Thursday, April 7, 2011

Review of Craig vs. Harris Debate

The William Lane Craig-Sam Harris debate promised to be a better affair than last week’s Craig-Krauss debate, and it did not disappoint. It is my contention Harris, overall, did little better than Krauss.

The debate format was as follows: each speaker, beginning with Craig, had a 20-minute opening speech, followed by 12-minute rebuttals, eight-minute rebuttals, and five-minute closing arguments. The topic was: “Is God the Foundation of Good?” or “Is supernaturalism or naturalism the foundation of Good?”

As expected, Craig trotted out the moral argument behind the usual premises, with slightly different emphases. Craig made two contentions: 1. If God exists we have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties, and 2. If God does not exist we do not have a sound foundation for these. Craig pointed out Harris was actually in complete agreement as to the existence of objective moral values. He also pointed out that God’s existence or non-existence is irrelevant to the debate. That is, positing God’s nonexistence is wholly compatible with belief in both of Dr. Craig’s contentions.

In support of (1), Craig brings in “perfect being theology.” If God is the perfect being, then it follows he is also morally perfect, so that his nature is the locus or grounds of that which is good. This accounts for moral values. To account for duties, Craig mentions these are derived from values rooted in God’s nature in the form of commands, or Divine Command Theory.

In defense of (2), Craig questioned the worth of humans, both collectively and individually. He mentioned the usual line about atheism’s being true means morality is really just a behavioral byproduct of evolution and not at all obligatory. Craig aptly pointed out that saying one ought to do something in order to achieve human well-being doesn’t answer, in a non-question-begging way, how this well-being grounds morality. It’s like saying “If you want to be good at growing corn, do such-and-such.” He also mentioned the “is-ought” fallacy, along with the ought-implies-can problem of naturalistic objective ethics. The best line of the night, in my opinion, was when Craig mentioned those who act immorally are doing nothing more than acting unfashionably; “The moral equivalent of Lady Gaga!”

Harris’ opening speech brought with it a concession of objective moral values’ being a societal construct. Harris mentioned these values are known through a common-sense epistemology. While Craig would likely agree (and did) that moral values are known in a variety of ways, I really wish they would have entered into the problems of such well-being utilitarianism (which Harris even mentions in the Q & A portion). For instance, if saving the life of Jim by jumping on a bomb is something you might do, yet you hold to this theory of maximizing well-being, what should you do? Suppose the world might be robbed of some great good (like an unborn descendant of yours who cures cancer) upon your death, but Jim’s death is relatively irrelevant. Or suppose the reverse. Which one is right? The problem is that if ultimate maximal well-being of human society is the objective standard, then not only is one action over another preferable, but obligatory. If you want to act in accordance with your moral “ought,” then you ought to do whichever of these is better. But you have no idea! Any extra moral standard is an arbitrary fiat: if you don’t know, save his life. But in that case you may save the life of a monster and so bring about lower well-being than before. That you didn’t know doesn’t absolve you of committing a moral evil. We may say you should not be punished (if you survive), but nevertheless you have done wrong.[1]

Harris came off as accommodating, even friendly, in this first speech. He conducted a thought experiment whereby he says to imagine the worst possible world of suffering and pain, and asked if we have an obligation to relieve some of it. If yes, he contends, then human well-being is at the heart of the matter. It is here Harris gives his only real argument for his position, namely:

1. Moral values and obligations are mind-dependent in their grounding.
2. Minds are nature-dependent.
3. Therefore, moral values are nature-dependent.

Neither Craig nor Harris ever address this argument directly again. Craig does go on to point out free will and how no moral obligation can be placed on one who does not have this will, thus indirectly addressing the second premise. Harris provided no account for why we should believe minds are naturally-dependent, and while I believe a mind is necessary for moral truths and facts, it doesn’t at all follow that because minds exist, moral values exist. The problems raised with respect to what Craig said seem to surmount this. But there is a further problem. The way Harris framed this was in terms of necessity. If humans did not exist and the moral platonic realm is rejected by Harris, then there is both a possible world and an actual time in the actual world where moral values do not exist, even though they are posited as necessary!

In Craig’s rebuttal, he pointed out Harris had confused moral epistemology with moral semantics; Craig was not claiming if religion is false, “good” has no meaning. He illustrated this point with the concept of “light.” People knew how to speak about light and what it does (semantics) long before they understood what it really was (ontology). In the same way, people can know the good even if they do not know the ontological foundation of that good. Craig again pointed out the issue of God’s existence is a red herring with respect to Craig’s two contentions.

In response to Harris’ argument about “worst possible suffering,” he asked what makes human well-being good? This is precisely the question under debate, and Harris takes it as axiomatic. However, Craig pointed out Harris’ usage of “bad” throughout the opening speech is really non-moral. For example, when one says “you’ve made a bad move in chess,” no one takes it to also mean you’ve done something evil. He went on to give several examples of non-moral good: “the sun feels good, I’m good at basketball, that’s a good way to kill yourself, etc.”

Craig’s most powerful critique of Harris’ view that the property of being good is identical to the property of well-being is this: if rapists get well-being from inflicting pain, then there is a possible world in which the continuum of well-being is not an objectively moral landscape, and the peaks or high points of well-being could be occupied by people we call evil. But in the actual world then these are not identical; identity is a necessary relation. Since the law of identity says no entity or property is the opposite of itself in any possible world, if there is a possible world in which the rapist (who does what is evil even on Harris’ view) receives well-being, then there is a world in which well-being is not identical to good. In this case, then it is actually true (on pain of a violation of the law of identity) that the good is not identical to well-being in this actual world either.

Harris’ rebuttal was a strange, 12-minute diatribe where he offered literally zero arguments for his position. I do not mean he offered zero arguments which I found compelling or good. Just zero arguments altogether. He spent the time presenting the problem of evil and criticizing Christian particularism, both of which were irrelevant to the debate. Harris started to look angry during this portion of the debate. He also seemed to have given up the actual debate topic from here on out.

Craig pointed out that not only were no arguments offered for the naturalistic hypothesis, but that no criticisms of any of his arguments were offered as well! Craig did refer the audience to look into the critiques of Harris through Paul Copan’s book, Is God a Moral Monster?. Craig contended the point of Christianity was not eternal well-being, as Harris alleged earlier. Rather, the point is to worship God on account of who he is! Harris had mentioned in his diatribe that Christians are lunatics, and Craig dismissed this as “stupid and insulting.” I don’t know that I would have said it was “stupid,” but Craig did not come off very mean-spirited (but rather annoyed).

In Harris’ second rebuttal, he accused Craig of misrepresenting him, but did not offer any explanation. Harris defaulted to claiming that if you grant him certain axioms, then his account of morality is true, in much the same way as logic or math. The problem is that people generally don’t view morality to be transcendently true based on “nothing;” further note what this is asking the audience to do: just take his word for it. Take it on faith. He relies on objective morality’s being true, but then his argument just begs the question!

In Craig’s closing, he pointed out that none of his arguments had been addressed throughout the entire debate (which is truly astounding). He also mentioned that taking objective morality on faith doesn’t get us atheistic objective grounding of morality, it just gets us morality itself! We literally have no reason to believe naturalism can account for morality’s being objective.

In Harris’ closing, he again attacks Christian particularism. He states that Craig’s arguments could be given to any God. At this point, however, he’s virtually conceded the topic (and by extension, that a morally good God exists); he’s just demanding to know which one. Both Krauss and now Harris seemingly admit to deistic views in implication; it’s just the Christian God they don’t like (along with others, no doubt).

The Q&A was not particularly interesting except for one gentleman who claimed God had appeared to him and told him homosexuality was OK. It was obviously a non-serious (and irrelevant) issue to see what Dr. Craig would say, and he wouldn’t have any of it, thankfully.

In summary, while there were times Harris scored rhetorical points (i.e., one-liners against God), these weren’t arguments. The arguments he did make were unfortunately completely irrelevant to the topic. Craig’s arguments were clearly better, and I suspect many clear-headed atheists would agree that on some kind of theism, morality may be grounded, and without theism, there’s no reason to think morality really is objective.


                [1] There’s also the issue of the well-known “utility monster,” or even a race of such monsters. The idea is that there is a race in the galaxy of super-beings whose well-being is inextricably linked to destroying other races and causing them pain and suffering. Now suppose there are more of these beings than all other beings in the galaxy combined. On an account of ultimate well-being, not only is human suffering and misery at these monster’s hands permissible, but it is also obligatory. It is no escape to claim humans have a special place in objective morality in this case; that’s purely arbitrary (and supports subjectivism more than anything else).

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99 comments:

  1. My snarky summary is a little funnier than yours, even though you said "utility monster", which is pretty funny.

    See:
    Snarky summary of the Craig-Harris debate

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  2. And can you believe that one guy in the Q&A session who seriously tried to derail Dr. Craig by saying he had a vision from God which he claimed that God seemed to permit homosexuality as good and wholesome lifestyle? That seems to be hitting below the waistline, and in that regard, Harris was WAY above doing that (and as I watched, Harris even had the expression of, "What the heck is this kid doing?").

    Suffice to say, Craig totally judo-flipped him, and someone needs to make a Youtube video of just that one exchange alone!

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  3. I keep hearing people say that Harris didn't address any of Craig's arguments. However, I thought he did. Harris was pointing out that Craig claims morality is founded on God. But God allows things to happen that we would view as extremely evil, given someone had the power to stop it. So grounding our morality in a being whose moral principles go against ours doesn't seem to work.

    At least that's what I took from it.

    Also, what if that kid who God talked to was telling the truth?

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  4. Craig wasn't claiming that morality was found on God. He said that if God exists we have a sound foundation for claiming objective morals. If atheism is true, then we don't have a sound foundation for claiming that there are objective morals. Harris erroneously thought if he could disprove that God existed he could win, but Craig clearly stated that the actual existence of God was immaterial to his case. Harris didn't have to worry about Craig's first premise, he had to worry about the second one. Harris believes in objective morals, but if he denies Craig's first premise then he has to show that atheism can provide a strong foundation for the existence of objective morals. He didn't do this at all. He tried to twist the definition of good and bad, but this was irrelevant because the debate was not what are objective morals, but what is the source of objective morals. Whereas Craig provided a positive case in the form of his two pronged case listed above, Harris went on a diatribe about the problem of evil, which is completely irrelevant to topic they were supposed to be debating. I was there and got the feeling that Harris knew that he had lost on the subject so instead tried to win over the crowd by a combination of humor, gross misinterpretations of Christian theology, and circumlocution.

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  5. Harris pwned WLC. No doubt about it. Craig in his usual manner attempted to establish the points about which he wanted to set the agenda. Harris saw through this ruse and presented a cogent and blistering expose on the nonsense of christianity. Craig then attempts to discount Harris's argument by claiming his points were not taken up by Harris. From the second rebuttal on, Craig was rattled, distinguishable by the repetition and whining Harris was not playing by his [Craig's] rules.
    Harris was quiet, reasoned and purposeful in his demeanor and was not going to be distracted by Craig's silliness on ontological as opposed to epistemic as opposed to philosophical, as opposed to theological definitions of 'morality' and good' apparently bandied about by Harris [or so Craig whines]. Harris saw through this obfuscatory blathering and was not going to be drawn into Craig's theistic miasmic mire.
    All in all, a very good debate exposing the 'shifting sands' of christian morality.

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  6. So, in short, for you, the debate was about EXPOSING THE CULTISH STUPIDITY OF CHRISTIANITY, and not really on arguing the issues, eh?

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  7. Hi Zachary Kroger
    Your points and questions are pertinent to the veracity of the outcome of the debate. WLC had little to offer other than, "IF god exists then we have morality. If god does not exist then we have no morality."

    What sheer bunkum. Five billion+ people do not believe in a christian god and indeed eschew the notion of a christian god, yet morality generally seems to operate fine. I would generally feel safe in a village of Buddhists in Thailand or Hindus in India. Indeed I would probably feel a lot safer there than in the southern bible belt of the US.

    Craig's morality, locked in the mind state of 1st C CE primitives, simply had no explanatory power for addressing Harris's critique on theistic superstition that forms the basis for christian morality.

    Craig was rattled and showed his ire and discomfort during the Q&A session.

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  8. Papalinton,

    I really think you've failed to grasp Craig's argument from morality. It's perfectly consistent with Craig's contention that people who don't -believe- in God are still able to act morally. Craig only contends that if God does not -in fact- exist, their actions do not -in fact- have moral value. Whether God exists is, after all, independent of whether anyone believes in Him, and if the existence of moral values is dependent on God's existence, then the existence of moral values is independent of what anyone believes about God or morality.

    The debate was, furthermore, never about Christianity- Craig posited a general conception of God that was compatible with any monotheism.

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  9. Hi Matt
    Don't go apoplectic and silly Mat. Your words, not mine.
    You know and I know that christianity was created by Paul, just as Mormonism was started by Joseph Smith, and Scientology was started by L Ron Hubbard. They all began with a village story. A couple of like-minded cults members are lured into the story. Pretty soon a 'critical mass' is reached and the group begins to generate its own impetus and momentum. It becomes large enough to fend itself against the disgruntled and the 'misinformed'.
    The evidence stares us in the face. The very same happened with Islam. Someone in Mecca gets an idea, surrounds himself with sycophants, and from 630Ce onwards christianity had its ass kicked so hard they have never recovered throughout Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Israel, Gaza. This was all christian territory from the 1st to the 7th Century CE. So much then for the supposedly one one true religion.

    Religion is a cultural construct. Nothing more nothing less.

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  10. Even if what you said were true, not a word of it would invalidate any of the arguments that Craig presented in this particular debate.

    Still, your knowledge of contemporary scholarship on these issues seems to leave much to be desired.

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  11. Paplinton,

    That's some irrelevant tangent you went on there. If the issue is "Is Pizza healthy?" but instead I go into the history of how Papa John used monkeys to dominate the world and made everyone eat his precious pizza… then I would not be addressing the issue, now would I?

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  12. I don't understand the criticism by some that Harris dodged this point by Craig: if Atheism is true we don't have a sound foundation for morality.

    Harris' use, by way of analogy, of health and medicine dealt with this argument handily. Do we say that we have no sound foundation for medicine, simply because we can't precisely define terms like "healthy" or "alive"?

    I thought the end of the debate and Q&A got to the heart of it. In every system we take certain things as axiomatic. Each debater offered their own axiom: for Harris it was the well being of conscious creatures. For Craig it was belief in the supernatural.

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  13. I thought that by the end of the debate, Harris made Craig look like a buffoon. Craig's argument's didn't stand up to the common-sense approach that Harris took. The questioning period I think was where the real debate was.

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  14. Nick,

    That's not the same thing at all. Harris was actually offering a surprisingly profound argument for belief in moral objectivism, arguing that it's perfectly rational to take moral intuitions as reliable because arguments against the veridicality of moral intuitions applied consistently would undermine other faculties like reason as well, and so be self-refuting.

    However, this doesn't solve the problem. Even if you demonstrate that it's rational to trust your moral sense, you still don't demonstrate any sort of logical entailment of moral values. The perception that there is a moral fact is not generated by the logical faculty, but by the moral one.

    On atheist materialism, since no material fact entails a moral truth, and material facts and the properties they logically entail are the only kind that exist, on atheist materialism there can be no moral truths.

    Harris' intuitions would thus be in direct conflict with his atheistic materialism.

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  15. It's funny to see how the trolls come out in full force once one of their atheist champions is exposed.

    One commenter said 5+ billion don't believe in the Christian God, which isfor one wrong (you can't even get stats right) and two irrelevant to the point since those same 5+ billion would ascribe to the existence of God (in some form) and thus would accept Craig's overall premise.

    Absent from this kind of atheist blather is the minuscule representation of atheism -- the percentages of atheist adherents is vanishly small by comparison to religious believers.

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  16. Funny to see Harris of all people getting stomped on by Craig. What I particularly love about this is that it shows, for all the yammering on about reason and rationality gnus love to get into, at the end of the day theirs is primarily an argument based on emotions and temper tantrums. That's pretty much all Harris was able to call on by the end of the debate, and apparently some atheists don't know the difference between "saying something I personally like" and "having the better argument".

    Harris went down hard. But really, was there ever any doubt considering his track record on anything intellectual? His schtick from day one has been to appeal to people's emotions and bluff when it comes to actual rationality and argument.

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  17. Hi everyone, thanks so much for commenting and keeping it civil! I want to address a couple of points: First, there is the issue of moral epistemology vs. ontology. I was greatly disturbed that Papa seemed to brush these distinctions aside, as if they didn't make a difference. Knowing morality doesn't entail a foundation at all. Second, note that Harris only offered plenty of evidence for perceiving objective moral values, and in that sense I think he is right. I have developed an argument for intuitive knowledge that I think is right on the money. However, when it came to showing that these values which we perceive are or can be founded in naturalism, Harris only defaulted to saying, "well it's question-begging and logic does it too!" So, we should just grant him the premise. But in that case, why have the debate? He should have just mailed the response in and not shown up! It just doesn't follow in a non-question-begging way if I perceive objective moral values that they can be grounded in naturalism. What also helps is that while logic is universally perceived (and so is morality, to a lesser extent), people do not perceive intuitively that objective moral values are grounded in naturalism. If anything, it's telling that nearly all people who embrace naturalism realize morals are NOT objective!

    Finally, the reason the problem of evil was irrelevant is because of the rules of relevancy. If someone could accept a premise or argument's conclusion as true whether or not the objection is true or false, then the objection is irrelevant. Suppose all of Harris' worst claims were true. Which claim of Craig's does that invalidate? Neither one. If anything, at best this seemed to be a concession of the argument's force, and by extension then, a belief in some sort of God! Harris just wants to know which one. :)

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  18. Randy, I'm not sure about the following example you gave:

    "For instance, if saving the life of Jim by jumping on a bomb is something you might do, yet you hold to this theory of maximizing well-being, what should you do? Suppose the world might be robbed of some great good (like an unborn descendant of yours who cures cancer) upon your death, but Jim’s death is relatively irrelevant. Or suppose the reverse. Which one is right?"

    I don't disagree that it poses a problem, but I feel like it also proposes a problem for Divine Command theory. What if God wants Jim to die? How do you decide whether to save him or not? Or I've also heard the question formulated with coming upon a person drowning in the wilderness.

    In Dr. Craig's response to the problem of suffering, one of the things he says is that we don't know God's long term moral reasoning for permitting suffering, so we have no basis to say it is wrong to allow a seemingly uneccessary death. That would seem to cut both ways.

    Now, I imagine you've looked into Divine Command much more than I have (since I think you hold this view yourself), so perhaps you can tell me if something is off about this. We seem to have an epistemology problem in both cases.

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  19. All that is necessary for a PoE defense to succeed is that we affirm that we don't know what justifications God might have for not intervening.

    That doesn't mean, however, that we don't have warrant for our beliefs that we are ourselves unjustified in not intervening, since we can't know whether God's justifications apply to us equally, and we have moral intuitions indicating that it's wrong to fail to intervene.

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  20. Matt, but if it is God's will for some person to die, then it would be wrong to intervene. And, if we are granting that we don't have good epistemic access to God's will about such matters, then how do we know we are justified? If we are departing from God's will, then certainly it would be wrong to act. This is not saying that our justifications are the same as God's, rather, it is saying it would be wrong to contradict God's justified act.

    The well-being defender would also have some moral intuition. So, if our spur of the moment intuition makes it right to save Jim even if we don't know for certain whether God has willed it, then it would seem our intuition could also be justification for saving Jim even if we don't know for certain his offspring won't cure cancer.

    Your thoughts?

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  21. Good points and question. :)I do in fact hold to DCT. DCT, as well as most moral theories, distinguish between values and obligations; good/evil vs. right/wrong; theories tend to include both. For DCT, "murder" is a moral value (specifically that of evil). However, what constitutes murder is dependent in at least some respects on God's command (since God has no obligation to extend the life of someone). On DCT, God never commands murder by definition. However, an instance of rape would never be commanded by God since rape is forcible sex against a person's consent; therefore any command by God to forcibly copulate is therefore by definition rape, regardless. End digression. :)

    I agree with Matt's comment. With respect to DCT, things are only permitted if they are also not prohibited; such commands of permission, obligation, and prohibition are not only derived from the Bible, but intuition as well. The man who claims he is justified in allowing the drowning man to die can only do so on the basis of a direct command from God. In this case, however, I think both intuition and revelation trump this. That is, we might have a reason to say he is nuts. In any case, it's actually relatively few times in human history, on DCT, where God has intervened to give commands in a direct way (at least relative to moral intuition).

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  22. Mike, good thoughts for a defense from moral intuition. The problems here are different though. For one, since DCT has a moral agent in play who has given us moral intuitions, we may know what we are permitted to do. However, our intutions about what is moral do not extend to intuitions about what will happen in the future to bring about human flourishing.

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  23. Mike, perhaps the defender of well-being objective morality could just say, "in the absence of evidence to think an act will be detrimental to human well-being, an act is morally justified and hence good, and right."

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  24. Right, I think you could admit some ignorance about the future. Take Hume's skepticisim, for example. So, even though he admitted we have no independent justification to think the future will occur like the past, he still acted like it would. It seems the only practical way to behave. On probability alone, most people's lives don't affect widespread well-being or suffering. So we could probably assume that saving Jim would not have such an impact on the future, even though we wouldn't know for certain.

    That has its own problems, though. I think most people would intuitively feel it is "good" to save a person's life regardless of the people involved. If I am some great person who everyone knows is having a good effect on the world and I walk by a homeless person being savagely beaten, I think most people would think it would be wrong of me to simply walk by and good of me to intervene even at risk to myself.

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  25. But, of course I would find it intuitively odd since I'm not a utilitarian.

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  26. Mike,

    "Matt, but if it is God's will for some person to die, then it would be wrong to intervene."

    If it were God's will for some person to die, he would, and nothing one could do would stop it, heheh. We musn't confuse "God refuses to personally intervene" with "God wants this person to die."

    "And, if we are granting that we don't have good epistemic access to God's will about such matters, then how do we know we are justified? If we are departing from God's will, then certainly it would be wrong to act. This is not saying that our justifications are the same as God's, rather, it is saying it would be wrong to contradict God's justified act."

    I think we don't have good epistemic access to God's reasons for declining to intervene. We do, however, have access to moral values and duties as they apply to us, at least, through our moral intuitions. It certainly could be true that it is wrong to contravene God's justified act, but that is just to say that it's possible the same reasons by which God constrains himself also apply to us. However, where our moral intuition dictates that we would be unjustified in failing to intervene, to say that it could be true that you're contravening God's will in doing so is simply to say that our moral intuitions are possibly mistaken. But that's always true anyway. We're still justified in trusting the intuition despite the possibility that it's false.

    The well-being defender would also have some moral intuition. So, if our spur of the moment intuition makes it right to save Jim even if we don't know for certain whether God has willed it, then it would seem our intuition could also be justification for saving Jim even if we don't know for certain his offspring won't cure cancer.

    I don't think we're really obligated to think about practically inacessible probabilities and possibilities in such situations.

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  27. I have to say though, that such an arbitrary standard as "if we don't know the future, then we are morally permitted" won't work in the same way as "if we don't know God's commands, then we are morally permitted." For in the case of the former, it is not what some agent commands, but what is actually the best for well-being which is good, and hence what is right to do. The practical principle we have applied may work for moral blameworthiness at best (but probably only punishment), but it won't work for what is ontologically good and right.

    I appreciate that you are not a utilitarian. :)

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  28. I still fail to see how divine command theory is anything but advocating obedience to orders. To define the word 'god' as 'good', and then piggy-backing the christian conception of the word 'god', seems more than a little disingenuous. Couldn't you simply define the words 'George W. Bush' as 'good', and then go on to claim that the 43rd president of the united states is the foundation for morality? I think this is what Sam was pointing out through the entire debate, this disconnect from what morality actually means and what DC theory gets you.

    Craig commits the same fallacy of equivocation with the KCA, perhaps this is his signature fallacy :)

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  29. Hi Lee, thanks for commenting! First, as a metaphysically-ultimate explanation for grounding, there's no reason to expect that one could attach it to any contingent being; in fact this is incoherent. In fact, it was Harris who was guilty of arbitrarily picking well-being to be identified with the good! Second, Craig never says anything about God other than as a metaphysically-ultimate explanation and morally-perfect being in accordance with perfect being theology. Prima facie, Christianity may or may not apply to that (if you'll notice, Harris' entire second speech was devoted to saying it wasn't), but it doesn't follow either of Craig's contentions were false even if Christianity were to be untrue. Finally, the fallacy of equivocation is using the same term with two different meanings; which term in Craig's two premises contain different meanings?

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  30. Just to briefly follow-up:
    1. The choice was anything but arbitrary on Harris' part, as he pointed out when he said that IF hell exists, it is obviously something conscious creatures would want to avoid, and would then factor into his moral landscape. Craig is appealing to well-being as well, he just asserts that obedience is how we attain well-being.

    2. Then why call it 'god'? Why not say 'potato'? or 'the flying spaghetti monster'? I think this answers your final point as well.

    The question of whether this is the christian god, or a potato, becomes immediately relevant once defined in that manner. This is why Sam spent so much time on the obviously immoral aspects of this foundation, why he harped on the POE, and why it matters both which god is being used and what this god is divinely commanding. What craig was trying to do was essentially define a blank piece of paper as good, and anything written on it would be moral. In this instance, it MATTERS what is on that piece of paper, and why that piece of paper is chosen over any other.

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  31. The debate topic was silly because "Is God the foundation for good?" presupposes the existence of both God and goodness. I'm surprised that Craig would state that God's existence was not relevant to the debate topic. After all, God cannot be the foundation for good if God does not exist. Therefore, I disagree with those who say that Harris' middle speech was off topic. It was certainly not a response to Craig's arguments, but Craig wasn't really on topic himself.

    The topic Craig was debating was that goodness can only come from God, which probably should have been the title of the debate. I must be misundertanding Craig's arguments about objective moral values, because they seem nothing more than an appeal to authority. Why can't I disagree with God's definition of goodness? If the God of the Christian Bible does indeed exist, then God and I part ways on a number of topics. Am I immoral for such disagreements? Can't I charge God will immoratily based on my own definitions? It seems to me that there is just as much moral relativism in Craig's arguments as in any other argument about morality. If something is inherently good or inherently evil, isn't it good or evil independent of God as well? If not, then the response to Craig's "Who Says?" line is: "God Says!" Craig is too smart to not recognize these issues, and I'm sure he addressed them, so could someone please dumb them down for me.

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  32. Hi Lee, I'm afraid we have some ambiguity here with respect to the word "arbitrary." It just doesn't matter whether or not Hell exists as to what would ground moral values. That you want to avoid Hell for one's own well-being would be at best a corollary of one's own well-being, so that presupposes the standard anyway--which gets us back to the question: why choose the standard in the first place? Second, physical objects cannot be metaphysically-ultimate grounds for objective morality as they aren't metaphysically necessary; as an entailment of this, potatoes and whatnot is really just a gratuitious addition to the concept. It seems you would say "God" is used equivocally? So you think that "God" as used in Craig's first contention means a perfect being and in the other means a potato? Finally, you can believe every one of your points above and still embrace both of Craig's contentions, which means these considerations are irrelevant to the debate!

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  33. Hi Bryan, thanks for commenting! Craig's contentions were, "1. If God exists we have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties, and 2. If God does not exist we do not have a sound foundation for these." You can accept both of these and still maintain God does not exist. Most atheists could heartily agree with both premises and simply retort that objective moral values do not exist, so that it doesn't matter. But since God's existence can be maintained or denied in the face of acceptance of both of these claims means it is irrelevant to the debate!

    It's also important to note that Harris wasn't disagreeing that there are objective moral values; that's why he doesn't want to embrace either (1) or (2) of Craig's argument; because then this entails the God of perfect being theology exists! Now considerations of the Christian God are important in life but irrelevant to the debate topic.

    As to your questions, you certainly are free to disagree with God, but I suspect what you mean is "can I disagree and still be moral?" and the answer is "no," if God exists and is the foundation/grounds of morality. The last issue is solved when we realize that while objective moral duties come from God's commands (that is, what we should actually do), their bases (or the objective moral values of good and evil) are rooted in God's nature. So while the values are independent of God's commands, they are not independent of God; that is what it means to be the metaphysical grounds of something.

    I typed this quickly, so if anything I said can be taken to be insulting, please give me the benefit of the doubt! :) I would love to discuss Christianity in more detail. It seems you may be willing to accept the Christian God, if certain moral issues were to be solved.

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  34. I think you missed my point. I didn't mean potato, the vegetable, I meant potato as a grouping of letters that could be defined as good just as easily as the grouping of letters 'god'. What the word potato actually means (the vegetable) in common usage presents a problem, which you graciously pointed out; in fact the very same problem with using the word 'god' in the way Craig does. You went to a decent amount of trouble explaining why a potato can't be the grounding of morality, which is of course not what I said, or meant.

    I said the word 'god' used in both contentions is a servant to his definition, namely good by nature. By choosing this particular constellation of letters(instead of p-o-t-a-t-o), it is then implied that this is a supernatural entity that can be comprehended via the christian religion. The two concepts are inseparable, despite both yours and his claiming that they are not contingent, and the POE then becomes eminently relevant. Once you have grounded morality in this ephemeral concept, regardless of the name, the commands, or mandates, must then be collected and branded. You see, to get from this fantasy of metaphysics to the reality of moral choices, there must be a link between the concept and the imperatives.

    For Sam's argument, the two are one and the same. He is grounding morality in the concept of well-being, and well-being is the imperative. The question of WHY to consider well-being an adequate grounding for morality is a misguided question, much like asking why should you prefer being well over being sick.

    What if obeying the commands of this 'god' lead to the worst possible suffering for everyone? At what point on the landscape would we choose to dissent, regardless of our status as moral? Why would one choose morality over immorality if it resulted in this?

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  35. You're right that "God" is the word delineating the concept of morally perfect being theology, and you're right that Craig is a Christian (as am I). But there's no reason to suppose if you show Christianity to be false, that perfect being theology is false; indeed, all that follows is that the Christian God is not the morally-perfect being; it doesn't follow that there is no morally perfect being! Again, people can be atheists or non-Christians and still agree with both of Craig's contentions; they would just disagree with objective morality altogether (atheists) or object that the Christian God is the correct one (atheists/agnostics/other religions). Even if you were to assert that only Christianity can possibly align with perfect being theology, nonetheless you may still accept both of Craig's contentions and still be an atheist, so long as you don't accept that such a being exists! If the argument or premise can be held whether or not the objection is true, then the objection is irrelevant!

    Your criticism is impossible on a perfect being theology, but exactly the criticism that can be applied to Harris. Since the law of identity states that no entity can be opposite or distinct from or of itself, i.e., no entity can be both A and not-A, and since on Harris' view there is a logically possible world where rapists, murderers, and otherwise bad guys (who Harris would say are bad) reap the highest point on the moral landscape for well-being, then it follows the law of identity is broken; that is to say, "well-being" cannot, on pain of logcial contradiction, be identical with "good."

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  36. Isn't PBT, absent divine commands, irrelevant? The debate question was whether good comes from god, not whether it is logically possible for there to be a perfectly moral being(PMB). One does not imply the other, and much the same way christianity's truth is irrelevant to the existence of any PMB, the source of good stands in the same relation. Christianity, or some other theological framework, is required to tether the PMB to The Good in reality.

    If all Craig has to do to win this argument is posit a logically possible, perfectly moral being, the debate topic should have reflected this.

    On your second paragraph, the question is not whether one person can attain the highest peak, but whether all conscious creatures can attain the highest peaks at once. Craig, and you, missed the crux of Sam's argument on this point. Harris didn't skirt this objection because it was so powerful, he ignored it because it was trivial. The autonomy of the individual is a concept unique to monotheisms, and unsupported by our modern understanding of group behavior and societal interdependence. The idea that a single 'bad guy' could occupy a peak does not imply that this scenario would be the height of well-being for all conscious creatures, and thus does not represent the logical contradiction of A and not-A as claimed.

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  37. "The debate question was whether good comes from god, not whether it is logically possible for there to be a perfectly moral being(PMB). One does not imply the other, and much the same way christianity's truth is irrelevant to the existence of any PMB, the source of good stands in the same relation."

    This was my point exactly! I only took great pains to show this, what it means, et al.

    Your next point is simply pushing it back one step: we can imagine a logically possible world in which every being gets its best well-being from raping and being raped on naturalism. In this case, you and Harris would have to either a) abandon well-being as being identical to good, or b) bite the bullet and say in that case it would be good. In the case of A the law of identity applies and in the case of B our moral intuitions state this isn't good, even if there are no apparent consequences.

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  38. Thank you Randy for your honest and thoughtful response. (However, let's not get too ahead of ourselves about my accepting Christian theism. I find both the concept of hell and the crucifixion morally reprehensible. Those will indeed be difficult moral issues to solve. A discussion topic for another day!)

    One of the things that confused me about Craig's objective moral values argument is that he routinely employs this argument as a proof of God's existence, but in the Harris debate stated that God's existence was irrelevant. I guess the argument Craig uses in other debates is slightly different. 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. 2. Objective moral values do exist. Therefore, God exists. I always found this argument lame, because of the difficulty in proving the second premise.

    I don't understand the "rooted in God's nature" claim. That seems like an ad hoc claim to avoid the morality argument from being simply Machiavellian. However, if goodness comes from God's nature, and God is the creator of all things, and some of those things are evil, then can't it be argued that evil is also rooted in God's nature because he can create evil things?

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  39. These are great questions Bryan, and I agree a good discussion of the crucifixion would be in order, perhaps on another blog post? :)

    You have correctly stated the moral argument for God's existence as given by Craig in debates about God's existence. In these cases, there are three questions; one of them ultimate, two of them logical. The ultimate question (Does God exist?) is answered by the two logical questions since they are in deductive form. In order to establish God's existence, then, one must defend each individual premise as true.

    Under consideration, though, was something slightly different than the first premise of the moral argument (though its content was analytically similar). As such, one does not have to consider God's existence in order to accept the premise. In fact, I debated an atheist friend a while back on the moral argument, with his conceding from the beginning that if God does not exist there remains no foundation for objective moral values! However, he still did not believe in God. It may help to know that in rejecting a material conditional (if-then statement), you should only do so if you believe the antecedent is true (the "if" part) and the consequent is false (the "then" part) on that conditional. So on Craig's first contention, in order to reject it you should say were God to exist, then we do not have a foundation for objective moral values. With the second, you should only reject it if you think were atheism to be true, we do have a foundation for objective moral values. If you do not think this, then you should believe Craig's contentions (even if you do not believe in God at all). It's only because Harris accepts objective morality that he wants to deny both premises, and it is only as an entailment of Craig's premises and Harris' belief about objective morality that get us God; this, however, is a corollary.

    It's also important to note God's nature is distinct from his commands; while God's commands will not violate his nature, neither are they just identical to his nature (just as your actions, while consistent with your nature are nonetheless distinct from your nature), so that there is no ad hoc actually taking place.

    In response to your last question, which is a good one, let me just mention that in the same way as a pothole or a wound is real, so is evil; yet in the same way as those are not things but a deprivation of things, so is evil. Good is necessary in order for evil to exist, but not the reverse.

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  40. Once again, I think you are missing the thrust of my argument. The existence, or non-existence, of a PMB does not logically entail that morality COMES from this being. It could exist, yet be silent, leaving us to philosophize our own moral choices, and thus wouldn't be the source of morality. It COULD be a grounding of morality, but absent some form of communication (a book deal, perhaps?) we have no reason to believe morality actually comes from this PMB.

    For your second paragraph, I choose option 2. In a world in which rape isn't simply permissible, but actually increases the well-being of all involved, it would be ludicrous to brand it as immoral. This is an alien world you are talking about, of the sort that consciousness takes on an altogether different avenue. Rape, in this world, could be akin to a hug, and murder could be the only method of reproduction.

    Before you protest, to posit a different moral system for another universe, or a completely alien group of conscious creatures, is not to adopt moral relativism. If the sorts of things I listed above were true, our moral code would spell extinction for such beings, and our concerns about rape and murder would be unintelligible to them.

    There is no reason, however, to believe that such beings exist, and no basis to say that rape would increase the well-being of all involved in any stage of human evolution. This 'counter' demands more careful scrutiny of the conditions in which such a situation would even be possible. Given all of the requisite modifications to the consciousness and life of such creatures, it seems flippant to simply say HUMANS could be this way, and that this now dooms Harris' arguments.

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  41. Lee, the argument is that on theism, we have a grounding of morality. PBT teaches that this being exhibits all maximally excellent behavior or attributes, including moral perfection. Since such a being is metaphysically and logically necessary, this necessity is the grounds as well. But it's irrelevant to either of Craig's two claims, for one can embrace (1) without believing in PBT; he needs only to believe that in that case morals come from God. You should only reject the conditional in the case that you think were a God to exist, we would not have objective moral grounding. In addition, as long as we have moral intutions, we can at least perceive our own moral obligations from these grounded objective values.

    Finally, objective moral values are true independently of any people (Harris understood and did not deny this at any time; this is why he thinks rape is always bad). By your choosing to bite the bullet, it follows inescapably that what you consider to be morally evil is actually morally good in another logically possible world; this is a defeater for your belief that rape is morally evil. After all, you have Actual World A in which rape is morally evil, but World B in which it is good; you have subjective moral values, not objective. You may remain consistent with objectivity only by denying the very moral intuitions which gained you objective moral values in the first place and say rape does not fall under the moral value of evil even in our world.

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  42. "Harris’ rebuttal was a strange, 12-minute diatribe where he offered literally zero arguments for his position. I do not mean he offered zero arguments which I found compelling or good. Just zero arguments altogether."

    Exactly. I find it astounding that anyone could claim Harris won this debate. He didn't even show up.

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  43. "Finally, objective moral values are true independently of any people (Harris understood and did not deny this at any time; this is why he thinks rape is always bad)."

    I don't think Harris was saying this. He takes great pains to connect notions of morality to states of the brain, which is how he gets to well being. We know objectively that rape is not conducive to well being.

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  44. Hi Nick. Thanks for commenting! Yes, but then it of course follows that there are worlds in which it is true that rape is conducive to well-being, so that in some worlds it is morally good to rape, and others morally bad; this is the definition of moral relativism or subjectivism!

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  45. So our intuitions supply this link? How do we determine whose intuitions are accurate representations of this being's will?

    "By your choosing to bite the bullet, it follows inescapably that what you consider to be morally evil is actually morally good in another logically possible world; this is a defeater for your belief that rape is morally evil."

    You'll have to explain how it is logically possible for rape to increase the well-being of all involved in order for this to fly. It is an action that requires one party to be unwilling to engage, and therefore at no point could it be something the victim would benefit from, in regards to their psychological well-being. It is a proposition that is incoherent simply because of the nature of rape.

    The idea is that we understand, and will continue to discover more about, how the human mind works, and what furthers it's well-being. This does not imply that any formulation of consciousness would yield the same results, only that human consciousness reacts, in the main, consistently to moral situations and actions. Objective morality does not mean independent of human, only independent of human opinion or consensus. The concept of rape is a meaningless one in a universe populated only by rocks, and in like style, a vastly different type of being would likewise find rape meaningless if sexual congress is of an alien sort altogether. However, if enough similarities are to be found with both consciousness and congress, the action of rape, the forcing of congress because one party does not want to participate, couldn't increase the well-being of all involved. It is simply incoherent.

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  46. Lee, Harris believes this exact account of moral epistemology: he calls it "common sense" morality.

    For something to be logically possible, it only requires the concept to be internally consistent and not contrary to any known necessary truths. I can easily conceive of a world where rape benefits someone in terms of psychological well-being. There's nothing inherently logically necessary about psychological well-being (unless you take naturalism to mean that this actual world is the only logically possible world, in which case you owe us an account of why this is). Further, it doesn't follow that if X is unwilling to Y, that Y does not contribute to X's well-being. In any case, your morality is entirely different from possible world to possible world and so are not necessary truths. In any case, there are far too many assumptions one must make, including: that well-being is inextricibly linked with what someone wants, that this is the only possible world, that in our world rape is not morally evil, that well-being is identical to good; and all of these are either arbitrary, ad hoc, or both. None of these seem to be able to ground the truth of objective morality; just of non-moral success within a particular realm. Labeling it to be moral is simply arbitrary, and most atheists agree!

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  47. "I can easily conceive of a world where rape benefits someone in terms of psychological well-being."

    As can I; this is, in fact, such a world (enter the psychopath). That's NOT the question. The question is whether both X and Y gain a benefit to their well-being by action Z. This is again misunderstanding, or just not recognizing, the link between the individual and the group. If Z presents an increase in well-being to both X and Y, in all cases, it is inherently moral. If it is not, I do not know what you mean by moral. Further, this is not about what X or Y WANTS, but what will objectively increase their well-being. Satisfying wants does not imply an increase of well-being.

    You continue saying it is possible for rape to benefit one individual, and this is a point I can readily concede. That does not indicate that rape would increase well-being for all involved, a situation I don't think is logically possible given the definition of rape.

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  48. Lee, I only bring up the satisfaction of wants since this is what argument you in fact used to say that rape would not be moral. Unfortunately, you have not done anything to show why in this other world, if rape benefits everyone, that it is immoral. You have only asserted that my scenario is impossible. But why? If you answer because rape is always wrong, you're merely question-begging for atheism's being the source of morality as it pertains to goodness being identical with well-being. Yet in our world, it is immoral. So if it is moral in one world and immoral in the next, you have subjective morals. Which is fine, but then you cannot claim on atheism morality is objective! Finally, we still have seen no non-arbitrary reason for choosing human well-being. Further, an entailment of your view is that if not everyone experiences this well-being from an act, then that act is not good (again, the law of identity). If you allow an act which contributes not necessarily to all well-being but some well-being to be good, what non-arbitrary standard are you using?

    Also, not to be offensive (believe me, I am just trying to help), but these last two posts' objections have been raised as though I brought up the individual subjects therein; it may benefit you to reread the thread before posting.

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  49. "Finally, we still have seen no non-arbitrary reason for choosing human well-being."

    Why should we avoid the worst possible suffering for everyone? Harris: "Once again, we have hit philosophical bedrock with the shovel of a stupid question."

    "Further, an entailment of your view is that if not everyone experiences this well-being from an act, then that act is not good (again, the law of identity)."

    It is not perfectly moral, no, but there are gradations within moral conduct, yes? Some actions are more moral than others, just like murder is less moral than lying. No one would be tempted to say that murder is ok in as many situations as it is said about lying. There are times when lying is the moral thing to do("are you hiding jews?"), and perhaps a few circumstances exist for which murder is the same(self-defense, euthanasia), but I fail to see how rape could possibly qualify for either of these caveats.

    "Also, not to be offensive (believe me, I am just trying to help), but these last two posts' objections have been raised as though I brought up the individual subjects therein; it may benefit you to reread the thread before posting."

    I reread the post, and, though I could be mistaken, I think I repudiated the autonomy of the individual early on in our exchange when I said:"The autonomy of the individual is a concept unique to monotheisms, and unsupported by our modern understanding of group behavior and societal interdependence. The idea that a single 'bad guy' could occupy a peak does not imply that this scenario would be the height of well-being for all conscious creatures, and thus does not represent the logical contradiction of A and not-A as claimed." I would add that there is a significant amount of evidence to suggest that a psychopath occupying a peak of well-being would be detrimental to any number of his/her neighbors.

    --

    Thank you for being so accommodating to my heresy ( :) ) I believe we are rapidly approaching the 'agree to disagree' line in the sand, so I think perhaps this will be my last post. If I haven't made my position clear before now, I don't imagine thrashing away at it for another 20 posts will suddenly make me more articulate.

    I would close with a conciliatory 'god bless you', but if a god does exist, lets both hope (s)he bestows those blessings on those in obviously greater need than you or I.

    Ciao!

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  50. Lee, agreed. Thank you very much for defending your position without being condescending or rude. It is often best to agree to disagree, and I have no problem with someone else "having the last word," so I will leave your last post to stand as the last one overall. May God bless you, and those people of whom you were speaking as well! :)

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  51. Craig argument for morality fails because he tries to have it both ways:
    1) Morality is objective
    2) Morality is subject to the existence of a God.

    They can't both be true.

    As for the question regarding an alternative reality where rape doesn't harm people, the answer is that for this reality to exist, rape would have to be such a different thing to how we conceive it, that it's meaningless for us to call it 'rape' in the first place.

    And the question could equally be batted back to Craig anyway - in an alternative reality where God's nature said that rape was OK, would that make rape OK? By definition, Craig would have to say that it would be OK.

    By the way, I tried posting (politely) on Wintery Knight's blog a few times, and they never cleared moderation. From this I'd say that one cannot read his blog comments and figure that no-one is successfully countering his arguments, as it seems likely he simply deletes any that oppose him too well. Not that there aren't comments that counter him pretty well anyway.

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  52. Hi Andrew, thanks for commenting! I recognize you from "Tough Questions Answered;" unfortunately I've not been over there in a couple of weeks due to business (or busyness). :)

    In any case, I think we can clear up your objections quite quickly: Craig is not arguing morality is itself contingent upon God, but grounded by God in a metaphysically necessary way; that's what objective morality entails. If being X is metaphysically necessary, it is because it either is a brute fact or a necessary entailment of another being Y (replace "being" with "fact" in either case if you'd like). That's all it means. What Craig is contending is that 1. If theism is true, then we have objective moral grounding for values and duties, and 2. If atheism is true, we do not.

    As to the rape concern, as far as I know rape is defined as "forced sex." My logically possible world or state of affairs does not assume this definition to change at all!

    Also, it's important to note that moral obligations are derived from God's nature--which cannot change. A being's nature just is who that being is essentially, and if that nature is metaphysically necessary, then its actions or commands will not vary wildly. All that to say, it's not possible for God to command evil things to be good.

    I cannot account for WK's moderation policies and do not know them or have too much experience commenting there; I can tell you that so long as you communicate politely on this blog your comments will be approved (though I have noticed in recent days several posts ending up in spam); though in cases of extremely long correspondence I may, in the case of Lee above, allow you to get the final say and call it good. :)

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  53. I object to rape because of the harm it does. If you say 'well, what if it didn't cause harm?', then I can say a) I wouldn't see it as being immoral if it didn't harm, with the caveat that b) I don't see how it would NOT cause harm.

    It sounds funny saying that 'rape isn't immoral', but you're talking about it in an alternative reality that is so different to ours that rape manages not to traumatise the victim, it's difficult to understand how 'rape' would even go by that name.

    It's not entirely unlike saying "If in an alternative reality a triangle had four sides, would you agree that it's possible for a triangle not to have three sides?". And then if I say yes, you say that I'm making an absurd claim. You're the one positing a situation where rape benefits everyone. Expound on how that might work, and I'll be happy to tell you whether I would see rape as being moral in that situation.

    That all said, I'll be fair and construct a possible scenario: a woman is in a coma, and for some reason, having sex with her is the only way to wake her up. Would it be immoral for a doctor to have sex with her, by necessity without her consent? NB: if it helps, add a caveat that before falling into a coma, she left her young child unsupervised somewhere, and the woman is the only one who knows where to find that child. So if she's woken up, the child's like will be saved and the mother will be very grateful to whoever woke her up.

    Answer: I would probably say that it probably wouldn't be immoral. What would you say?

    Obviously this is an unlikely situation, but it wasn't us who brought up the idea of a scenario where rape benefited everyone.

    Thus Harris's argument seems to stand.

    "If theism is true, then we have objective moral grounding for values and duties"

    It's still a non sequitur. It's just something he is asserting. HOW does theism provide an objective grounding? He's just telling us that it does without explaining how or why. What does he even mean by 'grounded'?

    "a necessary entailment of another being Y "

    How is this not is/ought fallacy? 'Because God IS this way, we OUGHT to behave that way'? How do you get from the 'IS' of God's nature to an ought, without depending on assumptions that exist externally to God, or without deriving assumptions FROM that God (ie circular arguments)?

    "All that to say, it's not possible for God to command evil things to be good."

    But 'good' is merely being defined as God's nature. We're not talking about God COMMANDING evil to be good, we're just talking about a different reality where rape is moral by God's nature. This shouldn't be any more difficult or impossible a thought experiment than the one you presented to us.

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  54. The problem is that something against someone's will may not do anything at all against that person's well-being, yet most people ascribe being free (at least in this particular case) as a moral good. But in Harris' framework, this scenario is not only not-good, but the one being raped is obligated to be raped!

    That you view rape as necessarily evil is well; I do too! But that just smuggles in the concept of an objective grounding of this necessary truth! Further, in the absence of humans, or other conscious creatures, why think morals apply at all? After all, if conscious creatures ground objective morality in their well-being, and that category is contingent (at least metaphysically), then morals did not exist prior to conscious creatures, but then they are not logically necessary in this way. Also, in your thought experiment, you equate "without one's consent" with "against their will." So long as there is a logically possible world in which well-being seems to entail things we think to be objectively evil and wrong, well-being cannot be identical to good (even if good entails well-being overall and in general, which I think it does).

    I have indeed provided a metaphysically-necessary application/explanation; most students of philosophy readily recognize if morality is objective, theism can provide a grounding of it. A grounding is what "makes it true," in regular terminology.

    It is helpful to recognize it is not the "is-ought" fallacy to say "Because X is a moral obligation, one ought to do it." After all, that's the definition. We're not saying, "God's nature is good, therefore one ought to behave a certain way," but rather "God's nature is good (or entails the grounding of the good), therefore what he commands we ought to obey." If we want to be moral, that is (also, it's imperative to remember if God exists, he does so as a metaphysical necessity [as is necessary to ground objective moral truths]). Remembering this nature as metaphysically necessary means there is no possible world where evil is a nature; evil is a derivation from the good, so that while good can exist without evil, evil cannot exist without good. As such, the grounding of morality cannot really be evil, or command wrong.

    The problem is either Harris must postulate conscious creatures are metaphysically necessary (a fact which is both ad hoc and for which we have no evidence), and if they are, how this functions contrary to a being very much like God, or that objective moral truths exist as brute facts--but in this latter case, well-being doesn't seem identical to good at all!

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  55. May I ask one final question? What standard of good/bad are you using to determine what it means for his nature to be good, and to determine whether his dictates vary from this nature?

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  56. Good question Lee! As Dr. Craig has said, I am quite open to different theories of moral epistemology, and I actually agree with Dr. Harris that we can apprehend moral values and obligations largely through our moral intuitions (though not always). I actually have an argument for intuitive knowledge here: http://randyeverist.blogspot.com/2011/04/argument-for-intuition.html

    Now as for determining what it means for his nature to be good, we can couple this intuition with a metaphysically ultimate explanation of moral truths to understand that his nature is good. Now, if a nature is good, and obligations come from DCT, then by definition every command is right. But also, by necessity, every command correlates with the good. So, if we see a command which is necessarily evil (which is a value, not an obligation) which we recognize as such (I am also assuming our intuitions are not failing us, which they could, but just go with it), then we can conclude the command is not a moral obligation after all; on theism, then, this command could not have come from God.

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  57. “Further, in the absence of humans, or other conscious creatures, why think morals apply at all? “

    In the absence of conscious beings, indeed I do not think that morals have any meaning. Would it be immoral for a rock to fall on top of another rock? Is it immoral for a virus to infect a mindless clam?

    One could say that morals are an emergent property of consciousness and/or suffering.

    "Also, in your thought experiment, you equate “without one’s consent” with “against their will.”

    And so I SHOULD make such an equation: rape is defined as ‘without consent’, not ‘against their will’. For example, we say that minors are not capable of giving consent, regardless of whether it was their will or not.

    “So long as there is a logically possible world in which well-being seems to entail things we think to be objectively evil and wrong...”

    If I say that rape is wrong (given the suffering it causes), then it is in our reality that I am talking about, where it certainly does NOT cause well-being. If you posit other realities where the nature of rape is completely different (eg it does not cause suffering) then might not make the same statement. This is entirely consistent with Harris’s argument.

    “But that just smuggles in the concept of an objective grounding of this necessary truth!”

    ...Which is exactly my own complaint about the idea of ‘God’s nature is necessarily good’. It is ‘smuggling in’ a concept of good, tautologically relating it to God's nature. Why not simply say that God's nature is evil? You're starting with an assumption.

    “Now as for determining what it means for his nature to be good, we can couple this intuition with a metaphysically ultimate explanation of moral truths to understand that his nature is good.”

    I think you’re talking in circles here, trying to ‘defined into existence’ a ‘grounded’ meaning of good, and throwing the word 'necessary' at the problem.

    In fact, perhaps we’re at that ‘going round in circle’ part of the argument again, and going over the same argument we've had before. Perhaps I should let you have the last word this time...

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  58. You say "if a nature is good", and "a command which is necessarily evil", appealing to our intuitions to recognize the difference. I thought on divine command theory, every action is morally neutral (nihilism) until the divine commands it as good or bad (see Craig's second contention, or his arguments against metaphysical naturalism). If, as you say, "by definition every command is right", then the content of the command is irrelevant, only the command itself can be used to adjudicate the moral status of each command. Once the command is issued, and action X is mandated as moral, performing this action is now the moral thing to do. At this point, action X being moral, a perfectly moral being would perform action X as often as possible, and avoid not-X perfectly. Thus, what would prevent god from declaring the tortue of children to be moral? What standard would we appeal to in order to "conclude the command is not a moral obligation" if we cannot appeal to divine command?

    As you said:
    "As to your questions, you certainly are free to disagree with God, but I suspect what you mean is "can I disagree and still be moral?" and the answer is "no,""

    It seems to me that if our intuitions are to be trusted in the main, what need have we of god, or his commands? Perhaps I am missing some important piece of the puzzle here, though. Thank you again for indulging my curiosity, moral philosophy is such a captivating subject, I couldn't resist speaking my mind!

    Lee.

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  59. "If we want to be moral, that is"

    If we WANT to? Isn't that coming down to the very 'personal preference' idea that Craig etc is always claiming as a flaw in the atheist position?

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  60. Hi Andrew, thanks for your comments. Let me address them briefly (I am very busy today; please do not think I am ignoring your comments if I do not approve them immediately). First, morality cannot be necessary in the way you claims if it is wholly dependent upon conscious creatures (unless, of course, conscious creatures as a category are metaphysically-necessary). Second, the scenario you describe is statutory rape, which is qualifiedly different from actual rape in its normative usage. Further, you aren't suggesting "without consent" is identical to "against their will," as plenty of things are done without my consent, but not against my will. Doing something against my will entails it is without my consent, but not the other way around. Further still, in most instances of rape, including types I am speaking of, it is not merely witholding consent but being against their will which in view. Now, it remains under this moral framework that this is a logically-possible world on atheism, and it is question-begging to say rape is evil to avoid it. Your only alternative is to say this action is not evil. But if this action is not evil in that world, then the action is not morally evil in this world either. In any case, it is something other than well-being which grounds the moral value as evil (since we have well-being in both cases), and hence, well-being is not identical to good, per the law of identity (which says there is no possible world where A is not A). As to your second comment, I'm afraid there's a bit of a misunderstanding. This isn't saying "something X is moral if we want it to be," but rather saying "if we wish to conform to moral obligations, we ought to do such-and-such."

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  61. Lee, don't apologize for your comments! I am very impressed with the overall quality of commenters on this thread (as opposed to the Krauss thread, where I got people like Mark). As to commandments being moral obligations, I would say that God's nature being the moral grounds of good and being perfectly good himself, if we think we have received a commandmment from God, and this command would be evil and hence wrong, then we have not received it from God.

    As to DCT, there is a bit of truth to what you are suggesting. An action is prohibited only if God has commanded its prohibition, and permitted if it has not been, and obligatory if it has been positively commanded. That being said, DCT has no inherent limitations or particular vehicles which must be used to communicate these commands. So, if there were a God, and he were to create people, he may put into them a "moral compass," or our moral intutions, which, when functioning properly, lead to correct apprehension of moral facts and duties. However, God may choose to supplement this intuition with written or spoken revelation (think the Bible as an example, or God's speaking to Moses). As to your last question, I want to agree with you fully here: we don't need to believe in God in order to know morality; the contention here is that God is ontologically needed as the foundation for morality.

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  62. Randy, I don't think your rape argument works at all. I'll leave aside quibbles about without consent vs against will, as I think it makes no difference to the argument, including the statutory rape comment.

    You've posited a world where rape doesn't harm, and then said if it's not wrong there then it's not wrong here. Say we posit a world where hitting someone over the head makes them smarter and gives them pleasure. I can say that hitting them there would not be immoral. That doesn't mean it isn't immoral here to whack your neighbour on the head with a shovel. It is no threat to Zharris's argument to say the morality of a situation depends on its affects and the damage it can cause. In fact, it's an important PART of his argument.

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  63. "if we think we have received a commandmment from God, and this command would be evil and hence wrong, then we have not received it from God."

    That's simply appealing yet again to our intuitions, or ambiguity, or both. For my argument, it is assumed that we have a vehicle of clarification (a given, accurate epistemology). It is also assumed that we are starting from a point of complete moral ambivalence, or moral neutrality(nihilism a la metaphysical naturalism).

    For example, the remainder of the sentence I quoted above (preceding):
    "I would say that God's nature being the moral grounds of good and being perfectly good himself"

    If, as my argument would require, we are starting from a point of ultimare moral neutrality (we'll say pre-commandment, a logically necessary contrast to moral grounding), to say this being's nature is 'good' is to appeal to a standard of right and wrong that is not defined until said being makes the moral standard! How does he make the moral standard? By divine commands. How do we tell if divine commands are good? By his nature. How do we tell his nature is good? By his moral standard. Round and round we go.

    This is not to say that this disqualifies this being as a moral grounding, but it appears to throw the entire enterprise right back into the nihilism it is claimed to be escaping. A mandate that makes torturing children a moral act would be in keeping with his moral nature "by definition". It would be the right thing to do "by definition". What you do to escape this yawning chasm of nihilism (~Harris), or at least what you have attempted so far, is one of the following:

    1. Assume previous commandments(this is not a viable option)

    2. Appeal to intuition (but the source is the PMB, problem not solved)

    3. Appeal to a separate standard of good (which logically unseats the PMB as your grounding) Craig has attempted 'worthy of worship', but this performs the same appeal(or #3) in judging worthiness.

    4. Appeal to well-being (which puts us in agreement)

    5. Bite the bullet and accept that obedience is king (leaving you facing the is-ought gap[why obey?]).

    I don't have any formal training in philosophy, so feel free to point out where I'm stepping out of bounds!

    Lee.

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  64. Andrew, I think we're talking past each other here, but if good is identical to well-being, and one gets his well-being in the other logically possible world for something we decry here, then the action itself is not inherently evil. That is to say, you would be saying rape is wrong here but not there. There in fact rape=well-being=good, so that rape is good. But here, rape does not equal well being, which means it is not good. This means there is a logically possible world in which rape is good and another in which it is bad, which is subjective moral (not, as you had previously mentioned, metaphysically necessary) values. In order to retain objectivity, you must commit either to rape being morally good in this world, or claim rape is bad in that world. But the first option seems psychopathic (and not one I think you would take) and the second means well-being is, in the alternate world, not identical to good. If this is the case, then the law of identity is violated and well being is not equal to good.

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  65. Hi Lee. Don't confuse moral values with moral obligations/duties! Since God is posited as metaphysically-necessary (in order to ground these necessary moral values), his nature just is the locus and grounds of moral values. So just as something cannot "get outside of its own nature," so God cannot lie, or sin (a position which is fairly unique to Christianity/Judaism, especially in contrast to Islam, which teaches God can do whatever it is he pleases, even if God previously said it was not only prohibited, but evil). We know his nature is good simply as its being the metaphysically ultimate explanation. We do this by reasoning backward from our moral intuition by which we perceive moral facts to the recognition were God to exist in such a way, that moral truths and values would be grounded in him. But any grounds of moral value must itself be good, as evil is a privation off of the good.

    It's important to note our moral intuitions seem to say these values are objective; it is impossible for something evil to be something good (the very idea is considered incoherent on metaphysical terms; an analogy might be to say "what if people said what is true is false?" Well in that case what is false would be true; but we can't actually flip the concepts--that's impossible. The same goes for good and evil.). Because of this, if we encounter what we think is a command from God, and it commands something specifically in the value of evil, then it did not come from God. Now there are situations in which we think God must not be commanding correctly (Peter in Acts 10 was commanded to kill and eat unclean foods; but in this case God's command against eating these foods wasn't derived from a moral evil, so that he can command this). Again, thank you for your comments!

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  66. To summarise my rebuttal of your 'if you oppose rape in one world you must do so in all' argument:

    Act x is harmful in some situations, not in others. I see it as immoral in the former cases, not in the latter. To say that makes no sense would be to argue that if it's wrong to chop someone's arm off to torture them, it would also be wrong for a Dr to remove a limb to prevent the spread of gangrene.

    There's nothing illogical about judging the morality of an act with reference to the intention behind it and the consequences of the act.

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  67. Hi Y’all. I’d like to point out that there isn’t a person in this blog, including Randy and Craig who don’t appeal to special revelation inherent in DCT (via moral intuitions), so any smugness/outrage about axioms should be turned down. Your “foundation” is STILL hypothetical as both divine agency and as revelation. I agree with Andrew that just saying something is “grounded” by assertion is still just a non-sequitur and Randy did not answer that by appealing to what “most philosophy students” have thought would be the best explanation in the past, and god is no more necessary than a multi-verse (as I shall argue below based upon some statements from Craig himself).

    No one here has properly stated the debate topic yet. It was “Is Good From God?” IMO, this would ALSO invoke the epistemic question in its own right, as well as because it DOES have bearing upon the ontological question (of ‘absolute goodness’), let alone the pragmatic implications if we want this debate to mean ANYTHING- so IMO, Craig belittled the epistemological questions untenably (yes, I understand the technical “IF” that doesn’t require me to accept it- I still counter that). Since no one has properly defined the *parameters* of “good” or “god,” we are obligated to find out what “god” and “good” REALLY MEANS by invoking the documented actions and predilections of the various deities, which as Sam Harris reminded us, still include *human sacrifice* in the most popular ones (as a side note- that one great sacrifice was made in order to thwart the suffering of the many is an example of this very Entity appealing to a utilitarian principle that so many here have poo pooed). I’m disappointed at the disingenuousness implication that dodgy PBT has any relevance to Christianity and it belies what god really means to the world; it’s really just a retreat to possibility (Craig’s favorite)- is that how we should define the ontological? What seems to escape our current criticism?

    Lee’s use of the potato was a perfect illustration of Craig’s deflection concerning equivocation. If you want to find a problem in a position, the best place to look is often shown by reversing accusations (i.e. whoever smelt it, dealt it- we have this tendency psychologically to cover our tracks). For Craig, using well-being is a tautology; but for Harris, as Lee showed, it IS the imperative; for Harris, it’s DCT that illustrates the tautology, but for Christians, it’s the imperative. I’m glad this debate was free for me to listen to.

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  68. There are two reasons why Harris took this debate out of the realm of philosophism and into pragmatic relevance. 1) DCT makes the epistemological question valid (since theists, via DCT, claim the moral imperative and god’s ontology are inseparable- regardless of any qualitative shuffling to not conflate them, but you must SHOW WHY you are not just eating your cake. God’s nature is NOT distinct from his commands *concerning the imperative* so you cannot separate them when convenient [in order to escape the is/ought fallacy, Randy appeals to morality being “THE VERY DEFINITION,” and yet to avoid ad hoc, he tries to argue they are “NOT THE SAME THING”! Randy said, “We're not saying, "God's nature is good, therefore one ought to behave a certain way," but rather "God's nature is good (or entails the grounding of the good), therefore what he commands we ought to obey.” There is no meaningful difference here. Your premise is exactly the same for both and THIS is equivocation of god’s NATURE]- and remember that we are already imbued with these as moral intuitions anyway); 2) retreat to something like PBT is actually irrelevant pragmatically and Harris wants to win minds more than a debate about logical possibilities. The epistemological question CAN show us the *incoherence* of god’s “goodness” if the property of omnibenevolence is demonstrable and this being interacts with the world. Would anyone deny it isn’t demonstrable or doesn’t interact OUT OF NECESSITY? So we have grounds to observe the necessary effects of this necessary being and it is surely admittedly illustrated by Yahweh’s behavior and predilections in the OT by everyone in this blog.

    We don’t need to read Copan’s book to ask whether or not it is permissible for god to do actions that we are not permitted to do. Jeremy Beahan, from Reasonable Doubts podcast argues about the incoherence of god’s goodness by first asking us to consider Yahweh’s documented behavior in the bible: Does god kill? Is god “Jealous”? Does god take from one person and give it to another against their will? Did god send lying spirits, false prophets, and delusion? (All breaking Commandments.) He then asks if we will concede that god cannot sin (i.e. is there an action that god can do, that humans cannot do, that is not morally justified? Obviously, NO). As Beahan then puts it (paraphrased), “God’s goodness is not just different in MEASURE- it’s not like he gave us these standards and we just don’t live up to them as well as he does; his standard is different IN KIND.” So the BEST we can say- the only thing you can actually assert, is that *he has the ability to be morally ambiguous to us and yet SOMEHOW, IN SOME WAY UNKNOWN TO US, can still be considered the greatest good*. If you consider that what is really praiseworthy in this assertion is *Yahweh’s capability to still be good while appearing morally ambiguous*, is that really praiseworthy? If one claims that this is why we must trust God’s will unquestionably, even when we don’t understand it, how can one ever praise God for His goodness unequivocally if we don’t know whether or not something is really good? This is why the epistemic question has bearing upon the ontological question of morality. There is an equivocation of the good in theology. To argue for a perfect being not represented by ANY religions on the planet is to argue for Lee’s potato. Andrew said it well, “I think you’re talking in circles here, trying to ‘defined into existence’ a ‘grounded’ meaning of good, and throwing the word 'necessary' at the problem.”

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  69. Randy: “…if conscious creatures ground objective morality in their well-being, and that category is contingent (at least metaphysically), then morals did not exist prior to conscious creatures, but then they are not logically necessary in this way” and “physical objects cannot be metaphysically-ultimate grounds for objective morality as they aren't metaphysically necessary.” Yes they are- well, what do you mean by “ultimate”- as in “absolute”? That is meaningless anyway. Craig has failed to show (and didn’t get the clue in the Krauss debate in the Q&A when the implications were presented to him by a questioner who asked how he would argue for teleological necessity), and even practically admitted that he “doesn’t think [he] would argue for teleological necessity” (Krauss debate Q&A)… SOooo if contingent beings don’t need to rely upon specifically *teleological* necessity, there’s no reason why a god is *any better* necessity than a physical multi-verse. And from there, it’s obvious that without physical objects there is no morality. Absolute morality is not out there floating in space somewhere- objective morality IS determined by *the way the physical world is PLUS the way the agents interact*, but absolute morality is something altogether different, it claims some kind of “super-reified” status which is really superfluous. Without agents, objective morality does not exist, only the potential for it, just like 2 hydrogen atoms with only the potential for an oxygen molecule are not (yet) water… but the FRAMEWORK for how both H20 and objective morality WOULD exist in possibility *by the way the world is*. THIS gives it an objective basis that is a STRONGER foundation than if we posited something NOT possible, such as a 20 jillion ton cookie monster that only eats snowflakes. There are things we can say and things we can’t, but we can’t keep busting out more ‘sky hooks’ than Hellraiser. We need ‘cranes.’ As Lee said so well, “Objective morality does not mean independent of human, only independent of human opinion or consensus.” When we further take into account how the parameters of the physical world bear upon the nature of sentient being interaction THEN we have everything we need (though admittedly lacking the helpful attribute of omniscience) to get to work on discovering empirically what we have evolved to prefer (which I admit is not always ‘good’) and what actually IS best for us (based upon standards similar to the concept of ‘health’) and then try to compare and see what benefits the most well being overall for everyone. It’s absolutely clear to me that sentient beings are at the core of morality and not hypothetical gods posited to fill gaps from our epistemic and logical limitations.

    Finally, what I see most ignored by Randy and others are the factual parameters of morality considerations beyond the individual’s interest (in relation to society- which is why we don’t harvest the organs of one for the five, because it’s not the kind of world we ALL want to live in. The weight of that distasteful scenario outweighs the maximized benefits for the 5), as well as a recognition of our reflexive ability to empathize (and not only with others, but with our past and future selves). If a psychopath cannot empathize, then his moral sense is BROKEN- it doesn’t need justifying by the atheist. To echo Lee, psychopathic well being on the moral landscape is NOT at a pinnacle, as only fulfills ONE desire and greatly thwarts the desires of MANY others. ‘Seems clear to me.

    Thanks for your time.

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  70. Lets try this a little differently:

    1. Without the PMB, 'good' is undefined(ontologically). There is no real moral difference between killing a child and not killing a child, even though we know what the word 'good' means.
    2. The PMB defines(ont.) 'good' with divine commands (such as "do not kill children"). **
    3. The commands are good because the PMB is good, not because the commands are good (which would be a tautology)

    Now, I think we both agree on these three premises. What I would like to do is demonstrate a reductio ad absurdum as follows:

    1. The PMB defines(ont.) 'good' with the divine command: kill children.
    2. The command is good, because the PMB is good.
    3. Therefore, killing children is good.

    I have outlined possible objections previously, such as appealing to intuition, another moral standard, or previous commandments. Once again, epistemological problems are irrelevant to this argument, as I am granting a valid, accurate vehicle of communication (pretend the PMB is sitting in front of you, speaking).

    1. You cannot appeal to intuition because our intuition comes from the PMB, and therefore our intuitions would be in line with his commands. Since the commands are good, and his nature is necessarily 'good' (which is defined by his commands**), killing children is not a violation of his nature. This has been your primary objection, but as you can see, it is unfounded.

    2. You cannot appeal to another moral standard, or you logically unseat the PMB as the grounds for morality. Craig occupies this objection, in claiming that the PMB is defined as 'worthy of worship', but you will notice that he is actually making an appeal to another standard in judging the worthiness of the PMB*.

    3. You cannot appeal to previous commands, because we are starting from premise (1) above: "Without the PMB, 'good' is undefined(ont)."

    This leaves one possible objection:

    1. You can appeal to well-being, which would reasonably show that killing children does not increase well-being. This can be hashed out later, but recognize by doing so that you are conceding Harris' argument***. The available tools here are empathy, compassion, love, fraternal/maternal concerns, etc. Even if DCT is true, we still value well-being, we just value it less than the commands of the PMB. You cannot ask 'why value well-being' in the same way you can ask 'why value what the PMB says to value'; we objectively value well-being (even psychopaths, though they don't include others in their moral sphere).

    If you decline to appeal to well-being, you are stuck biting the proverbial bullet, and the absurd conclusion that killing children is good follows logically.

    --- Footnotes---

    *"As to your questions, you certainly are free to disagree with God, but I suspect what you mean is "can I disagree and still be moral?" and the answer is "no,""

    **If God is the perfect being, then it follows he is also morally perfect, so that his nature is the locus or grounds of that which is good. This accounts for moral values. To account for duties, Craig mentions these are derived from values rooted in God’s nature in the form of commands, or Divine Command Theory.

    ***1. Moral values and obligations are mind-dependent in their grounding.
    2. Minds are nature-dependent.
    3. Therefore, moral values are nature-dependent.

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  71. Hi Andrew, but then you have subjective morality. Which I am fine with as an epistemological position (though I obviously do not agree), but Harris argues for objective values, true in the same way as necessary truths of mathematics and logic.

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  72. Hi gatogreen. Thanks for commenting! You wrote quite a bit, and while I intend to get to it, I don't have time tonight. That said, please give me the benefit of the doubt that if I do not address an issue, it is not because I have no answer. I may have addressed it here on the thread already, or may not be interested, etc. I only say that because you have written so much!

    First, let me offer one helpful bit of info: generally speaking, Christian theologians and philosophers do not count moral intuitions to be instances of special revelation, but general (like viewing nature itself). I don't think that affects your point, but it may help in the future. That said, I don't have a problem with arguments from intuition; I even have an argument for intuition itself on this very blog this month! That said, two things present itself: 1. Simply because A has an intuitive belief, it does not follow that B shares that belief, and 2. Harris' proffered intuition is not shared by many atheists, much less theists.

    Also, my argument for God as the grounds of objective morality (or [1] in the above article review) still has not been addressed by anyone with regards to its being a non-sequitur, as you say. After all, if X is a metaphysically necessary truth, then grounds Y of X must be metaphysically necessary. How is this a non-sequitur? That is merely a defense of how it is possible God is the grounds of morality (and such an argument cannot be abducted by the naturalist who argues from well-being since conscious creatures as a category are not postulated as metaphysically necessary, and if they were, you'd have a tall order of how this is even possible). The offensive is that obligations (which are derived from values) are owed to persons; thus even if naturalism manages to account for objective moral values, there's just no duty inherent in it.

    As to your next paragraph, this is essentially an argument that says, "We don't know which deity, therefore there are none?" The problem is this is just irrelevant to the issue. If on atheism there is no grounds for objective morality and yet we believe there is objective morality, then so much the worse for atheism!

    It's also worth noting that DCT typically do not make moral commands inseperable from God's nature insofar as "identical" is meant. I do think, ontologically speaking, God's nature is distinct from his commands. That is, there are varying possible worlds in which other commands are issued from God. God's commands being derived from his nature do not equate to that nature itself. Moral values are identical to God's nature, but duties are distinct from value. The rest of your first post is irrelevant to either contention mentioned by Craig in the debate, though I would be happy to discuss it on another post. In the case of your next argument, you are arguing for subjective morality. Which is fine, but beyond the scope of the debate!

    Finally, in regards to the last comment, I did in fact address it by expanding my thought experiment to include every person's well-being; however you have provided "what every person wants," which is not identical to well-being and creates its own set of problems. If everyone gets what that want, then it is morally good?

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  73. Hi Lee, in your first syllogism there, I would disagree with (2). The PMB gives moral commands which are "right" to follow which derive from "good," but are not necessarily identical to the good. For instance, while it is a moral good to save lives as a doctor, it hardly follows we all have an obligation to be doctors! Every moral obligation is right to follow, but not every moral obligation is even in itself a moral value! Consider the ceremonial laws of early Judaism. There is nothing inherently evil about eating squid, but the Law forbade it. It would be wrong to eat squid and right not to, even though in itself it is a morally-neutral act with respect to moral value. The value which is good and which is evil is obeying or disobeying God. The commands are "right" because it is "good" to align oneself with the good; it is simply an entailment of performing obligations the good lays upon us. Since I have already shown that right is not always good-in-itself, that is, right and good are distinguishable, the tautology is avoided. :)

    Thus, in the reductio, I do not necessarily have to accept (1). Now, interestingly, God has no obligation to extend anyone's life, but that is a separate argument. At this point we are simply trying to ascertain whether or not X is good. Suppose we both agree rape is evil and hence always wrong. Suppose in your thought experiment God told me to rape the next woman I saw. Because this is impossible, I have reason to suspect either: A) this isn't God, or B) I am going crazy. Because God is the locus of moral value, it is logically impossible for him to issue a command contrary to the good. He can issue commands about morally neutral acts, or acts that are wrong in some contexts but not in others. Murder is evil and hence always wrong. Killing is not, for example.

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  74. “Hi Andrew, but then you have subjective morality. Which I am fine with as an epistemological position (though I obviously do not agree), but Harris argues for objective values”

    Randy, I don’t think you understand Harris’s argument. And your argument falls apart as soon as you start to apply it to real life situations (see final sentence in this post).

    It’s not subjective morality to allow that an action may have different consequences in different situations, and may therefore be immoral in one situation and not in another. It’s not the ‘cutting someone’s arm off’ that is the ‘objective wrong’, it’s the deliberate harm and pain caused. It’s not an argument against this to point out that a doctor may need to amputate an arm to save someone’s life. We could come up with thousands of similar examples.

    Unless you want to argue that such a doctor would be acting immorally? Would you?

    “Suppose in your thought experiment God told me to rape the next woman I saw. Because this is impossible...”

    Is it any more impossible than God commanding Abraham to kill his own son? You’re using your own morality to judge God’s in this situation. If you’re tying yourself in with saying ‘whatever God commands must definition be moral’, then who would you be to say that the rape would be immoral? At any rate, you’re on dangerous ground when you declare any act to be ‘out of bounds’ for God, as it’s often not hard to find biblical examples of any heinous act.

    Numbers 31:18 certainly has rapish overtones: “But all the girls, who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

    For what purpose do you imagine that the virgins are being kept ‘for yourselves’? Why specify ‘virgin’s rather than just young girls? Elsewhere we can find examples of God commanding slaughter, and even commanding pregnant women being stabbed in the belly. You’re really better off keeping the discussion off ‘what God might command’.

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  75. "Murder is evil and hence always wrong. Killing is not, for example."

    Isn't murder here simply defined as unjustified killing? Hence, you're basically saying "Unjustified killing is unjustified, and therefore cannot be justified. Justified killing is justifiable".

    You are confident in saying that killing is sometimes justified, but that rape is never justifiable. Are you saying this with utter certainty, or do you just mean that you cannot conceive of a situation where it would be justified? If the former, why cannot the naturalist similarly dismiss your alternative reality scenario where rape produces well being for all?

    "Because God is the locus of moral value, it is logically impossible for him to issue a command contrary to the good."

    OK, so God is bound by the laws of logic. Does it therefore follow that God cannot be the creator of said laws? If the laws of logic exist externally to God, then is it in theory POSSIBLE for objective morals to fall into the same bracket?

    Then His nature is by necessity tied in with these laws (In the same way that the speed of light is tied to c, which is a separate value that would exist even if there was no light) but is not causing or creating or grounding them.

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  76. Hi Andrew; your tone is getting a little defensive, so let me put you at ease: I am not trying to "win" or whatnot. :) Allow me to address the two posts, hopefully, in one response.

    First, the major problem is there just seems to be no relevant moral difference in the rape situations. On your examples, in one instance there is an act of maiming (which terminology suggests the act is always wrong), and the other involves healing. While both carry the content of cutting an arm off, both are not identical. The problem is there just seems to be no relevant difference between raping someone in one world and not another; having sex against someone's will is either a moral evil or it isn't. If not, then it is not evil in this world either; it is only because they may experience damaging consequences. If it's evil in this world but not in another, you have relativistic morals. I understand Harris' argument all too well, and so do most atheists (which is why most atheists reject objective morality). They may argue we ought to do what's best for everyone, but they don't suppose this is an objective and hence binding standard.

    As to your next discussion, at most what follows is that we ought to evaluate the moral content of each command. But it does nothing to Divine Command Theory as a whole to rebut anything I said there. I commend you to Copan's book (or any scholarly journal article on ANE practices) for a discussion of that. Make sure you are not anachronistically and illicitly transferring a Western view to the text. Your rape example is one which needs adjusting in this way. But that is off-topic (I would be happy to discuss in another blog post though).

    Yes, all I am saying is that murder is always wrong by definition, yet killing is not always wrong. Someone tries to kill your mother with a gun and you have one too. Most people recognize you have not committed a moral evil should you shoot him and he die. As to the rape question, if you or a naturalist are prepared to say that rape is not inherently evil, you may do that, but in that case you are biting the bullet and saying rape is not inherently evil in this world either. In that case, were a man able to get away with raping a woman, by say drugging her, and she had no memory, disease, pregnancies, or any conscious senses or feeling during or after the act, then on this account it either a) wasn't rape (which seems ludicrous) or b) wasn't evil (which also seems counterintuitive).

    As to the laws of logic, most people believe these laws are necessary, so that they are not created at all. Why suppose the laws of logic exist externally to God? In any case, it doesn't follow that even if they do, then so do moral values. For logic doesn't seem to place any obligations on us in the same way as moral values, and without a compelling reason, I'm afraid this would take us too far afield. Thanks for commenting!

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  77. Thanks for your response Randy. Sorry if I came off defensive. I don't feel that way. Perhaps I'm typing too quickly to be polite, which is not a proper defence.

    "...having sex against someone's will is either a moral evil or it isn't."

    Yes, and I think the problem here is you positing a world where having sex with someone against their will is good for their well-being. The reason it creates cognitive dissonance is that the scenario makes no sense. I invited you to suggest a scenario where this would be the case, and you declined to do so (the scenario I suggested was just me trying to help you out). As I said before, it's like saying "Imagine a world where a triangle has four sides". And as soon as we come up with an analogous question for theists - "Imagine a world where God is in favour of rape", you reject it. The reason we see it as an evil is exactly BECAUSE it would be harmful in all scenarios.

    OK, now you offer a scenario where all harm is hypothetically removed. What are we left with as a defence for the women's virtue? I guess we are left with justifiable concepts such as a human being having possession and sovereignty over their own body. You could relate this to a basic concept of property law. The posession of one's own body idea is actually HARDER to justify through Christianity, given that the bible clearly condones Jews owning non-Jews in a clear, unambiguous, non-'indentured-servitude' sense of the word.

    "most people believe these laws are necessary, so that they are not created at all. Why suppose the laws of logic exist externally to God?"

    Aren't you conceding here that they are?

    "it doesn't follow that even if they do, then so do moral values."

    I didn't say that one followed from the other. I asked you if you considered it POSSIBLE that they existed externally to God. Or rather is it IMPOSSIBLE for them to?

    [deleted digression into morality vs logic]

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  78. Hi Andrew, thanks for your continued discussion! I agree that a rape which is good is as incoherent as such a triangle; but I say then all the more worse for atheism and the view that "well-being" is identified with "good"! I can conceive of well-being not being identified with good by showing a logically-possible world where well-being is achieved by every conscious creature at once by raping the other; each raping and being raped is conducive to well-being (note we cannot smuggle in the concept of well-being as identical to good without engaging in question-begging). A world is logically possible just in the case it is internally consistent and does not violate any necessary truths. There is no contradiction in the scenario, and while I could not say that such a world is good, I can say it is conducive to well-being. In that case, there is at least one world in which well-being is not identical to good; hence it follows well-being is not identical to good at all! Though it's worth noting that the good, most of the time, entails well-being of someone (and even if not immediately then ultimately for that or another individual); but entailment is not identity.

    Mostly here we are repeating ourselves, so I am more than happy to allow you to have the last word after this. Take care my friend!

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  79. Hello again, Randy.

    I believe I may have handed you an out with my badly constructed syllogism. Leave it to an amateur. Let me try to reword it so we don't get obligations and values mixed up:

    1. Without the PMB, 'good' is undefined (ontologically). There is no intrinsic moral value with respect to rape.

    2. The PMB is introduced, and defined as 'good', even though, as per #1, this is a concept without an objective, or ontological, definition absent any commands.

    3. The PMB defines(ont.) 'good' via divine commands (such as "rape is morally evil")(note: these are not obligations on our action, but values), which emerge from the point of objective moral neutrality in #1.

    4. The commands are good because the PMB is good. He couldn't issue an evil command, not because that would go against his nature but because the concept of evil has no objective meaning prior to his commands.

    5. The PMB's nature is then determined by the substance of his commands. The good has been defined, this now lends objective content to his nature, and we now have moral obligations which are predicated upon the values of #3.

    On to the raa:

    1. The PMB defines (ont.) 'good' with the divine command: rape is a morally positive action.

    2. The command is good, because the PMB is good.

    3. Therefore, rape is good.

    Of course, whats most interesting here, is that if he were to then order you to not rape someone, you would consult his nature (see #5 above), and conclude that this command could not have come from the PMB!

    --

    I also want to take you to task for your distinction between killing and murder. You used an analogy in response to Andrew that I will take the liberty of recycling here:

    "Someone tries to kill your mother with a gun and you have one too. Most people recognize you have not committed a moral evil should you shoot him and he die."

    This is a subjective judgement on your part, or on the part of 'most people'. In the eyes of 'god', who has commanded that human life is sacred, our obligation, to not murder, stems from that value. In "killing" the man with the gun, you are in no better position than the man "murdering" your mother. In either case, a human life is lost, but its actually worse than a simple arithmetic problem; in point of fact, instead of him committing an affront to the PMB's commands, you have committed it instead. The moral thing to do, on your view, is to allow the man with the gun to murder your mother. He has done the evil, not you. There is no objective difference between killing and murder if the underlying value speaks to human life.

    The fact that 'most people recognize you have not committed a moral evil" speaks to some other value at work(or is simply irrelevant).

    Your analogy about the jewish law is problematic in that you use a separate definition of 'right' for the analogy than you do in your proposition. When you say "the commands are 'right'", what you are really saying is that they represent proper conduct(moral definition). Proper with respect to what? Proper with respect to the good, i.e. not contradicting his 'good' nature. Nature is determined by commands, commands checked against his nature; this is at best an appeal to previous commands, at worst circular reasoning. In programming terms, god's software would have crashed before he could issue the first command.

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  80. Hi Lee. Metaethical theory is one of the more challenging areas of philosophy (modal logic and metaphysics themselves being the only areas I consider to be more difficult), so don't sweat anything! :)

    I think, if I understand (2), that I would reject it, and I know I would reject (3). The good (which you have correctly identified with "value," for what it's worth), is not derived or defined ontologically via divine commands. The arrow in (3) would run this way: PMB-->Divine Commands-->Good, whereas on DCT it runs this way: PMB-->Good-->Divine Commands-->Right. The good is derived ontologically from God, the commands issued by God are derived from the good (that is, in accordance with the good and not contrary to it), and to obey the commands is moral "rightness."

    Now (4) is certainly interesting. I would amend it to say in the beginning, "obeying the commands is good because the PMB is good," but this distinction does not affect the rest of the premise so far as I can tell. Evil is a derivation of the good, so that if God never created anyone, he would issue no commands, and hence the objective moral good would be all there was in actuality; but nonetheless I don't see how affirming a lack of commands entailing no moral value of actually existing evil negates the PMB's logically impossible state of issuing morally evil commands. Further, moral facts would in this case be counterfactual, so that it would be true to say, "If there were a human H, who murdered human I, this would be evil and wrong," even if no creation and hence no commands were ever issued! The reason is because of the objective value of something God has created, in this case, "were God to create I, taking his life would be wrong (notable exceptions aside)."

    Qualifications aside, (5) depends on (2) and (3)'s being true, which I think they are obviously not given DCT. Hence, the reductio fails on DCT.

    I am confused at the analogy; why think that all human life is instrinsically good-in-itself (and hence all killing is wrong)? Most DCT's don't think this, and most people don't either. Since DCT doesn't entail this, and since we can trust our moral intuitions on DCT, I can conclude: a) DCT does not require me not to act in self-defense in such a case, and b) I am quite comfortable in trusting my moral intuition, and there is no good a priori reason I shouldn't trust them here. Since there's nothing inherent in DCT which obligates me to allow my family to be killed, any further debate is merely a matter of disagreement amongst fleshed-out morals, not whether DCT is coherent or viable as an account of moral obligations.

    I am reiterating DCT does not postulate God's nature comes from his commands; in fact this is metaphysically impossible. This was just put in to your syllogism at (3) without defense. The only thing I can think of is that there may be a confusion between (1) and (2) that goes beyond epistemological considerations of the PMB to ontological considerations of that being himself. For instance, when you said in (2), "the PMB is introduced," I merely assumed this was epistemic on your part. It occurs to me now you may have viewed this ontologically; i.e., there was a time or point in metaphysics where the PMB did not exist and thus objective moral values did not exist on DCT. Yet on this account of moral values and duties, since they are necessary, their grounding is as well (since necessary effects do not--indeed cannot--arise from contingent causes). This might solve the problem. But maybe not! :)

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  81. "I can conceive of well-being not being identified with good by showing a logically-possible world where well-being is achieved by every conscious creature at once by raping the other; each raping and being raped is conducive to well-being"

    So they're having sex with you - against your will - and at the same time you are having sex with them - against THEIR will? That doesn't really make sense. Perhaps you mean that one minute you're raping them, then the next they're raping you?

    Sorry, but this world sounds horrible! You're not going to mind your daughter being raped, as you figure that she'll get to rape them back later? I don't think anyone I know would want to live there, and I bet you don't either. How can you argue that 'well-being' is present in this world? The very fact that this world sounds horrible to us makes it clear that it's not a place of well-being.

    So I don't think you've demonstrated a clear distinction between 'good' and 'well-being'.

    Thanks for the conversation.

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  82. Hi Randy,

    “Christian theologians and philosophers do not count moral intuitions to be instances of special revelation”

    Really? So under Reformed Epistemology Christians and atheists are on the same metaphysical epistemological footing? That’s not what I’ve read.

    “1. Simply because A has an intuitive belief, it does not follow that B shares that belief, and 2. Harris' proffered intuition is not shared by many atheists, much less theists.”

    Depends upon the belief. The more ubiquitous the imperative, the more it is grounded in desire- but that is only half the story, there is also what is factually best for everyone *in principle*. Consider this quote from Richard Carrier’s recent post about moral ontology: “Moral facts are thus facts about the behavior of physical systems, in particular social and neurological systems. Since these and other facts are objective facts of the world (and thus not just opinions), our moral emotions and intuitions can be in error. We can feel guilty for something that wasn't in fact wrong, or feel righteous for doing what is actually vile. Moral facts are thus not opinions. Moral facts are facts about what is and what we want, regardless of what we believe those are. The morality of an act is therefore a property of a physical system: it refers to the physical relations among the components of that system, including (a) the things you want most in the world, which desires are physical structures in your brain, (b) the way the world works generally (such as the way technologies and economies and societies and brains work), and (c) the actual physical circumstances you find yourself in (the "moral context" of a given decision).” Google: Richard Carrier Blog/ Moral Ontology, Posted Tuesday, March 15, 2011 (in fact, please read this link through- it may help) So that some intuitions are not shared just means that some people are ignorant of what is the best action morally.

    “Also, my argument for God as the grounds of objective morality (or [1] in the above article review) still has not been addressed by anyone with regards to its being a non-sequitur, as you say. After all, if X is a metaphysically necessary truth, then grounds Y of X must be metaphysically necessary. How is this a non-sequitur? That is merely a defense of how it is possible God is the grounds of morality (and such an argument cannot be abducted by the naturalist who argues from well-being since conscious creatures as a category are not postulated as metaphysically necessary, and if they were, you'd have a tall order of how this is even possible).”

    Again, there will always be possible retreats that we can posit beyond the crane if we just ascribe infinite abilities (sky hooks). That doesn’t actually answer HOW it is grounded, only that it has some mysterious grounding ability that remains unknown. By appealing to actual nature, physiology, social science, psychology, evolutionary principles, philosophy, history, we gain an understanding of what actually CAN ground morality and WHY.

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  83. “The offensive is that obligations (which are derived from values) are owed to persons; thus even if naturalism manages to account for objective moral values, there's just no duty inherent in it.”

    Depends on what you mean by duty- not in the Kantian sense, but if we consider duty to mean that which we ‘ought’ to choose if we were to know all the facts (which is exactly how I think ‘ought’ should be used), then we are still ‘compelled’ to make that decision and would indeed do it.

    “As to your next paragraph, this is essentially an argument that says, "We don't know which deity, therefore there are none?" The problem is this is just irrelevant to the issue.”

    To which paragraph are you referring? Because I never intended that to be the main thrust of any of my arguments here.

    “If on atheism there is no grounds for objective morality and yet we believe there is objective morality, then so much the worse for atheism!”

    There ARE grounds as I have already described, based upon how agents operate and how the world is. These are objective facts. You need to recognize this: WHATEVER REASONS/FACTS THAT GOD HAS FOR WHY WHAT IS GOOD IS GOOD IS JUST AS ACCESSIBLE TO ATHEISTS IF THOSE REASONS ARE *GROUNDED IN THE WORLD* AND IF THEY ARE *NOT* GROUNDED IN *THIS WORLD* THEN THEY ARE *IRRELEVANT TO IT*. IF we CAN access these same STANDARDS through reason, god is superfluous.

    “Moral values are identical to God's nature, but duties are distinct from value.”

    I already addressed this when I said, “god’s nature is NOT distinct from his commands *concerning the imperative*” and that is all we need to show. You have not shown WHY you are allowed to eat your cake when BOTH god’s existence and his commands obligate us with the moral imperative. Saying that they are also values is irrelevant.

    “The rest of your first post is irrelevant to either contention mentioned by Craig in the debate,”

    I wish you would be more specific. I don’t see anything irrelevant to the debate in any of my posts, just because Craig chose to ignore certain parameters implied by the title “Is Good from God?” He unfairly and disingenuously to his advantage IMO, outlawed the epistemological question, which was really the MOST important practical quality that this debate could have had. I think he argued for an irrelevant straw god.

    “though I would be happy to discuss it on another post. In the case of your next argument, you are arguing for subjective morality. Which is fine, but beyond the scope of the debate!”

    Where did I argue for subjective morality? The moral propositions still fall within the standards of moral realism in principle.

    “If everyone gets what that want, then it is morally good?”

    Harris and I have been very clear about saying that desires are only part of the equation. Read that link and you will get a better understanding of the difference between types of values as they pertain to ontological morality. Some values are subjective, while others are beyond opinion in their objective ability to fulfill desires.

    Thanks for your time.

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  84. Hi gato, why limit yourself to Reformed epistemology? That is certainly not the dominant view, and I am unaware that they consider it to be special revelation (but the point stands even if they do: why find one faction and apply it to the whole?). Carrier's account is question-begging. He simply defines morality to be physical, and then arrives at this result. Further, in order to reject intuitive knowledge, you'll have to deny one of the premises of my argument for intuitive knowledge, which can be found on this blog within the last few posts. Besides, in context, the intuition was that Harris said we take facts of logic to be true intuitively, therefore he doesn't have to provide an argument for why we should take well-being to the good. However, most people don't share the intuition that whatever is good for X is itself morally good, and any variant on this moral theory is not shared intuitively by nearly as many people as share the intuition that a) moral values are real, and b) truths of logic are real, and hence there's just no reason for me to accept this account.

    You've done the equivalent of intellectual hand-waving, though you've admitted now that (1) is true. Metaphysical necessity is the vehicle by which things are ontologically grounded. You may not agree that God does ground moral values, but if he exists, and objective moral values exist, then he does.

    In your next post, "ought" is simply used in a non-moral sense; if you want to act towards goal X, do X. Further, you should know that typing in all caps is considered yelling, and bad etiquette in general. :)

    There are two other problems with this paragraph, however. 1. It just doesn't follow, in a non-question-begging way, that because there are objective moral values that atheism provides a grounding for these. 2. If God is part of the world (assuming you are not meaning "natural world," but "world" as in maximal state of affairs), then a) on theism moral facts are grounded in the complete description of reality as it relates to God, and b) atheism doesn't have any access whatsoever to an objective grounding in God's nature, by definition.

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  85. Now, if you did mean natural world, then what justification is there to say "if something is not natural, then it is irrelevant to the natural world?" That seems a strange argument which won't be able to be justified in a non-circular way.

    Your next statement is a conflation of moral epistemology and moral ontology. How you come to know objective moral values has no bearing on how they are grounded. I can gladly agree a belief in God is not necessary to apprehend moral truths, but why think if a belief in grounding G of fact F is not necessary to understand F that G is irrelevant to the grounding of F? Replace G with "the law of gravity" and F with "if I drop an apple, it will fall to the ground" and place it contextually 150 years before Newton. A belief in the law of gravity as a force is wholly unnecessary to the apprehension of the truth that if I drop an apple, it will fall to the ground, even though the force of the law of gravity is what grounds this truth.

    The next paragraph is a repeating of the assertion that is a) unsupported, and b) not an entailment of my position. It's logically fallacious to infer that if nature=value, and value does not = duties, that nature=duties. Also, simply because something is not contradictory to something else, it doesn't follow they are both identical. Merely the fact that there exists more than one possible world on DCT is enough to show this.

    What's interesting is both Craig and Harris agreed to the former's contentions; that is, it was agreed to the title of the debate referred to "on theism, there are grounds for objective morality," and for Harris it would be "on atheism or naturalism, there are grounds for objective morality." Typically, opening statements are exchanged, but even if they aren't it is standard fare; no one goes into a debate without knowing exactly what contentions are being said. Note Harris never said "that's not what this was about!"

    You argued clearly that morals are not objective without conscious creatures, so that in some worlds moral values are objective and some are not; but this is contradictory to objective moral values' being necessary truths (which is the contention--see Andrew's comments above!). I hope you have a wonderful day!

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  86. Hi Randy, I don’t mean to shout, just that I think of caps as italics, which I use a lot for clarity when I have them. I do appreciate both your tone and your philosophical prowess.

    I think, as Harris obviously did, that it’s of paramount importance to continue to highlight the (undisputed) fact that this argument is for a being that not only is not posited by any religion on earth, but is also no more probable either. Arguing that one of many such hypothetical possibilities exist (e.g. PBT, multiple gods, amoral gods, immoral gods, alternate realities, etc.), *does nothing* (is that better? “***”) for Christianity, even though I continue to clearly infer the still disturbingly unrenounced implication that it does by every single theist I have spoken with about this debate here and on other sites. It’s not intellectual hand-waving. I honestly find it unfair the way that Craig not only appropriated the debate on his terms (demanding a strictly ontological argument), but also his implication that it means if he wins on the terms of a PTB argument, it means anything for Christianity. It means just as much for Lee’s potato. Whether Harris realized that Craig would have the cahones to argue for a non-christian god I could only speculate, but hey, it’s about winning and perception, right?

    Now, I want to bring this back to reality. I’m going to try one more time to carefully illustrate what it means for morality to be grounded and show where the differences with theism lie:

    The world (yes, in the philosophical sense) works in a certain way because of physical necessity and so do agents (I will presume that the contingent world is based upon the necessary multiverse- you contest this, but have no grounds that a teleological being is any better of a necessity). This means that all (admittedly) non-moral propositions of consequence have answers *in principle* as to better (more effective) or worse (less effective) ways to complete the goal of if/then non-moral propositions, even if we can’t completely know them because of epistemic limitations (and as someone once said, “you don’t need perfect knowledge to have reliable knowledge”- science illustrates this). The only difference at this point (we aren’t talking about “duty” yet) in this grounding of objectivity (and it is a grounding of objectivity simply in that it is framed by the objective fact that there is an objective “best” way [though not the *only* way] to fulfill the most parameters of the proposition *in principle*- ideas that don’t or can’t relate to this reality, such as my cookie monster, are not objectively grounded). So:


    The way the world is + the way agents interact= objectively verifiable better and worse ways to complete if/then non-moral propositions.

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  87. The objectivity lies in the world and the agents. The grounding of the objectivity is *done*. At this point, I will ask you if you agree that these *non-moral* if/then consequential statements are ‘objectively grounded’ (because if you think that they are not, then I give up- ;-) If yes, then please continue on…). Now it is claimed by theists that when a ‘good god’ is introduced into the mix it introduces a moral imperative. But first we must ask, *how* does god’s goodness introduce a moral imperative? Is it *simply by the virtue of its existence* as the necessary consequence of DCT (I think you said yes, but as a side note, if you don’t conform to the mandate of the ontological imperative, no matter how temporarily free you think you are, you will still go to hell as the ultimate consequence ultimately requires out of necessity- but that’s another can of worms)? In this case, the world and its agents would be contingent in such a way that the same physical properties that present the objective framework for theists are still available for atheists (i.e. atheists operate under the same system and therefore whatever ontologically good facts work for theists, work for atheists [*unless* special revelation or supernatural aid gives the theists some advantage])? Or…. is it the inclusion of a god’s “goodness” *in itself* that somehow grounds it? Because if it is that the inclusion of god’s “goodness” in itself, and it is not yet explicated (and/or incoherent, as Beahan showed in the case of Christianity. You said, “How you come to know objective moral values has no bearing on how they are grounded” and I am painfully aware of that, but there is *no way to QUALIFY what is good without employing epistemology*, so the very title of the debate is senseless without it. As I have repeated ad nauseum: I think Craig is unjustified in restricting the topic to pure ontology considering the title of the debate. It doesn’t allow enough ) then it actually *negates* objectivity in any meaningful (or at least pragmatic) sense and becomes purely authoritarian de facto:


    The way the world is + the way agents interact+ a good god= * objectively unverifiable* better and worse ways to complete if/then propositions (because at least the consequentialist account could offer empirical investigation and evidence into all of the factors of the world and interaction of agents, accounting for pleasure, pain, well being, sense of justice, etc, but god’s undefinable “goodness” negates *all* of these considerations, appealing to an incoherent non-human standard and other-worldy concerns [perhaps it’s obvious that I’m trying to get you to make your argument relevant pragmatically]). This is a pragmatic concern, but Craig surely did not want this on the table for open view and was just one (of many) reasons he argued for a straw PBT god.

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  88. NOW, what can the secular moral realists say about ‘duty.’ You said, “It's logically fallacious to infer that if nature=value, and value does not = duties, that nature=duties.” First, all of Kant’s moral imperatives reduce to hypothetical imperatives subject to context- it is unavoidable. There is *no* absolute morality. (You said, “It just doesn't follow, in a non-question-begging way, that because there are objective moral values that atheism provides a grounding for these.” This is a non-sensical question. There is nothing *more* object than objective morality, nor does it require *more* grounding.) Second, if you had read Carrier’s post, you would have seen that not all values are the same. There are type one and type two values. They may overlap and frequently do, but what you have done is to conflate the two. The *only reason* that your syllogism follows is because *type one values* do not have a veridical nature. Moral propositions of so-called duty are merely questions of type two values that are concerned with affecting others (and hence, self as well) and are therefore the most important questions. It’s that simple. That turn of the type two propositions to self and others alone turns a non-moral ‘ought’ into a moral ‘ought.’ This is not question begging any more than it was before the question was about self and others and you have to show why it would suddenly not be objectively true (because it isn’t a contrived type one value).

    There may be issues in terms of conflicting interests, but these are *not* non-objective, nor are they immune to evidence for pleasure, pain, well being, sense of justice, fairness, etc. Just because you import a hypothetical “goodness” as an attribute of your teleological necessity (one of many possible necessities and attributes, and you have not answered this charge either ‘how would you argue for teleological necessity?’ You have given me no reason why I need to appeal to god more than a multi-verse and Craig’s usual moral outrage argument is merely the fallacy of desired consequences)- let alone without any meaningful content if you are appealing to the notion that “goodness in itself grounds it” (because your PBT “good” is itself question begging when it appeals to elements of the equation that are *both* non-worldly and non-human, these are the only two things that we can actually show *are* relevant to morality).

    Many secular moral realists take several systems into account; they pay attention to the rule, the consequence, the evidence for habituated behavior (virtue ethics), and of course, the science on how people actually behave (e.g. tit for tat, game theory, etc). They don’t all have to be *completely* mutually exclusive. When we want to consider the rule part of the moral question, we look to deontology, when we want to look at the consequences, we consider what, for example, desirism has to say (completely empirically based BTW). That a system of morality, or combination of systems, can better guide us towards fair and balanced treatment between the individual and society *is real morality*. I think theists really just confuse and conflate the implicit urgency of questions about human life and well being and relationships with an evolutionarily evolved tendency to invent truths that protect our greatest urgencies intellectually and emotionally.

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  89. It is also my personal speculation that as we understand the brain more, we will find that certain parts of the brain (which have been shown to apparently ‘deliberate’ in fMRI scans over moral questions) may even enable *particular* moral systems better than others, depending upon the way they process (e.g. the amygdala ‘prefers’ relativistic morality, the frontal lobe, utilitarian morality, etc- I’m just guessing here for each, but the split brain experiments of the 70s had some VERY interesting results when they split and interviewed the separate hemispheres of patient “Paul S.” One half of his brain liked President Nixon, while the other did not; one half wanted to be a race car driver, the other a draftsman). When you combine this with the moral considerations above, such as what has been shown to work in virtue ethics, this is a game changer as to what is the best way to achieve our goals and no absolute moral imperative is going to do the trick for you.

    I hear you saying, “but if your goals are different than mine- they are not grounded. What if our goals clash (and they do)?” I think that they clash less than you think they do, first of all, as evidenced by the similar moral traditions overall (as C.S. Lewis argue). You could say that this is from god, but even completely godless tribes (who have flat out rejected Jesus) have clear moral intuitions (e.g. Daniel Everett’s Amazonian Piraha). The *problem* is *only* that theists are not using what is before them, before us all already, but positing and imposing superfluous parameters. If we were all to exclude theistic morality (not forcibly of course), I guarantee that we would be able to reduce moral facts to get a great consensus (I’m not merely appealing to ad populum, but to the success of propositions as a meritocracy, just like in science). We simply must continue to work to uncover the facts as to why they do clash with a crane, but skyhooks does not uncover anything at all. You said, “ME:"if something is not natural, then it is irrelevant to the natural world?" YOU: That seems a strange argument which won't be able to be justified in a non-circular way.” NO. There is the possibility for testing for consistency in the natural world; that is the difference.
    Hmm… what else… you said, “You argued clearly that morals are not objective without conscious creatures, so that in some worlds moral values are objective and some are not; but this is contradictory to objective moral values' being necessary truths” Not if they *don’t even exist to be other than objective* because there are no agents there. Morality is completely contingent upon agency or it is only potential morality.
    Whew, that a lot of work. I’ve got several other conversations going, so this may be my last response here. I appreciate the time you’ve put into considering my perspective and I always learn something everywhere I go.
    Peace!

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  90. Hi gato, thanks for the explanation! You've written a lot here! :) As to the first paragraph, this is essentially saying "the contentions can be true and Christianity still be false;" but this is the textbook way of knowing when a contention is irrelevant to the question! If a contention or objection can be true or false and the argument or premise in question still be true, then the contention or objection is irrelevant to the truth of that argument or premise.

    The problem with Kantian-like ethics is a) Kant, of course, postulated a God, but b) even if we're only abducting Kantian ethics as a structure, major problems remain. 1. If there is some kind of objective Platonic moral realm, it is unconnected with the intrinsic value of conscious creatures. How did this value get from there to here? 2. Even necessary truths need an explanation of their truth, so that we are left wondering how it is that valueless physical structures and matter acquired such value and obligation in explanatory terms? Why is it we should believe value came from valuelessness? 3. As Paul Copan says, "If moral facts are just brute givens...there is left unexplained a huge cosmic coincidence between the existence of these moral facts and the eventual emergence of morally responsible agents who are obligated to them. That this moral realm appears to be anticipating our emergence is a staggering cosmic concurrence that begs an explanation." (Copan's Moral Argument, stored at U of Western Mich.) 4. If evolution is true, then moral beliefs and intuitions developed in accordance with survival. There's no reason to think that all, or even most, of our moral intuitions are true--in fact this functions as a defeater for all of our beliefs about morality. Since, on naturalism, any belief has the defeater of being not-truth-conducive, every belief does.

    I did answer the question of DCT's moral imperative, and the imperatives are not God's existence. God's existence entails his nature, and his nature entails objective moral values. God's commands are in accordance with these values (and hence his own nature), but not identical to it. So our obligations come from God's commands, which are derived (though not identical with) from God's nature. Again, how you come to know the good won't tell you, even epistemologically, how the good is grounded.

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  91. My argument was not that "on atheism, objective morality needs 'more' grounding," but just that it doesn't follow that if we have objective moral values, atheism then does provide grounding for such.

    It's also worth noting that I don't need to provide a reason for why God is necessary, but why he would be were morality to exist. Since this is a possibility epistemically contingent on the outcome of objective morality, it is you who bears a burden of proof for why this is not possible. Also, I have demonstrated why, on objective grounding, theism is less ad hoc and necessarily existing if it functions as the grounding at all. Also, Craig's argument is actually an appeal to intuition, which is not fallacious so long as the one doing the appeal himself believes the apprehension of the question intuitively or believes it to be rational to apprehend intuitively.

    The problem with the argument of moral consensus is that it only shows we believe the same things about morality--not that morality is grounded in naturalism! Also, there's no way to justify that non-natural events or causes cannot supervene on the natural world by testing using naturalistic means--this is exactly why I said it would be circular! It's by definition impossible to test naturally and get a non-natural cause from that testing alone!

    In short, I don't see any reason morality can be, much less is, grounded on naturalism. Which makes more sense: that value comes from valuelessness, or that value comes from value? Thanks for the conversation, and I hope you come to reconsider Christianity (a token of your good will might be to read Copan's book, Is God a Moral Monster?) :)

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  92. Hi Randy, thanks for the reply. I wrapped up a few taxing conversations and was able to come and respond.

    “1. How did this value get from there to here? 2. Why is it we should believe value came from valuelessness?”

    This is where your presumption is in error: it is not valuelessness at this point. When two or more moral agents interact, necessary value is reified in the mix, because there is a relationship between objective needs and the objective fulfillment of those needs by both parties before a word is even spoken. Kagan illustrates this in his debate w/ Craig.

    "3. If moral facts are just brute givens...there is left unexplained a huge cosmic coincidence…” Just as in the last the last question, it’s not an arbitrary brute fact, but related to the objective necessity and fulfillment in the interaction between two people. Theists posit an extra step beyond this reification of moral necessity into cosmic significance. That’s actually going *too far* and taking the relevance *out of the immediate context where it needs to be*. You require more grounding than is necessary. As Kagan said (paraphrased) ‘if you think you need cosmic significance, than only cosmic significance will do.’ We have the ability to evaluate harm and compromise less harmful solutions with considerations for mutualism and temporality (i.e. some behavior may be more beneficial in the future). So when we appeal to veridical value propositions via our particular cognitive abilities, along with the tools of reason in an objective framework (and we do have empirically observed heuristics for mutual behavior expectations that employ a theory of mind, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Game Theory [and with each decision potentially made with some consideration of variable relevance to individuals vs. collective identity, as well as whether seemingly less moral choices are really parts of greater moral strategy are the kinds of complicated considerations that are always relevant], etc.), give us not only the necessary foundational machinery for a moral system, but sufficient machinery; the parts are both necessary and sufficient for a functioning moral engine. Adding a god at this point is like putting an ornament on the hood.

    “4. If evolution is true, then moral beliefs and intuitions developed in accordance with survival…”

    This is the EAAN argument that has been adequately dealt with by many others [See StephenLawdotblogspotdotcombackslash2010backslash11backslashlatest-version-eaan-paper-for-commentsdothtml] who have shown that while there are definitely, admittedly, a slew of evolved biases, this belies that we *also* clearly appeal to more accurate information gathering heuristics that *do* work, by circumventing our biases (which is evidenced by the fact that science works and is why Harris points to the scientific method as our best method in the context morality as well [via social science, psychology, anthropology, etc).

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  93. “I did answer the question of DCT's moral imperative, and the imperatives are not God's existence… God's commands are in accordance with these values (and hence his own nature), but not identical to it.”

    We’ll just have to agree to disagree here, because to my mind, if you *do not have the ontological ground already in place* [i.e. by god’s goodness via DCT] then the commandment is merely authoritarian, because god’s goodness *still isn’t objectively affecting the morality on the ground*. On the naturalistic account, the ground is objectively intertwined in the mix between two or more moral agents, based upon the quality and possibility of mutual desire fulfillment. This is not arbitrary. If two people agree to be evil to a third party (or multiple parties), those other agent’s desires are included in the mix as well. I think it’s pretty clear that better or worse answers to moral questions outside of the context of Christian theology show that the moral ontology is there without the commandments.

    “Again, how you come to know the good won't tell you, even epistemologically, how the good is grounded”

    The point was that it could show whether the good of the god in question was consistent and therefore coherent, which would undermine its ontological credibility. I admit this was not possible under PBT, but as I said, it was disingenuous to argue for PBT. I propose that for the next debate, the naturalist gets to argue for, let’s say… PNBT: Perfect Natural Being Theory, where you can't question the moral perfection of natural beings by default.

    “…it is you who bears a burden of proof for why this is not possible.”

    You’re right if I was making that positive assertion, but I don’t need to go that far. I only need to point out that it is superfluous.

    “Also, I have demonstrated why, on objective grounding, theism is less ad hoc and necessarily existing if it functions as the grounding at all.”

    I disagree and it is demonstrable, as (your) commandments are *a step farther away* from the objective necessity already inherent between two or more moral agents and their needs within naturalism. I would concede that you could solve this by accepting it is the nature of god’s goodness that creates the objective good environment, not the commands.

    “The problem with the argument of moral consensus is that it only shows we believe the same things about morality--not that morality is grounded in naturalism!”

    This belies that there are different kinds of consensus. A scientific consensus has more weight than a group of inter-subjective consensus, which usually has more weight than singular personal subjective opinion. At the end of the day whole societies could be way off the mark in the scope of history. As Kagan also noted, it takes ages to learn (and habitually imbed) moral facts, just as it takes long periods of time to learn scientific facts.

    “It's by definition impossible to test naturally and get a non-natural cause from that testing alone!”

    I agree, but again, I’m not trying to disprove it, only show that it is either not necessary because it is superfluous or irrelevant because it is superfluous.

    Thanks again for your thoughtful replies, and I always appreciate your congeniality.

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  94. Harris could not refute William so he resorted to bad-mouthing Christianity, which worked very well...in wasting time.

    Craig won hands down.

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  95. Thanks for commenting! I definitely agree that it wasn't very close, though I'll readily concede that Harris did better than Krauss did.

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  96. Funny you mention the idea of a race of "utility monsters", Randy. I'm reading a sci-fi / fantasy series called The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker, who has a philosophy PhD. The book takes place in a vaguely medieval world, except that humanity is in danger of being exterminated by a race of aliens who get sexual gratification out of murder and torture. However, since landing on Earwa (the name of the fictional continent in which the story takes place), these aliens have been exposed to the monotheistic theology of humanity, and have actually come to believe in it - along with all its implications, including eternal damnation for one's sins.

    In a panic over what they see as an unjust fate (that is, being eternally damned for acting in accordance with their insuppressible nature), they have come to the solution of eradicating every human soul in the world. By extinguishing all the conscious souls for whom morality is relevant, morality itself would effectively be removed from the world. By this, these beings hope to "seal the world shut" from heaven and hell.

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  97. David, thanks for commenting! What an interesting idea indeed (and terrifying!). Of course, the aliens would be acting illogically if in fact morality is truly objective; removing the ones who owe moral obligation does nothing to abrogate their responsibility, nor does it successfully get rid of the locus of objective morality. But it's interesting to see the way it could be portrayed. All the more reason to have a proper moral theory, I say! :)

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