What should we make of the proposal that there's no such thing as objective morality, that morals are just determined by cultures or by individuals? That's what I'd like to address in this post. I specifically engage the cultural relativism advocated by Ruth Benedict, who claimed that “good” and “evil” are socially determined. I argue instead for the moral absolutism advocated by the British Catholic analytical philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (G.E.M. Anscombe).

This post will proceed by considering the appeal of, and arguments for moral relativism; the arguments against moral relativism; and the interplay between moral relativism and Anscombe's moral philosophy on the question of conscience.

The Appeal of Moral Relativism

 
The rise of moral relativism is closely related to the process of globalization. In earlier times, when individuals were exposed primarily or exclusively to their own cultures, it was easy to imagine that one's culture's morals simply reflected morality. The spread of Christianity throughout Europe (and Islam throughout much of the rest of the world) had a similarly homogenizing effect on morality: pagan mores gave way to an Abrahamic moral code that held largely intact from one nation to another. What was immoral in France was likely immoral in Scotland, Spain, and Switzerland as well. This moral uniformity lent itself strongly to the suggestion that these mores reflected the natural law, that these were objective rules of morality existing apart from any particular culture.

As Christianity's influence on European and North American culture waned, this uniformity began to break down. Simultaneously, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians began to examine cultures with moral systems dramatically distinct from, and even diametrically opposed to, Christian culture. For example, anthropologist Ruth Benedict argues against moral objectivity by telling stories about the (allegedly) paranoid and violent culture on Dobu island in northwest Melanesia, a culture that she described as treating violence as acceptable, while ostracizing the kind and helpful.¹ In the light of these alien moral codes, what had once looked like common-sense moral rules reflecting a universal human consensus now appeared to be arbitrary social conventions. The cultural relativist argues on this basis that the notion of an objective and transcultural morality is illusory.

Instead, the argument goes, we must learn to value tolerance, since to insist upon Christian morality would be an arrogant imposition of our own culture. Certainly, the morals on Dobu seem barbaric and evil, but Benedict argues that “the very eyes with which we see the problem are conditioned by the long traditional habits of our own society.”² That is, we see Dobu morality as wicked because we approach it with Western eyes. They would likewise see Western morality as wicked, given their own cultural formation.

The Problem with Moral Relativism

 
Without question, G.E.M. Anscombe, whose adherence to moral absolutism is well-established, would reject moral relativism of this sort. Francis J. Beckwith gives several reasons why in answering the above line of argumentation. First, this cultural relativism conflates preference-claims with moral-claims, so that “killing people without justification is wrong” is treated as a merely subjective preference, like “I like vanilla ice cream.”³ Second, relativism is premised off of the idea that, since cultures cannot agree on what objective morality is, there must be no objective morality. Logically, the conclusion does not hold: the people of Dobu might have cosmological and scientific beliefs radically at odds with Western cosmology and science, but we would not rationally conclude that, therefore, there must be no objective cosmology or science. Worse, if the mere existence of disagreement means that the belief is not objectively true, then the disagreement over cultural relativism disproves it.⁴ Third, the cultural relativists typically exaggerate the disagreements between cultures, and ignore underlying commonalities between moral codes.

Additional problems with cultural relativism can be seen from the real-life encounter of General Sir Charles James Napier, British Commander-in-Chief in India from 1849 to 1851, with certain Hindu priests. The priests were protesting the British ban on Sati, the practice of burning a widow alive on her husband's funeral pyre. They argued that Sati “was a religious rite which must not be meddled with,” and “that all nations had customs which should be respected and this was a very sacred one.”⁵ Napier responded:

"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pyre. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."⁶

Napier's response highlights several problems facing cultural relativism. Where cultures clash, whose moral code should triumph? For the British to “tolerate” Sati would involve violating their own moral codes. For that matter, whose morals should triumph within a particular culture? Should the Indian brides simply “tolerate” being thrown into the flames against their wills because of popular morality? Or should cultural morality simply be decided by the powerful imposing their will—be that the Indians forcing brides onto the pyre, or the British forcing them to stop? Quickly, this devolves into pure Nietzschean will to power.

As Beckwith notes, “cultural relativism is making an absolute and universal moral claim, namely, that everyone is morally obligated to follow the moral norms of his or her own culture.”⁷ This is problematic, both in that it is self-refuting (since the crux of cultural relativism is the rejection of such absolute moral claims) and that it would eliminate any possible social progress, since no one could upset the moral norms of his or her own culture. For that matter, the whole notion of social progress would have to be rejected, since “progress” implies some comparison of a culture to an external standard of some kind.⁸

Moral Relativism and the Problem of Conscience

 
That moral relativism cannot be endorsed in total does not mean that it is entirely without merit. Take, for instance, this claim by Ruth Benedict:

"The concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the good. It is that which society has approved. A normal action is one which falls well within the limits of expected behavior for a particular society. Its variability among different peoples is essentially a function of the variability of the behavior patterns that different societies have created for themselves, and can never be wholly divorced from a consideration of cultural institutionalized types of behavior."⁹

As a description of the good, this account is inadequate, for the reasons discussed above. However, as a description of the influence of societies in the formation of individual consciences, it highlights a real phenomenon. In Anscombe's words, “it belongs to the natural history of man that he has a moral environment,” such that it is impossible to raise a child without this being the case.¹⁰ This moral environment includes the deliberate influence of the child's parents, but it also includes the society in which the child is raised. A child raised in the notoriously-violent Yąnomamö culture will be shaped differently than a child raised in a strictly-pacifistic Quaker community, and their approach towards moral reasoning will likely reflect this upbringing, at least initially. Benedict and the cultural relativists are right, therefore, to see culture as playing an indispensable role in the formation of individual consciences.

In fact, Anscombe and Benedict arrive at similar conclusions for the class of cases that Anscombe would describe as involving “invincible ignorance,” which she defines as “ignorance that the man himself could not overcome.”¹¹ Thus, if Abner has been taught of a certain affirmative duty, and Charles has never been taught about this (and has no reason to suspect its existence), Abner is morally responsible for his failure to perform the duty, while Charles is not. For Benedict, this distinction would be explained by reference to the differing cultural norms facing Abner and Charles. For Anscombe, it would be explained by reference to Charles' invincible ignorance. Nevertheless, the conclusion would reached along somewhat similar lines: because the two men received different moral instructions, they are held to differing standards.

Here, the agreement between Anscombe and Benedict ceases. In two major areas, they would decisively part company on the question of conscience. The first is on the relationship of social moral pedagogy to objective morality. Benedict viewed it as disproving the existence of objective morality, at least in any transcultural sense: that is, because cultures indoctrinate in differing, and even contrary ways, there can be no binding transcultural morality. Anscombe would disagree, holding that some societies are simply better or worse at moral formation, just as some parents are. Both parents and the culture possess a certain moral authority in the upbringing of children, yet Anscombe noted that this authority “is not accompanied by any guarantee that someone exercising it will be right in what he teaches.”¹² Acculturation and indoctrination must therefore be compared to an external standard of objective morality. Accordingly, we can affirm that some parents or cultures create a moral environment suitable for raising virtuous individuals, while others fail to do so, or succeed in creating viscous persons.

The second area of disagreement between Anscombe and Benedict on the question of conscience involves the degree to which the individual's socially formation is fixed. Certainly, Benedict speaks of cultural morality as a static thing: an individual believes such-and-such because these are the values of his culture. As Beckwith notes, the rigidity of such a view leaves no room for moral reformers like the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.¹³ Nor does it seem to leave room for individuals like Benedict herself, whose belief in cultural relativism was a radical break from her native culture's moral outlook. Anscombe rightly rejects Benedict's rigid view, holding instead that an individual may move closer to (or further from) objective morality throughout his life. She describes the context in which children come to reject their parents' moral authority; the same is surely true of societies.¹⁴ Individuals need not live out their entire lives blindly accepting a particular thing as true simply because society says so.

These two points prove to be crucial. Because conscience can be malformed, the individual may face a genuine moral perplexus in which every course of action is morally wrong:

"If you act against your conscience you are doing wrong because you are doing what you think wrong, i.e. you are willing to do wrong. And if you act in accordance with your conscience you are whatever is the wrong that your conscience allows, or failing to carry out the obligation that your conscience says is none."¹⁵

This moral perplexus is only comprehensible in light of the fact that relativism is wrong. We would otherwise have to affirm that “there's no such thing as false conscience. Conscience is conscience and infallibly tells you what is right and what is wrong. So conscience always binds, or else legitimately leaves you morally free to do or not do.”¹⁶

So, having rejected moral relativism, we are left facing a moral perplexus. Here, it is important that Benedict was mistaken to view socially-formed conscience as static or fixed. It is precisely in the ability of the conscience to be formed, even in adulthood, that Anscombe finds a solution to the perplexus, saying: “There is a way out, but you have to know that you need one and it may well take time. The way out is to f­ind out that your conscience is a wrong one.”¹⁷ That is, the long-term solution to the perplexus problem is to repair the damage inflicted upon your conscience, whether that damage was self-inflicted or the result of a bad moral environment.

Conclusion

 
A major appeal of moral relativism is that it tells a half-truth: culture really does influence the way that individuals approach morality. A proper moral environment is invaluable, if not indispensable. But this reality does not point to the absence of objective morality. Rather, as Anscombe shows, it points to the need of properly forming one's conscience, and ensuring a healthy moral environment for the rearing of children. To fail to take these steps risks placing you or your children in a moral perplexus, in which every possible action is morally wrong.
 
 
Originally posted at Shameless Popery. Used with permission.
(Image credit: UNAV)

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)

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

In affirming the resolution, “Does objective morality depend upon God?” I’ve argued two things: (a) that objective morality can be grounded in God; and (b) that objective morality cannot be grounded in anything other than God. Steven challenged (b), claiming that moral truths like “suffering is inherently bad” are simply and intuitively true, and do not rely upon God.

In my rebuttal, I asked, “what does it mean to call agony ‘intrinsically bad,’ exactly?” If we mean that agony is inherently painful, that’s a tautology, not a moral claim. As Peter Geach explained in Good and Evil:

"[I]f I call a man a good burglar or a good cut-throat I am certainly not commending him myself; one can imagine circumstances in which these descriptions would serve to guide another man's choice (e.g. if a commando leader were choosing burglars and cut-throats for a special job), but such circumstances are rare and cannot give the primary sense of the descriptions. It ought to be clear that calling a thing a good A does not influence choice unless the one who is choosing happens to want an A; and this influence on action is not the logically primary force of the word “good”."

So, to turn “agony is intrinsically bad (painful)” into an objective moral claim, you would have to have an objective moral system (e.g., that we should always pursue pleasure and avoid painful or unpleasant things). But the terms don't carry that system within themselves, and there's no objective, non-theistic way to construct this or any other moral system.

On the other hand, if we mean that agony is an intrinsic evil, that’s false. Steven has yet to define his term, but his answer to Question 1 suggests that this is his meaning. I’ll proceed under that assumption.

To say that an act is intrinsically evil is to say that it may never be done. By “evil,” we mean that sort of thing that ought not be done; by “intrinsically,” we mean that it ought not be done of itself, without consideration of any consequences. We ought not rape, murder, etc., regardless of the good or bad consequences of an individual act of rape or murder.

But that’s not what Steven argues at all. He says that suffering can be inflicted if it is the “lesser of two evils.” I asked about the case of a woman intentionally getting pregnant, given the pains of childbirth. He says that “if a woman has to endure the excruciating pain of child-birth so that the child may be born, we should permit the suffering, otherwise a child dies.” That's telling, but not my question: if a woman chooses to get pregnant, the alternative isn’t that a child dies. It’s that a child is never conceived. So the “lesser of two evils” principle doesn’t apply. By Steven’s initial analysis, it would seem that every instance of intentional conception is evil. But now, it seems that he’ll permit agony not only to avoid greater evils, but also to achieve greater goods (like procreation).

If it is okay to inflict agony in some cases, then agony is not intrinsically evil. This refutes the claim that “agony is intrinsically bad (evil).”

At this point, Steven seems to have shifted to utilitarianism, a moral system which I rejected in my opinion statement, in a passage left unrebutted:

"[U]tilitarianism leads to unconscionable results. No action—slavery, rape, genocide, torture, etc.—could ever be described as objectively evil. We’d have to determine how much pleasure the slavemaster, rapist, genocidaire, and torturer derive (along with the pleasure or displeasure of the general public). Only after we’ve weighed all of those factors, could we determine whether the action is right or wrong."

Steven hasn’t, and can’t, show this moral framework to be true, or binding upon anyone.

Stepping back from the particulars of the claim “agony is intrinsically bad,” is the broader problem of moral intuitionism, which I raised in my rebuttal: namely, that it's not an objective moral code, since intuitions differ from person to person; that it provides no basis for rational decision-making, because there's no mechanism for resolving competing values; and that all true moral intuition relies upon God.

Steven gives an intriguing illustration of the moral system he's defending:

"Think of a tall skyscraper. What grounds it? Well, you might say its foundation. And what grounds its foundation? You could say the land in which it is built in or upon. And what grounds the land? You could continue asking of each proposed grounding structure what grounds it. Assuming this cannot continue on indefinitely, you’ll reach a point where there simply is no deeper grounding structure: you’ve struck rock bottom. I’m saying that moral facts are grounded by other moral facts, and so on until we reach moral facts so foundational there’s just no further to go. This is radically different from saying that there is no rock bottom, and moral facts just sort of...free-float."

I largely agree with this view. In fact, it's virtually identical to the first three of Thomas' Five Ways. But Steven stops too soon in his digging into the foundation: you can't logically conclude that there are several rock bottoms. Even the moral claims he's arguing that are irreducibly fundamental aren't. If they were, he couldn't say that they are permissible in some cases. To say that a certain truth is foundational, if it means anything, means that it's not just true in certain situations.

This is why moral intuitionism provides no capacity for rational moral decision-making: if both equitable distribution of goods and respect for private property are irreducibly foundational moral principles, what do we do when they clash? It's an irresistible force and an unmovable object: a contradiction that exposes the incoherence of the intuitionist worldview. Likewise, in saying that agony is sometimes permissible, Steven shows that it's not a foundational principle that agony is inherently evil.

Still, I agree with his impulse, to dig further and further into the metaphysical foundations. And the solution is to dig deeper, to the First Cause. There must be a single First Cause, or you can't get this moral system off the ground. This First Cause can't be anyone other than God (as we've seen, all other alternatives fail to create an objective moral system). That's what I meant in the rebuttal about all forms of intuitionism relying upon God.

Steven objects that it doesn't make sense to claim that objective morality depends upon God because we don't have anything literal to say about God. Here, I must raise an objection: Steven complains that God isn't reducible to the unaided human intellect. But a being that could be comprehended by the unaided human intellect would be, in some way, smaller than the intellect, and therefore, not God.

What Do We Mean By God?

 
We can affirm that God is Pure Being, Pure Goodness, etc., but we can’t tell you, short of encountering God directly, what that is like. It would be irrational to expect us to be able to. Furthermore, we must ask a question: is it true that the only concepts we can know of are ones that we can make literal, positive statements about? It seems to me there is at least one that breaks the mold, acknowledged by both theists and atheists alike: infinity.

Just as we often mistake God for a really big being (instead of Subsistent Being Itself, the Ground of all Being), we often misunderstand infinity as a really big number. Not so, says mathematician Raymond Nickerson:

"[I]n fact infinity is not a very large number; it is not a number at all, and such phrases as ‘approaching infinity,’ ‘an almost infinite number,’ and ‘nearly infinite in extent’ are contradictions in terms. Think of the largest number you can imagine. How close is this to infinity? Not close. […] Between it—our largest number—and infinity there will remain a gulf of infinite extent, and there is nothing we can do to decrease it."

Look at the sort of claims that we can make about infinity: its very name is a negation (denying that it possesses finitude). Whether we call it infinite, boundless, limitless, etc., we’re making negative claims. But these negative claims still tell us something concrete about what infinity is, by showing us what it isn’t.

St. Anselm properly defines God as “that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.” This sounds like unnecessary verbiage, and the philosopher Descartes opts for the simpler formulation that God is a “supremely perfect being.” But the difference between Anselm’s and Descartes’ definitions of God turns out to be infinite. Anselm’s definition, like infinity, is a negative claim: it defines what God isn’t, and gives us a hint (but little more than a hint) of what He is, as a result.

Therefore the proposition "God exists" can be affirmed without directly knowing the nature of God, just as we can say that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa without knowing what he was like. And just as we can know that there is such a thing as infinity, even if we’re unsatisfied with the limitations of our knowledge of the limitless, we can say that there is such a thing as God, even if we’re unsatisfied with the limitations of our knowledge of Him.

Fortunately, unlike with infinity, God reveals Himself to us, enabling us to know Him in a way that we would never be able to by unaided human reason. This relationship with Him, followed to its logical conclusion, terminates in the Beatific Vision, in which we take on divinity in some way: we know God with God’s own knowledge of Himself.

Conclusion

 
Without God, all of reality is literally pointless: it’s a random cosmic accident, and there’s no objective, morally-binding reason to do good and avoid evil. The two logical conclusions from this are either that “God exists” or that objective morality doesn’t exist. Steven gives good reasons, based upon moral intuition, to reject the second option. But that’s a proof for the existence of God.

Yet once that we’ve established that God exists, what can we say? Hopefully, it is now clear that since God is infinite, our unaided knowledge of Him is limited to negative and analogical statements. Yet our minds crave a deeper knowledge of God than these statements provide. This is a preamble, and an invitation to accept His offer of a relationship.

Thanks again to Steven for a civil and worthwhile debate, and for Brandon and the folks at Strange Notions for hosting!

 
 
(Image credit: Cognitive Disinhibition)

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!
 

Today, each of our two participants answer the three questions submitted yesterday by his counterpart.

Joe's Answers to Steven's Questions

Question #1: I was a little surprised at how ambiguous you found the proposition "Agony is intrinsically bad". It seems to me that we all know what agony is and can recognize that experiences such as agony are bad. Furthermore, you linked to a Wikipedia page about intrinsic value in your opening statement, providing several standardized ways to interpret my proposition, but didn't make use of them. Be that as it may, I'm curious about what you think of the proposition on its more usual meaning. So, my first question is:
 
Q#1: Where it just means that agony is a bad thing because of what it involves, do you agree that agony is intrinsically bad?

Answer #1: Unfortunately, the background doesn’t clear up the ambiguity that I pointed out in my original response, so let me give two answers.

If, by “agony is intrinsically bad,” you mean that it’s intrinsically painful or unpleasant, then yes, I agree. That’s tautologically true: very painful things are painful. But that’s not a moral claim (any more than saying that scalding things are hot), and it’s not a particularly helpful claim.

If, by “agony is intrinsically bad,” you mean that it’s intrinsically evil, then no, I disagree. I gave the examples of childbirth and surgery for things that can be agonizingly painful that aren’t morally evil. For the world’s billion Christians, one of the things that we embrace is the Cross: “we preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23), an event preceded by Jesus’ Agony in the Garden. The fact that Our Savior was willing to freely take on so much agony for us is something that endears us to Him.

Furthermore, there are contexts in which describing agony as morally evil wouldn’t seem to make sense. For example, Aron Ralston was trapped under a boulder for over five days, eventually having to cut off his own arm to get free. That sounds positively agonizing, but it seems strange to me to claim that either Ralston or the boulder was acting evilly.

If you mean something other than either painful/unpleasant or evil, then I’ll need more clarification.
 

Question #2: On your view, the moral fact that there is goodness is not grounded in or by anything because God is goodness and God is not grounded in or by anything.
 
Yet, in reaction to the position that there are moral facts so fundamental they're in no need of being grounded, you indicate that this is a cop out. To say there are such facts is to say they're there "just because."
 
This is a self-defeating argument unless you're not taking issue with the position that objective morality is ultimately ungrounded, but with the non-theist's adoption of it.
 
One may wonder why it’s a cop out for the non-theist to believe in ultimately ungrounded objective morality but not for the theist, and as best as I can tell, your answer is that while theists have good reasons to believe in such morality via arguments that God exists and is goodness, non-theists do not. So, my second question is as follows:
 
Q#2: Would you present an argument in premise/conclusion format for the conclusion that God is goodness?
 
I understand properly defending the premises would lead to exceeding the word count, but if we could just see the argument itself it’d give us a better idea of where you’re coming from.

Answer #2: First, a minor protest: I don’t think that this is necessary to resolve the debate. My point here isn’t that God, understood in the Thomistic sense, exists. It’s that if God, subsistent Goodness, exists, that provides a perfectly logical account for the existence of objective morality.

To prove the resolution, I must show two things: (1) a system of objective morality is possible with God; and (2) a system of objective morality is impossible without God. You just have to refute either of these, by showing either (1) objective morality is impossible, even if theism is correct; or (2) objective morality is possible without God.

Of course, if I’m right, this does mean that if objective morality exists, then God exists. But that argument requires a premise (objective goodness exists) that I didn’t prove. That said, you end up giving me that premise, and making arguments for it.

Second, your background mischaracterizes my position. I’m not claiming that goodness is ungrounded. What I’m claiming is the furthest thing from that: I’m claiming that goodness is grounded in pure Being. It is unimaginable for goodness to be more grounded.

Your characterization sounded like God was a branch on a Porphyrian tree below goodness. My argument is that God is the trunk of that tree, so to speak. Anselm rightly defined God as “that which nothing greater can be conceived.” If you’re imagining a god capable of doing evil things, you’re not imaging God, but something infinitely less than Him.

---

Having said that, let me modify Aquinas’ Fourth Way slightly into two distinct-but-related arguments:

Part A
Step 1: Diversity in perfections is found in things. Some things are more good, true, and beautiful than other things. The perfections we’re talking about here are what are called non-essential and non-material perfections.

Step 2: The intelligibility of diverse perfections depends on their approaching a maximum of that kind. Ex: “good” and “better” are only coherent terms in relation to some (perhaps implicit) “best.” I can say 80˚F is a hotter temperature than 30˚F with no further referent. But if I say 80˚F is a better temperature than 30˚F, you’d rightly ask, “better for what?”

Step 3: No infinite regress. The maximum rules out the possibility of an infinite regress in more and more perfect beings.

Step 4: Preliminary conclusion. God as maximum being and therefore, being itself, as well as the exemplary and efficient cause of all other beings.

Part B
Step 1: Whatever is maximally such in any genus is the cause of all which are of that genus. Whatever belongs to one thing less than to others belongs to it not by virtue of its own nature along but through some other cause. This cannot go on to infinity. Thus, the cause of a transcendental perfection in any genus must be that which is that perfection unlimitedly, wholly, and essentially—which is called here the maximum. If you take infinite regress off the table, you need to find something unlimited.

Step 2: The maximum being is the maximum in the genus of transcendental perfections. In other words, you can’t have a Perfect Good as the cause of all good things, and a separate Perfect Beauty as a cause of all beautiful things, and so on. That would give you multiple First Causes of the same set of beings (since the same being are good, true, beautiful, etc., in different respects).

Step 3: Therefore, there is something which is the cause of the being, goodness, and whatever perfections of every being. And this, we call “God.”
 

Question #3: Finally, you infer that Moral Intuitionism is not an objective moral code because intuitions differ. But, intuition would just be a means of coming to know objective moral codes. Other proposed means include ‘conscience’, inference to the best explanation, and revelation. My third question is as follows:
 
Q#3: Does your proposed means of coming to know objective moral codes not differ among anyone? (E.g. If it’s conscience or reason, do no one’s consciences or reasoning differ?)

Answer #3: If moral intuition is understood as a means to an end, I’m completely onboard with your argument. Yes, we have moral intuitions. And yes, this points to object moral truth outside of ourselves. And it’s no serious problem that, as a tool we use to grasp reality, it may perform better in some than others. After all, this is the case with eyesight, memory, intellect, etc. But if you and I disagree about something we see off in the distance, at least one of us is wrong, because there is an objective thing that we individually perceive.

What I reject is moral intuition as an end—that something is morally good or evil simply because I intuit that it’s morally good or evil. If our subjective moral intuition isn’t open to any correction, and if it doesn’t correspond to some objective system of moral truths (capable of resolving moral dilemmas or value-disputes), then it isn’t an objective morality at all.

We actually agree on quite a bit. We both agree that moral intuition exists, and that it’s of the nature that it calls out for objective moral truths (that is, we don’t feel “this is wrong for me,” but “this is wrong, period”). My argument is that this objective moral system can only exist if there’s a God, for all of the reasons that I cited in my rebuttal. I don’t see anything in either of your posts so far that would suggest otherwise.
 

Steven's Answers to Joe's Questions

Question #1: Why ought we to be opposed to the suffering of others?

Answer #1: In so far as suffering is intrinsically bad and we should be opposed to what is bad, we should be opposed to the suffering of others. That is, we should prefer that others not suffer because their suffering is a bad thing.

However, the badness of suffering only constitutes a prima facie reason for being opposed to the suffering of others because there could be greater goods at stake.

For example, if a woman has to endure the excruciating pain of child-birth so that the child may be born, we should permit the suffering, otherwise a child dies. By no means am I suggesting that we look upon the suffering of others with pleasure or apathy. Permitting the lesser of two evils does not require you to view either evil in a favorable light.
 

Question #2: In your rebuttal, you suggest that I leave the door open for “ungrounded” objective morality. What do you mean by this? If a moral system has no foundation, how is it objective?

Answer #2: You and I have stipulated that morality is objective on the condition that some things are good, bad, right or wrong regardless of what people think. We did not further stipulate that morality is objective on the condition that every moral value or duty is grounded in or by something. So, it is permissible within the parameters we’ve drawn for morality to be objective and yet not grounded in or by anything.

To say that objective morality is not grounded in or by anything is not to say that objective morality is arbitrary. Think of a tall skyscraper. What grounds it? Well, you might say its foundation. And what grounds its foundation? You could say the land in which it is built in or upon. And what grounds the land? You could continue asking of each proposed grounding structure what grounds it. Assuming this cannot continue on indefinitely, you’ll reach a point where there simply is no deeper grounding structure: you’ve struck rock bottom. I’m saying that moral facts are grounded by other moral facts, and so on until we reach moral facts so foundational there’s just no further to go. This is radically different from saying that there is no rock bottom, and moral facts just sort of...free-float.
 

Question #3: You defined normative theories of ethics as “theories which discuss what is good, bad, right and wrong.” Given that, what is your basis for your assertion that “you don't need to hold a normative theory in order to endorse moral objectivism”?

Answer #3: A discussion on whether morality is objective is primarily concerned with whether an existent morality satisfies an objectivity condition. It is not primarily concerned with whether morality exists.

And herein lays the distinction between normative ethics and metaethics. Normative ethics is primarily concerned with what is good, bad, right and wrong. But, metaethics takes it for granted that morality exists. It is primarily concerned with whether what is good, bad, right or wrong satisfy various conditions such as that for objectivity.

Moral objectivism is a metaethical thesis. While it presupposes that some things are moral or immoral, it doesn’t really commit you to any particular normative theory, it just rules out those that are incompatible with the objectivity condition.

Our debate has been about whether objective morality satisfies a dependence condition. Thus, the resolution takes it for granted that there is objective morality. To avoid conceding this, I think we’d have to state the resolution as ‘If morality were objective, then it would depend upon God’s existence’.

 
 
(Image credit: Venture Burn)

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!
 

Today, each of our two participants submit three questions to his counterpart regarding his opening statement and rebuttal. If you're an atheist commenter, consider sharing your answers to Joe's questions in the comment box, and if you're a Catholic commenter consider answering Steven's.

Joe's Questions for Steven

 
Question 1: Why ought we be morally opposed to the suffering of others?

Question 2: In your rebuttal, you suggest that I leave the door open for “ungrounded” objective morality. What do you mean by this? If a moral system has no foundation, how is it objective?

Question 3: You defined normative theories of ethics as “theories which discuss what is good, bad, right and wrong.” Given that, what is your basis for your assertion that “you don't need to hold a normative theory in order to endorse moral objectivism”?

Steven's Questions for Joe

 
Question 1: I was a little surprised at how ambiguous you found the proposition "Agony is intrinsically bad". It seems to me that we all know what agony is and can recognize that experiences such as agony are bad. Furthermore, you linked to a Wikipedia page about intrinsic value in your opening statement, providing several standardized ways to interpret my proposition, but didn't make use of them. Be that as it may, I'm curious about what you think of the proposition on its more usual meaning. So, my first question is:

Q#1: Where it just means that agony is a bad thing because of what it involves, do you agree that agony is intrinsically bad?

Question 2: On your view, the moral fact that there is goodness is not grounded in or by anything because God is goodness and God is not grounded in or by anything.

Yet, in reaction to the position that there are moral facts so fundamental they're in no need of being grounded, you indicate that this is a cop out. To say there are such facts is to say they're there "just because."

This is a self-defeating argument unless you're not taking issue with the position that objective morality is ultimately ungrounded, but with the non-theist's adoption of it.

One may wonder why it’s a cop out for the non-theist to believe in ultimately ungrounded objective morality but not for the theist, and as best as I can tell, your answer is that while theists have good reasons to believe in such morality via arguments that God exists and is goodness, non-theists do not. So, my second question is as follows:

Q#2: Would you present an argument in premise/conclusion format for the conclusion that God is goodness?

I understand properly defending the premises may lead to exceeding the word count we agreed upon, but if we could just see the argument itself it’d give us a better idea of where you’re coming from.

Question 3: Finally, you infer that Moral Intuitionism is not an objective moral code because intuitions differ. But, intuition would just be a means of coming to know objective moral codes. Other proposed means include ‘conscience’, inference to the best explanation and revelation. My third question is as follows:

Q#3: Does your proposed means of coming to know objective moral codes not differ among anyone? (e.g., If it’s conscience or reason, do no one’s consciences or reasoning differ?)

 
 
(Image credit: All Things D)

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

 
With deep gratitude towards Steven Dillon (for an engaging and charitable debate), Strange Notions (for hosting it), and all of you (for reading and participating in the comments), here’s my response to Steven’s opening statement:

Is Agony Intrinsically Evil?

 
In my opening statement, I suggested that non-theistic moral systems cannot be the source of objective moral claims. In his opening statement, Steven proposed what he described as an “exceptionally good” candidate for a necessarily true moral proposition: that “agony is intrinsically bad.”

He defines “agony” as “an intense and extreme amount of pain.” But instead of defining what it means to call agony “intrinsically bad,” he simply gives “some paradigmatic examples of bad things.” For example: “It’s bad when parents have to live their lives in worry and stress because of inopportunity and an unfair society.”

So what does it mean to call agony “intrinsically bad,” exactly? Do we mean simply that agony is extremely unpleasant or, in some way, painful? If so, that seems tautological, like saying “extremely painful things are painful.” Besides being uninformative, that’s not even be a moral claim.

It’s possible that this tautology is all Stephen aims to prove with the proposition. His argument is that “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.” But if that is the case, then he hasn’t done the job of establishing a moral proposition at all. Even a torturer could readily and gleefully affirm, “agony is very painful!” That, I suspect, is the point.

So saying agony is painful doesn’t say it’s good or evil, that it should be pursued or avoided, etc. As G.E. Moore would say, these are “is” claims, not “ought” claims. Saying that agony is painful may describe reality, but it doesn’t tell us how we ought to behave (or not behave) without reference, at least implicitly, to some sort of moral code or system. And it’s that moral system that we’re looking for.

Let’s consider an alternative interpretation of the proposition “agony is intrinsically bad.” Since Steven tells us that this is a moral proposition, he may mean that agony is a moral evil, never to be intentionally committed. If so, is that true?

At first glance, it certainly seems like good advice. But is it morally evil to intentionally suffer? Put more concretely, do we consider it morally evil for a woman to intentionally get pregnant, given the pain of childbirth? Or what about the surgeon who performs an agonizing (but life-saving) operation? Are high-stress jobs immoral? If so, what makes these things evil? Again, we’re left hunting for some sort of objective and binding moral code or system.

So, understood in either sense, then, “agony is intrinsically bad” fails as an objective moral claim. It’s either a non-moral tautology, or a false (and non-objective) moral claim.

The Problem of Intuitionism

 
In the last section, we saw that under either interpretation of the proposition “agony is intrinsically bad,” we were left looking for some sort of moral code or system. Instead, Steven advocates something akin to what the utilitarian R.M. Hare described as “pluralistic intuitionism”: namely, belief in “a plurality of moral principles, each established by intuition, and not related to one another in an ordered structure, but only weighed relatively to each other (also by intuition) when they conflict.” There are several problems with this pluralistic intuitionism.

First, it’s not an objective moral code. Intuitions differ. Steven takes it as self-evident that “Racism, animal cruelty, human trafficking, all of these things are bad.” For centuries, Europeans and white Americans assumed the opposite, at least about racism. As the Supreme Court noted in the notorious Dred Scott v. Sandford case:

"They [racist colonial laws] show that a perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery, and governed as subjects with absolute and despotic power, and which they then looked upon as so far below them in the scale of created beings, that intermarriages between white persons and negroes or mulattoes were regarded as unnatural and immoral, and punished as crimes, not only in the parties, but in the person who joined them in marriage. And no distinction in this respect was made between the free negro or mulatto and the slave, but this stigma, of the deepest degradation, was fixed upon the whole race."

So the ordinary American today views racial equality as self-evident and racism as a morally intuitive evil. The ordinary (white) American of yesteryear viewed racial inequality as self-evident, believing it immoral to treat black and white people as equals. Upon what basis can we say that their moral intuition and judgment was wrong? Our own intuition? Or something more substantive?

Second, pluralistic intuitionism provides no basis for rational moral decision-making. Russ Shafer-Landau, as Steven notes, says, “It seems to me self-evident that, other things equal, it is wrong to take pleasure in another’s pain,” etc. In saying that it “seems to me” self-evident, Shafer-Landau seems to be conceding the subjectivity of intuitionism. But in saying “other things equal,” Shafer-Landau is revealing a second problem: what do we do when we have a clash of values?

Moral reasoning is simple when all other things are equal. What makes it so vexing is that this is rarely the case. Often, moral reasoning involves apparently-competing values, like justice v. mercy, private property v. equitable distribution of goods, etc. If your moral code is a hodgepodge of unsorted feelings, you have no tools other than gut feeling to decide these questions. As Hare said, these values are “only weighed relatively to each other (also by intuition) when they conflict.”

Third, all forms of intuitionism point to (and rely upon) God. Mind you, I don’t doubt that moral intuitions exist. But as we’ve seen, they’re incoherent without reference to God. If these really are objective and binding laws of human behavior, where is the law-giver? Given that these laws exist, why do they exist? Steven quotes Erik Wielenberg, who treats these laws as an effect without a cause:

"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."

This 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 assumethat God must exist: we show that He must.

Further, this conclusion makes sense. After all, God is Subsistent Being (ipsum esse subsistens). Being could no more not-be than non-being could be. Asking who caused the Uncaused Cause is contradictory, and it makes sense to say that a necessarily-existing Being necessarily exists.

That's quite different when we're dealing with moral principles: there's no apparent reason or explanation why we would assume that they're uncaused (other than the alternative requires God).

And asking who or what causes these truths isn't contradictory. On the contrary, it’s a question that anyone who insists on the existence of objective morality should be able to answer. Do these various moral truths exist apart from us? Or did we bring them into existence somehow? It doesn’t make sense to simply assert the existence of myriad uncaused and unrelated moral truths, and claim that these are each necessarily-existing, particularly when no two intuitionist philosophers seem to agree on what these principles are.

Asserting that there are random incommensurable moral rules is no basis for establishing morality as binding. The origin of these laws is “just because.” Why follow these authorless laws? Apparently, just because. Needless to say, that’s hardly a sufficient reason to justify changing one’s lifestyle or moral behavior.

When we describe something as "pointless," we mean that it doesn't have a purpose. It's only in relation to a purpose that we can say whether something succeeds or fails. The most common atheistic cosmology is that the universe is an objectively meaningless accident, and therefore, pointless. But if the entire universe is devoid of inherent meaning, how can we possibly find meaning inherent in our moral behavior (or misbehavior)?

Is Morality Contingent Upon Knowledge of God?

 
Steven suggests in his opening statement that the person affirming objective morality’s dependence upon God “must explain why these arguments—which don’t even mention God—are only sound if God exists.” And he provides a fascinating quotation by the Christian apologist Richard Swinburne:

"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."

With all due respect to both Steven and Swinburne, this gets things backwards. God, as Aquinas’ Third Way shows, exists necessarily. We just saw as much in the last section. So to say that objective morality depends upon His Existence is to ground morality in something necessary, rather than in something subjective, like our shifting moral intuitions about the good. (Even if you’re not personally convinced of the necessity of God’s existence, hopefully you can see why Swinburne’s argument fails: it assumes the existence of a contingent God, which both Christians and atheists would reject.)

But does that mean that we need to know of God’s existence before we can know of morality? No.

Let me illustrate with an example. A thing falling to the ground depends upon gravity. But surely, we observed that things fall before we understood why they fell. The technical explanation for this is that there’s a difference between ontology and epistemology. In the order of being, gravity is prior to the fall: it’s because gravity exists that the thing falls, not the other way around. But in the order of knowing, we know that things fall long before we know why they fall. In fact, the question “Why did that thing fall?” should point us towards the truth of gravity. It would be a mistake to respond to this question, “The thing just fell, no need to probe any deeper.”

Likewise, both Steven and I have observed that objective morality exists. Now the question now is why it exists. Steven’s explanation amounts to “Just because.” I argue that we need to do better than this, and that objective morality cries out for the existence of God.

Conclusion

 
Objective morality is observable apart from knowledge of God, which is why atheists and agnostics can know right from wrong, and why philosophers can talk about self-evident moral propositions, and why everyone reading this knows what we mean by “moral” and “immoral.” Some things are just wrong, regardless of our philosophies, and even if we desperately want them to be right.

But objective morality isn’t explicable apart from knowledge of God: every attempt, including Steven’s most recent one, fails to explain why objective morality exists.

 
 
(Image credit: Young Aus Skeptics)

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)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today kicks off an eight-part debate on the resolution, "Does objective morality depend on the existence of God?" Over the next eight days, 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!
 

The Question: Does Objective Morality Depend Upon the Existence of God?

 
The resolution that I’m affirming is that objective morality depends upon the existence of God. I should probably explain what I understand that to mean, and what it doesn’t mean. In calling morality “objective,” I mean that the morality of certain actions exists independently of our subjective assessment.

(I’ll leave to one side the question of whether the morality of all actions is objective.)

As William Lane Craig puts it, “to say that the Holocaust was objectively evil is to say that it was evil, even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was good, and it would still have been evil even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in brainwashing or exterminating everyone who disagreed with them, so that everybody thought the Holocaust was good.”

So when I say that certain actions are objectively immoral, for example, I don’t mean “everybody knows that they’re immoral.” I mean, “they’re immoral, regardless of what you or anyone else thinks.” Another way of putting this is that binding morality depends upon the existence of God. If morality is objective, then it is binding upon everyone, even the most powerful. If it’s not objective, it’s not binding, except to the extent that the strong can enforce their will upon the weak.

So that’s the playing field. I’m not addressing, at least directly, whether or not God actually exists. Nor am I arguing whether or not atheists can behave morally. (Full disclosure: yes, and yes). Nevertheless, this argument certainly has large implications for how we approach the topics of Christianity and atheism, as well as how we discuss morality.

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

 
The easiest way to prove this claim is to begin with a simple three-prong test. To whatever extent possible, let's reformulate the moral philosophy in question in this format: “If you want to achieve X, you must do Y.” (Obviously, this works in reverse as well: “if you want to avoid X, you must avoid Y,” etc.). Now, ask three questions.

1. Could there exist a person who doesn’t want to achieve X?
2. Could there be some good other than X that an individual values more than X?
3. Is there another means of achieving X besides Y?

If the answer to any of these three questions is yes, your system is neither objective nor binding. This test should serve as a helpful guide, and will quickly show that the non-theistic moral systems fail. (If you’re going to contest this point in the comments, try to provide an objective, binding moral system in this format that doesn’t require God).

For example, consider the following four ways of accounting for morality without recourse to God:

1. Social: An action is moral or immoral based upon whether society approves or disapproves of it.
2. Personal: An action is moral or immoral based upon whether I feel it to be moral or immoral. (Going against conscience is the only sin.)
3. Biological: Morality is “hardwired into our genes as an evolutionary survival mechanism.”
4. Utilitarian: “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” - John Stuart Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle (GHP).

Why am I bound to obey society, or even my own conscience? Why am I obliged to act upon my genetic predispositions, or to act in such a way that it produces the greatest aggregate happiness? At a minimum, the social, biological, and utilitarian bases fail the first prong: we can easily imagine a person who is a social misfit, and who isn’t particularly concerned with survival of the fittest or the GHP.

All four theories fail the second prong of the test. Martin Luther King gives us an example of someone who valued a good (social justice) over the societal morality laid out by the Jim Crow South. Indeed, the entire notion of social progress is based upon the idea that we’re not bound to blindly accept social mores.

As for personal morality, the only reason that conscience is binding is because we believe that it corresponds to something higher than ourselves. If it’s our own creation, we are its master, not its servant. A guilty conscience would be, at most, one factor to be weighed in decision-making. In deciding to cheat on your wife or rob a bank, you’d weigh the amount of guilt you’ll feel compared to the amount of pleasure. If that’s the case, conscience is no more binding than indigestion is “binding” on my decision to eat eight tacos.

And if morality is merely biological, why not treat it as accidental or vestigial, like the coccyx? After all, couples routinely act directly against the propagation of the species by contracepting, choosing careers over marriage, etc.

Finally, utilitarianism. Why pursue the GHP? After all, this isn't how moral decision-making works. If it were, we would stop taking care of our families, and send that money to the world’s neediest people. In practice, even utilitarians like Peter Singer abandon the GHP when they have to make important decisions. Moreover, utilitarianism leads to unconscionable results. No action—slavery, rape, genocide, torture, etc.—could ever be described as objectively evil. We’d have to determine how much pleasure the slavemaster, rapist, genocidaire, and torturer derive (along with the pleasure or displeasure of the general public). Only after we’ve weighed all of those factors, could we determine whether the action is right or wrong.

Argument 2: We Can Ground Objective Morality in God.

 
At this point, I anticipate an obvious objection: how does God solve this problem, exactly? Isn’t it just as subjective and arbitrary to say that we should do Y because God says so? What if I don’t want to do what God says? This objection is based off of two misconceptions about the nature of God. So hold on to it for a second, consider what we actually mean by “God,” and see if you still find the objection to be convincing.

First, I want to draw a parallel to the question that Socrates asks Euthyphro: “whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods?” Given their polytheistic theology, the Greeks were unable to convincingly resolve the question. I think that Christians can fare better, because we believe that God is Good essentially, rather than by participation.

When we say that God is good, we mean this in a different way from the way that we mean it when we say that some human is good. For us, goodness is a participation in Goodness: we can participate more or less, by degrees, and therefore, we can be better or worse. That’s not what we mean when we say that God is good.

Think about the difference between saying “the dog is wet” and “liquid is wet.” We can imagine the dog being not wet: it’s an attribute he possesses right now, but with a good toweling off, he won’t possess it anymore. We can imagine wet dogs and dry dogs, and everything in between. But when we say that liquid is wet, we mean that wetness is an essential attribute of what we mean by “liquid.” If someone claimed to have a dry liquid, we’d have to conclude that they misunderstood what’s meant either by “liquid” or “dry.”

So it is with God. The virtuous are good in the way that dogs are wet. God is good in the way that liquid is wet. But there’s also a relationship between the wetness of liquid and the wetness of the dog, of course. The degree to which the dog is covered with liquid is the degree to which he is wet. The dog’s attributive wetness depends upon the degree of participation or conformity with the essential wetness of liquid. Likewise, the attributive goodness of the moral law logically flows from its conformity with the essential goodness of God.

So it isn’t like there’s God on one side, and Good on the other. God and Good are One. What we mean by objective goodness and what we mean by the Divine nature are the same thing. (This, by the way, also shows why it’s literally incoherent to ask, “What if God asks you to do something evil?” You might as well ask, “What if white is black?” or “what if that triangle turns out to have four sides?”)

Hopefully, you see how this solves the dilemma that Socrates raised. God is bound to do and will good, but He is bound only by His own nature, not by something external to Himself.

Second, examine the question teleologically: the goodness of a thing can be determined by examining its end. The mid-twentieth century philosopher Peter Geach showed this in a fantastic little essay, "Good and Evil". A beautiful clock that can’t tell time is a bad clock. It may be a beautiful decoration, but it’s bad qua clock. And just as we can make this evaluation based on the function of an object, we can do the same thing with the purpose of human beings. This is true on a micro level (a good firefighter, a good husband, etc.), and a macro level (a good man, a bad man, etc.). So, if all of Creation was created by God for specific purposes (including us), we can determine the goodness or badness of thing by its conformity with the Will of God.

Finally, we’re ready to address the core question of how God can solve the problem of objective morality. Let’s put the answer in the form of a syllogism, using the “If you want to achieve X, you must do Y” format I laid out above:

• P1: If you want to achieve the good, you must do what is consistent with God's will (and avoid what is inconsistent).
• P2: By nature, everyone wants to achieve the good. As Aquinas put it, “the good is that which all things seek.” Even our immoral actions are done in search of some perceived good (wealth, fame, honor, pleasure, etc.).
• C: Therefore, everyone is bound to do what is consistent with God's will.

Ralph McInerny discusses this at greater length in Ethica Thomistica, which is worth reading.

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

 
Let me close this opening case by laying out a slightly different way of approaching the whole problem, that I think helps show why all of these non-theistic systems fail:

A. Objective moral obligations point to the existing of a universally-binding end. That’s because all moral obligations are ordered to “ends” (in the philosophical sense, as a purpose, goal, or destination; the way we use it when we talk about the ends not justifying the means). So, if I want to keep my dog in the yard, then I must close the gate. If I don’t care if the dog gets out, I have no obligation to close the gate. The obligation is only as binding as the end.

B. Our end is either given to us from God, or it’s arbitrary. The standard objection to this claim is that we can give ourselves our own purposes. This runs into three problems:

1. Self-given ends are subjective, by definition.
2. Self-given ends are arbitrary: why choose one end over another? That answer is either “no reason,” or by appeal to a higher end.
3. Self-given ends are not binding: if I’m giving myself my goal, I can change it. After all, I’ve already changed my end once, from having no end (or whatever end I was born with) to having the end that I gave myself.

C. Since arbitrary ends cannot bind, objective moral obligations require the existence of God.

That’s the basic case. Now what do you think?
 
 
(Image credit American History)

Many atheists are fond of using the argument from evil to debunk the notion of God. It goes something like this:

1. If God is all-powerful (omnipotent), He could stop evil.
2. If God is all-loving (omnibenevolent), He would stop evil if He could.
3. Therefore, if an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God existed, evil would not.
4. Evil exists; therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God does not.

Another variation of the argument was put forward by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, centuries before the time of Christ:

Against Catholics, this argument is stronger rhetorically than logically. But against atheists, it's ironically quite devastating. Let me explain what I mean.

I. The Problem of Evil for Catholics

 
Logically, this argument misunderstands what's meant by God's omnipotence. Omnipotence means that God cannot possibly be more powerful than He currently is. His power is perfect. But within these traditional confines, we still acknowledge that God cannot do the logically impossible. He cannot, for example, will what is contrary to His Will. Why? Because that's a meaningless self-contradiction.

Herein lies the easiest answer to the problem of evil:

1. God gives us free will, because free will is inherently good.
2. Free will entails the possibility of doing what is contrary to God's will (this is what we know as evil).
3. Thus, evil exists, because of man's actions, rather than because of God.

Thus, the notion of an all-loving God is consistent with abundant free will, and abundant free will is consistent with the presence of evil (I discuss that more on my own blog.) You may disagree with that solution—you may not see why free will is better than God forcing us to perform on command, for example—but it at least shows that there's no logical problem with the simultaneous existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God and evil.

II. The Problem of Evil for Atheists

 
But today, I wanted to show why this is a particularly bad proof for atheism. It relies (in the fourth point of the argument outlined above) on the proposition “evil exists.” Now there are two things that might be meant by this claim:

• Subjective evil exists: That is, things exist that I don't happen to like. But if that were the case, the whole argument of evil falls apart. Obviously, an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God might well do or permit things that I happen to dislike. The existence of broccoli and the New York Yankees doesn't discredit God, unless I'm such a narcissist as to think that a loving God would create the universe as best suits my own whims.
• Objective evil exists: This is what is obviously meant by the problem of evil. Things exist that aren't just contrary to my personal tastes (like broccoli) but which are contrary to what all moral people know to be good (like genocide or the torture of little children).

But here's the problem with that: Objective morality, including objective evil, cannot exist without God. This doesn't mean that atheists can't be moral people, of course. Catholicism teaches that much of objective morality is knowable by natural law. Atheists can and generally do implicitly recognize the moral law, and obey it. The problem is that this behavior appears completely irrational.

More specifically, the problem is that is that there's no way to get from statements about how the world is to how the world ought to be without imposing a value system. And to say something is objective evil—that it objectively ought not to be—you have to believe in objective values, binding everyone (including, in the case of the problem of evil, God Himself). It has to be something infinitely more than whatever your personal values might be.

This, as you can hopefully tell, is a serious problem for atheism, since atheistic naturalism denies any such universally-binding moral laws (since they require Divine Authorship). Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, in his debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens, laid out the problem like this:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore God exists.

Hitchens misunderstood the argument, and flubbed it pretty badly, so I sought out an atheist response. The atheist responding argues that both of Craig's premises are false:

Firstly, objective morals could well exist without God. They could be hardwired into our genes as an evolutionary survival mechanism. So clearly, Craig’s first premise is incorrect.

Others have used this argument before, but it's quite a bad one. A man might simultaneously be sexually attracted to a non-consenting woman, and conscious that rape is immoral. Why, from a strictly biological standpoint, should the man listen to his genetic hard-wiring when it tells him rape is wrong, and not when it gives him an urge to rape? The answer to that question is a moral one, and one that (by definition) can't come from mere evolutionary urges. The urges are the problem, not the solution.

You can see this with virtually any sin: man both desires sin, and knows it's wrong. If both the desire and the moral aversion are nothing more than evolutionary conditioning, why listen to the unpleasant one? Why not act like simply another member of the animal kingdom, a world full of rape and theft and killing.

But for that matter, is it morally evil to go against our genetic hard-wiring? If the hard-wiring is nothing more than the result of random chance over millions of years, it's not at all clear to me why it would be morally evil to disregard it. Your body may also decide to start producing cancer cells at a remarkable rate, but you feel no moral allegiance to quietly let it have its way. We constantly subdue our bodies to make them perform better, last longer, and the like.

And indeed, atheists constantly go against their genetic hard-wiring. For example, I'd venture that most atheists use birth control and don't seem to find this immoral, even though it's transparently contrary to both our genetic hard-wiring, and evolutionary survival mechanisms. They're literally stopping evolution from working: a more direct violation of evolutionary hard-wiring is almost unthinkable (except, perhaps, celibacy).

So at most, evolution can explain urges we have for or against certain behaviors. Some of these urges are worth acting upon, some aren't. But to know which to obey and which to ignore is a moral question, not a biological one.

Significantly, when Hitchens eventually understood Craig's argument, he conceded this first premise—because it's undeniably true. That brings us to the second premise, that objective morality exists. The atheist reply continues:

However, objective moral values de facto do not exist. Not everyone has the same moral standards. Our perception of what is right and wrong have changed over the centuries with Richard Dawkins has termed “the shifting moral Zeitgeist”. Indeed, practices in other parts of the World today which are considered the height of piety seem barbaric to Westerners. You only have to look inside the books of our religions and see what these pronouncements mandate to see that this is the case.

If this is true, we cannot criticize the Nazis for killing millions of Jews, any more than we can criticize the Yankees for beating the Tigers. We don't happen to care for Nazi genocide, but their cultural practices are just different from our American values.

More directly, if objective morality does not exist, the problem of evil breaks down. As I said above, if by “evil” you mean nothing more than what you happen to like or dislike, the term is meaningless. So when atheists raise the problem of evil, they're already conceding the existence of objective evil, and thus, of objective morality.

So atheists can either believe that morality is nothing more than a “shifting moral Zeitgeist,” of no more importance than the latest fashion, or they can criticize what's “inside the books of our religions.” But they can't coherently do both.

III. Objective Evil Exists

 
Just in case some people reading this would be inclined to give up the problem of evil, in exchange that they don't have to admit the existence of universally binding morals, let me be clear. We can see that objective morals do, in fact, exist. We don't need to be told that raping, torturing, and killing innocent people are more than just unpleasant or counter-cultural. They're wrong—universally and completely wrong. Even if we were never taught these things growing up, we know these things by nature.

Incredibly, even the most evil societies—even those societies that have most cruelly warped the natural law for their own ends—still profess these universal morals. Nazi Germany, for example, still had laws against murder, and theft, and rape. They didn't have some delusion that those things were somehow morally good: it's sheer fiction to suggest otherwise. Everyone, with the possible exceptions of the severely retarded or severely mentally ill, recognizes these things to be evil, whether or not they've been formally taught these truths.

Conclusion

 
So is the problem of evil a problem for Christians? Sure. There are intellectually satisfying answers, but it's not for nothing that St. Thomas Aquinas lists it as one of two logical arguments for atheism in the Summa Theologiae. But we shouldn't let this fact blind us to the paradoxical truth: the problem of evil is a dramatically larger problem for atheists:

1. To complain of the problem of evil, you must acknowledge evil.
2. To acknowledge evil, you must acknowledge an objective system of moral laws.
3. Objective universal moral laws require a Lawgiver capable of dictating behavior for everyone.
4. This Lawgiver is Who we call God.

Ironically, this evidence lays the groundwork for establishing that God not only exists, but cares about good and evil.
 
 
Originally posted at Shameless Popery. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: VK)