The moral argument for the existence of God Dr. Neil Shenvi Duke University

Biography

Talk outline The moral argument explained Premise 1: Is God necessary to ground morality? Premise 2: Do objective moral facts exist? The transcendental-moral argument: is truth-seeking intrinsically good or obligatory if atheism is true? Summing up: why do we reject the moral argument?

The moral argument Premise 1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist Premise 2. Objective moral values and duties do exist Conclusion: God exists This argument is valid, but is it sound? Are the two premises true?

Definitions Objective moral values –values like compassion, love, and justice which are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ independent of human belief Objective moral duties –obligations which are true and binding independent of human belief Moral facts – statements about morality which can be objectively true or false, just like physical facts

Definitions Moral ontology – What are moral facts? To which element of reality do moral facts correspond? Moral epistemology – how do we know moral truth? Ethics – which moral facts are true? The moral argument does not claim that atheists cannot know good and evil (moral epistemology) or engage in moral behavior (ethics), only that atheists cannot satisfactorily explain the ontological basis of morality.

Talk outline The moral argument explained Premise 1: Is God necessary to ground morality? Premise 2: Do objective moral facts exist? The transcendental-moral argument: is truth-seeking intrinsically good or obligatory if atheism is true? Summing up: why do we reject the moral argument?

Premise 1 of the Moral Argument P1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist Naturalism cannot account for the intrinsic value of human beings Christianity can account for the intrinsic value of human beings The Euthyphro Dilemma does not defeat the claim that God grounds objective moral values and duties

Premise 1: Is God necessary to ground morality? Naturalistic theories of ethics attempt to ground moral facts in nature To have any overlap with traditional ethics, all naturalistic theories of morality must somehow affirm the intrinsic value of human beings such that murder, rape, assault, and hatred, are bad and love, justice, mercy, and compassion are good.

The wardrobe experiment Destroy one wardrobe. One contains a human being. One contains a highly complex self-sustaining chemical reaction of DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids. Which one do you destroy?

Atheists on premise 1 "[m]oral properties constitute so odd a cluster of properties and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events without an all-powerful god to create them.“ – J.L Mackie, The Miracle of Theism “God does not exist [and] there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven... Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist.” – Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

Euthyphro Dilemma: Can God ground morality? “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” - Plato’s Euthyphro ,10a "Is that which is good commanded by God because it's good, or is it good because God commands it?" – ironchariots.org God is the Good envisioned by Socrates. God’s necessary moral nature is the paradigm of goodness. If He failed to be perfectly Good, He would not be God The same question can be addressed to all realist theories of meta-ethics, e.g. “Does an action promote human flourishing because it is right or is it right because it promotes human flourishing?” Even if we take the first horn of the dilemma, we are still left with a regress, which can only be terminated by some ultimate Good

Talk outline The moral argument explained Premise 1: Is God necessary to ground morality? Premise 2: Do objective moral facts exist? Morality as a properly basic belief Five pieces of empirical evidence that moral facts exist Problems for moral anti-realists The transcendental-moral argument: is truth-seeking intrinsically good or obligatory if atheism is true? Summing up: why do we reject the moral argument?

Premise 2: do objective moral values and duties exist? Morality is a properly basic belief because it need not be justified by other beliefs Other properly basic beliefs include belief in the existence of the external universe, belief in the existence of other minds or belief in the reliability of memory Belief in the existence of objective moral categories of right and wrong is basic and intrinsic to human beings

Talk outline The moral argument explained Premise 1: Is God necessary to ground morality? Premise 2: Do objective moral facts exist? Morality as a properly basic belief Five pieces of empirical evidence that moral facts exist Problems for moral anti-realists The transcendental-moral argument: is truth-seeking intrinsically good or obligatory if atheism is true? Summing up: why do we reject the moral argument?

Evidence supporting the existence and immediate perception of moral facts Point 1. The ubiquity of basic moral behavior and true altruism “the prosocial behaviours variously labeled “cooperation” or “altruism” are disadvantageous to individuals and evolve only by virtue of the differential contribution of groups to the total gene pool. ” – David Sloane Wilson, The New Scientist, 2824, p. v “Group selection, which was once widely rejected as a significant evolutionary force, is now accepted by all who seriously study the subject.” – David Sloane Wilson, Evolution, 65, 1523 "we don't know whether true altruism ... has any genetic basis in human society…it's an epiphenomenon… it probably didn't evolve." -Jerry Coyne, Why evolution is true blog, 5/18/11 “Why are we still so good to each other, even sometimes to others who might be thought to belong to an out-group? Could it be that our Good Samaritan urges are misfirings... [a] 'mistake' or 'by-product'...” - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Chapter 6 p.252-254 “Group Selection has a superficial appeal… [but ] I have argued that the concept of Group Selection has no useful role to play in psychology or social science…if it is meant to explain the psychology of individuals… it is dubious both in theory … and in practice…” – Steven Pinker, The Edge, 6/18/12

Evidence supporting the existence and immediate perception of moral facts Point 2. The moral behavior of moral relativists

Evidence supporting the existence and immediate perception of moral facts Point 3. Universal human intuition of objective moral categories

Evidence supporting the existence and immediate perception of moral facts Point 4. The moral realism of philosophers Moral realism (56.4%), anti-realism, (27.7%), other (15.9%). http://philpapers.org/surveys/index.html

Evidence supporting the existence and immediate perception of moral facts Point 5. The moral realism of naturalists

Talk outline The moral argument explained Premise 1: Is God necessary to ground morality? Premise 2: Do objective moral facts exist? Morality as a properly basic belief Five pieces of empirical evidence that moral facts exist Problems for moral anti-realists The transcendental-moral argument: is truth-seeking intrinsically good or obligatory if atheism is true? Summing up: why do we reject the moral argument?

Moral criticism The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. – Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, p. 132 “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Cipher’s challenge You are offered the chance to have whatever you want most in life in exchange for performing some horrific moral action on people you do not know. Afterwards, your memory will be erased. Do you accept the offer? Follow-up: when you ignore suffering and injustice all over the world to protect your ability to enjoy your life, how is this different than accepting the offer daily?

The amorality pill You are offered a pill which will remove all your negative moral emotions like guilt, empathy and remorse, but will leave all positive emotions intact. In other words, you will still love your family, derive delight from watching your children play, feel tenderness and joy whenever you watch them sleeping. But if you decide one day, that killing them all would make you happier, you will be able to do so without any pangs of conscience. Would you take the pill?

Atheists on premise 2 "It is more reasonable to believe such elemental things (as wife-beating and child abuse) to be evil than to believe any sceptical theory that tells us we cannot know or reasonably believe any of these things to be evil... I firmly believe that this is bedrock and right and that anyone who does not believe it cannot have probed deeply enough into the grounds of his moral beliefs.” – Kai Nielsen, Ethics Without God “most forms of relativism –including moral relativism, which seems especially well subscribed– are nonsensical. And dangerously so.” – Sam Harris, The End of Faith

Is belief in god rational? Premise 1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist Mackie, Sartre, Russell, Nietzsche Premise 2. Objective moral values and duties do exist Nagel, Martin, Nielsen, Antony, Harris Conclusion: God exists

Talk outline The moral argument explained Premise 1: Is God necessary to ground morality? Premise 2: Do objective moral facts exist? The transcendental-moral argument: is truth-seeking intrinsically good or obligatory if atheism is true? Summing up: why do we reject the moral argument?

The transcendental-moral argument Premise 1. If a truth-loving God does not exist, then it is neither intrinsically good nor morally obligatory to seek the truth Premise 2. It is intrinsically good and morally obligatory to seek the truth Conclusion: Therefore, a truth-loving God exists

Is a truth-loving God needed to ground the intrinsic goodness of truth-seeking? All naturalistic meta-ethical theories entail that truth-seeking is instrumentally good, but not intrinsically good If knowledge of some truth will diminish overall human flourishing, then utilitarianism states that seeking this truth is evil If an ideal society is one in which everyone believes some lie, then social contract theory states seeking the truth is evil

Is truth-seeking intrinsically good or morally obligatory? If we deny this premise, then why should Christians ever seek to know whether Christianity is true? Paradoxically, atheists who insist that truth-seeking is their highest calling, have no basis to urge others to seek the truth or for seeking it themselves! The only way to ground the intrinsic goodness and obligatory nature of truth-seeking is through the existence of a truth-loving God.

The Transcendental-Moral Argument P1. If a truth-loving God does not exist, then truth-seeking is neither intrinsically good nor obligatory P2. Truth-seeking is intrinsically good and obligatory C3. Therefore, a truth-loving God exists Denying P1 is extremely difficult even if we accept an atheist account of morality Denying P2 is difficult because it means that there is nothing objectively good about being a ‘free-thinker’ or ‘rejecting religious lies’ Given P1, Christians have a basis for urging people to seek to the truth while atheists do not

Does the biblical God love and command truth-seeking? “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” – Psalm 24:4-5 “Into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, O Lord, the God of truth.” – Psalm 31:1 “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” – John 8:32 “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” – John 14:6 “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” – Rom. 1:18 “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” – 2 Thess. 2:10

Talk outline The moral argument explained Premise 1: Is God necessary to ground morality? Premise 2: Do objective moral facts exist? The transcendental-moral argument: is truth-seeking intrinsically good or obligatory if atheism is true? Summing up: why do we reject the moral argument?

The threat of the moral Law “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God” – John 3:19-21

The threat of a moral Lawgiver ““Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”” – Is. 6:5 What will resolve the animosity we feel towards the reality of the moral Law and the moral Lawgiver?

The unique relationship of morality to the gospel “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air... All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions... For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” – Eph. 2:1-5 Religion: morality  God’s acceptance The gospel: God’s acceptance  morality