If God does not exist, then everything is permissible

[Prodigal_Son]

I do not subscribe to the concept of transcendental wrongness, because I do not find it to be coherent. For example, what do you mean “wrong in and of itself”? What is wrongness in the first place? The way I define wrongness is in reference to codes of conduct. I am unable to make sense of wrongness apart from definite codes of conduct.

Do you subscribe to “transcendental objectness,” as we might call it? This is the thesis that there are objects out there in the world, in and apart from our opinions about them. Someone might criticize that view, in just the same way. "What do you mean by an object ‘out there in the world,’ " they might say. “What is objectness in the first place?”

A philosopher named Berkeley said that the was no such thing as objects outside of the consciousness of objects. You are saying that there is no such things as morals outside of consciousness of morals. What difference do you see between the two claims?

 

[hatsoff]

Do you subscribe to “transcendental objectness,” as we might call it? This is the thesis that there are objects out there in the world, in and apart from our opinions about them. Someone might criticize that view, in just the same way. "What do you mean by an object ‘out there in the world,’ " they might say. “What is objectness in the first place?”

A philosopher named Berkeley said that the was no such thing as objects outside of the consciousness of objects. You are saying that there is no such things as morals outside of consciousness of morals. What difference do you see between the two claims?

Objects are characterized by our experiences; that is, we formulate folk models for the physical world in order to navigate it. If we didn’t share the same kinds of folk models, then we wouldn’t be able to talk about objects the way we do. Fortunately, this is not the case.

However, it is the case for morals. You and I do not share the same model of morality. Indeed, I question whether you really have a robust model which can serve as the basis for an argument like this.

 

[tonyrey]

1. Objective value and purpose cannot emerge from that which lacks objective value and purpose
2. If God does not exist nothing has any objective value or purpose
3. If nothing has any objective value or purpose everything is permissible

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Objects are characterized by our experiences; that is, we formulate folk models for the physical world in order to navigate it. If we didn’t share the same kinds of folk models, then we wouldn’t be able to talk about objects the way we do. Fortunately, this is not the case.

Of course, I would say that morals are characterized by our experiences. To a tremendous degree, we share the same kinds of folk models of morality. Please note: this does not entail believing in the same moral entities across cultures; our folk models of the physical world, similarly, do not correspond in a one-to-one way. One person will say that atoms exist, and another will say that some entity (or entities) which explains the effects that atoms explain exists. Both are reasonable positions.

Another example: one folk model of the physical world says that “magnets have the power of attracting metals”. Another folk model says that “magnets and metals behave in certain ways, based on certain forces that are acting upon them.”

I am going to claim that human beings obviously share a common understanding of morality in the most basic sense; otherwise, we would find it impossible to talk about morality. I will agree that morality exists within contexts, but I will insist that “the set of all events” is a context – and thus objective facts can exist. I would further argue that differences in moral opinions (which are relatively uncommon) are not significant evidence against objective morality.

Some students of Zen will insist that the physical world does not exist; likewise, some subscribers to Western philosophy will insist that objective moral truths do not exist. But what reason do I have to believe either claim? Are you simply arguing from moral disagreement, or is there some larger argument that I’m missing here?

You and I do not share the same model of morality. Indeed, I question whether you really have a robust model which can serve as the basis for an argument like this.

Well, if you give me a plausible argument that calls into serious question the second premise in my syllogism, I will change my mind and agree with you.

Oh, and once you give me a robust model of *how *things exist in the physical world, I will give you a robust model of *how *things exist in the “moral world”. But I suggest that the answer to either question is not forthcoming, at least not in the next few milennia.

 

[TheWatcher]

1. Objective value and purpose cannot emerge from that which lacks objective value and purpose
2. If God does not exist nothing has any objective value or purpose
3. If nothing has any objective value or purpose everything is permissible

Why is God necessary to value and purpose?

 

[hatsoff]

Well, if you give me a plausible argument that calls into serious question the second premise in my syllogism, I will change my mind and agree with you.

The problem isn’t that your premise is false, but rather that it’s incoherent. In other words, it lacks meaning, such that it can be neither true nor false.

 

[NowAgnostic]

We’re on the second page and no one’s brought up the Euthyphro dilemma?

Does God command what’s moral because it’s moral, or is it moral because God commands it?

If God commands what’s moral because it’s moral, then objective morality exists apart from God and the argument in the OP doesn’t work (premise 1 is false, even if God did not exist, some things would not be permissible).

If what’s moral is moral only because God commands it, then there is no non-question-begging reason for accepting premise 2 (you’re only going to accept an objective morality if you’ve already accepted God’s existence).

The standard resolution to this dilemma is to say that God’s commands are not arbitrary and yet morality has no basis save in the goodness of God. Or, in other words, the dilemma is false because morality and God’s command are only notionally, but not really, distinct entities. In this case the argument reduces to a tautology:

1. If God does not exist, He has not commanded anything.
2. But He has commanded something.
3. Therefore, He exists.

And again clearly there’s no non-question begging reason for accepting premise 2.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

The problem isn’t that your premise is false, but rather that it’s incoherent. In other words, it lacks meaning, such that it can be neither true nor false.

Similarly, Berkeley claimed that a thing being a physical object, over and above being the object of perception, is incoherent. What gloss can you give to the “objective physical reality” hypothesis, that would make it more coherent to the skeptic?

Me: There are real objects in a real world.
Skeptic: What are they like?
Me: Like this hat, for example.
Skeptic: Oh, that old thing? That’s just an object of our perception.
Me: No it isn’t. It exists independently of our perception.
Skeptic: That sentence doesn’t even make any sense! How can you have had any experience independent of perception, to lead you to believe such nonsense?

What should I say in response? And yet, despite the skeptic’s argument, I still believe in something like an “external” world.

 

[tonyrey]

Why is God necessary to value and purpose?

How do you explain their origin? By chance?

 

[hatsoff]

And yet, despite the skeptic’s argument, I still believe in something like an “external” world.

Then we’re at an impasse. I have no concept of transcendent morality, and although you claim to have one, you are unable to articulate it. I’m sorry, but that’s not convincing to me.

 

[tonyrey]

Does God command what’s moral because it’s moral, or is it moral because God commands it?

A false dilemma. Goodness has its source in God.

 

[NowAgnostic]

Similarly, Berkeley claimed that a thing being a physical object, over and above being the object of perception, is incoherent. What gloss can you give to the “objective physical reality” hypothesis, that would make it more coherent to the skeptic?

Me: There are real objects in a real world.
Skeptic: What are they like?
Me: Like this hat, for example.
Skeptic: Oh, that old thing? That’s just an object of our perception.
Me: No it isn’t. It exists independently of our perception.
Skeptic: That sentence doesn’t even make any sense! How can you have had any experience independent of perception, to lead you to believe such nonsense?

What should I say in response? And yet, despite the skeptic’s argument, I still believe in something like an “external” world.

It’s an unprovable metaphysical assumption. The best you can do is argue like this:

So do I really exist, or only as an object of my perception? If the latter, what does the “my” reference? A real “me”? Or is that also only an object of “my” perception? Etc., etc. If that which perceives is only an object of something else’s perception, then an infinite regress results. Yet the skeptic could conceivably embrace it.

Note that asking why our perceptions correlate so well (why don’t we perceive different objects in the same location) does not work as a rebuttal because the skeptic will say our correlation is also only an object of perception!

 

[AntiTheist]

Skeptic: Oh, that old thing? That’s just an object of our perception.
Me: No it isn’t. It exists independently of our perception.
Skeptic: That sentence doesn’t even make any sense! How can you have had any experience independent of perception, to lead you to believe such nonsense?

You can demonstrate that objects exist apart from our perception. For example, you could set a hat on fire, walk away, and come back later to find a burnt hat. It continued to exist (and burn) when you weren’t around, regardless of what you “perceived” or what you thought about the hat or the fire.

You can’t do such a demonstration for the concept of “wrong” – “wrong” is an idea that only exists in the minds of thinking beings. Without minds, the concept of “wrong” couldn’t exist.

The second premise of your OP is false, or at the very least it cannot be demonstrated to be true.

 

[TheWatcher]

How do you explain their origin? By chance?

I’m not trying to argue with you. I’m just curious. Just asking questions.

 

[o_mlly]

1. If God does not exist, then there are no codes of conduct meeting the set of criteria “morally obligatory to all sentient beings”.
2. There are codes of conduct meeting the set of criteria “morally obligatory to all sentient beings”.
3. Therefore, God exists.

And again, my question is: why should I not be persuaded by such an argument? Which premise, if any, should I reject?

My understanding (and guess) is that you’d get these answers from these historical moralists. The first 7 were overtly theists or deists (accepting your conclusion via other arguments) and, ironically, it is only the avowed atheist, Sartre, who agrees with 1 and rejects your conclusion becuase he reject 2 – at least, the man was consistent!

Machiavelli: 1. No, 2. Yes.
Hobbes: 1. No. 2, Yes.
Rousseau: 1. No, 2. Yes.
Descartes: 1. No, 2. Yes.
Hume: 1. No, 2. Yes
Mill: 1. No 2. Yes.
Kant: 1. No, 2. Yes
Jean Paul Sartre: 1, Yes. 2. No

 

[tonyrey]

I’m not trying to argue with you. I’m just curious. Just asking questions.

O.K.
If God does not exist there is no reason or purpose for our existence. We just happen to be alive and values exist only in our minds. They are human conventions we can ignore if we think we can get away with it. The only crime is to be caught!

 

[Prodigal_Son]

You can demonstrate that objects exist apart from our perception. For example, you could set a hat on fire, walk away, and come back later to find a burnt hat. It continued to exist (and burn) when you weren’t around, regardless of what you “perceived” or what you thought about the hat or the fire.

Begs the question. If you don’t assume that it continues to exist when you weren’t around, you simply find that the observation “burnt hat” succeeded the observation “hat on fire”. Whether there was anything there – apart from two subsequent observations – cannot be demonstrated by any possible deductive method.

It can, however, be inferred by induction. So can the existence of objective morals.

The second premise of your OP is false, or at the very least it cannot be demonstrated to be true.

And neither can physical objects be demonstrated to objectively exist. If we believe it, we believe it as a fallible inference.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

If God commands what’s moral because it’s moral, then objective morality exists apart from God and the argument in the OP doesn’t work (premise 1 is false, even if God did not exist, some things would not be permissible).

How am I assuming that objective morality is true *because *it is God’s will, in the original post? That would be a strange thing for me to assume, since I don’t even believe it! Rather, my position is that the Good is *binding *because it is God’s will, but that God’s will is good because it “happens to” conform to the standard of the Good.

If God did not exist, then everything would be permissible in exactly the sense that everything is permissible in any Kantian framework. It would be not only possible to do what is wrong, but there would be no consequence for doing what is wrong. Thus, the cosmos would be like the University of Michigan on Hash Bash – a bunch of unenforced laws. (This was, by the way, exactly the complaint that Plato made about morality in the Republic – that the wicked prospered.)

 

[AntiTheist]

If you don’t assume that it continues to exist when you weren’t around, you simply find that the observation “burnt hat” succeeded the observation “hat on fire”.

But the more often you observe “burnt hat” after observing “hat on fire,” the more evidence you have that there really is something there operating when you’re not around. That’s evidence.

It’s completely different with morality. There’s no evidence at all that anything is “wrong” in some objective sense. The very idea is incoherent and makes no sense. What could possibly make an action 'wrong"?

At most, you might determine that the majority of people don’t like behavior X in most circumstances. That wouldn’t come anywhere close to being evidence that X is somehow “wrong” outside of human thought.

You’re just talking nonsense on this thread.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

But the more often you observe “burnt hat” after observing “hat on fire,” the more evidence you have that there really is something there operating when you’re not around. That’s evidence.

I agree. It’s not demonstration, but it is inductive evidence – which is to say, reason to believe. I’m not altogether certain that this “reason to believe” is indicative of knowledge or simply “custom” (Hume’s position), but I agree that we have good reasons to believe in a material world.

It’s completely different with morality. There’s no evidence at all that anything is “wrong” in some objective sense.

You hit another kid on the playground, and you feel guilty. You hear about the Holocaust, and you are appalled. The more often you observe such reactions, the more reason you have to believe that there is something objective about it. And we notice this about others, too; they certainly act as if certain things are inherently right and wrong, over and above what the laws say.

At most, you might determine that the majority of people don’t like behavior X in most circumstances. That wouldn’t come anywhere close to being evidence that X is somehow “wrong” outside of human thought.

Well, in a sense, you’re right. Moral or immoral actions only exist when there are people to act in these ways, just as rational or irrational decisions only exist where there are people to be rational or irrational. But if there are intelligent people, then there are certain *objectively rational *ways of thinking, some ways of thinking that approach the truth more accurately. In a similar way, the categories “right” and “wrong” are dormant until some intelligent beings are capable of perceiving them.

You’re just talking nonsense on this thread.

Do all atheists think so? If so, I’m severely disappointed. I thought that the proposal “torturing innocent children is always and everywhere wrong”, for example, would win some supporters among rational people, whether or not they believed in God. Was I wrong about atheists?