and nothing known about God from reason tells us how, if at all, he would do so.

While I am still of the mind that for reasons such as these, there really isn’t any good evidence to think that it was God who resurrected Jesus, I believe I may have come upon an interesting non-evidential reason to think that Jesus was nevertheless resurrected.

The argument does require an evidential consideration, unfortunately. However, it is one that few dispute: after his death, at least one of Jesus’ disciples took herself to have seen the resurrected Jesus.

To those for whom it is true that Biblical scholars are probably in a better position to know whether this claim is warranted (and I think, if we’re honest, that’s basically anyone that’s not a Biblical scholar), it need only be explained that most Biblical scholars think it is in fact warranted.

For example, on pages 372-73 of his The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, Mike Licona cites no less than 20 experts on the matter who say as much, a number of whom are not even Christian and describe the claim as beyond doubt and a matter of fact. This also includes the scores who belong to the Jesus Seminar and two surveys conducted by Gary Habermas, the first of which is better known and ranges over hundreds of English, German and French scholars who’ve written on the matter since 1975 and the other lesser known recording sixty more recent critical scholars. In both cases, the results were the same: those included in the survey overwhelmingly thought the claim is warranted.

Normally, in a debate setting, proponents and opponents of Jesus’ resurrection would compete to explain the experience of this early Christian, but none would start by taking it at face value. But, why not?

Consider that we should believe things are as they are perceived to be unless and until we have good reason not to. Without this so called “principle of credulity”, we could not reasonably take any perceptual experience for granted. But, then we could not verify any given perceptual experience, since such verification will itself involve taking some perceptual experience or other for granted. I’m not sure what else to call this position but crazy.

Insofar as we do endorse the principle of credulity and we do have good evidential or deferential reason to think that at least one of Jesus’ disciples perceived him to be resurrected, it should be believed that Jesus was in fact resurrected unless and until there is good reason not to.

We may simplify the foregoing by condensing it into a premise-conclusion format:

1. We should believe that things are as they are perceived to be unless and until we have good reason not to.
2. Jesus was perceived to have been resurrected.
3. Therefore, we should believe Jesus to have been resurrected unless and until we have good reason not to.

This argument, if cogent, would change the discussion in a couple of interesting ways. First, our initial attitude towards the experience of this early Christian should be one of belief, not of skepticism or agnosticism. It would therefore be inappropriate to compete explanations of this experience before we had any reason to suspect it was not veridical. Second, and as implied, we wouldn’t need any evidence that this experience was veridical in order to believe that it was: we’d only need reason to think the experience in fact occurred.

Now, I have claimed that the foregoing argument is interesting, not that it is sound or cogent. Moreover, I did not so much defend its evidential premise as I deferred to those who are best qualified to do so and have. There are many questions to ask and objections to answer, and hopefully we can delve into some of them here.

To wrap up, let’s consider a few of the benefits this argument would have for those interested in the subject. For starters, the argument makes use of premises that those who are not already convinced of the conclusion accept. Thus, non-Christians can accept it without having to become Christian. In fact, non-theists can accept it without having to become theists! How much further could the discussion advance if that hurdle was no longer a hurdle? Secondly, such an argument could begin a new era of discussion on Jesus’ resurrection, one focused not on whether Jesus was resurrected, but by whom or what and to what end. This could clarify immensely what sort of grounds Christians have for identifying YHWH as the God that the cosmological, teleological and other such arguments conclude with. Perhaps it will prove far easier for them to show that it was YHWH who raised Jesus than that it was God. Whatever the case, I’d be interested to hear what you guys think.
 
 
(Image credit: New Art Colorz)

In his recent article "Do You Need God to Know That Abortion is Wrong?", Joe Heschmeyer shares an argument for why abortion is wrong. Now, the point of his article was not to advance or expound upon this argument, but it affords us with an opportunity to look into a common argument against abortion. As he states it, the argument goes like this:

"The pro-life argument is simple: (1) human beings are alive from the moment of fertilization, and (2) it is morally wrong (and ought to be illegal) to intentionally kill innocent human beings."

He goes on to say that “[t]he first point is a scientific one. The second is a moral and legal one, one that science can’t answer.”

Quibbles about validity aside, this simple argument encapsulates one of the most widely held reasons to be pro-life today: abortion is murder. But, the argument involves a number of problems including a crucial reliance upon an ambiguity which, when exposed, commits the pro-lifer to an untenable position.

You’ll notice that proponents of this sort of argument are adamant that (1) is a deliverance of science. And, indeed, “science” does tell us that the organism which humans produce through sexual intercourse is to be biologically classified as “human.” But, biological classifications do not always map to metaphysical classifications, and this becomes especially clear in the case at hand.

Metaphysically, the human being is an animal with rational powers. Her physical structure reflects the fact that she is an animal, and this is only to be expected since matter reflects whatever corporeal form of being it is in – e.g. solid, liquid, gaseous, sub-atomic, etc. But, as my pro-life interlocutors will agree, rationality is not a corporeal form of being. As such, it is not reflected in the physical structure of the human being.

(It may strike some of the Catholics here as bizarre that the presence or absence of rationality in a body makes no difference to its physical structure, but Catholics have long been committed to the position that human beings cannot, of their own power, reproduce members of their species: only God can create the human soul. As such, the body produced by humans only reflects the corporeal forms of being it is in, not the form of rationality.)

But, biologists classify substances according to the corporeal forms of life they come in. This is why you won’t find any talk of rational powers in Joe’s citation of Sandra Alter’s Biology: Understanding Life. In fact, as she says in the quotation, the cycle of human life she is describing is “representative of all animal life cycles.” So, the standards of humanity set by biology are not the same standards of humanity set by metaphysics, though the latter may include the former.

What all this means is that just because an organism satisfies the biologist’s criteria for being human does not mean that it satisfies the metaphysician’s criteria for being human. It’s not enough for a fetus to have this or that genotype, or whatever epigenetic primordia at whatever stage: such features are only reflective of corporeal forms of being, and the metaphysical human being enjoys more than just corporeal forms of being.

The ambiguity in the initial argument should be apparent at this point: in order to be valid, premises (1) and (2) have to mean the same thing by “human being.” But, premise (2) presents a metaphysical understanding of “human being” whereas (1) does not, being only “a scientific one.” Thus, the argument commits the fallacy of equivocation for using the same term in different ways, and the fallacy of non-sequitur for inferring a metaphysical categorization from a biological one.

However, matters are much worse than just that a premier argument against abortion is fallacious on several counts. As was stated above, metaphysically the human being is a rational animal. But, not just any ol’ parcel of matter can pass for an animal: there are features defining of the animal form of life that must be reflected in the matter. Now, my pro-life interlocutors (here at Strange Notions at least), will agree that, in terms of metaphysics, what is distinctive of the animal form of life is the power of sensation. But, nothing can have this power unless it also has the means by which to exercise that power; namely, sense organs. Just try to imagine having a sensation without having any means by which to sense, such as eyes to see or ears to hear.

The problem I’m raising is that there is at least one point in a biological human’s gestation at which she has no sense organs whatsoever: fertilization. Thus, the human zygote does not reflect any of the forms of animal life it would need to in order to be an animal in metaphysical terms. But, if the human zygote is not an animal, then, a fortiori, it is not a rational animal.

The standard pro-life argument encapsulated in Joe’s remarks therefore falls prey to a number of difficulties, including equivocation and non-sequitur. But, the going only gets tougher when we realize that the human zygote isn’t even an animal, let alone a rational one at that.
 
 
(Image credit: Pregnant Now)

NOTE: Today we feature a guest post from Steven Dillon, one of our regular non-Catholic commenters. On Wednesday, we'll share a response from Catholic writer Brandon Vogt.

 
This site is primarily a forum for dialogue between Catholics and atheists. We can see this clearest on the part of the Catholic contributors who post about everything from the influence of Catholicism on science, and the crusade history to Marian apparitions and Catholic policy in the public school system. By contrast, the atheist contributors seem to have focused almost exclusively on posting about God’s existence, occasionally venturing into territory like whether Jesus of Nazareth really existed. But, there is much more for atheists to discuss with Catholics.

For example, an atheist can discern the Catholic Church’s claim to having not contradicted itself in any of its official teachings. E.g. The extraordinary magisterium decreed – through the 15th century Council of Florence – that whoever dies in the state of original sin alone goes to hell. But, no one can die in the state of original sin alone if, as the universal and ordinary magisterium currently teaches, God gives everyone the grace necessary to be saved; for the acceptance of this grace removes original sin and its rejection adds mortal or venial sin. Which infallible magisterium is right?

Or again, the Vatican Council of 1870 claimed that through the words attributed to him in Matthew 16:18-19, Jesus promised to confer a primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church upon Peter. But, an atheist can use what tools scholarship affords us to test how plausible this interpretation is. E.g. Had these words been understood by the earliest Christians to be of such ecclesiological importance, wouldn’t they have been multiply and independently attested? Given his explicitly stated purpose of recording such details, how could Luke have failed to even mention this, especially since he records a parallel version of this very event in Luke 9:18-20?

These and many other issues could prove to be fruitful grounds for discussion and debate. But, I’d like to steer this in the direction of another discussion starter: do Catholics know that their theology is correct? The status of theological belief is quite a divisive one in the philosophy of religion. Many, many thinkers from atheists to Pagans are of the mind that there is no theological knowledge. We only have varying degrees of reasonable and educated opinions. But, equally many thinkers from Christians to Muslims are of the view that there is such knowledge. Needless to say, if belief in Catholicism were at best educated opinion, the dynamic between atheists and Catholics would be drastically altered.

I’m going to argue – in an introductory way – that it should be. Theology is the theorizing about a piece of divine revelation, and thus takes it for granted that there is divine revelation to theorize about. It is not the theologian’s job – in that capacity – to demonstrate that the Bible is inspired by God, or that Allah commissioned Mohammed as his prophet. That task is left to the philosopher, who may in turn rely heavily on experts of other fields, such as historians and physicists. The foundation that philosophers lay for theologians is called the preamble of faith, and consists in beliefs such as that a specific divinity exists and has in fact issued revelation. But, regardless of how certain the preamble of faith is, the theologian offers nothing like certitude. Theologians may propose various reasons to think such-and-such divine revelation means this-or-that, and their reasons may even be very strong, but they don’t endow one with knowledge. The difference between an amateur theologian’s views and an expert’s is one between an opinion and an educated opinion. Why agree with me?

Every theologian is either an amateur at theorizing about divine revelation or an expert. If she is an amateur, then she is not qualified to know of what she speaks. You might expect that she can just defer to someone who does. But, expert theologians are in scarcely a better position, for their reasons for holding this-or-that theological belief have not been good enough to persuade any significant portions of their peers even after centuries and centuries of scholarship. It’s no secret that instead of tending towards unity, Christianity has only fractured over time. The reasons one faction offers for believing whatever they do about divine revelation haven’t just failed to convince likeminded individuals, they’ve even fueled dissolution! Yet, each faction boasts of highly trained experts in theological matters. If experts do not have good enough reasons to settle a dispute, then the dispute is not settled. The fact of the matter is not yet known.

Note, I’m neither saying it’s unreasonable to hold any theological belief, nor that Christianity enjoys no doctrinal unity whatsoever. By all means, hold those opinions which are reasonable for you to do so, and if the conciliar creeds prove anything, it’s that Christian factions are not at complete theological odds. But, experts in Christian theology are in anything but agreement, and evangelization is like a fish out of water when based on opinion.

The theologian might object that the reluctance theologians have manifested toward changing their minds does not show that their reasons aren’t knowledge-conferring. It may just as easily show that other theologians are blinded by sin. We could of course wonder why these reasons wouldn’t be good enough to cut through sin, but more importantly, how do we know there is sin to be blinded by? One’s mere opinion on the matter does not a robust response make.

Finally, some may worry that I’m advocating a form of relativism here. But, I’ve been careful not to talk about whether theological beliefs are true, only whether they are reasonable, and if so, how much? Are they so reasonable as to count as knowledge?

Whatever else you may have thought about the issue before reading this, and however this may have changed your mind, I hope it raises a number of questions about the nature of theological knowledge and opens another avenue for dialogue between the folks here.
 
 
(Image credit: Institute of Leo XIII)

One objection to First Cause arguments is that they make superfluous attributions: surely in any steady hand Occam’s razor would deliver a much more modest looking First Cause than God. In my last post, I argued that this objection is fallacious in as much as it begs the question against Classical Theism, for which the First Cause and its attributions are indivisible (and thus hardly capable of being whittled by Occam).

But, this doesn’t show that there is a First Cause, or that Classical Theism is right about its simplicity. Still less does it show that its attributes include “intellect”, “will”, or “goodness”. I’m going to try and make up for much of this deficit in this post, hoping my point about the fallacious nature of these Occam-style objections has in some measure cleared the runway.

I believe it can be demonstrated that there is a First Cause and that Classical Theism is right about its simplicity in one fell swoop. While this argument will not in and of itself show that the First Cause’s attributes include “intellect”, “will”, or “goodness”, and thus that it is God, it will show that the First Cause is supernatural, or non-natural at least.

Allow me to begin by asking you to consider an average human being. I think we will all agree that it has body parts. But, this is just a realization of its potential to have body parts. If it did not have this potential, if it were literally incapable of having body parts, then it simply would not exist (lacking all the essential organs and such).

Let’s now abstract from this or that human being’s potential to have body parts, and consider the potential by itself. Obviously, the potential to have body parts is general enough that non-human animals have it as well.

This process of abstracting the particulars away could continue on until we arrive at the most general potential included in a human’s potential to have body parts. Thus, we might say the next particular to be abstracted is the having of any specific kinds of parts. In turn, the potential to have parts is just the potential to be composed, from which we may abstract the potential for there to be composition. What saves this from being an exercise in the mundane is that last item. What a peculiar thing, this potential for there to be composition.

Potentials don’t just float around: things have potentials. But, in what sense could something have the potential for there to be composition?

We can divide all potentials into two mutually exclusive categories: active and passive. Active potentials are powers to cause whereas passive potentials are just capacities to undergo change. Thus, my potential to eat lunch is active, while my potential to become older is passive.

If the potential for there to be composition were passive, there would need to be something that could undergo a change that would result in there being composition. But, if there were something capable of undergoing this change, something that genuinely had this potential, then there would already be composition! As such, the potential for there to be composition cannot be passive.

But, if it were active, then something would have the power to cause there to be composition. Since cause logically precedes effect and composition would be one of its effects, this cause could not be composed in anyway whatsoever. Given that this potential has to either be active or passive, and that it cannot be passive, we are forced to deduce that it is active, and therefore that there is a perfectly simple cause of composition.

We may formalize the foregoing reasoning as follows:

1. Every potential is either active or passive.
2. If the potential for there to be composition is active, then there is a perfectly simple cause of composition.
3. The potential for there to be composition is not passive.
4. Therefore, the potential for there to be composition is active. [(1), (3) Disj.]
5. Therefore, there is a perfectly simple cause of composition. [(2), (4) M.P.]

This is a pretty straightforward argument for a First Cause. There could not be more than one perfectly simple being since they would lack any distinguishing features by which to be differentiated.¹ And since everything other than this perfectly simple cause is composed of parts, and it causes there to be composition, it sustains all things in existence by holding them together. It doesn’t matter whether the chain of composed beings regresses infinitely into the past, or loops back in on itself: the causation of this perfectly simple being is not ‘first’ in a temporal sense. Rather, its primacy lies within its fundamentality, its causation serving as the pulse of life underlying the existence of everything.

Still, why think it’s super or non-natural? The answer to this lies in the apophatic method: considering what forms of composition there are so as to deny them of the First Cause.

Fortunately, one sort of composition will suffice: that of matter and form. In every change something becomes otherwise than it was before. That is, something persists through the loss and gain of characteristics. Call these characteristics (such as redness, squareness, hunger, or location, etc. etc.) 'forms'. If forms are what are gained and lost through change, what is it that gains or loses them? Call the substratum in which forms are gained or lost ‘matter’. We can distinguish between different kinds of matter based on the forms that it 'substrates'. For example, we might designate the substratum of sensible form as 'physical' matter.

By virtue of its simplicity, the First Cause could not have matter, physical, quantum or any other partition thereof. It occupies no space, persists through no time, and lacks any and all pictorially identifiable features. No laws of nature govern its behavior; it is quite literally unlike anything in nature.

Granted, this does not spell ‘theism’. But, it’s eerily close and at complete odds with Naturalism in any case. The missing ingredients here have in no short supply been given elsewhere; however, perhaps that is a matter best left for another time.
 
 
(Image credit: Gawker)

When I first began to study the philosophy of religion, I became acquainted with a certain style of reasoning about God. This style seems to model arguments for and against God after arguments in the natural sciences, and is very much in vogue today. Herman Philipse is representative when he says that "the methodological dilemma for natural theologians in contemporary Western culture is that they either have to opt for methods of factual research that are intellectually respectable in the light of the present state of the sciences and scholarship, or for alternative methods, which are practised in religious investigations only, and which cannot be validated."¹

This philosophical Zeitgeist has all but determined the discussions and debates about God for the last 50 years. This is why Richard Swinburne — with his edifice of probabilistic arguments for God — has gained the place of prominence he has. Even Alvin Plantinga, who is perhaps today's most influential philosopher of religion, says "In my opinion, Swinburne's arguments that Christian belief is probable with respect to public evidence are the best on offer."²

But, this ‘scientizing’ trend is a blip on the radar screen of historical theism, whose adherents have traditionally looked to considerations deeper than, and indeed presupposed by, science in order to determine the question of God's existence. Their contemporary successors don't appeal to Big Bang cosmology, to the fine-tuning or specified complexity of anything, in order to infer that God exists. Probability calculations are entirely inappropriate to their way of thinking. It does not much matter whether religious experiences are just effects of temporal lobe seizures, or even whether an all-powerful, all-good demiurge of the sort called 'God' by philosophers nowadays would prevent more evil than is in fact prevented: their cases for God aspire to rest on nothing less than metaphysical demonstrations.

Because of what the classical theist takes God to be, she contends that there is something so fundamentally absurd about God's non-existence that questions of probability calculations and scientific discoveries are superfluous or distracting at best, and circular at worst (as science can hardly explain the material it presupposes in order to explain things).

As Eastern Orthodox scholar David Bentley Hart puts it: "When I say that atheism is a kind of obliviousness to the obvious, I mean that if one understands what the actual philosophical definition of 'God' is in most of the great religious traditions, and if consequently one understands what is logically entailed in denying that there is any God so defined, then one cannot reject the reality of God tout court without embracing an ultimate absurdity."³

But if the classical and modern traditions so starkly diverge, what accounts for this? In a large way, the divergence arises from a disagreement on whether God participates in existence.

All of nature has being, and it is by virtue of having being that it exists (whether that being is substantial, material, or whatever). Folks working in the modern tradition discuss whether God has being, a topic about which there could obviously be rational disagreement given its assumptions. But, classical theists do not think that God has being, or that he could, even in principle. On classical theism, God is the most fundamental reality, and just is subsistent being itself. Thus, he does not instantiate properties, or participate in forms of being, as if there were anything independent of and prior to him: everything apart from God is subsequent to and dependent upon him. Everything else derives from the fount of being. Is there room to rationally think that derivative being ultimately doesn't derive from anything?

Instead of considering that question, I’d like to look at a way an atheist might respond to classical theism. She might agree that regardless of what shape derivative being takes — whether it extends infinitely into the past, or forms a causal loop in which A causes B, B causes C, and C causes A, etc. — derivative being is still derivative being, and thus there must be something from which it derives, namely a First Cause. But, she might caution, this First Cause needn't be God. Sure, it might be immutable, and even the source of all value⁴ and so forth, but we needn't say it has intellect or will.

Graham Oppy's recently published The Best Argument Against God represents something like this strategy: maybe we do need to posit an ultimate First Cause of sorts. But whether we do or not, there's nothing to be gained by saying it's a supernatural entity with intellect and will. No hitherto unexplained facts get explained, and no currently explained facts get explained any better. All we end up doing is making explanatorily superfluous claims. This is what LaPlace had in mind when he said, in reference to God, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”

This response would have considerable force against modern conceptions of God, under which God might be viewed as a sort of conjunction of essential properties: God is necessary and omnipotent and the source of all value, etc. Here one is entitled to reject the entire conjunction simply by virtue of rejecting one of its conjuncts. So while a non-theist might not think that anything has all of these properties, she might think that something has a couple or more of them.

But, this way of thinking is incoherent on classical theism, since the First Cause is considered to be utterly simple. In other words, the First Cause isn't thought of as having essential properties, or any sort of parts at all: the First Cause and its power, goodness, and even knowledge all refer to the same thing, just in different senses (much like "Clark Kent" and "Superman" do).

Classical theists advance a number of arguments for this simplicity. For example, “every composite is posterior to its components: since the simpler exists in itself before anything is added to it for the composition of a third. But nothing is prior to the first. Therefore, since God is the first principle, He is not composite.”⁵

Moreover, because composites would not have any power unless their parts coalesced, their power is of a dependent sort. But, the power of the First Cause would not be dependent on anything: that would completely destroy the ultimacy it's supposed to have in the first place. Thus, the First Cause is not, nor could it be, composed of any parts.

But, whether classical theists have good reasons for affirming Divine Simplicity or not, this way of responding to classical theism commits the fallacy of begging the question, since it assumes that the First Cause could be composite, which entails that Divine Simplicity (a central tenant of classical theism) is false.
 
 
(Image credit: Dumb Ox Ministries)

NOTE: Today we feature a guest post from Steven Dillon, one of our regular commenters. When Strange Notions launched in May 2013, Steven didn't believe in the monotheistic conception God. Although he still rejects God as Trinity, he has since come to believe in a single, simple, perfect, immutable God. Today he shares one reason that swayed him closer to monotheism.

 
I’ve spent a lot of time arguing against theistic conclusions here, but I feel it’s time to change gears. There are a lot of good arguments out there not only for theistic sorts of beliefs (such as in an after-life), but also for God’s existence, and I’d like to start defending some of these, especially for the latter.

Now, more often than not, philosophical arguments bottleneck our rich background beliefs and experiences in such a way that our evaluations of and discussions about these arguments are just summaries of more expanded positions we hold. This prevents dialogues and debates from really changing people’s minds a lot of times because there tend to be a lot of relevant points and assumptions that go unaddressed and unexamined.

So rather than defend an entire argument for God in one post, I’d like to defend an important proposition that can play the role of ‘premise’ in various arguments for God’s existence, namely, “If anything whatsoever exists, then it has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.” Let’s abbreviate it to “If anything exists, it has an explanation of its existence” and call it ‘PSR’ for ‘Principle of Sufficient Reason’.

PSR strikes a lot of people as pretty obvious. But, is there any evidence for it? Not only do I think there is, but I think it’s extremely difficult to deny that there is: the very existence of something counts as evidence of its explicability!

Probability theory tells us that something (call it ‘E’) counts as evidence for one hypothesis (‘H1’) over another hypothesis (‘H2’), if and only if E is more likely given that H1 is true than that H2 is.

But, something is more likely to exist given that it has an explanation of its existence (H1) than that it does not (H2), because having an explanation of its existence entails that it exists, whereas lacking such an explanation does not.¹ In other words, H1 predicts that E exists better than H2 does because it entails E.

Note that we can talk about ‘things’ lacking an explanation of their existence without having to say they exist: unicorns have no explanation of their existence because they have no existence to explain.

Now, if it’s true of anything whatsoever that it is more likely to exist given H1 than H2, then it is true of anything whatsoever that if it exists, there is evidence that it has an explanation of its existence, for the two are just different ways of saying the same thing.

You might wonder how strong this evidence is: does it prove PSR, or just barely support it? As Dr. Pruss explains:

“According to the Expectation Principle [i.e. the leading philosophical interpretation of ‘likelihood’], if an event or state of affairs is more to be expected under one hypothesis, h1, than another, h2, it counts as evidence in favor of h1 over h2 – that is, in favor of the hypothesis under which it has the highest expectation. The strength of the evidence is proportional to the relative degree to which it is more to be expected under h1 than h2.”²

So the strength with which something’s existence is evidence for its explicability is just a function of how much more its existence is to be expected given that it explicable than that it is not.

Now, we know that something’s existence has the highest possible expectation given H1 because it is properly entailed or necessitated by it. As such, unless a thing’s existence is extremely expected given its inexplicability, it will count as significantly strong evidence for its explicability.

But, why should the failure of anything to have an explanation of its existence lead us to expect that it exists? The mere lack of an explanation of thing’s existence provides no reason whatsoever to think it exists because it does not in and of itself explain why there is such a lack of explanation: it could just be because there is no existence to explain.

Thus, the existence of anything whatsoever is far more to be expected given its explicability than not, and as such, we have significantly strong evidence for PSR.

Note that even if I have overestimated the strength of this evidence, it is still evidence
 
 
(Image credit: Mother Fitness)

NOTE: Today we feature a guest post from Steven Dillon, one of our regular atheist commenters. Be sure to read Brandon Vogt's response, "Why Evil and Suffering Don't Disprove God".

I wish that God existed, I genuinely do. His presence would be an invaluable source of hope and strength as well as peace and happiness.¹ But, I don’t think he does and that realization is perhaps the greatest of disappointments. Be that as it may, reality is still beautiful and I think we should honor the truth.

So, in hopes of some provocative discussion, I’m going to share what strikes me as a fairly compelling reason to think that God does not exist.

Now, as Richard Swinburne notes, “One unfortunate feature of recent philosophy of religion has been a tendency to treat arguments for the existence of God in isolation from each other. There can, of course, be no objection to considering each argument initially, for the sake of simplicity of exposition, in isolation from others. But clearly the arguments may back each other up or alternatively weaken each other, and we need to consider whether or not they do.”²

I propose this argument then as another piece to the puzzle, one which needs to be weighed in conjunction with the arguments for God’s existence.

My core thesis is this:

P: If God exists, then he will have had to have done things that he would not do.

If (P) is true, it affords what seems to be a powerful argument against God’s existence, because it’s absurd that God has done what he would not do. (P) is essentially composed of two claims:

P₁: If God exists, there are things that he will have had to have done.

P₂: God would not do at least one of these things.

Since (P) is true if and only if both P₁ and P₂ are true, I’ll focus on them. Let’s take each in turn.

P₁: If God exists, there are things that he will have had to have done.

God is traditionally conceived of as being perfectly good and the ultimate source, ground, or originating cause of everything that can have an ultimate source, ground or originating cause.

As such, if God exists, he will have had to have brought the natural world into existence along with most if not all of its significant features. Moreover, nothing that has happened will have happened without his permission. Each of us would be under his care as he chose to sustain us in existence from moment to moment.

P₂: God would not do at least one of these things.

If God exists, then due to his role as the ultimate cause, he will have had to have given his permission for every single thing that has ever occurred, including the most awful and horrific of events.

Take for example the Holocaust. God will have had to have deliberately allowed the systematic execution of millions, despite their unnervingly helpless pleas for him to spare their children as they were marched at gunpoint into gas chambers.

He will have had to have given his permission for every heinous count of abuse that children have been subjected to.³

But, this seems beneath God and more like the track record of a morally impoverished deity.

Typically, you should not allow children under your care to get beaten and molested. Perhaps there could be an exception to this rule, probably in what I’m guessing is a farfetched scenario. But, it is still a rule, and it thus expresses what is normally the case. To argue against this is to adopt the disturbing position that it is usually not wrong to allow children under your care to get beaten and molested.

Now, because it’s rational to assume that things are as they normally tend to be until given good reason to think otherwise, we’re putatively entitled to assume that someone who has allowed children under their care to get beaten and molested has done something wrong. We very well might go on to learn of extenuating circumstances that mitigate culpability or some such. But, the default position is that this sort of behavior is morally unacceptable, and just as well, right?

Well, in so far as we have prima facie reason to think that allowing kids under your care to get beaten and molested is wrong, we have prima facie reason to think that God would not do this. Because God will have had to have done this if he existed, we have prima facie reason to think that God does not exist.

There are many other moral rules that seem to yield this same conclusion, but they’d needlessly complicate a simple deduction

Conclusion

So, I believe there are some significant reasons for thinking that if God exists, he will have had to have done things that he would not do. For all its beauty, our world just seems too ugly to include God in it. I certainly won’t pretend like this is a rationally undefeatable argument, but I also don’t think it’s anything like a pushover.

How shall a theist respond to this argument? Is it not normally wrong to allow children under your care to be abused? Are we not under God's care? Or perhaps she will simply say the arguments for God’s existence are just too strong.

However we might respond to it, keep in mind that it won’t do to argue that God might allow things like the Holocaust, or human trafficking, or that God could have good reason for doing so. No has said that he couldn’t, that’s not the issue at hand. What needs to be shown is that God would allow these things. Theists will need to take the risk of identifying the reason why God would allow the Holocaust, or human trafficking, and seeing whether that identification can stand to reason.

What do you guys think?

(Image credit: Blog CDN)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today continues our eight-part debate on the resolution, "Does objective morality depend on the existence of God?" We'll hear from two sharp young thinkers. Joe Heschmeyer, a Catholic seminarian in Kansas City, Kansas, will argue the affirmative view. Steven Dillon, a gifted philosopher and a former Catholic seminarian, will argue the negative. The eight parts will run as follows:

Monday (11/4) - Joe's opening statement (affirmative)
Tuesday (11/5) - Steven's opening statement (negative)
Wednesday (11/6) - Joe's rebuttal (affirmative)
Thursday (11/7) - Steven's rebuttal (negative)
Friday (11/8) - Questions exchanged (three questions each)
Saturday (11/9) - Answers (Joe and Steven answer each other's questions)
Sunday (11/10) - Joe's closing statement (affirmative)
Monday (11/11) - Steven's closing statement (negative)

Today we conclude the series with a closing statement from Steven. Both Joe and Steven have agreed to be present in the comment boxes, so if you have a specific question for them, ask away!
 

Introduction

 
I’m very grateful to Brandon Vogt and Strange Notions for hosting this debate, and to Joe for participating in it. Debating a Thomist has been refreshing.

Now as I’ve indicated throughout this debate, the resolution is vulnerable to numerous interpretations. But, it has a particularly interesting meaning when uttered by someone of a Thomist persuasion, such as Joe.

As Ed Feser explains:

“[I]t isn’t atheism per se that threatens the very possibility of morality, at least not directly. Rather, what threatens it is the mechanistic or anti-teleological (and thus anti-Aristotelian) conception of the natural world that modern atheists are generally committed to…”

Objective morality depends on God, for the Thomist, in so far as its underwriting teleology does. But, Aristotle took teleology to be fundamental, thus permitting objective morality to exist independent of God. In a lot of ways, I’ve defended the Aristotelian view in this debate. I’ve argued that morality is ultimately foundational, negating the need for it to depend upon something further. And I resisted Joe’s argument that the teleology of moral duties requires God by showing the argument to be internally inconsistent. Of course, my arguments don’t commit anyone to endorsing Aristotelian metaphysics (though, I’d encourage people to do so), but they’ll play an important role in this closing statement as you’ll soon see.

Let’s review and evaluate the debate so far.

Joe’s Case

 
Joe’s general strategy for defending the resolution was to argue that objective morality could only be grounded in God, and he presented three arguments to that end. First he argued that normative theories which do not appeal to God are unable to ground objective morality. Second he argued that if God existed and was goodness, then objective morality would be grounded in God. Finally, he argued that objective moral duties required something that only God could deliver: universally binding ends.

In response, I noted that Joe’s general strategy was incapable of evincing the resolution. We could grant everything he said and it would only show that objective morality would be ungrounded in God’s absence. But, an ungrounded objective morality is still objective morality. Furthermore, each of his arguments seemed burdened with problems. For example, his first argument involved a series of questions which do not—contrary to their purpose—indicate whether a normative theory is objective, and as stated above his last involved a set of self-defeating claims.

We did not really interact over these points in the Question and Answer period, so I don’t have much to add here. Perhaps the resolution is true, but it does not seem to me that Joe’s arguments are able to show that it is. However, this could ultimately mean nothing for the purposes of this debate unless my case fared better.

My Case

 
My general strategy was to argue that objective morality does not depend upon God because some moral propositions belong to the class of propositions that would be true regardless of whether or not God exists. Other members of this class include the laws of logic and mathematical truths. I employed one argument to this end. I argued that the proposition ‘Agony is intrinsically bad’ featured the properties that characterize members of the class of ‘God-independent’ propositions. Namely, I argued that it was necessarily true, fundamental, and did not involve God.

I expected Joe to respond by arguing that there is no evil without goodness and no goodness without God. But, he instead took issue with the truth of the proposition. In his rebuttal, Joe argued that however we understand the ‘badness’ of agony, it won’t allow my proposition to qualify in the class I need it to. Either ‘badness’ just emphasizes the pain of agony—in which case, this isn’t even a moral proposition—or, ‘badness’ refers to moral evil, in which case counter-examples abound wherein agony is either not morally evil, or at least sensibly described as such.

But, ‘badness’ doesn’t just emphasize the pain of agony nor is it just a moral evil. In fact, moral evil is a proper subset of badness. Badness is an enormous category that we all recognize on a daily basis, which is why I’ve been stubborn in explicating this: it seems far too close to experience to need analysis. To illustrate its breadth, badness also includes natural evils. Thus, we tend to think that it’s ‘bad’ when hundreds of children drown after a natural event occurs such as a tsunami striking a village. Badness even transcends actions. We say “I had a bad day”, and “This is just a bad situation.” It is the most fundamental disvalue known to us. So, as we can see, Joe’s counter-examples are not successful. Agony is intrinsically bad, even though it’s not intrinsically morally evil. Note, in using such a broad notion of badness, my proposition is still moral as it concerns evaluative facts that relate to what we should and should not do.

How else did Joe respond to my case? Well, consider the following quotation:

“[Positing ultimately foundational moral truths] is not an answer. It’s a shrug of the shoulders and a “Just because.”

That's not the case in the Christian answer that God is uncaused. We argue that God must exist, since you cannot just have an infinite series of conditional and created beings. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Third Way proves the existence of a Being (who we call God) who must exist necessarily, and who relies only upon Himself for His Being. Without Him, there couldn’t be a universe. We don’t assume that God must exist: we show that He must.”

Those of us who do not believe in God will simply disagree: Christians have not shown that God exists. I’d add that they especially have not done this through Aquinas’ Third Way. If it is sound, it only shows that there is an imperishable substance. We’d definitely need additional argumentation to reasonably infer that this substance is anything like God. Joe may believe it’s a short step from the Third Way to God, but it doesn’t seem like we’ve been given reason to share that sentiment.

Now, because Joe has given an argument for God’s existence, I feel it is permissible for me to respond. In fairness to Joe, I won’t argue in any greater length against the Third Way than his linked video argued for it. You can find my response in footnote.¹ I’ve included it there so as not to interrupt the flow here.

In the above quotation Joe indicates that it’s a cop out to say some moral facts are so foundational they’re in no need of being grounded in or by anything. But, I pointed out that this is self-defeating because on his view, the moral fact that there is goodness cannot be grounded in or by anything, since God is goodness and nothing grounds God.

He replied in his Answers section that goodness is—contrary to my suggestion—grounded in God. But, surely this can’t be right. If God is goodness, then to say that goodness is grounded in God is to say that God is grounded in God. If his view commits one to the position that God grounds himself in himself, my view can hardly be regarded as inferior!

So, Joe is suggesting that theists have good reasons to believe in ultimately foundational morality because they’ve got good arguments that God exists (e.g. Aquinas’ Third Way) and is goodness, whereas non-theists lack comparable reasons for endorsing this moral position.

But, what are these arguments for the conclusion that God is goodness? Joe linked us to a video on the Third Way, but up to this point he’d only said that God would be goodness. So, I asked him to provide such an argument. At least this way the readers could decide for themselves whether or not Joe is justified in suggesting that theists are more reasonable than non-theists in endorsing ultimately foundational morality. But, Joe responded by protesting that providing such an argument wasn’t necessary to establish the resolution. However, in so far as he needs to show that God would be goodness in order to show that morality would be grounded in God, he does.

In response, Joe gave us two Fourth Wayish kind of arguments. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine whether these are logically valid and factually correct. I’ve responded to them in [1]: in so far as Aquinas’ Fourth Way implies that Pure Act efficiently causes², it’s unsound.

The only other issues Joe raised that I’m aware of are about Moral Intuitionism. But, they seem more to do with its practicality than truth, so I’ll set them aside for the time being.

Conclusion

 
I hope that at the very least I’ve managed to show that non-theists can reasonably resist the resolution. But, my case strikes me as stronger than that. What do you think?

Thanks for reading!
 
 
(Image credit: Fine Art America)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today continues our eight-part debate on the resolution, "Does objective morality depend on the existence of God?" We'll hear from two sharp young thinkers. Joe Heschmeyer, a Catholic seminarian in Kansas City, Kansas, will argue the affirmative view. Steven Dillon, a gifted philosopher and a former Catholic seminarian, will argue the negative. The eight parts will run as follows:

Monday (11/4) - Joe's opening statement (affirmative)
Tuesday (11/5) - Steven's opening statement (negative)
Wednesday (11/6) - Joe's rebuttal (affirmative)
Thursday (11/7) - Steven's rebuttal (negative)
Friday (11/8) - Questions exchanged (three questions each)
Saturday (11/9) - Answers (Joe and Steven answer each other's questions)
Sunday (11/10) - Joe's closing statement (affirmative)
Monday (11/11) - Steven's closing statement (negative)

Both Joe and Steven have agreed to be present in the comment boxes, so if you have a specific question for them, ask away!
 

Introduction

 
I’d like to thank Joe for his opening statement, and I’ll try to be as fair and as open minded as possible in my response to it.

Allow me to begin by asking the following question: In what sense does Joe say that objective morality depends upon God?

You could, theoretically, say that morality depends upon God in any number of ways. For instance, you might say it causally depends upon God. However, since cause logically precedes effect, if God were the cause of objective morality, he—and all his essential properties including moral perfection—would have to precede objective morality. But, unfortunately, it’s not possible for objectively moral things like moral perfection to precede objective morality.¹

Joe seems to argue that the way in which objective morality depends upon God is by being grounded in God.

To avoid lapsing into the causal dependence just refuted, I think we’ll have to understand Joe's claim to be not that morality is objective because of God doing anything, but rather because of God being something.

With that in mind, let’s turn to some general considerations about the arguments that Joe enlists.

Joe’s Arguments

 
It’s difficult to understand how Joe’s arguments would support the resolution if they were successful. You might say “Well, the basic idea is just that objective morality couldn't be grounded on atheism, while it could (and would) on theism.” But, far from supporting the resolution, this would actually undermine it, because then it wouldn’t be objective morality that depends on God, but grounded objective morality. That is, this would—contrary to the resolution—permit there to be objective morality on atheism, it’d just be ungrounded. Now, perhaps—contrary to what I've suggested—there's something wrong with saying that objective morality is not grounded in or by anything, instead being foundational itself. But, there's no argument for this in Joe's opening statement. So, you might revise: “Okay, but morality could only be grounded on theism.” This suggestion, however, fairs even worse because morality would certainly be grounded on atheism if it was subjective.

Maybe I’ve mischaracterized Joe’s case and it’s simply that morality would be objective on theism, but not on atheism. Unfortunately, if you were to ask why this is so, the only answer that can be found in Joe’s opening statement is that it’s because morality can be grounded on theism but not on atheism. And we’re back to square one. So, I don’t think Joe’s arguments would support the resolution even if they were successful.

But, let’s put the issue of how Joe’s arguments relate to the resolution to one side and see whether any of them are sound. I’ve kept his original headings for clarity.

Argument #1: We Can’t Ground Objective Morality in Anything Other than God

 
Here, Joe invites us to ask three questions of any given moral theory. “If the answer to any of these three questions is yes, your system is neither objective nor binding.” But, he doesn’t explain why this is so, and I fail to see how it could be. Consider his first question (where X stands for whatever the theory identifies as morally valuable or obligatory):

"1. Could there exist a person who does not want to achieve X?"

The whole reason of calling morality objective is to express the irrelevance of what people think to the moral nature of an action. That is, if morality really is objective, then it doesn’t matter whether anyone wants to achieve X. So, answering yes to this question can hardly mean your theory isn’t objective, quite the opposite!

Moreover, even if Joe’s argument shows that most non-theistic ethical theories fail to account for objective morality, it certainly doesn’t show that all of them do, let alone that every possible non-theistic theory would.

Finally, this argument is posed against non-theistic normative theories of ethics. These are theories which discuss what is good, bad, right and wrong. But, you don't need to hold a normative theory in order to endorse moral objectivism any more than you need to hold a theory of mental causation in order to endorse substance dualism. So, it's hard to see how taking normative theories away from the non-theist should prevent her from maintaining moral objectivism.

Argument #2: We Can Ground Objective Morality in God

 
It seems to me that this argument is incapable of supporting the resolution. Just consider what Joe could mean when he says we can ground objective morality in God. On the first possible meaning, Joe is saying that if God exists, is goodness and designed things with functions, then objective morality is grounded in God. As a purely conditional statement, this would not affirm that God exists, is goodness or has designed anything with functions. Thus, by itself, it’d offer no support whatsoever for the resolution. It’d merely identify a condition under which the resolution would be supported.

On the second possible meaning, Joe is saying that God does exist, is goodness and has designed things with functions. However, contrary to this possibility, Joe expressly tells us that he does not intend to directly argue for God’s existence. So, this option doesn’t seem viable.

If he did take this latter route though, the atheist would be entitled to reject the resolution on the basis of his arguments against theism.

Now, let me briefly comment on the conception of God that Joe is working with here. This is the Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of God, which I believe commits one to a host of extravagant and unnecessary positions. While I certainly don’t intend to turn this debate into one over this form of classical theism, I want everyone to understand some of what they’d have to buy if they followed Joe in this regard.

On this view, due to the doctrine of analogy, we can never say what God is or is like in a literal sense. He's so radically transcendent that we can only speak about him in analogies and metaphors. But, as philosopher Herman Philipse has noted:

“If no literal description is possible of an entity to which the word ‘God’ allegedly refers, however, since that entity, if it exists, can only be hinted at by irreducible metaphors and analogies, one should conclude that we could never succeed in providing the word ‘God’ with a referent. Indeed, we have no clear idea what kind of entity we are hinting at by using these irreducible metaphors. And if the word ‘God’ lacks a clearly defined referential use, the sentence ‘God exists’ cannot express a meaningful existential hypothesis.”²

This problem extends to every sentence predicating something of God, such as that God is goodness.

Imagine if I told you that Adfs is goodness. You ask what Adfs is. I say she's sort of like people. You ask how so. I say she has something sort of like a mind. You ponder what I mean and ask if I mean she’s a computer. I say no. Puzzled, you ask what she has that's sort of like a mind. But, I can’t tell you. I can only give more analogies. Eventually I think you'd just conclude that I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Without being able to say anything literal about God, it's hard to make any sense of the resolution because we have no idea what objective morality is being said to depend upon.

Argument #3: Why Theistic Morality Succeeds, and Non-Theistic Morality Fails

 
Here Joe argues that because moral obligations require binding ends, and such ends cannot be arbitrary or self-imposed, a higher source must give them and this is God. But, a number of problems rear their heads here, including self-contradiction.

Earlier Joe said: "If morality is objective, then it is binding upon everyone, even the most powerful." This entails that if God exists, then God has moral obligations. But, who gives God’s duties their binding ends? According to Joe they could not have been self-imposed or arbitrary and there’d be no higher power than God. So, Joe's claims are internally inconsistent. Either morality is not binding on everyone no matter how powerful, or some moral obligations have binding ends that are arbitrary or self-imposed. Either way, something has to give.

Conclusion

 
As they stand, Joe's arguments are unsound for several reasons (some of which I was unable to go over). But, the most important point is that they would not support the resolution if they were sound. So, it seems whatever repairs we make to them, they'd have to be fundamentally revised to support the resolution. This difficulty may amount to nothing however if Joe is able to raise comparable issues with my argument. But, and I suppose this bias is to be expected, I don't foresee this happening.

I proposed the following proposition as a counter-example to the resolution: "Agony is intrinsically bad." To say that agony is intrinsically bad is just to say that agony is bad, and that it is due to the essence of agony that it is so.

Because agony is intrinsically bad, it is impossible for agony to not be bad. That is, the counter-example is necessarily true, which entails the objectivity of morality.

Moreover, the badness of agony could not be due to anything other than the essence of agony lest it not be intrinsic. This entails that the counter-example isn't grounded by any deeper necessary truths: it's fundamental.

However, this proposition could still depend on God if either badness or agony were constituted by God. But, God's nature is neither identical with nor does it include badness or agony.

So, neither this proposition nor the objective morality it describes depend on God.

But, let's see what Joe has to say.

Thanks for reading!
 
 
(Image credit: Science Daily)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today continues our eight-part debate on the resolution, "Does objective morality depend on the existence of God?" We'll hear from two sharp young thinkers. Joe Heschmeyer, a Catholic seminarian in Kansas City, Kansas, will argue the affirmative view. Steven Dillon, a gifted philosopher and a former Catholic seminarian, will argue the negative. The eight parts will run as follows:

Monday (11/4) - Joe's opening statement (affirmative)
Tuesday (11/5) - Steven's opening statement (negative)
Wednesday (11/6) - Joe's rebuttal (affirmative)
Thursday (11/7) - Steven's rebuttal (negative)
Friday (11/8) - Questions exchanged (three questions each)
Saturday (11/9) - Answers (Joe and Steven answer each other's questions)
Sunday (11/10) - Joe's closing statement (affirmative)
Monday (11/11) - Steven's closing statement (negative)

Both Joe and Steven have agreed to be present in the comment boxes, so if you have a specific question for them, ask away!
 

Introduction

 
I’m very grateful to Brandon Vogt and Strange Notions for hosting this debate and to Joe for engaging me in this discussion. I look forward to an interesting and enlightening exchange!

The resolution of this debate is stated as ‘Objective morality depends upon the existence of God’. Now, you may find this initially puzzling. As Michael Huemer states, “The most discussed metaethical question is that of whether value is ‘objective’.”¹ And yet when you survey this extensive literature in search of arguments for the objectivity of values, you’ll be lucky to find any that mention God. In fact, when the resolution’s most public advocate—Dr. William Lane Craig—argues for objective morality, he just argues that in our experience we apprehend a realm of objective moral values and duties and we’re justified in trusting our perceptions until we have good reason not to. This is about as untheistic a case as one can make.

But, then it’s no wonder why so many atheists believe in objective morality. The position has good arguments and they don’t seem to carry anything theistic commitments. This becomes a source of burden for the proponent of the resolution. She must explain why these arguments—which don’t even mention God—are only sound if God exists. And the atheist who believes in moral objectivism on their basis seems well within her rights to resist the resolution until this burden is met. While this is a perfectly legitimate strategy for the atheist who is not saying the resolution is false, I am taking the negative in this debate. As such, I must bear the burden my assertion carries and construct a case against the resolution.

So what will it take to show that the resolution is false? I suppose I could just argue that objective morality doesn’t depend upon God because there is no God for objective morality to depend upon. But, that would make God’s relation to morality peripheral when that’s really what this debate is about. I’d much rather argue that God’s existence simply makes no difference to whether morality is objective. Certainly, God’s existence would affect what objective moral truths there are, but it would not affect whether there are objective moral truths.

The Argument

 
Allow me to begin my case by taking inventory of some common ground between Joe and I, clarifying the resolution’s terms along the way.

Though Joe believes that God exists, and I do not—that is, even though we disagree on whether there is an essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being—we share a good amount of moral beliefs in common. We both think, for instance, that some moral values and duties hold independent of our attitudes towards them. In other words, Joe and I believe that morality is objective. Moreover, we both believe that some things are unalterably good, bad, right and wrong, or put another way, that some moral propositions are necessarily true or false. And among these moral propositions, we recognize that some are more fundamental than others.

Now, this last statement might strike you as strange. If there really are necessarily true moral propositions, how can some be more fundamental than others? Wouldn’t that just make them contingent, at least upon the most fundamental moral truths?

But, there’s nothing obviously incoherent about necessary truths grounding or explaining other necessary truths. It may necessarily be the case, for example, that the second person of the Trinity takes the name “Jesus”. But, surely, it’d be even more fundamental that Jesus exists. He could hardly take a name if he didn’t!

So, let’s draw a distinction between necessary truths that are grounded or explained by propositions other than themselves and necessary truths that aren’t. We’ll call the first kind of necessity ‘non-fundamental’ and the second ‘fundamental’.

‘Fundamentality’ is typical of logically necessary claims, and as world renowned Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne explains:

“An argument that claims that the best explanation of the existence of morality is the action of God who created it must claim that many moral truths are (logically) contingent. For the existence of the phenomena described by (logically) necessary truths need no explanation. It does not need explaining that all bachelors are unmarried, or that, if you add two to two, you get four. These things hold inevitably and necessarily, whether or not there is a God.”²

And this is where our moral beliefs reach an impasse. In fact, I’d wager that this disagreement is so substantial that it all but determines how we view the resolution. Joe believes—and the resolution requires—that any and all fundamentally necessary moral truths involve God. These fundamental moral properties must be identical with or embedded in God’s nature, or be the result of some sort of causal activity on God’s part, like a command etc.

If there was even a single fundamental moral truth that didn’t involve God, objective morality would not depend upon God. Being fundamental, it wouldn’t depend upon anything it didn’t involve, and being moral, its truth would entail the objectivity of morality.

My position is that there are such facts. In the words of philosopher Erik Wielenberg:

“Such facts are the foundation of (the rest of) objective morality and rest on no foundation themselves. To ask of such facts, “where do they come from?” or “on what foundation do they rest?” is misguided in much the way that, according to many theists, it is misguided to ask of God, “where does He come from?” or “on what foundation does He rest”? The answer is the same in both cases: They come from nowhere, and nothing external to themselves grounds their existence; rather, they are fundamental features of the universe that ground other truths.”³

I feel that this is where the debate should focus, and because it’d make no difference to the resolution, I’m even willing to assume for the sake of argument that God exists and grounds all sorts of contingent moral truths.

Now, I should say a word about the costs and benefits of endorsing my position before arguing for it.

First, there’s nothing at all atheistic about it. Richard Swinburne accepts it, and he’s Eastern Orthodox! Second, the existence of such independent, fundamental truths would not deplete God’s greatness. At least, any more so than the existence of independent, fundamental truths like the law of non-contradiction would.

With these preliminary comments in mind, let’s talk about whether there are any fundamental moral truths that don’t involve God.

There are a number of ways that one might go about doing this, but I’ve found it helpful to start with moral propositions that are commonly held to be necessarily true and go from there.

I think the following candidate is exceptionally good at this role: Agony is intrinsically bad.

It’s always good to stick close to what’s clearest to us in experience and, unfortunately, pain and badness are things we experience all too much in life.

To better understand why this proposition is true let’s reflect on the concepts it involves, beginning with agony.

We all know what this is: it’s an intense and extreme amount of pain. It could be anything from searing burns and shattered bones to a parent losing its child on a hospital bed in the ICU. We’re not talking about paper cuts here, this is the kind of pain that can ruin someone’s life.

What about badness? Here are some paradigmatic examples of bad things: it is bad when a young and vulnerable child is bullied until she commits suicide. It’s bad when parents have to live their lives in worry and stress because of inopportunity and an unfair society. Racism, animal cruelty, human trafficking, all of these things are bad.

With these concepts in mind, let’s return to the experience of agony. Is this harrowing level of pain in and of itself a bad thing? I hope you find the question a little ridiculous. Is a pain so consuming that it leads some to think their life isn’t worth living any more a bad thing? Of course! It’s horrible. I’m not asking whether agony is good for certain things. I’m asking about the experience itself. I think the answer has to be yes.

Asking why agony is intrinsically bad is like asking why we ought to do what we ought to do: the answer is that if it’s true that we ought to do something, then that’s why! Likewise, if something really is agonizing, then that’s why it’s bad! How could anything further explain the badness of agony? It’s not like you have these two things: agony and badness, and something has to add badness to agony.

Note, we did not conclude that agony is intrinsically bad because some further necessary truth dictated as much. We didn’t even consider other propositions, after all. We just thought about what the proposition meant, and it seemed to us that it was true. This is how we come to believe claims such as that ‘Nothing is older than itself’, or that ‘Everything is identical to itself’.

As Michael Huemer explains:

“Reasoning sometimes changes how things seem to us. But there is also a way things seem to us prior to reasoning; otherwise, reasoning could not get started. The way things seem prior to reasoning we may call an ‘initial appearance’. An initial, intellectual appearance is an ‘intuition’. That is, an intuition that p is a state of its seeming to one that p that is not dependent on inference from other beliefs and that result from thinking about p, as opposed to perceiving, remembering, or introspecting. An ethical intuition is an intuition whose content is an evaluative proposition.”⁴

We know this proposition (and those like it) through intuition. Moreover, the proposition is self-evident. As Thomas Aquinas said, “A proposition is self-evident because the predicate is included in the essence of the subject.”⁵ Clearly, badness is included in the essence of agony!

So, is the proposition ‘Agony is intrinsically bad’ explained or grounded by a different proposition? The answer has got to be no: once you grasp what agony is, you understand that it’s bad. I’ll tentatively conclude, therefore, that we’ve identified a fundamental moral truth.

The only question left to ask is whether this proposition involves God, and I think the answer is very clearly no. God is obviously neither agony nor badness. Moreover the badness of agony is entirely accounted for by the nature of agony: God is not needed to make agony a bad thing. If he were, agony wouldn’t be intrinsically bad. Finally, since agony can exist without God, and agony inherently involves badness, badness can exist without God.

Conclusion

 
We’ve identified a moral proposition that boasts of the following features: it’s (i) necessarily true, (ii) fundamental, and (iii) it does not involve God. As such, this proposition belongs with all those other propositions that would be true whether or not God exists. God may affect what objective moral truths there are, but he makes no difference to whether there are objective moral truths.
 
 
(Image credit: Photo Ready)