The Counter Apologoist's Attack on the Moral Argument part 2

 

The Counter Apologist continues his assault, from last Monday,[1] upon William Lane Craig's Moral argument.[2] In this section he takes up the premise "objective more values exist." He doesn't dispute that issue He faults apologists for not being ale to produce real reasons for objective moral values. He says those can work as well for atheism because they don't have to come from God, but apologists can't prove them. Apologists will often observe that life is unlivable without such moral values but that is not proof they exist. "Plus, such an appeal can do as much work for a moral system that is compatible with atheism." [3]

In my mind this is no problem  at all. First because I would make a different moral argument, and I will make it either in part 3 or 4.What I hope to accomplish here in defending an argument I don't intend to make is to show that belief in 'god is still stronger grounding for moral axioms than not believing in God. It doesn't have to prove God exists. I don't even argue for proof I only argue for warranted belief. It's not that atheists can't be moral but that belief in God is always stronger grounding. Last time I showed that his major argument is wrong, the idea that theistic moral arguments assume an untenable nondescript notion for some magical good that can't be discussed.

At this point he's going to show that the notion of objective moral values is incompatible with belief in God and so introduces the Euthyphro  dilemma. One of the atheists greatest hits this argument comes out of the writings of Plato. “Is something good because god says it is, or does god say something is good because of some other quality it has?” I dealt with the ensuing issue in a post a few months ago discussing an article by Jeff Lowder who was defending Wes Moriston's argument. [4]  What came out of that was the same answer I'm going to give CA but I have to set it up first. At the first go round the atheist charges a dilemma, either God's will is arbitrary and capricious or God is subject to a higher authority. Of course there isn't one so most Christians take the first horn of the dilemma better a capricious God than a subordinate one. I wont follow that out because there is a better answer. It's the one I use and the Craig uses.  Go's commands are based upon his own nature, which is love, So the authority to which God heeds is his own being.

CA quotes Jeremy Koons who argues that this only pushes the problem back further bjut doesn[t answer it. That's because he's going to go through  tiresome litany of questions like a child asking "why..,," "why..,," "why?" Why  good? why  love?  why ?..."Essentially Koon’s asks 'are the properties like loving-kindness, impartiality, and generosity good because god possesses them in his nature, or does god possess them in his nature because they are good?...'" He's going to argue that in the end the apologist is forced to accept the first side of the dilemma.

Consider a situation where two humans express love for each other. This expression of love has the same basic motivations behind it, and the same effects on both parties.  According to Divine Command Theory if god exists, this can be called good. However if god does not exist, this exact same situation cannot be called good. In short, Modified Divine Command Theory says that the intentions and consequences of an action have absolutely no bearing on the goodness of that action. This conclusion is extremely counter-intuitive, and violates our deeply held pre-theoretical moral intuitions.   The very same intuitions that apologists need to appeal to in order to justify the idea that objective moral values really do exist. This puts the apologist in a dilemma.  If they want to hold that our intuitions can be good enough to justify belief in objective moral values, then they have to deal with the fact that they must also say those intuitions are wrong about what it is that makes love good. [5]

In my answer to Morriston it came down to his argumjent generocity is good only because God says its good. his answer is against modified command theory I agree with Craig that God['s character is moral is the immediate answer but Modified Command theory is not the answer. I don't argue that one. He turns the deeply held intuitions against the MDCT. The problem is I don't know if he's making a straw man argument or not. I  not Craig argues the intent of the agent doesn't ;lay a role in goodness then Craig is confused. I doubt that he says it. In any case Jesus tells us God Looks on the heart() so the intent does matter. Jesus addresses the motives when he tells us the attitude makes the sin. () That goes back to the foundation from which I draw my overall answer about the good being based upon God's character. [6] The moral ought would be derived from duty and obligation. So the statement is true in term of Meta ethical theory. Does that mean it's also true in terms of personal guilt? If guilt is notaccewssed by a sgrict ule keepimg mentality then iot'snot arbitrary.

Now Koons is still intent upon getting the apologist to be stuck with an arbitrary good, as is CA. Thus he quotes Koon's questions, why love? What makes love good? Is it because God says it or because there's a higher standard. The problem is they've used that trick already. It's neither. God is not loosing because he's obeying a higher standard. He is loving because his love. Nor is he loving because it's an arbitrary whim. He is loving because he is love and thus it is his nature to be loving. That is not arbitrary it's not as standard higher than God. CA ascribes morality to brute fact. There is no reason why morality is real or why a particular action is moral they just are. He turns against th believer on the basis that the atheist doesn't need a reason The believer can't prove why God is loving, the big metaphysical magic thing has been discorded so the believer has no basis for the good and the atheist doesn't need one.

Apologists who defend a Modified Divine Command Theory can’t really object here, because their solution to the problem suffers from exactly the same issue.  The concept that “god has a loving nature” is itself a brute fact!

Notice how there is no explanation as to why god’s nature is loving instead of say hateful.  Appeals to gods definition as the “greatest conceivable being” doesn’t help here because you can’t say god’s nature includes love because it is better than hate without already having a concept of moral value that is external to god’s nature.   Neither can an apologist appeal to god’s nature as a necessary being. This is because even if Christians conceive of god as having a loving nature in every possible world, there’s no logical reason as to why we couldn’t say god has a hateful nature in every possible world instead.

On all of these things both CA and Koons are very mixed up. Not the least of their befuddlement is the notion that God's love is a brute fact. God's love is not a brute fact, there is a reason for it. That reason is hinted at by the great Catholic mystic and theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar. He speaks of the nature of being in terms of being for itself, consciousness. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited opens unto him.”[8] What he means by that is it is only through being por soir, for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finite. Before we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this encounter:(1) realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy therefore being is beautiful.[9] Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.

The one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of being, because they surpass all the limits of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of identity, there must also exist an analogy between the transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.[7]

In other words There is a close link between being itself and love. Because God is being itself God's nature is to love. The loving nature of God is rooted in his perfection and that in the fact that he is being itself. In this sense he is  being for itself (as Sartre says por soir). There may be a brute fact in relation to God's being but it is to at the point of love. I call brute facts connected with God "deep structures" because none of them are total without reason or without meaning, The only one that may have no higher reason grounding it is God's existence or the fact of being itself. There could note a hi8gher purpose since that would, mean purpose higher than God's. Even though God as being itself is not the consequence of a higher purpose it is not unconnected to meaning since it is the basis of all meaning. It is at the very bottom of ontology where the only choices are something or nothing. That means noth8ing connected tov moral values is totally arbitrary if it is grounded in God.

The are further confused because their ethics are  grounded in arbitrary brute facts. He's so proud of it thinking it's on a par with Christian ethics because the big magic whoha he imagines Christin ethics is based upon has been done away now both are on a level playing field of meaninglessness. Such is not the case to any degree. God's moral values are grounded in the deep structures of being itself while atheist values are arbitary and meaningless. When he says "you can’t say god’s nature includes love because it is better than hate without already having a concept of moral value that is external to god’s nature" yes you can. Rather you can ground it in God himself for what he is, being itself and love and hate come after that. I've published before on why God is love and not hate. that is logical and based the same point, it's not arbitrary it's a consequence of being.[8]










[1] The Counter Apologiost, "A much longer Counter to the Moral Argument." The Counter Apologist Blog. (May 13, 2016) URL:
https://counterapologist.blogspot.com/2016/05/note-this-is-much-longer-version-of-my.html?showComment=1464336604963#c3125601153601767783
accessed 5/28/2016

[2] Craig's moral argument

(1) if God exists, there are objective moral values

(2) there are objective moral values

(3) therefore God exists.

[3] Counter Apologist, op cit.

[4] Joseph Hinman, "The Euthyphro Dilemma and the Arbitrariness Objection." Metacrock's Blog, Feb 29, 2016.
http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-euthyphro-dilemma-and-arbitrariness.html  accessed 6/4/16.
The arguments with Morriston are somewhat different than  CA's. zI urge the reader to read that peice.

[5] Counter Apologist op cit

[6] The foundation of my moral philosophy is Augustine's view that love is the background f the moral universe. CA claims that the statement is counter intuitive but is that because he's a consequentialist?

[7] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, 3. on like version p1-2 URL:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LLhBuwGFEugC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=Hans+Urs+Von+Balthasar+connection+between+Love+and+Being&source=bl&ots=E6-L_5GF4p&sig=A-MzjMjMmqjBqRmAaUOWGYiOUww&hl=en&ei=xrTSSdLiJdqJnAe4tNTgBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=Hans%20Urs%20Von%20Balthasar%20connection%20between%20Love%20and%20Being&f=true

[8] this blog, how we knkow God is good and not evil

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2014/08/how-do-we-know-god-is-not-evil.html

The Counter Apologiost Attacks The Moral Argument

The Fountain scene from La Duce Vita
one of my favorite films. I use it as symbol of
moral relativism.

 

I know nothing about this guy, who calls himself "counter apologist:" (I'll call him CA) except that he is a philosophy student somewhere in the US.I don't know graduate or undergraduate, I will say this for him, he's a good student. He is arguing against the moral argument for the existence of
God as it is ran by William Lane Craig, so it is a modified version of divine command theory. The basic argument says:

(1) if God exists, there are objective moral values

(2) there are objective moral values

(3) therefore God exists.

This is a lousy argument. I will say it up front. I never argue this  it's just a bad expression of a moral argument that I have to wonder if he isn't making  straw man hat is except it is a version WLC uses. I can't fault the guy but one does wonder why he doesn't  take on Kant's moral argument? My contention is that this argument is invalid because it's  committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Just because it is true that if God exists there will be objective moral values doesn't mean that the presence of objective moral values means that God exists. You would need another  premise saying that god is the only source of grounding possible. That would be pretty thought to prove. I'm going to argue the possibility of a moral argument and present my own better version. But I'm to engage CA at the point where he opposes oral realism to theistic morality.

But before we get into that there is another basic paradigm he brings into the discussion which I also want to challenge. In discussion Christian moral theology he labels the idea of God as proper grounding for moral axioms as "the grand metaphysics object" (GMO).He's doing the same thing with that phrase that Dennett is doing speaking of "wonder tissue," he's sarcastically mocking an ideal that he can't answer. That ideas is the notion that God grounds moral axioms. He can't conceive of how God could  equal a moral axiom being true so therefore it's like a magic trick just an arbitrary notion like some big magic trick. He juxtaposes this to antsiest version of moral realism where moral conclusions are just factually arbitrarily and we are given to think so, but no supernatural is required to make it so.

Before starting let me make clear my assumptions. I understand virtue ethics and deontology as two sides of the same coin. I also understand both as almost synonymous with Christian ethics. So he begins by playing what I call they wonder tissue card," that is asserting that the believer's notion of morality is some magical thinking thing that has no meaning. to witt:

Moral Realism and Atheism: "Why should we consider the 'grand metaphysical object' view of morality to be the only game in town when it comes to getting an objective morality?"  Objective could be used as a key, in that if the apologist was to use the word to mean “object-like” could be a way to insinuate that, but why would we care? We can have objective, independent reasons that apply equally to all moral agents, to adjudicate between right and wrong.   In fact, it is this second kind of objectivity that’s referred to in debates about the moral argument...

It is Hard to understand how literally he takes "object." He seems to be trying to build a straw man argument by re defining virtue/obligation in terms that portray it as "wonder tissue." [2] That is to say some kind of magic thing that can't be explained and has a reality beyond the world. of the physical; as though there is some magical moral stuff up in heaven that makes things good. It's a straw man argument because that's what religious people mean by ":the good" At least it[s not what I mean.

while there no doubt are those whose conception of the good is similar to the GMO idea there are obviously major thinkers (and also me) who don't have that idea so he's not challenging thke best examples, me.

 

What’s important to note here is that there’s a difference between “objective” moral values and any notion of moral values “existing” as a grand metaphysical object.  This is an important distinction to realize: moral objectivism is quite different from moral realism...If moral values are simply the basis that moral agents use to determine between right and wrong actions, then we can have an objective moral value system that does not require a “value” to exist as some object.  On this conception of morality, it would be equivalent to something like “money” or “chess”.   One certainly would say that these things “exist” even if it is only a concept that is used by human beings, and we can derive objective facts about these kind of things. 

 

Of course we can. We religious people can have that as well. I don't believe that the good is some magical stuff like a physical object. The good is not a magic stuff or some physical thing. It's based upon God's character,. So "the good" is an abstraction based upon the nature of God's inclination to prefer the other; ie "Love." The good is as concept and an attitude that regulates behavior in relations with others. But since CA thinks it's a magic stuff then he's going to compare it as competing against his philosophy of "moral realism." I may have a tendency to make a straw mam argument out of his views. Bearing that in mind, I think moral realism is the view that is irrational and most similar to magical thinking. But there can be theistic moral realism. In a sense any Christian ethical thinker is a moral realist in that we think moral values have real meaning and actually count. That's really the issue. Moral thinkers consider that moral values have meaning and there are reasons to hold to them beyond the pragmatic. It don't just want to be good to avoid fights and problems we think it means it matters that we are good. We think the meaning of moral value and the nature of it's gravitas is grounded in God's command. God has authority because he created all that is and all that could ever be is contingent upon God's active will or forbearance. It's not an arbitrary whim that makes it good but it's the basis of love. God as all knowing source of all that is judges the level of veracity against the acts of virtue, not for meritorious consequences but so that we might know in what ways our conduct and attitudes have fallen short. All of that tempered with love's propensity for mercy.

 

Moral realism when not backed by the divine is much like presupositionalism, there's no real reason given and non e will ever  be defended, he says: "I’m touching on a debate about what counts as 'moral realism'.  Moral realism is a philosophical position that there are true moral facts that accurately describe reality.  That’s a bit confusing if you’re not into philosophy, so let’s use an illustration." What makes something a true moral fact (as opposed to a false moral fact)? Nor will any be offered. Look at what passes for an answer in CA's argument.

Consider the following two statements:

1.)    I used to own a pit bul.

2.)    It is morally wrong to torture babies for fun.

 Moral realism holds that both statements, if true, are true in the same way. That is the statements actually describe some facts about reality. Suffice it to say, if one is a moral realist, you will affirm premise two of the moral argument.

What makes them facts? How do we know they are facts? That is as much like moral good being an object as theist morality ever comes. Now he uses moral realism to .put atheism in a position of parity, atheism has the equivalent of objective morals too because it has moral facts. He says:

One of the things that isn’t brought up often enough in debates over the moral argument is that the majority of “moral realist” theories in contemporary philosophy are completely compatible with atheism." There’s John Rawls’s Social Contract theory, various forms of consequentialism, Railton’s Reductive Naturalism, the Ideal Observer Theory, and a host of others.  Each of these theories provides a basis for moral agents to be able to tell the difference between right and wrong in an objective way. 

Here he shifted his argument, Those are not examples of moral realism. In fact some of them are not even moral but are based upon abandoning the moral. John Rawls is opposed to consequentialism,. Consequentialism is based upon outcomes matching value system but without grounding the value systems in something they are arbitrary. Most ethicists today feel that Rawls disproved consequentialism. Rawls social contract is limited to the dictates of society can't arbitrate between competing values such as a fascist based social contract. Reductive naturalism is like giving up on morality. I don't think any of those are moral realism.

There are entire families of “atheism compatible” moral realist theories that satisfy the criteria of there being objective moral values in the sense Dr. Craig describes with his Nazi example.  The list provided above isn’t even close to exhaustive. This is why the moral argument is so unconvincing to anyone who has spent time studying moral philosophy.  One of the first things that become clear is that there are a plethora of meta-ethical theories out there that can get us to this kind of “objective moral values”.  An apologist might counter that the above kinds of conceptions of morality don’t actually count as moral realist views as they don’t get you a Grand Metaphysical Object kind of morality.  Sometimes you’ll hear them refer to “robust moral realism” in order to indicate belief in the “Grand Metaphysical Object” style of moral values.  My response there is to ask why it should matter if there is no Grand Metaphysical Object.

This is actually a bait and Switch, None of those theories are moral realism, comseqntualism does not assert that it's axioms are moral facts it asserts that they grounded in being consequences, and so withy all the others. Moral realism is not just any other moral system that's not divine command. That is essentially what he's asserting. Moral realism is a specific idea that moral axioms are moral facts but they still have to be grounded or it's just as arbitrary as the big magic who ha that he tries to say God is, the wonder tissue idea. He's selling secular naturalistic wonder tissue.Moral realists don't believe in grounding but they offer not basis for moral facts.[3]
 

This is because even if one denies the Grand Metaphysical Object style of moral values, they can still get an objective moral value system that gives the atheist a basis for discerning between right and wrong, like in Dr. Craig’s Nazi example.  All that we’re arguing over is a semantic issue on whether or not such systems count as “real” even if they’re not fundamental parts of reality, but rather if morality was a “real” as “the economy” or “baseball”. The point is that atheism, even if one is a naturalist or materialist, allows one to avoid collapse into nihilism or moral relativism.

What's going to make it be objective? Look at Rawls social contract. That says moral axioms are moral because society says they are moral. In WWII we had  society that said gassing people and baking them in ovens was moral. What makes it not moral? society confined it. By definition social contract theory is relative to society. Consequentialism is relative to consequences. He is doing what an atheist friend of mine describes as pour ought sauce on it.[4]

Moral realism I either mysterious and arbitrary or it is based upon values that themselves reduce to non ethical values meaning it's as firmly grounded as values commanded by God because they relative and not universal. Moral realists are violating vthe4 is/;ought dichotomy, Grounding axioms would mean one has a reason to attach an ought, merely saying "one ought" doesn't establish the basis for ought, Saying X is a moral fact doesn't ell us why omen should do X or not do X.

Having eliminated the bait and switch to the secular wonder tissue it's no different then any other atheist who has to ground his values and axioms. God is always going to be the most certain and  universal grounding because he is the source of moral values and the source of love upon which morality is based.[5] Morality is not magic, it's an object in the physical sense, it's the mandated consequences of God's Love. Fletcher got the idea from St. Augustine who said Love is the background of the moral universe. Without a universal mind making judgments and instilling moral laws  and communicated and role modeling love atheists might maintain some moral motions and they can love. I am betting they wont have the strong grounding God supplies or the spiritual strength of love enemies. Let's just hope we have that. Without a universal mind to pass judgment on an ought where is the universality?


 see sources for more quotes.







Sources

[1] The Counter Apologiost, "A much longer Counter to the Moral Argument." The Counter Apologist Blog. (May 13, 2016) URL:
https://counterapologist.blogspot.com/2016/05/note-this-is-much-longer-version-of-my.html?showComment=1464336604963#c3125601153601767783
accessed 5/28/2016

[2] Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained. New York: Back Bay Books; 1 edition (October 20, 1992)

Wonder tissue a term Dennett uses to stand for the mysterious qualities of mind that can't be pinned down and that he doesn't believe exist.

[3] Shin Kim, Internet Encyclopedia: A Peer Reviewed Academic Resource.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/moralrea/ accessed 5/28/2016

The moral realist contends that there are moral facts, so moral realism is a thesis in ontology, the study of what is. The ontological category “moral facts” includes both the descriptive moral judgment that is allegedly true of an individual, such as,“Sam is morally good,” and the descriptive moral judgment that is allegedly true for all individuals such as, “Lying for personal gain is wrong.” A signature of the latter type of moral fact is that it not only describes an enduring condition of the world but also proscribes what ought to be the case (or what ought not to be the case) in terms of an individual’s behavior.The traditional areas of disagreement between the realist camp and the antirealist camp are cognitivism, descriptivism, moral truth, moral knowledge, and moral objectivity. The long and recalcitrant history of the realism/antirealism debate records that the focal point of the debate has been shaped and reshaped over centuries, with a third way, namely, Quasi-realism, attracting more recent attention. Quasi-realism debunks the positions of both realism and antirealism.

The point being realists have no  clear grounding.

Kim, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Korea.

 

[4] Fred D'Agostino, Gerald Gaus,  and John Thrasher,  "Contemporary Approaches to the Social Contract", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/contractarianism-contemporary/>.

The social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all stressed that the justification of the state depends on showing that everyone would, in some way, consent to it. By relying on consent, social contract theory seemed to suppose a voluntarist conception of political justice and obligation: what is just depends on what people choose to agree to—what they will. Only in Kant (1797) does it become clear that consent is not fundamental to a social contract view: we have a duty to agree to act according to the idea of the “original contract.” Rawls's revival of social contract theory in A Theory of Justice did not base obligations on consent, though the apparatus of an “original agreement” persisted as a way to help solve the problem of justification. As the question of public justification takes center stage (we might say as contractualist liberalism becomes justificatory liberalism), it becomes clear that posing the problem of justification in terms of a deliberative or a bargaining problem is a heuristic: the real issue is “the problem of justification”—what principles can be justified to all reasonable citizens or persons.

 That quote essentially says even though Rawls version is not based upon concert it's still  based upn society,

[5] Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality, Westminster John Knox Press; 2nd edition (July 1, 1997) 57, 87






 

The Traditional Moral Argument (Ala Meta)

Regarding the 1x1 debate on Doxa Forums between myself and Electric:
my first speech is up.

here

BTW I was nuts to set the limits so high. 8000 words is ridiculous. especially given four arguments. I suggest we say 4000 for constructive and 1000 for rebuttals?

This is not part of the 1x1 debate so anyone can join in. I thought in so far as Electric had argued against it s vehemently I might as well discuss it.


The Traditional Moral Argument (ala Metacrock)

---

Argument:

---

(1) Humans are possessed of moral motions which we find to be real and important. We cannot deny the senes of moral outrage over "evil" or the sense that one "ought" to do that which we find "good."

(2) Such moral moral motions can be understood as grounded in terms of behavior in our genetic endowment, but no explanation can tell us why we find them moral or how to justify them as an "ought."

(3) Genetic explanations only provide an understanding of behavior, they do not offer the basis of a moral dimension.

(4) Stoical contract theory offers only relativism that can be changed or ignored in the shifting sands of social necessity and politics.

(5) matters of feeling are merely matters of taste and should be ignored as subjective (the atheist dread of the subjective).

(6) God is the only source of grounding which works as a regulative concept for our moral axioms and at the same time actually expalins the deep seated nature of moral motions.

---

A. Universal Moral Law.

The Apostle Paul tells us that there is a universal moral law written upon the human heart. We can see evidence of this universal law throughout the world. Now scoial science is quick to tell us that moral codes of all cultures differ throughout the world; some are so drastically different as to allow for multiple marrages, in some cultures gambling and even cheating each other are expected, and in a few cultures there doesn't seem to be any notion of right and wrong.But we shouldn't expect that all the moral codes of the world would be uniform just becasue there is a moral law. The evidence of a universal law is not seen in structured belief systems but in the humanity of humans.People in all cultures have concepts of right and wrong, even they may attach different kinds of significance to them. There are a few cultures that are actually pathological examples, but in the main most people are capable of being good, exhibit a basic human compassion, and feel moral outrage at cruelty and injustice.

It is this sense of moral outrage and the ability to empathize and to feel compassion that marks the moral law best of all. In Nicagua in the 1980s members of the contra army fighting the Sandinistas conducted a campaign of terror to prevent the people from supporting the revolutionary government. To enforce a sense of Terror they cut off the heads of little girls and put them on polls for all to see (see Noam Chomsky Turning The Tide...Champsky's example comes from United Nations Human Rights Report in 1984). There is something about this act, regardless of our political affiliations which fills us with anger and revulsion; we want to say it is evil. Even those who believe that we must move beyond good and evil are hard pressed not to admit this sense of outrage and revulsion, yet if they had their way we would not be able to express anything more than a matter of taste about this incident for nothing is truly evil if there is no universal moral law.

Moreover, the nature of the moral universe is such that we are capable of elevating basic moral motions to the level of ethical thinking. We understand by this that we must deliberate about moral conditions and to do that we must have free moral agency, a sense of the meaning of duty and obligation, and a notion of grounding for moral axioms. All of these things are without foundation in the relativist scheme but they are part and parcels of what ethical thinking is about. Before trying to link the universal moral law to the existence of God we must first explore the objections to it.

B. Objections.

1) Philological argument.


There are no root words for good and evil universally shared by all cultures, as there are for gender and other things.

Answer: notions of good and evil are metaphysical constructs based upon religious notions. We should not expect cultures that understand God in different ways and have different cosmological and metaphysical schemes of the universe to share the same terms for designation of good and evil when they do not share the same metaphysics. But, this is actually a greater argument for the universal moral law, because despite different metaphysical schemes of the universe there is still an underlying humanity, which was recognized by people in cultures as diverse as Gandhi in India and even head hunters in Barnio.

2) Genetic Origin of Morality.

This seems like a really overwhelming objection. The notion of "herd instinct" has been around as an explanation for morality for a long time. But, in the 1970s E.O.Wilson invented the theory of sociobiology, which basically said that our genes determine everything in an attempt to mate, and what seems like our own ideas and concerns are all really a ploy my our gene pool to further itself. Morality, in this context is just an attempt to aid the pack. Even self sacrifice is just an attempt to save some part of the gene pool. IN the 1980s sociobiology became known as "naturalistic psychology" and under the lead of Richard Dawkins became an overwhealming force; thousands of websites exist to support sociobiology, and there is no real adequate Christian response. This seems like such an overwhelming flood time of support that there doesn't seem much hope for the moral argument.

Answer: The genetic argument really doesn't defeat the notion of a universal moral law, but it is problematic. The moral law "written on the heart" (Romans 2:7) could well be genetic at its root. Those Chrsitians who have no trouble understanding that God used evolution as a method of developing life can easily imagine that the moral law in encoded into the evolutionary process and is found from the ground up. The problematic part is that it blunts the thrust of the causality argument. Perhaps there is a basic humanity to humans which recognizes moral motions, but how to use that as a proof of God's creation when it could as easily be the product of evolution? More on this at the end of the argument.

a) sociobiology enshrining values of reductionism and consequential ethics.

First Things, May 98, 59

The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology. By Howard L. Kaye. With a new epilogue by the author. Transaction. 208 pp. $19.95 paper.

"Sociobiology is a secularized form of natural theology, Kaye explains: an attempt to "translat[e] our lives and history back into the language of nature so that we might once again find a cosmic guide for the problems of living." But the attempt fails, he argues, because in order to derive moral guidance from things like genes, sociobiologists first have to attribute to them various cognitive and moral attributes (e.g., "selfish genes"). In short, the sociobiologist first reads his own moral program into nature and then, unsurprisingly, discovers it from nature.

b) Reductionism of Sociobiology negates ability to discuss ethics.

(from First Things )

"Moreover, Kaye argues, these attempts at moral guidance are logically incoherent, given sociobiology's reduction of human beings to "mechanisms," "programmed" by natural selection. What, then, can it mean to talk about choice and values? Evolutionary psychology avoids some of the cruder reductionism of the older sociobiology. But by attempting to unmask all thought and feelings as genetically programmed survival strategies, Kaye warns, it may still "have a corrosive effect on our moral principles, social order, and even our souls."

c) Sacrificial (moral) genes is confusion of members and sets.

Val Dusek, Science As Culture "Sociobiology Sanitized: the Evolutionary Psychology and Enic Selectionism Debates"

http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/rmy/dusek.html

"Despite the new name, the general lessening of totally off-the-wall speculation, far-fetched animal analogies to very distantly related species, and the avoidance of grossly sexist remarks, evolutionary psychologists present the same theories as the sociobiologists. Central to the work of most of them is the genic selection theory, claims that genes, not organisms are selected. It is most well known as selfish gene theory in popularizations by Richard Dawkins. This doctrine, genetic selection, has been criticized by biologists such as Gould and Lewontin, but many journeyman biologists accept the theory, even attributing the details of the theory to Dawkins himself, when he was only popularizing certain trends in genetics and theories of Hamilton and others. The debates concerning evolutionary psychology have revived the debate about genetic selectionism. Part of the debate concerns whether genes alone are selected, as Dawkins claims, or whether individual organisms and species (and perhaps also groups) are selected as well...."

"This fits with the theory of kin selection, in which and individual can reproduce some of "its" genes by sacrificing itself for a relative which carries a proportion of the altruist's genes. Lewontin has criticized Dawkin's theory by claiming that it confuses classes with individuals. The genes which are reproduced by the relative are not physically identical with the sacrificed individual's genes, but are simply similar, the same kind of gene. Lewontin counters Dawkins claim that an extraterrestrial, to gauge earthly intelligence would ask "Do you understand the theory of natural selection?" with the Platonic question "Do you understand the difference between a class and its members?"--which, according to Lewontin, Dawkins, in his "caricature of Darwinism" flunks. Sober and Lewontin have put the distinction in more philosophical jargon, distinguishing genotokens from genotypes." (Sober and Lewontin, 1982, p. 171)

d) Other scientific objections and ethical problems.

Dusek:

"Lewontin, Gould, and some other writers have emphasized against selectionism a number of random and non-selective factors in evolution. These include 1) purely random recombination 2) genetic drift, in which random sampling errors in reproduction change the distribution of genes in a population 3) so-called non-Darwinian evolution, which involves the random mutation of the third letter in some DNA code words, in which two or more words are synonyms which code for the same amino acid, and hence the difference in the third letter makes no difference in the resultant organism, and is not selected for (a significant theory Dennett does not even mention) 4) structural constraints, such as basic body plans, which may become far from optimally adaptive, but which are too difficult to change by piecemeal natural selection without making many other features of the organism maladaptive. 5) geological or astronomical catastrophes such as the asteroid collision causing mass extinctions. 6) species selection, in which differing rates of extinction, and, more importantly, speciation (branching) produce more species in some lineages than in others....."

"There is [in Dennett] a discussion of the naturalistic fallacy in ethics, but no further discussion of scientific reduction. Apparently all that Dennett means by "draining the drama" from the problem is to deny that awful ethical consequences directly follow logically from selfish gene theory. But this ignores the more indirect ideological consequences in terms of cosmologies or models of nature that in turn can have ethical effects. An interesting sidelight of this is that Dennett, like Dawkins holds the Dawkinsian vision of all lower organisms. The are robots, but we, in Dawkins words can rebel against our genes. Surprisingly Dennett, the militant denier of dualism and of non-naturalistic mind, draws as strong a line between humans and other animals as does Descartes."

"What Dennett would have to counter is Lewontin and Sober's argument that when selection coefficients of genes are context-dependent and selection acts on gene complexes, the artificially constructed selection coefficients of genes do not play a causal role. (Sober and Lewontin, 1984). It is true that if one claims that what is selected are not genes but replicators as the later Dawkins does, then whole genomes, incorporating all the contextural effects of genes on each other, might be the object of selection. This would preserve the restriction of selection to the genic level, but it would give up the atomization of modular traits with which evolutionary psychologists work. On the other hand Dennett, surprisingly, does not dismiss the "selfish gene" image as a "mere metaphor" as do many scientists (somewhat in bad faith) but claims that if corporations can have interests, then so can genes (neglecting that corporations are made up of individuals who have interests but genes are not) (p. 328). Perhaps Dennett holds a view which "dissolves" the issues concerning reductionism in relation to levels of selection, but he nowhere argues for it of even states it clearly."

"Although Dennett chastises B. F. Skinner and E. O. Wilson for assuming that their opponents must be religious mysterians, Dennett himself accuses Steve Gould of all people of having secret religious motivations, based on the fact that Gould often quotes the Bible as literature the way he does Shakespeare. Ironically, the one "Biblical" passage in Gould that Dennett quotes is in fact not from the Bible but from a familiar African American song. Similarly Dennett grossly misrepresents the anthropologist Jonathan Marks, portraying him as a new Bishop Wilberforce, denying humans ape ancestry. In fact Marks pointed out the worse than shoddy treatment of data by C. G. Sibley and J. E. Ahlquist in their claims concerning hybridization of human and ape DNA. Dennett makes it sound as if Marks criticisms of Sibley and Ahlquists data was roundly condemned by the scientific community, as evidenced by an apology in the American Scientist. What Dennett neglects to note is that there was a lawsuit threatened against the magazine threatened by one of the criticized authors because Marks review suggested excessive massaging of the data. Despite the quality of Sibley and Ahlquists earlier raw data on bird classification based DNA, it is generally agreed that their work on human-ape relationships was worthless, and molecular evolution anthropologist Vincent Sarich has suggested that even the published versions of their bird conclusions is valueless, despite the value of the voluminous but unavailable raw data. Because of Sibley's eminence the human molecular evolution community has been unwilling to criticize the work, for fear of harm to the reputation of the field. This is far from the sort of replay of the Huxley-Wilberforce debate in which Dennett and other evolutionary psychologists wish to portray themselves as involved."

"Interestingly several of the leading sociobiologists and popularizers of evolutionary psychology, such as E. O. Wilson, Randy Thornhill, and Robert Wright hale from Alabama. One can speculate that the religious fundamentalist atmosphere of the American Deep South may have led those who defected to Darwin to find in Darwinism a cosmic world-view answering the same questions that the dominant religious view claimed to answer. Robert Wright (1988) is quite explicit about this."

CONCLUSION:

"The notion that human beings have evolved from other animals and are a part of biological nature is tremendously important. It is unfortunate and misleading that the evolutionary psychologists make it appear that a commitment to evolution and to the importance of natural selection necessitates a commitment to pan-selectionism, genic selection and the "selfish gene." We have seen how Wilson and now Dennett attempt to identify their opponents with anti-evolutionism. Even Barbara Ehrenreich dubs her opponents the "New Creationists." The split between selfish gene evolutionary psychology and cultural constructionism in anthropology can only prolong the delay in the development of a genuinely evolutionary view of humanity. "Evolutionary psychology" by preempting the field of evolutionary accounts of human nature and potential helps to prevent a non-reductionist biosocial account of humans.

3) The Inhumanity of humanity.

Many skeptics point out the extreme cases of the holucost in which normal law abiding citizens, chruch goers and Christians, did the most horrid things to babbies and old people and suffered no pangs of guilt over it. Moreover, we have seen on the evening news in Bosnia, in Ruwanda, and other places the most inhumane treatment of helpess victims which surely demonstrates that there is no moral law.

Answer: The explanitory power of the moral argument is demonstrated in this argument. The other side of the moral argument equasion is that we are not able to live up to the moral law. There are times when we turn it off, when it can be circumvented. Urges and temptations, ideology, socialization, many things can divert the basic motivations of compassion. If it was simpley genetic and the instictive urge to save the gene pool than why are we so bad at keeping it? While certain exptreme examples where the moral law is circumvented do not disprove that there is no moral law (because speical circumstances interveened) our anguish (ours not that of those whose consciences were ceared but that of those who look in horror at their deeds) demonstrates, along with our feelings of failure at living up to the mark, that there is a moral law. But it if is genetic why are we unable to live up to the standard that we feel passionately should be met?

C. Explanatory Power argues for God.

How can these moral motions demonstrate that God is the origin of such motions when there are also such strong indications that is genetic? Isn't this merely assuming God as an explanation when none is required?

That we feel such moral motions, both for compassion, and outrage over injustice, is better explained by an appeal to the God hypothesis since it demonstrates the depths of human depravity in man's fallen nature.So much of what we term "evil" is "over the top" and pointless, while the noble aspects of humanity cannot be reduced to mere behaviors. Morality is more than mere behavior, it is also deliberation, moral agency,and the ability to understand constitutive frameworks which embody self and our deepest values. This is so much more than just behavior, an attempt to save the gene pool. That is take is merely enshirining the ideology of consequentialist ethics. See also my take on the Fall of Humanity and what this means on the Gospel page. Without the notion of God a merely genetic morality reduces to behavioral urges and becomes relative and discardable. Yet the outrage and feelings of compassion remain. These are reduced to unimportant epiphenomena without God. This means that we are actually explaining away the phenomena. God is crucial as an postulate of practical reason; without metaphysical assumptions we cannot derive an ought from an is (Hume). But if we think of this observation in terms of the explanatory power of the God hypothesis that hypothesis becomes more than just a useful fiction. Since God explains morality and human nature better than any other view, in so far as it is honest about human depravity and nobility, we have a strong indication of the validity of the God hypothesis.

1) Regulative principle of practical reason (Kant)

We have this urge to condemn with outrage human atrocities and to extend compassion and justice. As with the Holocaust, we know it is evil; merely saying that it violates our genetic code isn't enough! But without assuming God as a regulative principle the alternative is that it does reduce to mere behavior and the moral outrage is groundless; yet we never lose it. That doesn't prove there is a God, but it at least justifies the notion as a regulative principle.

2) Regulative principle has explanatory power.

Both in explaining why we have these moral urges and yet can't live up to them, and in explaining why we need a regulative principle, why we can't just say it's not right or let it go.