I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I'm curious what other think.

If you ask people like William Lane Craig he will say that in order for morality to be objective it needs to be dictated by a godlike figure. And if it is not objective then it is effectively useless. This never quite sat well with me but arguments against were never very convincing either.

So what is a moral? It seems to me that it is an action by a free willed being. I would include thoughts in this set. That action is either good, bad or neutral. I will just focus on the good an bad aspect.

If the above is acceptable (defining a moral), it seems to me that morals can either be a set of categorizations (X is good, Y is bad) that are arbitrary and handed down by a God. Or they can be a set categorizations that are rational and lead one toward or away from a goal.

If it is true that they are an arbitrary set of rules, then we would still need to interpret them, which wouldn't make them very useful.

If they are just a goal, then they could be deduced. As far as the issue of one set of morals being better or worse, or more or less correct, than another, I would say if they were both attempting to achieve the same goal then they could be objectively measured. insofar as something could be objectively measured.

Im not sure what they arbitrary rules handed down by fiat has in the way of advantages here.

Generally treat other people the way you would like to be treated. Keep in mind that other people may respond to things differently than you. So generally, up to a point, tailor your actions according to how your sense of empathy guides you. Put yourself in their place. "Mind our own business" is often the best council. Of course you have a right to good treatment as well so don't be a doormat. You will feel better because they will feel better. You will have fewer people mad at you. Society runs smoother when people behave this way and your life in society will be easier for you. Also, any god that's worth being called god will be pleased.

Love is the way.


PairTheBoard

Start from the beginning. As a child, morality is socially imposed on us and we act like that morality is objective. Once we become dissatisfied enough and begin to rebel, we open the door to the subjective.

At this point, there is no way of completely closing that door to the subjective and going back to an “objective” morality. Our thoughts about morality, even objective morality, are filtered through the subjective whether acknowledged or not.

We can then subjectively decide on which moral source (external or internal) we submit to — and our subjective division might subside for a time — but the best we can hope for moving forward is a universal morality, rather than an objective one. The key difference is with a universal morality each individual arrives to it subjectively and freely.

Many people have the intuitive insight that a universal morality is the end game, but they are stuck, so they decide that their current moral framework is the universal one. Then, they come up with whatever argument seems most persuasive to impose that framework on others.

There is a (universal) moral journey. A journey is a story. The wise person guards against the impulse to impose his current moral framework on others (parenting an exception) and focuses on navigating himself through the story first.

The problem with a deity as a source of objective morality was adequately addressed by Plato in his dialog Euthyphro. It leads directly to a dilemma - are moral actions moral solely by virtue of the deity ordaining them so, or does the deity ordain these particular actions because they are moral ones?

In the first case - an action is moral because “God said so”, that is hardly an objective morality, and more than the idea that actions are moral because a king or emperor says so. The morality of an action is determined by the subjective opinion of a deity, and therefore this gives no objective morality. Believers might argue that the deity is wiser, more knowledgeable, mightier, etc. than anyone else, so we should listen to this morality, but that does not make it objective.

Obviously, the other case likewise provides no argument for a deity as a source for objective morality. It merely implies that while such a source might exist, the deity is relaying the objective morality to us, not supplying it himself. The deity says certain actions are moral based on some notion of morality outside the deity, but that would imply that the deity himself is not the source.

It seems to me that this dilemma has not been resolved adequately. If one wants to assume that objective morality comes from God, one must answer that if God commands you to kill a whole orphanage full of children, that you not only should do so, but that refusing to do so would be morally wrong. Most humans would recoil instinctively at such a conclusion, which seems to indicate a source of morality independent of a deity.

It’s only morally wrong to rebel against God if God is not multiple and not divided against himself.

Yet, we know from the beginning that God is one and perfect. Congratulations to the one who can hold seeming contradiction for the sake of truth.

Its not that simple. Our construct of the classical Western God (supreme being) is such that we believe God is good and acts for our welfare. What he does and says to us is to promote the well-being of our species. That belief makes the divine command theory of morality plausible and the Euthyphro dilemma weaker.

Since God is good, we should not that expect that God would put one person into a horrible moral quandary. God would not give an some extreme order to someone that is contradictory to his established moral laws without also providing an explanation of why it is necessary. Also, we would not expect God to give an significant conflicting order to just one person. It would be to several persons who are considered reliable to share and discuss among themselves. That's why we have religious clerics. A good God would, in some way, make it plausible that it was really God and not an impersonator.

But how do we know God is good? Because he says so? That is the essence of divine command theory. Yes, that could provide a plausible moral basis if such a God actually existed. However it still is not an OBJECTIVE basis, but rather a subjective one. It is the subjective opinion of God as to what the correct moral action is in any given situation. For example, there is no objective basis to say that killing children is immoral and refraining from doing so is moral should God give us the command to kill children.

You likely will object that God would never give such a command, but that objection is begging the question. How do you know God would never give such a command? Is there something about killing children that makes that action immoral INDEPENDENTLY of whether God commands child killing or forbids it? If yes, then God is not actually a source of objective morality - there is some other source. If no, then you have no basis to say either that God would never make such a command or that actually killing children is immoral should God command it. Morality is subjective, with the subjective part being the whim of God. Euthyphro is alive and well even with a Christian God.

You cannot escape Euthyphro by claiming that God acts in a way that is good. In Divine Command Theory that is true by definition. Good is defined as that which God wants. If God commands us to kill all the children we can, then according to DCT, killing children is now a moral act, even if it previously was immoral. Obviously most of us (I hope) find this notion repugnant. We think killing children is an immoral act, and most of us (again I hope) would continue to think so even if a deity commanded it. For that reason, I lean toward the first resolution to the Euthyphro dilemma - God is not the source of morality. Of course, as an atheist, that is hardly surprising, but this does seem to comport much better with the actual moral behavior of most humans.

If God exists, how can anyone defy / transcend God? If you are defying God, then you are doing the will of a higher (or lower) version of God. How can it be otherwise?

The idea that some invisible entity as a source makes it objective is part of the farce that is religion. What such an appeal is is not objective but authoritarian. And they desire such an ultimate authority because it creates a faux certainty and excuses them from agency themselves. Imagine if we wanted an objective standard for, say, the engineering design of a bridge, as to what load it will support ... and we appeal to some invisible perfect engineer for the "objective" answer. THAT is the absurdity of the claim of god as an objective standard for morality.

When we use fairy tale thinking as a solution to a problem, then our solutions belong in a Grimm's Fairy Tale instead of in the real world.

Maybe it wasn't clear, but I am not arguing for the deity arbitrary morality. Quite the opposite.

And the argument that a god might tell us to do something that we currently view as bad, isn't a very good argument.

The argument that a god might tell us to do something we currently view as bad is not an argument against a god being a legitimate source of morality. It is an argument against god-given morality being in any way objective. The religious types claim that ONLY a god-given morality can be objective.

If god is the ultimate source of morality, then whatever god commands must, by definition, be moral. We have no other source for morality to say otherwise. Therefore if god commands us to burn down an orphanage with 50 children inside thereby killing all of them, that would be a moral action. If you object to that, then you implicitly are recognizing that there is something beyond the divine command that renders burning down an orphanage an immoral act. Even if you object that god would never give such a command, you implicitly recognize a source of morality other than god. Otherwise, you have no satisfactory answer to the question of how you know god would never give such an order.

I donÂ’t object to divinely inspired morality as such. Obviously I donÂ’t believe in it since I am an atheist, but if IÂ’m wrong and there is a god, then sure he might well be a legitimate source of morality. But that source is no more objective than any human-created morality. It is just subject to the whims and opinions of a mightier being than human-derived morality is. Heck, if god resembles the Old Testament version of god and would regularly smite dead those who disobey his morality, then it would even be rational to follow it - nobody wants to be smitten. It still does not make it objective though.

The Christian belief is that "God is love" . Christians believe that God wants humankind as a whole to flourish, proliferate, thrive, grow, and be happy. Those are the God’s objectives. God's laws are meant to promote those objectives. So it is objective law.

How can Christians reasonably think that God's "attitude" towards us is good, that God is loving to humankind? If you ask a pastor, they will likely spout a bunch of biblical verses that were written 2,000 years ago which assert that belief. No need to repeat them all here. The main idea is that Christians believe is that God’s great law is “love thy neighbor as thyself”. Since this law orders people to treat each other well, it is reasonable to expect God to treat us well. A command like "kill orphans" would be in conflict with the main command.

Ontologically, the desire for the creator to assist humankind would be consistent with the concept of God as the creator of humankind. We would expect a creator to take care of a creation rather than abandon it. God is also believed to have created humankind "in his image" so unless God is self-hating he has another reason to love his flock. God would take care of those that share some of his identity.

From a pragmatic point of view, if there possibly exists an omnipotent entity that can help us in this world, it is worth investigating it. It is also worth trying to interact with it. That’s common sense. On the other hand an omnipotent entity that is hostile to us would be pointless for us to ponder or to interact with.

Then “love thy neighbor as oneself” becomes the guiding moral principle. If you are saying that God cannot change this and order us to “hate our neighbor and kill him whenever possible”, then morality no longer comes from God, but rather God is ordering us to “Love thy neighbor…” because that is the moral thing to do. It no longer is the case that “love thy neighbor” is moral because God commands it, but rather that “love thy neighbor” is moral in and of itself (with unknown justification), and God is simply telling us to do so because that is the moral thing to do.

I think you are missing the point. Stating that God wouldnÂ’t order certain things doesnÂ’t defeat my argument, but instead supports it. Either God himself is the source of morality, in which case you have zero justification for saying God would never command otherwise than what he does now, or there is another moral principle independent of God that justifies the belief thy God would never command certain things, but in that case God is no longer a source of morality at all, let alone an objective source.

If the Bible is to be believed, “love thy neighbor” has not always been God’s command. I’m sorry, I cannot quote chapter and verse here, but in one of the historical books of the Bible detailing the conquest of the promised land by the Hebrews (Joshua maybe?) God orders the Hebrew commander to kill all of the enemy, men women and children, without mercy and to spare nobody. God actually punishes this commander when he refuses to kill some of the women and children. Besides obviously contradicting “love thy neighbor”, was sparing these women and children an immoral act? If we are to follow Divime Command Theory to its logical conclusion, then yes, by definition, refusing to commit genocide in this case was an immoral act. ANYTHING commanded by God is moral; anything contradicting a divine command is immoral. Unless of course there is some other standard for judging morality.

That is exactly the crux of the argument - if morality does emanate from God, then it is not objective. If there is a way to justify the belief that God would never command certain things that implies a standard of morality independent of the deity. Such a standard may or may not be objective, but it cannot be said in that case that morality comes from God

It’s not that there isn’t truth in your post here, but the Book of Job is holy scripture for a good reason.

I am arguing that, from the point of view of the classical Judeo-Christian conception of God, that the Euthyphro Dilemma should be considered a false Dilemma. I am also saying that Divine command theory is correct.

Why? God is conceived to be a single, supreme, infinite, omnipotent force. In the classical theist theory, there was a time when only God existed and no humans existed. No other gods existed either. For such an entity alone, at that time, there was no need for morals and morality didn't exist. Without humans, morality doesn’t exist. So, when God created humans, God must also have created the idea of a moral system specifically for humans. If he created a different sort of life form he may have created a different moral code for them. According to this line of reasoning God transcends human morality and there is no dilemma.

As you keenly brought up, the Bible explains that Saul slaughtered most of the Amalkalites tribe (1 Samuel 15 ) at God's command (relayed through Samuel) but was chastised by God's messenger for not doing a complete job. Genocide is supposed to be wrong but here the Bible implies that in this case it was morally correct because God said so. At times God's commands may seem to conflict with the past stated moral code but must still be obeyed. So here, the Bible is giving an example in support of divine command theory.

When I posted that a "kill orphans" command conflicted with God's other commands I didn't mean to imply that it could not happen or that it should not be eventually obeyed. As I posted earlier, I was suggesting that extreme dire commands might require more authentication and thought before they are obeyed. I also speculated that God, being good, might also provide more explanation as to the reason for it to sooth our conscience. Given authentication though, it should be obeyed.

Fair enough. I understand your point of view. We may have to agree to disagree on this part though - this does not seem to me to be an objective source of morality. It certainly is a source of morality, but one that can change over time and one where an action is moral or not depending on the opinion of a deity hardly seems to me to meet the definition of objective. For a moral code to be objective, at the very least, it seems to me that you must be able to look at an action and determine whether or not that action is moral. There can certainly be situational circumstances that come into play and there can be exceptions to general rules, but there should not be uncertainty. IOW it is not moral in general to kill children, but in situations where X,Y and Z occur, killing children may be justified. We should be able to come up with things like that where X, Y and Z are clearly defined ahead of time. With DCT it just seems to me to be too uncertain. We can THINK we know the moral thing to do in any given situation, but at any time God can tell us the opposite, with or without any justification other than “Because I said so”. Because I said so does not seem to me to be an objective source for morality.

In the Abrahamic tradition, there are two parts to morality. You begin with the law which can be viewed and treated as objective, but there are also the prophets, the spirit of truth, and the instinct for meaning. The former is static but the latter are fluid and dynamic. Both are necessary aspects of morality, but the laws are really just placeholders until you can establish a reliable connection to the Holy Spirit (the prophets, the spirit of truth, and the instinct for meaning).

Discussions about morality seem to almost always focus on identifying the static laws, no matter if it’s within a religious or secular context. That’s because the rational intellect can grasp laws. This can only get you so far, though, which is not far at all.

When people have a desire to contemplate morality, it’s usually because they have a desire to go beyond their current moral framework. The issue is they delegate the task to the rational intellect which is capable of spinning wheels but incapable of actually making meaningful progress.

After repeating this pattern a few times, many people lose hope. The result is to just accept the current framework as the final version rather than admit to being stuck. It’s better to not do this.

The spirit of truth and instinct for meaning are associated with God, so connecting to truth and meaning allows the religious person to construct a model of God. When truth and meaning move further along the path, instead of following along, the religious person will stick with their God construct, which they have already linked with truth and meaning.

This is a very common way for the religious person to get stuck and cease navigating through the story.

You were clear. I wasn't directing that comment at you but at the subject and the idiocy of fairy tale-based "objectivity." There is no bigger farce going.

So when somebody says a prayer about the load bearing of a particular bridge design, the answer he gets back is "objective and perfect and ultimate." This is what religion says: objectivity comes from god claims.

This isn't correct. The objectivity of God's moral command would not be contingent on whether or not you agree with it. That's what makes it objective. Objective, with regard to morality, would just mean that something is good or bad regardless of what any one individual believes. The earth being round is objectively true. The fact that there are people that believe otherwise is irrelevant.

If you want to attack the objectivity of the God given morality, then I suggest you use my approach above. The fact that all moral truths are required to be interpreted by individuals. Which, imo, makes them useless.

Objective morality does not depend on the belief of any individual. Therefore objective morality does not depend on what God believed to be moral. Hence any objective morality must come from somewhere other than just “God says so”, which had been my whole argument all along.

Let’s not confuse objective with correct or subjective with wrong or useless. A subjective opinion can be very much useful and it often is best to heed such opinions. If your doctor tells you you need surgery, that is not an objective fact. (Well it is an objective fact that your doctor said you need surgery, but it is not an objective fact that you actually do need surgery - it’s easy to confuse things here so we should be careful). You might even ask another doctor for a second opinion. But it would be unwise to just completely disregard what your doctor says just because it is subjective.

In similar vein if God says “action X is immoral”, you probably should listen and not do X. Again, the statement that God said X is immoral is objective, but the statement X is immoral is subjective, unless there is some standard other than “God said so” that would make it objective. God saying X is immoral is no different than Pope Francis says X is immoral or Joe Pesci says X is immoral, at least in terms of making the statement X is immoral an objective truth. Obviously, God’s opinion on the matter would carry more weight than Pope Francis or Joe Pesci’s opinion, but it still is an opinion.

Random thought-If we had an advanced Artificial Intelligence program making moral choices for us would it be correctly termed subjective or objective? I'm not sure right now.

If there is such a thing as objective morality then it's part of ultimate reality. If God is ultimate reality then objective morality is part of what God is. So if God tells you what objective morality is, it's the same as objective morality telling you what it is.


PairTheBoard