Why Must Morality Be Objective?

[rookiebatman]

I watch a lot of debates between theists and atheists, and one point that comes up a lot (especially by William Lane Craig, who unfortunately has done a lot of debates) is the Argument from Morality, that without God, we couldn't have an objective sense of morality. The thing that I don't get is, they act like saying "if atheists are right, then morality would only be subjective" somehow proves their point. It seems to me that theists are presupposing that morality is objective, and so they would conclude that any system which indicates subjective morality must therefore be false. But why? Where's the support for the initial premise that morality is objective? Not that it should be, or that the world would be better if it was, but that objective morality is a known and accepted fact, which means that any line of thought which leads to subjective morality must be false.

Also, as a preemptive follow-up question, if you believe that morality is objective, how do you rectify that with the observable fact that people can't agree on what that objective morality is? Even people who say that the Bible is the objective source for morality can't agree on interpretations and nuances and what parts of the Old Testament should still be followed or not.

[Mesopatamia]

[Replying to post 30 by Divine Insight]

You mentioned "unproven" religions. Are there any proven ones? Also, in order to lie you have to know what you are saying is not true. If someone believes it is true, it is not lying. If it isn't true but they believe it is true, that would just make them wrong, not lying. However, whether they are wrong or right, that can't be proven logically, no matter how hard people may try or pretend to have "proven" it.

Also, you said that it should be illegal for people of religion or faith to share or pass this along in any way to their children. Do you have children? Do you not realize that children learn more from watching than anything you say? True faith is revealed through your actions, whether you say anything or not. You can't separate your beliefs from who you are. If someone just thinks their a Christian, for example, and expresses it by saying so, but they don't really believe anything inside, then their actions will contradict what they "say" they believe.
There are many people who lie in that way. They hide their dirty deeds behind a "righteous label". But, someone else may never verbalize their beliefs as a Christian, yet everything they believe is carried through their actions. A child is going to be influenced by whatever you do as a parent. They may or may not follow it, but it will have an influence. They will see their parents praying, reading their bibles, torah, Koran, or whatever it is that they practice. They will ask questions about why their parents are praying. Should they say, "I CANT tell you!! lest you should become indoctrinated". Here, Buddy, go smoke a joint in the other room; maybe you can go trolling on that website you like so much with all the nice old men who are lonely and like to talk to kids. They will be safer to hand with since they won't indoctrinate you with religion."

By the way, my brother was just in a car accident a few weeks ago. He was stopped at a red light when a car going 30 mph plowed into the back of him without ever braking. My brother is a safe driver, also and has never gotten into an accident before. Had he not had the mandatory insurance, though, he would not have been able to cover any of the medical costs. This is not an argument for or against insurance. I'm just pointing out that just because you are a safe driver doesn't mean that you are safe from accidents. Anything can happen.

[Donray]

No one has been able to list any absolute objective morals that God will always punish with hell and never forgive. After all, forgiveness is subjective and not objective.

Also, since god is vindictive and a murderer does that mean these are moral values from God?

What about slavery that is OK by the bible? What about rape that god said to actually do to virgin children.

Another thing if you believe the bible is that Jesus said one does not have to obey the laws and that should include the ten commandments.

Hi Donray:
The national laws of national Israel were the 613 Mitzvoth laws. Every nation had national laws, and there was nothing special about Israel's. The penalties for breaking the 613 laws were written right into those laws.
The 10 commandments were simply a national standard which, if Israel maintained, would cause Israel to become the great, everlasting, nation it was chosen to be. The penalty for the national breaking of the 10 commandments, is found in the statements that a nation divided against itself will surely fall, or a house divided against itself will not stand.
The wages of sin(national) is death(national), but the gift of God is everlasting life(national). God had promised that His chosen nation will be established forever, but His chosen nation became divided against itself and fell. The gift of God which will give God's chosen nation everlasting life is, the new covenant, which God will "graciously" make with resurrected Israel. The new covenant will be accompanied by God's writing of the 10 commandments on all the hearts of resurrected Israel. Israelites will then do by nature the things contained in the 10 commandments. Israel will never sin(nationally) again, will never become divided against itself again, and will therefore go on to become the great everlasting nation it was chosen to be.
My conclusion is that the 613 national laws of national Israel, were arbitrarily based on the common crimes of the day, and they ceased to exist as national laws when nation they applied to fell into non-existence.
The 10 commandments continue to be a good national standard for any nation, but they do not apply to Israel because Israel does not exist. However, when Israel is resurrected from the dead, and God makes His new covenant with it, and all Israelites do by nature the things contained in the 10, the law will be, for all intents and purposes, fulfilled.
That is what I take from the bible story:-)

What I take from your reply is that God does not have objective moral values nor does he imprint on people this lack of objective moral values.

[Provoker]

What I take from your reply is that God does not have objective moral values nor does he imprint on people this lack of objective moral values.

Hi Donray:
Sorry to take so long:-)
God is not concerned about morals. He is not concerned about anything man does. That is why He gave no laws from Adam to Moses, and no sin was charged during that time.
The 10 commandments may be moral laws to us, but they are nothing more than a national standard to guide a nation which had just promise to become the great everlasting nation of God's everlasting gospel promise.
Do you see the context here? No laws from Adam to Moses because God saw no need for laws. Then suddenly, when a national assembly promises to become the great, everlasting nation of God's gospel promise, God gives that national assembly 10 penaltyless laws which would make any nation which followed them, great and everlasting.
It is clear from that context that the only laws God ever gave, were for the maintenance of the national unity that Israel would need to fulfill it's promise.
To confirm that with more context, long after the fall of Israel, God spoke through Jeremiah, saying that because Israel fell by breaking God's laws, God is going to make a new covenant with Israel(resurrected), writing God's laws on all of Israel's hearts. Israel will then do by nature the things contained in God's laws, so resurrected Israel will not break God's laws, and therefore will not fall this time, but will go on to become the great everlasting nation it was chosen to become.
Israel, having been resurrected from the dead, will have been given everlasting life through God's new covenant.
Remember that God told David that his kingdom will be established forever.
Remember that God spoke through an angel saying; He will be given the kingdom of his father David, and there will be on earth peace, good will toward men.
It was not individuals sins which caused the division and fall of Israel, it was the national sin of breaking God's laws. The wages of national sin is national death, but the gift of God is everlasting national life through the new covenant.
What do you think?

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 30 by Divine Insight]

You mentioned "unproven" religions. Are there any proven ones? Also, in order to lie you have to know what you are saying is not true. If someone believes it is true, it is not lying. If it isn't true but they believe it is true, that would just make them wrong, not lying. However, whether they are wrong or right, that can't be proven logically, no matter how hard people may try or pretend to have "proven" it.

It's lying to say that a person "knows something to be true" when in truth they don't. Even if the thing they claim was true turned out to be true, they would have still be lying when they claimed to know it was true when they didn't really know.

Honesty would be to confess that they only believe it on faith themselves.

Also, you said that it should be illegal for people of religion or faith to share or pass this along in any way to their children.

I never said any such thing. Especially not to "pass this along in any way".

If they can pass it along honestly and make it crystal clear that it is indeed a faith-based believe that even the parents can't know is true, there would be nothing wrong with that.

But, yeah, outright lying to small impressionable children should be considered "Child Abuse". And teaching them that there exists an invisible man in the sky who watches over them and will punish them if they don't satisfy his demands is a lie. Especially when the parents KNOW that this is just a faith-based belief.

I small impressionable child doesn't understand that.

Do you have children? Do you not realize that children learn more from watching than anything you say?

Yes, I fully understand that children learn more from watching their parents than listening to what they say. This is why many children begin to realize that their parents are often hypocrites.

Also, if the child has a parent who goes around proclaiming to everyone that the parent "knows" God exists, then the child is going to see this parent lying over and over again. Because the child doesn't realize that this is just a faith-based conviction and the parent truly doesn't know any such thing.

Even the Bible has Jesus proclaiming that people must believe on "faith".

True faith is revealed through your actions, whether you say anything or not. You can't separate your beliefs from who you are. If someone just thinks their a Christian, for example, and expresses it by saying so, but they don't really believe anything inside, then their actions will contradict what they "say" they believe.
There are many people who lie in that way. They hide their dirty deeds behind a "righteous label". But, someone else may never verbalize their beliefs as a Christian, yet everything they believe is carried through their actions. A child is going to be influenced by whatever you do as a parent. They may or may not follow it, but it will have an influence. They will see their parents praying, reading their bibles, torah, Koran, or whatever it is that they practice. They will ask questions about why their parents are praying. Should they say, "I CANT tell you!! lest you should become indoctrinated". Here, Buddy, go smoke a joint in the other room; maybe you can go trolling on that website you like so much with all the nice old men who are lonely and like to talk to kids. They will be safer to hand with since they won't indoctrinate you with religion."

I'm not saying that a parent can't answer questions of a child, or even teach them to pray. But if they do this, they should be honest about it. Especially if the child asks questions about God. And children almost certainly will ask questions. All I'm saying is that those questions should be answered honestly.

By the way, I hold this same standard for atheists. I don't think it's right for an atheists to tell there child "There is no God". That too would be a lie (even if it was coincidentally true).

By the way I disagree with what you said earlier. It is a "lie" to claim that something is a fact, when you don't know it to be a fact. Even if it turns out to be true later, it was still a "lie" when you claimed to know it be a fact when you had no way of verifying it.

By the way, my brother was just in a car accident a few weeks ago. He was stopped at a red light when a car going 30 mph plowed into the back of him without ever braking. My brother is a safe driver, also and has never gotten into an accident before. Had he not had the mandatory insurance, though, he would not have been able to cover any of the medical costs. This is not an argument for or against insurance. I'm just pointing out that just because you are a safe driver doesn't mean that you are safe from accidents. Anything can happen.

I never claimed to be safe from accidents. All I suggested is that I'm willing to take the risk to drive without insurance. And now at 67 years old looking back I see that it would have been a lifetime "risk" that was well worth it, at least up to this point in my life.

Of course, now that I have paid car insurance over the course of my life up to this point the bulk of the money has already been paid. I think it would be a gross injustice if I were not covered now.

In any case, I only gave that example to demonstrate how many of the laws we actually have in place don't have anything to do with morality anyway.

[enviousintheeverafter]

I watch a lot of debates between theists and atheists, and one point that comes up a lot (especially by William Lane Craig, who unfortunately has done a lot of debates) is the Argument from Morality, that without God, we couldn't have an objective sense of morality... It seems to me that theists are presupposing that morality is objective

Pretty much. Despite the fact that moral realism is a controversial thesis in meta-ethics, it is often taken for granted by apologists that some robust form of moral realism is true, and oftentimes are simply counting on the emotional and intuitive appeal most find in objective morality. For instance, Craig will say things like this:

"And could anything be more obvious than that objective moral values do exist?The fact is that we do apprehend objective values, and we all know it. Actions like rape, torture, child abuse, and brutality are not just socially unacceptable behavior—they are moral abominations."

or

""Why should I think that objective moral values exist rather than that evolution has made me believe in the illusion that there are objective moral values?� And the answer to that question is, “Because I clearly apprehend objective moral values and have no good reason to deny what I clearly perceive.�

(both quotes taken from Craig's blog at reasonablefaith.org)

So Craig "clearly perceives" that moral values exist, and everyone agrees with him. Mmm, ok. I can imagine that the many professional moral philosophers defending moral anti-realism find what Craig claims to perceive to be an incredibly compelling argument... Or not.

Also, as a preemptive follow-up question, if you believe that morality is objective, how do you rectify that with the observable fact that people can't agree on what that objective morality is? Even people who say that the Bible is the objective source for morality can't agree on interpretations and nuances and what parts of the Old Testament should still be followed or not.

We can/should go a bit further than this. Moral disagreement, in itself, is not a problem for moral realism. People disagree about facts all the time, and facts are objective. But the extent and nature of moral disagreement does raise problems for moral realism; namely, in many cases of genuine moral disagreement, there do not seem to be ANY possible facts which could resolve the dispute. Moral disagreements are not very tractable. This suggests that either morality is not about objective facts at all (but rather about emotions and tastes, which are subjective), or it is about objective facts, but those objective facts do not exist. The former view is emotivism/non-cognitivism, the latter error-theory.

[enviousintheeverafter]

[Replying to post 35 by enviousintheeverafter]

Also should be pointed out that not only is the truth of a robust moral realism often taken for granted by the apologist, but they usually only pay lip-service to all the naturalistic forms of moral realism, if they even do that much. In meta-ethics, a majority of philosophers lean towards moral realism, but very few of them accept Divine Command Theory (Craig's preferred flavor of ethics, obviously), which is widely viewed as the least tenable and credible form of moral realism. But Craig and his ilk rarely give adequate refutations of alternatives like deontological or virtue ethics, which would be the most serious competitors for most likely theory of moral realism.

[Mask of the Devil]

Morality may or may not be considered objective. In my opinion, it is not.
But consequences are objective and effectiveness of laws is too.

[Anomaly]

[Replying to post 1 by rookiebatman]
I think to discuss whether morality is objective misses the point. To my thinking, morality is an effect. The real question is whether truth is objective. Morality to me is simply the pressure felt in the of tension and resistance between a prescriptive 'ought' and 'ought not'. As such in asking if morality is objective we're only asking if moral propositions can be true for all or some (subjective)...pointing to truth that is actually on trial here.

[enviousintheeverafter]

[Replying to post 1 by rookiebatman]
I think to discuss whether morality is objective misses the point. To my thinking, morality is an effect. The real question is whether truth is objective. Morality to me is simply the pressure felt in the of tension and resistance between a prescriptive 'ought' and 'ought not'. As such in asking if morality is objective we're only asking if moral propositions can be true for all or some (subjective)...pointing to truth that is actually on trial here.

Well but not exactly, not truth simpliciter- but whether there is such a thing as objective moral truth. Given that "objective" means not differing from person to person (i.e. subject-invariant) in this context, there isn't an especially interesting debate about whether truth is, in general, objective- it is (indeed it is probably a necessary condition for truth). The question then, is whether (objective) truth can be a property of moral claims/judgments. There are some good reasons to think it cannot be (Moore's open question, the is/ought chasm, metaphysical queerness, etc.).

[jgh7]

People think too much in terms of objective and subjective. What matters is that the reasoning that explains what morality is must be factual: it must be logical and sound.

Morality is simply stating how people ought to act, right? So if you have an argument that logically and soundly explains how people ought to act, then that's all that matters.

It doesn't matter if this argument says certain people should act differently from others (subjective: the guidelines for this morality change depending on the person). It doesn't matter if it says we should all act in a similar manner (objective: the guidlines for this morality are the same for all of us).

What matters is that these moral guidelines logically and soundly tell us how we ought to act.