Morality without God?

[Peter_Plato]

So can anyone here speak to these folks from a position of experience, where God actually became necessary to understand what is moral? Or why he became necessary for anything that you couldn’t get from a parent, friend, or any human?

From my experience, behaviour in general, and, therefore, moral behaviour as well, derives from what it means to be human, but that presumes a person’s rather limited understanding of “being human” is capable of grounding moral thinking. Absent God, the moral sentiments that arise in my own mind and in the thoughts and actions around me become, de facto, the guiding principles for all behaviour.

Without God, I find myself to be at the mercy of a kind of moral drift that has no anchor precisely because no sufficient grounds for morality can be identified solely within human experience. Certainly, we can ground moral principles in our own moral sentiments, but then the problem is that we have no authoritative means by which to extend our moral thinking to all human beings.

There is no reason for thinking some kinds of behaviour are essentially and qualitatively better than others without an objective “standard” for claiming them to be and that standard, it seems to me has to come from a purpose “outside” of a strictly human derived one. Political, social, familial, or environmental ideals or similar grounds for acting “morally” are limited and often end up conflicting with each other. There must be a kind of meta-ethic founded in ultimate purpose or morality is reduced to a kind of parochial enterprise which does not stand against challenges such as from megalomaniacs set on global domination.

 

[Bradski]

I don’t think a sense of right and wrong depends upon a belief in God, however, I do suspect that without God as the ground of morality it is difficult to justify moral principles as obligatory.

In what sense do you mean obligatory? In what sense, for example, are you obliged not to steal?

 

[tonyrey]

No that’s not what I suggest. I suggest that a person who has not endured hardship is untested. Look, the atheistic folks you are talking to probably know all about the severe persecution of Jesus and the Christians throughout history. They are not moved by any of that. They might just say, “we’ll all kinds of people have been persecuted.” It’s all just information and questionable information at that. Isn’t that the thrust of the argument about the validity of the Gospels? “Why should I be moved by those accounts? It all might just be BS.” So can anyone here speak to these folks from a position of experience, where God actually became necessary to understand what is moral? Or why he became necessary for anything that you couldn’t get from a parent, friend, or any human?

The answer lies in your point about hardship. There are more atheists in Sweden than anywhere else in the world precisely because they have one of the highest standards of living. It is only when we suffer and are confronted with death that we see everything in its true perspective. Nothing can give us true peace and joy but the unselfish love demonstrated by Jesus that liberates us from our attachment to ourselves and outlasts the ephemeral pleasures of this world.

DH Lawrence is generally associated with the permissive society but he rejected the false concept of love which now dominates Western society: He wrote:

“Tragedy is like strong acid: It dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.”

He suffered from ill health for much of his short life and realised that physical desire and satisfaction are far less important than spiritual love:

“One should stick by one’s soul, and by nothing else. In one’s soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one’s own soul-knowledge one is the worst of traitors.”

A fitting epitaph would be his own words:

“In every living thing there is the desire for love.”

 

[Peter_Plato]

In what sense do you mean obligatory? In what sense, for example, are you obliged not to steal?

In the sense that the obligation not to steal would logically and morally override any will, desire or compulsion on your part to do so. It would mean, also, that other moral beings would be justified in stopping you from doing so, which provides the moral justification for the state to involve itself in preventing theft of property.

 

[aprilfloyd]

I guess if you think defending enslaved and defenseless Israelites against Egyptian military might is to be defined as being “nasty,” then we have very different notions of what the word means.

In the event that you are kidnapped and enslaved to a barbarous, cruel and inhuman band of terrorists make sure to point out to any would-be rescuers that their apparently benevolent actions are “nasty” and intolerable to you, even if they are merely attempting to save you from your brutal and inhuman captors.

Unless, of course, you believe your captors are merely acting humanely when they torture you or force you to do their bidding, which you must, since all actions, according to you, are merely “human” actions. So why should anyone try to save you?

I was referring to innocent god created egyptians

 

[Bradski]

In the sense that the obligation not to steal would logically and morally override any will, desire or compulsion on your part to do so. It would mean, also, that other moral beings would be justified in stopping you from doing so, which provides the moral justification for the state to involve itself in preventing theft of property.

You are saying that an obligation will logically and morally override desire or compulsion. So you are telling me what the obligation does and what the result of that obligation will be, but you are not telling me what obliges you in the first instance.

The answer lies in your point about hardship. There are more atheists in Sweden than anywhere else in the world precisely because they have one of the highest standards of living.

So increasing the standard of living would be a bad thing for Christianity? I’ll be interested to see where this goes…

 

[Peter_Plato]

You are saying that an obligation will logically and morally override desire or compulsion. So you are telling me what the obligation does and what the result of that obligation will be, but you are not telling me what obliges you in the first instance.

Indeed, that is the point. The only possible answer to what obliges you in the first place is an ultimate purpose to all creation. That is only possible if God exists. If God does not exist then nothing can oblige us.

If all reality, including any moral ends, proceeds from Supreme Goodness that endows a purposeful end to reality, then qualitative aspects such as moral principles are grounded in the reason all things, including human beings, exist. We would be obliged to live towards the ultimate purpose if we exist within a reality that has been created towards specific meaningful and moral ends by God as the Creator and Sustainer of all that is.

However, if reality is merely purposeless matter, then there are no ends and no obligation on the part of human beings to behave in any particular way.

Now, you might claim that you have no knowledge of moral ends outside of your own determination nor believe that God exists and are, therefore, exempt from having to abide by any external dictates, but it seems to me that our principle moral end is to sincerely seek what a greater purpose might be and not dismiss it prematurely, especially if our motive for not accepting a possible greater purpose to our existence is out of a desire to foster our own willful ends and live accordingly.

Why do I exist? would seem the most basic moral question. It is our determination to find the right answer to that question that perhaps decides what kind of moral end we will have and justifiably so.

 

[Peter_Plato]

So increasing the standard of living would be a bad thing for Christianity? I’ll be interested to see where this goes…

Not a bad thing, necessarily, but a morally neutral one precisely because wealth (or ease of life) is not necessarily conducive towards character building, which is a principal goal of Christian morality.

There is a difference between having one’s daily needs met and securing or protecting oneself against moral challenges that just might require addressing in order to become a better moral person.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I was referring to innocent god created egyptians

Charging that these “God-created Egyptians” were indeed innocent and that God’s judgement on them was unfair presumes what you are trying to show: that God was unjust in bringing about their destruction.

Assuming that God is omnibenevolent and omniscient, and consequently brought about a just result means the Egyptians were not innocent. Do you have access to facts that demonstrate otherwise?

 

[Portofino]

I don’t think a sense of right and wrong depends upon a belief in God, however, I do suspect that without God as the ground of morality it is difficult to justify moral principles as obligatory.

Obligatory is an interesting word. Given that Catholics believe in free will, obligatory can only have a relative meaning – namely, obligatory in the sense that it is demanded, and that any failure to fulfill those obligations will be punished.

But not obligatory in the sense that you are are not free to disobey. You are perfectly free to disobey, but will have to face the consequences of doing so.

that moral principles direct or oversee behaviour and behaviours typically come about, where humans are concerned, as a result of reason and motive, a purely atheistic view of the world provides neither good reasons nor the motivating impulse to act morally.

Provides neither good reasons, nor the motivating impulse – how does one define this? If atheists disagree with you about the motivating impulse, are they mistaken? A motivation is a subjective experience.

An atheist may not torture animals because he has no desire to torture animals. Yes, he could torture animals – or people – if he wanted to, but he doesn’t want to.

I think these metaphysical arguments get too hung up on the, “but you still could, if you wanted to!” You could virtually anything, if you wanted to – including in a universe created by God.

I think it’s just as pragmatic as that. Most of us do not struggle with the overwhelming compulsion to murder. It’s not clear that the desire to kill others is a great, innate compulsion in a human being, as a general rule. Most of us who are socialized are bred towards empathy – and a days-old infant is capable of forming bonds with other human beings, starting with its mother.

Why do humans care about each other? Why does the family exist? Why do friendships exist? Societies? Why is the human being, as Aristotle observed, a social animal? It is, apparently, in our nature as a species, necessary to our survival and flourishing. And we recognize that – in a God-fearing society and in a non-God-fearing society – there will always be those who want to murder (for example), and who do.

Even a God-fearing Christian can – for example – turn psychotic and kill someone, whom he thinks he possessed by the devil. So we lock that person up, for the safety of others.

I know that “metaphysical need” – the need to ground human values in something that transcends humanity is very intense, with those who are religious. And it irks them that secular humanists, at best, recognize that their arguments begin and end with pragmatism and human experience – falling short of metaphysics. As they see it, though – and I agree with them – metaphysics is ultimately speculative in nature, not certain knowledge.

I also submit that our sense of right and wrong is grounded pragmatically – the way we came to discover it. That is, though we ground “do not steal” or “do not kill” either as a God-given command or as something innate, the most obvious reason it is prohibited, as a rule, is that a society cannot function peacefully if these behaviors are permitted.

Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, were experiments – experiments that failed. They led only to impoverishment, violence, and the self-destruction of a culture. They were tried and found deficient – proven to be poisons to any society that values life and flourishing.

And, rightly or wrongly – with metaphysical sanction, or not – most people do value life and human flourishing.

 

[PRmerger]

Obligatory is an interesting word. Given that Catholics believe in free will, obligatory can only have a relative meaning – namely, obligatory in the sense that it is demanded, and that any failure to fulfill those obligations will be punished.

But not obligatory in the sense that you are are not free to disobey. You are perfectly free to disobey, but will have to face the consequences of doing so.

Right.

“Obligatory” is the floor of human morality, not the ceiling.
It guards against the basest aspects of human behavior so that a moral society can function.

It appears that what you are saying above is that you can’t impose the spirit of a noble character into “obligation.”

True, that.

Obligation cannot instill love of neighbor, for example.
But it can and ought to prevent us from harming your neighbor.
It mandates that if you can’t love your neighbor, at least don’t beat him to death with a baseball bat or kill his kitty cat. That’s a really moral function. It’s just not the highest moral function.—paraphrased from Mark Shea

 

[Bradski]

The only possible answer to what obliges you in the first place is an ultimate purpose to all creation.

But that would mean that the answer to the question: ‘What obligates you not to steal?’ becomes…

‘Because there is an ultimate purpose to creation’.

Now whether there is or there isn’t doesn’t affect my perception of morality in the here and now in the slightest. Whether I or anyone else will cease to exist after we die or whether there is some ultimate meaning to existence that will be revealed in due course has zero effect on my personal decision that stealing is generally morally incorrect.

If all reality, including any moral ends, proceeds from Supreme Goodness that endows a purposeful end to reality, then qualitative aspects such as moral principles are grounded in the reason all things, including human beings, exist. We would be obliged to live towards the ultimate purpose if we exist within a reality that has been created towards specific meaningful and moral ends by God as the Creator and Sustainer of all that is.

All well and good, I’m sure. And you say ‘would be obliged’ as opposed to ‘should be obliged’. But there is nothing in what you are telling me that obligates you in any way. You are suggesting that you feel that you should act morally (however you come to a decision on what is, in effect, moral) and that perhaps there is a need to act morally, but you are still not telling me what obligates you.

A lot of people, including obviously Catholics, who might well be certain that ‘reality, including any moral ends proceeds from Supreme Goodness’, know that stealing is morally wrong, but do it any way. So I’m not asking you from where you get your sense of morality or how you know it must be correct. I’m asking you, on the assumption that you do not steal (as say other Catholics do) what obliges you not to.

However, if reality is merely purposeless matter, then there are no ends and no obligation on the part of human beings to behave in any particular way.

Enough with this already. It’s becoming tiresome. Life is not meaningless in any way, shape or form. There may not be an ultimate purpose to the universe, but please can we stop this nonsense about proclaiming that ‘life is all meaningless, so what’s the point’. Do you really think that I have told my children, for example, that they may as well live a life of crime because there is no ultimate purpose to the universe? What abject nonsense.

Now, you might claim that you have no knowledge of moral ends outside of your own determination nor believe that God exists and are, therefore, exempt from having to abide by any external dictates.

I claimed I was exempt from external dictates? That I am only responsible to myself? Where do you get that idea?

 

[Bradski]

Obligation cannot instill love of neighbor, for example.
But it can and ought to prevent us from harming your neighbor.
It mandates that if you can’t love your neighbor, at least don’t beat him to death with a baseball bat or kill his kitty cat. That’s a really moral function. It’s just not the highest moral function.—paraphrased from Mark Shea

Not wanting to kill his cat is to take a moral position that killing it is wrong. How you reach this position is not relevant to the subsequent question which is: what makes it obligatory to follow through on that? Knowing that something is wrong is not the same as not doing something wrong.

What makes it obligatory?

 

[PRmerger]

Not wanting to kill his cat is to take a moral position that killing it is wrong.

Actually, the moral position is not that killing is wrong. We kill all the time. Animals. Bacteria. Kill our disordered desires.

The moral position is: murder is wrong. Unjust killing is wrong.

How you reach this position is not relevant to the subsequent question which is: what makes it obligatory to follow through on that? Knowing that something is wrong is not the same as not doing something wrong.

What makes it obligatory?

What makes it obligatory is that we all feel “bound” to obey certain moral principles.

That’s what we mean by obligatory.

 

[JamesATyler]

There is a similarity between the adult atheist and God. No one precedes God so it stands to reason that he is acting in a certain moral way by his own will, and without external pressure. For we also believe that no one is of greater power than God. The atheist is left to the similar task of developing morality without pressure “from above”.

Instead of using the terms “good and evil” which hardly makes any sense to an atheist we could interchange those terms for “love and hate”. For the human being is capable of love or hate before he able to understand what a God is, or what a society wants, or to read laws and make intellectual decisions about written laws. Indeed, a child is able to act in a loving way towards others without understanding his own needs.

So when we try to answer the question of what makes a moral action obligatory shouldn’t we try to figure out why God chooses his morality? I personally think that the obligation arises from love. I believe that love is a part of God’s nature and happily he prefers to order his morality around what increases and protects love. The atheist is no different from God. He will have a preference for love or hate. This is where his morality stems from. The obligation to act on that morality first comes from within himself. Only when the atheist falls short of society does the obligation to act on a moral code become external. It is then that he must conform himself to meet certain objectives such as avoiding prison. An atheist can also exceed the demands of the public if he is has greater love than the general populace.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Bottom line:

Morality that comes from God is obligatory.

Morality that comes from men may or may not coincide with God’s will. When it does not, it is not morally obligatory. Yet men may try to make it obligatory and impose it on others by persuasion, threats, or force.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But that would mean that the answer to the question: ‘What obligates you not to steal?’ becomes…

‘Because there is an ultimate purpose to creation’.

Now whether there is or there isn’t doesn’t affect my perception of morality in the here and now in the slightest. Whether I or anyone else will cease to exist after we die or whether there is some ultimate meaning to existence that will be revealed in due course has zero effect on my personal decision that stealing is generally morally incorrect.

The bolded portion is precisely the problem with your perception of morality. If anything, morality must be teleological in nature. Morality assumes a good end worth striving for. **What is obligatory (to answer the question you have posed several times) are behaviors which are necessary or sufficient (or both) towards achieving the final good end towards which beings are ordered. **

Even your morality must assume this. The question, however, is whether the end has been properly identified, which is where metaphysical materialism fails miserably. Metaphysical materialism proposes that subjectivity, and therefore personal existence, is merely an epiphenomenon, a shadow cast off by causal biochemical processes, and of no real significance. A morality based upon such underpinnings must be as insubstantial as the proposed insignificance of the “subject” it denies has any reality.

So, the point being made is that metaphysical materialism offers little in the way of a valued end so reasoning from the “insignificant existence” of human persons to the “moral importance” of human beings involves a logical leap that is not warranted by the assumptions of metaphysical materialism (or atheism).

Certainly, it is possible for you (or any atheist) to hold moral values, but the point is that these are not warranted by your metaphysical position. You cannot reason from an end that is only subjectively important to the holder to objective obligation on the part of others.

It is only when the teleological end or goal of existence is objectively good for all that it can be objectively mandated as an obligation on all. Metaphysical materialism cannot provide a laudable goal to warrant moral obligation on the part of moral beings because it presumes human beings are merely illusory, inconsequential and, in the end, incapable of anything except being the shadowy castoff of inevitable biochemical machinations.

All well and good, I’m sure. And you say ‘would be obliged’ as opposed to ‘should be obliged’. But there is nothing in what you are telling me that obligates you in any way. You are suggesting that you feel that you should act morally (however you come to a decision on what is, in effect, moral) and that perhaps there is a need to act morally, but you are still not telling me what obligates you.

A lot of people, including obviously Catholics, who might well be certain that ‘reality, including any moral ends proceeds from Supreme Goodness’, know that stealing is morally wrong, but do it any way. So I’m not asking you from where you get your sense of morality or how you know it must be correct. I’m asking you, on the assumption that you do not steal (as say other Catholics do) what obliges you not to.

What obliges anyone to act morally is the existence of a morally licit and worthy end or goal. The greater and more worthy the end goal, the more important it is to act accordingly. Actions which are important and obligatory are so because they are necessarily conducive to bringing about the end goal. Actions that have no impact are optional. Denying the end goal may, of itself, be an “act” that undermines the end goal and could, in fact, be immoral.

Let’s presume the ethical end is merely something like the physical well-being of human beings. Morally, we would be obligated to do what is conducive of the welfare of those around us and ourselves. An individual who willfully denies that human welfare is a valued end is acting immorally regarding this moral scheme because they are denying the value of the end itself and therefore have negated the grounds on which a particular, and probably correct, moral perspective is founded.

Continued…

 

[Peter_Plato]

… From previous

Enough with this already. It’s becoming tiresome. Life is not meaningless in any way, shape or form. There may not be an ultimate purpose to the universe, but please can we stop this nonsense about proclaiming that ‘life is all meaningless, so what’s the point’. Do you really think that I have told my children, for example, that they may as well live a life of crime because there is no ultimate purpose to the universe? What abject nonsense.

I claimed I was exempt from external dictates? That I am only responsible to myself? Where do you get that idea?

The argument is not that if there is no ultimate purpose to the universe therefore you will teach your children to act criminally. That is a non-sequitur. The argument is that if there is no purpose to the universe then, morally speaking, there is no qualitative difference between teaching your children to act criminally and teaching them to act morally because, in the end, it makes absolutely no difference. You may as well teach them to act criminally because on a metaphysical materialists’ premises they have no logical reason to act morally - it simply doesn’t matter.

Perhaps the reason we keep pounding this point across is because it isn’t being heard. Given metaphysical materialism there is no logical bridge to “therefore you must act morally.” Certainly there is nothing to stop you from doing so, but there is no logical reason in materialism to obligate you or anyone else to do so. It might provide you with a heightened sense of self-righteousness to parade in front of your friends, but your worldview does not, logically speaking, lead to your moral position.

In this sense, a theistic worldview is much more robust as a moral ground because the goal or end good is that human beings have infinite worth in the large scheme of things because that worth has been endowed as an aspect of all reality by the Creator of all that is. Such moral worth is much more substantive than one that is conjured simply from a subjective sense of self that an atheist must confess is only as durable as the tenacity with which he holds to it. Once all hope is lost, so too is the moral value of all that relies on it.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

One can say, if one likes, that there is no such thing as absolute morality. But that statement is like the statement that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Is it absolutely true that there is no such thing as absolute truth, or is it absolutely true that there is no such thing as absolute morality? The answer is abundantly clear to anyone with an ounce of common sense.If there is no such thing as absolute morality, how can we talk so forcefully for or against something that couldn’t even exist?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Obligatory is an interesting word. Given that Catholics believe in free will, obligatory can only have a relative meaning – namely, obligatory in the sense that it is demanded, and that any failure to fulfill those obligations will be punished.

But not obligatory in the sense that you are are not free to disobey. You are perfectly free to disobey, but will have to face the consequences of doing so.

In a sense, this is the “shadowy” meaning of obligatory. If things are obligatory merely because they are demanded of us or are punishable, that fails to answer what obligatory means. The answer begs the question because, essentially, obligatory means what is obligatory (demanded).

In my two previous posts I tried to show that what is obligatory is tied essentially to the teleological moral goal. What is obligatory are those acts that are necessary or sufficient (or both) towards bringing about the end good.

If the end good is contingent upon the will of a contingent being, for example a human will, then there is only a contingent relationship between the good (for me as identified by me) and the means to attain it. If I want to be healthy, I should …

However, if the final good is an objective aspect of reality, then the means to attain the good are obligatory because, in a sense, reality mandates the connection to the good. It is not a matter of “if you personally desire the good,” but more like “this is the good that you are to desire because of the nature of what you are.” The connection to the good is not an optional one, but an actual and logical one. Denying the connection does not make it less real or arbitrary.