The Moral Argument for Theism

[_Gadianton]

I'll just come out and say it. I think this is one of the dumbest arguments for God I have ever read. I read some of your blog entry Stak, and you point out a fair number of problems here. EA's ED noted and I appreciate Mikewut broadening the ontology a bit to have "non-nature" that isn't required to be supernatural.

My thoughts?

P1 and P2 beg the question against very interesting and significant debates about whether an "ought" can be derived from an "is", the naturalistic fallacy, and reductive physicalism vs. non-reductive physicalism. And probably more.

If our ontology is "nature" and "supernature", fantastic, we put God and morals in supernature, but what does this buy us? Does this mean all normative statements are supernatural, if not, how are they natural? God, again, explains nothing. We are left with all the conventional problems of philosophy while laden with an uber-complex ontology.

I happen to think that the notion of qualia represents the most significant challenge to physical reductionism. I cannot wrap my mind around this one at all. In the past, I've laid awake at night thinking, "How?!" If I had to pick between understanding what lies beyond the big bang and how to explain qualia, I might go with qualia. It's a maddening problem. And here's the cheap solution, "don't bother to understand it, it's supernatural. It's up there with God and morality." Yet, no one has asked me to sweep qualia under the rug with God and morality. I can either sweep it away, or, accept a naturalistic world with this horrendous problem of qualia and only sweep morals away. Or perhaps, I'm left with a possibly fractured material world at best ,plus the supernatural; or a world where all the tough problems are swept into the supernatural plus the dumb, physical world; or a world where there exists at least, a 3-part ontology.

Finally, there's this convenient knowledge of the supernatural your blog friend has; it makes "the most sense" to ascribe supernatural morals to a supernatural "being" because, you know, we've created this ontological rift, a fundamental division between realities that are forbidden to translate into each other, but we can tell you in terms of our reality's intuitions what the most likely properties of the pseudo-noumenon are. Sure.

I don't know who this guy is, but I hope he registers on this forum and debates you and EA. Perhaps it's been a while since he lost an argument and he needs a little humility.

[_EAllusion]

Mikwut -

If our two choices were some form of error theory or moral anti-realism or accepting that we have some innate, non-sensory capacity to tap into an abstract moral noumenon, I don't see why error theory or moral-antireailsm doesn't win the day. But let's suppose we accept our moral sense works this way. It isn't a strong argument to then just say, "sensing gods is like that too." Just as you have a burden to prove the existence of your queer moral sense, you have a burden in the case of a god sense. Otherwise, one could trivially assert this about anything. "See. Sensing the extra-terrestirals that read my thoughts is like that too."

[_Aristotle Smith]

I don't know if you prefer posting here or at your blog, but since I'm lazy...

I think you make a good point in pointing out the the terms in P1 are not logically exclusive. Natural and non-natural are logically exclusive, but supernatural and non-natural do not cover the same ground. Hence natural and supernatural are not mutually exclusive. As you rightly point out, something like Platonic forms would be non-natural but not supernatural.

While not logically exclusive, it's been my observation (limited as it may be) that they are practically exclusive in philosophical discourse. By that I mean that I haven't seen too much advocacy for non-natural things unless it is by someone who would also believe in supernatural things. I'm sure there are a few Christian Platonists out there, but I haven't seen too many people arguing for Platonism lately. While Platonism doesn't exhaust the non-natural yet not supernatural category, I haven't seen much of that either. You are more plugged into contemporary philosophy than I am so I'm sure you will correct me if I am wrong.

I think that P1 points to something more general. A more general thought might be something along the lines of: You can't get objective morality unless you have a sufficiently rich metaphysics. The trend in philosophy over the last 100 years has been to try and get by with as thin of a metaphysics as possible. Logical positivists practically banished metaphysics and up until the 1960's or so advocating a rich metaphysics in philosophy was on par with advocating child slavery. Since logical positivism died metaphysics has made a comeback, but the attitude still seems to be "Well, we have to have it, but let's go there as little as possible." Perhaps a rich, but not supernatural, metaphysics would give theists and atheists more common ground to talk about.

[_EAllusion]

By that I mean that I haven't seen too much advocacy for non-natural things unless it is by someone who would also believe in supernatural things.

Betrand Russell believed numbers existed as platonic abstrata. It's obviously a position people can take. I actually have no position on the ontology of numbers because the issue is beyond my philosophical understanding.

On the semantic side, I just don't think there is a good defintion of natural and consequently supernatural that covers what's being discussed here. Calling an object natural can mean "amenable to empirical investigation." It can mean, "it behaves according to some set of fixed rules - i.e. has a nature." But natural most frequently is just used to refer to the sort of objects and their properties that are currently posited as existing by modern science. The problem there is if there is some new discovery that upturns this order, that doesn't defeat naturalism. It just caues those new objects or properties to be incorprated into the natural order. If God exists, then God is a natural thing. The hard natural/supernatural distinction developed from an outmoded style of thinking that saw there being some clockwork laws of nature that were involate - like Newton's Laws for instance. A supernatural entity was something that could violate the laws of nature. But the reality is that if we find something that violates the laws of nature as we understand them, we don't declare that something supernatural. We accept that our current udnerstanding of the laws of nature is flawed and we modify them accordingly. The "laws of nature" encompass the underlying order of all of reality. A supernatural entity never gets its foot in the door, so - as I suggested above - naturalism trivially wins.

[_MrStakhanovite]

I don't know if you prefer posting here or at your blog, but since I'm lazy...

I don't allow comments at my blog (I rule it with an iron fist), so please post your thoughts here.

[_MrStakhanovite]

After a kindly exchange with Dr. Peoples in e-mail, I think my two observations have been dealt with.

[_KevinSim]

(P1) If there are moral facts, then their basis is either natural or supernatural (where these two are construed as mutually exclusive categories)

(P2) The basis of moral facts is not natural

In my blog post, I make some observations, but what do you folks think?

I really don't see any reason to believe P2. How is the conclusion drawn that the "basis of moral facts is not natural"?

Also for the record it has been a long time since I thought God needed an association with the supernatural to explain Her/His existence. What is the supernatural if it isn't just events that seem to defy natural law because we don't understand them fully? I see no reason to believe those events really do defy natural law.

[_MrStakhanovite]

I really don't see any reason to believe P2. How is the conclusion drawn that the "basis of moral facts is not natural"?

From Dr. Peoples' post:

I think that these two premises can be defended quite plausibly. Let’s start with the claim that the basis of moral facts is not natural. Obviously this is a real bone of contention, because a large number of atheists consider themselves moral and also recognise a lot of things in the world around them as either moral or immoral: Charity is morally good. Rescuing prisoners of war is morally good. The pursuit of justice, love and so on. Most atheists also believe that some things are morally wrong: Child molestation, torturing people for fun, greed etc. When people in general – atheist or otherwise – see these things, we don’t just think “well that’s not in keeping with our social norms.” We actually think that as a matter of fact those things ought not to be done. And given that atheists in general believe this, they are hesitant to believe that moral facts couldn’t be natural, because a thoroughgoing atheist worldview is, I think, best construed as entirely naturalistic. There is nothing other than what is natural, so if moral facts aren’t natural, then we’d have to doubt that they exist at all, which seems enormously counter-intuitive in light of what people tend to find themselves instinctively knowing about the world.

But could moral facts just be facts of nature? I don’t think so. I know that some atheists have tried to argue that moral facts are just natural facts with no need of a divine lawgiver, but I don’t see that they’ve been very successful. The reason is that moral facts have to do, not with the way that things just are in the world, but rather to do with the way that things should be in the world. But if there world is not here for a reason. If unintended nature is all there is, then there simply is no way that things were meant to be. Natural facts are facts about what is, not facts about the way things should be. We observe animals killing and eating each other and we don’t regard it as a moral atrocity because it is merely a fact of nature. It is that way. But if natural facts are the only kinds of facts, then the same is true of human beings, surely. People maim and torture each other, they rape, exploit and terrorise each other, and that is they way it is.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Also for the record it has been a long time since I thought God needed an association with the supernatural to explain Her/His existence. What is the supernatural if it isn't just events that seem to defy natural law because we don't understand them fully? I see no reason to believe those events really do defy natural law.

It would be a mistake to place God within the realm of the natural.

[_mikwut]

Hello E,

Mikwut -

If our two choices were some form of error theory or moral anti-realism or accepting that we have some innate, non-sensory capacity to tap into an abstract moral noumenon, I don't see why error theory or moral-antireailsm doesn't win the day.

First, I admit my simple adjustments to the argument Stak provided do presume a form of realism and even ethical intuitionism. The realism debate is an interesting issue and discussion; error theory is as well. I have always maintained that if that discussion is held diligently and appropriately the end result is psychological, attitudinal choice. Theism (in this case a form of ethical realism and intuitionism that I defend) - is possible, there are the strong arguments that support it. Nihilism (really what error theory amounts to) is possible and there are strong arguments to defend it, and atheistic naturalism in some form of anti-realism is possible and there are strong arguments to defend it. Our personal judgment makes a choice (it is psychological) - rather than empirical or inductive based reasoning. I would be interested in why you believe error theory or moral antirealism indeed wins the day?

But let's suppose we accept our moral sense works this way. It isn't a strong argument to then just say, "sensing gods is like that too." Just as you have a burden to prove the existence of your queer moral sense, you have a burden in the case of a god sense. Otherwise, one could trivially assert this about anything. "See. Sensing the extra-terrestirals that read my thoughts is like that too."

I agree. I believe the force of the experience of God to be equal to the force of say, the Good includes not harming children for no reason but hedonistic pleasure. That rational force, intuition and 'seemingness' of what reality presents to me requires a defeater (hence my interest in your posited defeaters from error theory.

But, I also believe there are arguments that satisfy the existence of God so when I correspond that sensing the presence of God it is not without a being whose existence is rationally persuasive to me. Second, the extra-terrestrials is a form of the Plantingan objection of the great pumpkin. My argument isn't wholly Plantingan. My argument is Polyani-an. So for example - Plantinga via really mere stipulation among believers accepts the self-evident beliefs formed by the group of believers - Polanyi shows empirical evidence for personal judgments we are warranted to make based on our beliefs formed by profound and rational personal intuitions. For example, and for simplicity, he describes his correspondence with Einstein in the first chapter of Personal Knowledge. The textbooks had described Einstein's theory as a natural continuation of the Michelson Morley experiments. Polanyi confirmed through personal correspondence with Einstein himself that that isn't true. Einstein had come up with the theory through a preta-rational way when he was still a teenager and not even familiar with Michelsen Morley which he learned later. He intuited from the mathematical harmonies a beauty that his theory discovered and unfolded to him. D.C. Miller than provided extensive experiments for the next couple decades that 'verified' the theory. So unlike Plantinga (who I don't fully disagree with) Polanyi adds a layer of empirical verification that corresponds at many times to our rational intuitions that reality unfolds to us.

my regards, mikwut