So is it fair to say that you hold that objective moral values do exist? And in that case, how do you reconcile this view with materialism/naturalism?
@Giltil, I appreciate that question because it is a ubiquitous one among so many of my Christian brethren. Yet, as an expired and retired mediocre theologian (former seminary professor), I honestly have never thought that there is much to reconcile.
Is there TRULY no possibility for “objective moral values” under “materialism/naturalism”? (At very least, it depends greatly on one’s definitions.)
To clarify for newcomers: I’m certainly a kind of “methodological naturalist” when it comes to science because that is exactly how the Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages who helped to pioneer the new field of “natural philosophy” defined themselves. (That natural philosophy of centuries past produced the scientific method and evolved into what we now call modern science.)
I’m not trying to get in the way of @Puck_Mendelssohn reply or anybody else’s (e.g., replies from any atheists or agnostics on this forum) but depending on how the words are defined, I just don’t find this popular apologetics trope about materialism/naturalism all that interesting or useful. I certainly don’t consider it a “gotcha” or an excuse for casually dismissing the moral values of atheists or anybody else.
Important: Scientific methodological naturalism and an absolute philosophical naturalism are not the same thing.
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Objective morality is simply the proposition that something is moral independently of what anyone thinks about it (it isn’t subjective).
Theists typically say God’s nature is defined as “the basis” or “the foundation” for morality.
Disregarding that this claim is subjective opinion (I can simply disagree that God’s nature is the basis for morality, and then we’re just battling opinions), if we simply define God to be the basis for morality and it becomes objective by virtue of this (which must be the claim of theism), then we can define something else to be the foundation and it would be objective too.
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I think the first phrase (“…how the words are defined…”) shows us exactly why this trope is empty, ridiculous and (this should matter to decent people) obnoxious. It simply does not follow that objective morality requires supernaturalism, just as it does not follow that god-belief generates morality. (God-belief does seem to correlate with moral incompetence but the logical problem is that a deity need not dictate or even care about moral values.) A person like me who doesn’t believe in gods can confess belief in objective morality the same way a person confesses belief in a deity: by saying “this is what I believe.” Easy as that.
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I’ll avoid the risk of needing to spin off a new topic to its own thread—but for those of a philosophical bent and perhaps a philosophy course or two behind them— I would simply say properly basic beliefs (as defined in epistemology and foundationalism) FOR ME set the stage for why I believe that atheists (for example) can certainly hold valid objective moral values.
Now admittedly whether these moral values are truly objective or subjective (for atheists or theists or anybody else) has been hotly debated for a very long time by philosophers. Definitions and all sorts of complex analyses come into play. I would refer the reader to Alvin Plantinga’s “reformed epistemology” for his analysis of reliable belief-forming processes.
The bottom line is that while Giltil’s question is a popular one in many circles, I don’t at all consider it any sort of decisive “gotcha” question. [And I’m not implying Giltil is necessarily playing gotcha. I just wanted to make a general point.]
POSTSCRIPT: I just now saw @sfmatheson’s reply to Giltil and I appreciate seeing an atheist’s response to the question. I would encourage @Giltil to consider why a theist and an atheist both find the question (and the traditional answers which usually come with it) not all that persuasive, to put it casually.
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It seems to me that the Hindu idea of Karma is closer to a concept of objective morality than anything Christians offer - if there is objective morality then a God doesn’t seem to add anything - and if there isn’t, there isn’t.
Personally I believe that morality is not objective - but even if it is there seems no objective way of resolving moral disagreements. So far as I can tell, morality - for us - must be intersubjective - like languages. So long as we have a shared understanding of morality all is well - but if disputes cannot be resolved by appealing to shared values then they can’t be resolved at all.
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Well, now we have to know… 
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My view is that because morality exists only in the realm of human (or, perhaps animal) experience, and is not a set of “facts” we can test, the idea of “objective” morality is incoherent and useless. I certainly said nothing at all about “objective” morality and I cannot imagine why you apparently think I did.
We all get our morality from human experience; and a thousand sad and gut-wrenching tales from that experience teach us that brutalizing people on the basis of their ancestry is wrong.
Now, there are notions of objective morality that do derive from human experience. Kant’s whole notion of categorical imperatives springs to mind, and it needs no religion to under pin it. I’m not a particular subscriber to any of those notions, but they do exist, and so if you want to go interrogate someone who does subscribe to them, you’ll need to find someone else.
What is very, very clear is that no “objective” morality can be derived from the mere opinions of a supernatural being, who does not live in our moral circumstances or have to deal with the consequences of our moral choices. The morality, if any, of a supernatural being is purely its own subjective morality.
I take it that you believe that if there’s no god, then imprisoning Japanese Americans purely on the basis of their ancestry is not wrong. I find that stance incredibly disturbing. I would never justify violence against others on the basis that nobody who can punish me is watching.
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I have reacted with nausea when I’ve read/heard alleged Christian speakers—thankfully on rare occasions in an article or Youtube video—say that if there is no God, they would have no reason not to pillage and rape.
Such people scare me. Obviously. Words escape me. Also worth mentioning, I’ve not come upon any atheist or agnostic say anything remotely like that. Why is that?
If anyone wants to defend such an argument from particular apologists who thrive on these kinds of pronouncements, I’m all ears.
Now, in case someone is prone to say, “Yeah, that is what Christians do.”, I would cite the teachings of Jesus where he said that plenty of people would claim his name even though they don’t actually follow his teachings. If someone contradicts the teachings of Jesus in those ways, I don’t consider them followers of Jesus.
It is kind of like the alleged Christians I know who seem to have no compassion for the suffering innocent people in Gaza (or they claim that no such “innocent Palestinians” exist) or are fine with people being rounded up, labelled terrorists without evidence of criminality, and denied the due process rights guaranteed even non-citizens under the Constitution (and sent to a hellhole in El Salvador funded-per-deportee by American taxpayers.)
The Bible says that “by their fruits you shall know them.” So I don’t see how people who often WITH VITRIOL express these kinds of calloused views can show evidence of actually being followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
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Funny, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the idea that morality is somehow Christian in origin is an old anti-atheist trope. But, of course, it’s not borne out by anything in our experience. Atheists mostly go around being just as moral as anyone else. And why should we not? Is there supposed to be something about being an atheist that erases all natural human feeling and empathy?
I recall that someone said to Penn Jillette that if there’s no god, he could kill and rape as many people as he wants. He responded that he already does kill and rape as many people as he wants, but that that number is zero.
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Has anyone run the numbers on Deuteronomy 20? We could find out how many people were selected for genocidal death, and how many for slavery (women taken as plunder), and then discover the author’s estimate of how many people one should kill and rape. It’s a lot more than zero.
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As a child I had no idea of the horrors of the Bible. My father vaguely made reference to them, but nothing terribly definite. It was when reading Mark Twain’s Letters From The Earth that I had my first pass through it, and what Twain said was so shocking and horrific that it inspired me to read the Bible cover to cover.
I have had two classes of experience with that: one just strange, and the other the sort of thing that makes one despair for humanity.
The strange one: there are a lot of people who fancy themselves to know something about the Bible, and they not infrequently have NO idea any of that is in there. A pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses were once reduced to tears when my father, during a visit, showed them these passages. They kept looking them up in their own Bibles, suspecting presumably that he was carrying some sort of Devil’s Bible with false contents, but of course they kept finding that he was right. For some reason, we never got many drop-in visitors.
The despairing one: there are a lot of people who will defend it up, down, backwards and forwards. Every excuse of every monster in the long catalogue of man’s inhumanity to man gets trotted out, as though we hadn’t heard the same from the very worst among us over and over again. And it is all said to be just great, because, y’know, god. And then the apologists, oh, the apologists! William Lane Craig let us all know that these genocides were actually a swell deal for the small children, since they will have gone straight to heaven (without, of course, any of those whom they knew and loved). Faith makes monsters out of men sometimes.
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Funny thing, but I was just going to ask you about that.
The thing is that the violent passages in the Bible should be interpreted as allegories rather than literally, and under the light of its last book, the book of revelation.
If you want to choose that indefensible and frankly despicable rationalization, great, but my advice is to avoid telling anyone (me or anyone else) how they “should” read a story of genocide and mass rape. And by the way: if genocide and mass rape is an “allegory” then… what is it an allegory for? Oh and: is the Flood an allegory? The public murder of Ananias and Sapphira? So many questions.
But look: I don’t expect or want a response. I don’t share that god’s values, or the values of anyone anywhere who makes moral choices like the ones attributed to him. That definitely includes his choice to use apparently historical accounts of directions given to his people to commit crimes against humanity. Calling them “allegory” doesn’t change my view of him. Let’s leave it at that.
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First: video links are a terrible way to explain what you mean. I watched about half of that and it was entirely pointless, with no indication that it was about to make any useful point at all. Whatever you think it said that was of value surely could not take more than a few words to express.
Second: I’m afraid that “allegory” doesn’t make a very good dodge. The allegorical use of scripture which portrays the vicious destruction of human life as a virtuous act seems inherently rather limited and questionable; and it is even more limited when one considers that, the works appearing in form to be historical accounts, anyone writing them would have realized that they would be taken at face value by many, many people and that this view of them would foster and enable cruelty on a fantastic scale.
Considering it in the light of The Revelation of John seems downright weird, though. The Revelation wasn’t written until centuries after these stories.
And then, of course, there is the problem: if every time one finds distinct and well-formed statements about history, morality, or any other reasonably worthwhile topic in the Bible, one has got to wonder whether these distinct and well formed statements are mere allegory and utterly worthless as a guide to what they appear to be a guide to, there’s no value that can possibly be extracted from the Bible at all. Some things lend themselves to allegorical interpretation – much of Genesis, for example, has a kind of asinine, cartoonish ridiculousness about it which encourages the reader to assume it is literally false. But it’s very hard to read these genocide passages and think that they are meant to teach some theological or ethical lesson beyond the inherent right of the chosen people to murder anyone who gets in their way. And when the theological and ethical lessons are of that character, the Bible is rendered more worthless still.
Indeed, and it certainly illustrates the point that if one were looking for some kind of morality (“objective” or not, I don’t care), the last place to look would be to this religion. Mark Twain, as usual, has it:
I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, “Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him.” The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way.
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Yes, but is it a true dilemma ? What about saying that morality does depend upon God, but it’s not dependent upon its will or its choice, rather it’s dependent on his very character or nature. IOW, God is identical to goodness, God is his goodness, therefore is it impossible for God not to be good and to command something that is not good.
How can you say that God is goodness without having a standard for goodness? If you just define “goodness” as “what God is”, then all you have said is that God is God, which is empty of meaning. Your claim relies on having a standard of goodness external to God. Yes, it’s a true dilemma.
Incidentally, when God commands the massacre of innocents, do we know that it’s good because God is goodness?
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That does not resolve the dillema. It just kicks it down the road a bit. The dilemma now becomes “Is God’s nature good because it is God’s? Or is God good because he has a good nature?”
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