contra the possibility of atheological morality

Twice has the question of whether morality can exist without God come up at Raw Theology. It has been been answered "no" by two people coming from two different perspectives. A key sentence from a treasured theist on board with Raw Theology, Derek, in his post contra Dostoevsky goes as follows,

“morality, therefore God” seems no more enlightening than “grapes, therefore God”

A resident atheist, my beloved cousin Chris, issued forth a similar claim, which can be found in his reply to my second major post on the existence of God. The claim is developed across several key sentences, and they are:

"Many of the nicest, most caring, most giving, most honest people I know are either atheist or claim a non-Abrahamic religion. Many societies, some quite advanced have existed peacefully for eons before and after monotheism."

"There are many secular explanations for and systems of morality."

"Their is a standard to the way the morality of any given society is formed, but not to specific morals themselves."

Well today I am going to beg to differ with my two friends and attempt to defend the proposition that morality cannot be coherently posited while denying the existence of God.

Let me first address Derek's statement. I hope to demonstrate that morality is so tied to God's existence that to believe in morality renders an atheist's view incoherent. And I hope to do this in a way that is distinct from my argument for God's existence from grapes. However, I am slightly disappointed that you failed to give my cosmological argument even one glance during the course of your post. For, certainly grapes are composed of matter and energy, a fact that lends itself to my argument such that I am justified in restating it thus:

1. [GRAPES] exist
2. The first law of thermodynamics states that [GRAPES] can be exchanged, but [GRAPES] can[NOT] be created [OR] destroyed
3. Therefore either
     a) [GRAPES] have always existed, or
     b) [GRAPES] had a beginning
4. It is impossible to transgress an infinite amount of time
5. Therefore (3a) is false
6. Therefore (3b) is true [entailed by (3), (4), and (5)]
7. Therefore either
     a) [GRAPES] caused themselves to come into being, or
     b) [GRAPES] were caused to come into being by something that was [NOT A GRAPE]
10. For an object to cause something, that object must exist
11. Before [GRAPES] existed, [GRAPES] did not exist
12. Therefore, [GRAPES] did not cause their own existence [entailed by (10) and (11)]
12. Therefore (7a) is false
13. Therefore (7b) is true [entailed by (7), (8), (9), (10), (11), and (12)]

Ok, this seems a little silly. The second law doesn't say that grapes can be exchanged but never created or destroyed. But the fact that matter and energy can be exchange but never created or destroyed does entail the inability of grapes to come into existence ex nihilo. So with a single dose of imagination - POW! You can run the argument again and come out with a conclusion: grapes came into existence by the power of something that was not a grape!

Surely even the "trousered ape", as C. S. Lewis might say, would be swift to point out that although God is not a grape, the argument does not entail His existence. There might be some other non-grape being who created grapes. Indeed, we know that vines bring forth grapes. So to the grape, the tree is god. Without mention of the infinite regress problem, we can reconstruct the argument again in a more natural way to come out with a narrow enough conclusion, one that restricts the categories that the Prime Grape Mover falls within so that only God qualifies.

i. Grapes exist
ii. Grapes are composed of matter and energy
1. Therefore matter and energy exist [entailed by (i) and (ii)]
2. The first law of thermodynamics states that matter and energy can be exchanged, but neither can be created nor destroyed
3. Therefore either
     a) Matter and energy have always existed, or
     b) Matter and energy had a beginning
4. It is impossible to transgress an infinite amount of time
5. Therefore (3a) is false
6. Therefore (3b) is true [entailed by (3), (4), and (5)]
7. Therefore either
     a) Matter and energy caused themselves to come into being, or
     b) Matter and energy were caused to come into being by something that was neither matter nor energy
10. For an object to cause something, that object must exist
11. Before matter and energy existed, matter and energy did not exist
12. Therefore, matter and energy did not cause their own existence [entailed by (10) and (11)]
12. Therefore (7a) is false
13. Therefore (7b) is true [entailed by (7), (8), (9), (10), (11), and (12)]

And so it can be demonstrated that the argument "grapes, therefore God" is in fact enlightening. To compare the argument "morality, therefore God" to it is a complement, not an insult. That you gave my argument no credence, or even so much as a shout-out, only troubles me.

Or is this fact, that the existence of anything (e.g. grapes) intensely implies a Creator, so obvious that the fact that I had to be enlightened by such an argument to see it renders me a fool? If so, I am at peace. I am however, most definitely a theist. And I do find the grapological argument quite strong.

There remain some issues with regard to Derek's claim. Perhaps he would grant that (if theism is true) then the existence of morality would necessarily require the existence of God. But this fact would not stand in any distinction to the fact that (if theism is true) then the existence of (insert noun, e.g. grapes) would necessarily require the existence of God. To one who does not accept theism and does not accept any cosmological (or grapological) argument, the moral argument holds no more persuasive power, and is in fact not augmentative to the discussion. As I stated earlier, I do in fact intend to show that the moral argument is a distinct and helpful one.

The other potential issue with regard to Derek's claim is related to the fact that he may not be rejecting any physical or nonphysical cosmological argument. Perhaps he is saying that to perceive one thing as right and another is wrong does not require one to ever think about God. Maybe it is so that people are capable of apprehending a moral the way they apprehend a grape: they just see it. Although they see one with their souls and one with their eyes, neither requires them to affirm or deny God's existence. Any man can perceive that a grape is one way or another, and any man can perceive that morality is one way or another. So an atheist would be no more incoherent when he says "that grape is purple" than when he says "that rape is wrong". I hope to also defeat this, showing that affirming such a moral as "that rape is wrong" cannot be done without founding it on the affirmation of the existence of God.

Before I begin what I came here to do, let me entertain Chris' claims as well. His first sentence merely observes the fact that many atheists (or those outside of the basic judeo-christian-islamic worldview, henceforth "atheists") are moral people. I must first admit that the Bible teaches that no man is righteous, and further, no man can be righteous without God's supernatural grace. But this is ultimately irrelevant to the argument at large. The fact remains that there are many (even my fellow theists should admit; at least seemingly) moral atheists. But is that any sort of rebuttal? It would be, if it were true that humans could not behave in ways inconsistent with their worldview. However, I am a Christian and I sin. I am able to behave in a manner that I believe is morally wrong and damaging to my body and soul, and others around me. To be more narrow with my counterexamples, permit another more specific and emotionally charged. I saw Diane Sawyer interview a rapist who said that he believed rape was morally wrong, even at the time of the incident. So the mere fact that atheists can behave morally does not demonstrate that it is false that a theoretical system of morality is worthless, hollow, and incoherent without being rooted in belief in God. I will show you that the smartest and most coherent of atheists admit this fact.

Chris' second claim is only the observation that there are many atheistic systems of morality, and there are even explanations of the existence of morality from an atheistic perspective. Without sounding rude, I can only ask you to furnish such a system and such an explanation. When you do, I will show you where the fallacy lies. The mere existence of such systems and explanations does not entail their coherence.

Chris' third sentence is interesting. He says, that "[there] is a standard to the way the morality of any given society is formed, but not to specific morals themselves." To be perfectly honest, I am perplexed by this. I would think that a Darwinian would not think that there is a standard to the way moral systems are formed. It should be obvious that before humans had evolved, morality did not exist - at least, morality did not form in the same standard way that it does in human societies today! What was this argument intended to show? How do the lines of reasoning go? I just can't seem to grasp what it is I am supposed to be defending against here.

But the second part of this sentence I think I do understand, and I commend your honesty. You recognize that without God there can be no lasting standard of morality, meaning that if there is not a person who comes first and follows after and has the authority to impose and enforce His morals, then morals are not built-in to our reality. Rather, they are relative to each individual. This is a point that I fear Derek, in his post, fails to admit. I will show that morality cannot be called such if it is not transcendent.

Now that I have an idea of the specific reasons why God's existence is not believed to be necessary for the existence of morality, I can commence my own, feeble attempt to support my claim. Let me reiterate it so that you don't have to scroll to the top of the page to remember it.

Morality cannot be coherently posited while denying the existence of God.

STAGE 1: Morality Circumscribed
To be fair, I want to be operating under the most popular definition of "morality" that native English speakers use in everyday speech. Whether either morality or God exist is not the issue here. The issues is whether morality's existence can be coherently affirmed during the denial of God's existence. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "morality" as:

mo•ral•ity |məˌrølədi| |mɔˌrølədi|
noun ( pl. -ties)
principles concerning *the distinction between right and wrong* or good
and bad behavior.
• behavior as it is affected by the *observation of these principles* : the past few
years have seen a *sharp decline in morality*.
...
• the *extent to which an action is right or wrong* : behind all the arguments lies
the issue of the morality of the possession of nuclear weapons.
• behavior or qualities judged to be good : they *saw the morality of equal pay*.
...

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French moralite or late Latin
moralitas, from Latin moralis (see moral).

The asterisks are mine.

So for instance, the example usage of "morality" given by the dictionary, "...behind all the arguments lies the issue of the morality of the possession of nuclear weapons", demonstrates that morality is typically used to reference a perceived standard present in reality. Arguing over whether something is moral only makes sense if morality transcends the humans involved in the debate. If morality were relative, or democratically determined, we could all vote on the issue without argument and the decision would be what it is, not objectively good or bad, but preferred, or arbitrarily deemed "good" by the most number of people. Or perhaps what one might call "relative morality" may still lend itself to debate, but the debate would not be for the purpose of discovering whether or not possession of nuclear weapons is moral. The debate would be about persuading each other to adopt the other's reasons for or against such possession. These reasons would not be rightly called "morals", but could include things like 'allowing possession of nuclear weapons increases our chances of dying before we want to'. The debate could even be about whether this claim is true. But the debate is not about trying to uncover the moral fact of the matter.

So let me highlight what I see to be just a few of the relevant essential attributes of morality according to Oxford's definition:

1. It's principles determine what is right and wrong
2. It's principles are observed
3. It's practice can decline among a group of people
4. It's principles are that by which actions are measured
5. It's presence in something can be seen

Let's elaborate on these key points a little. It is the principles of morality that determine right and wrong. This is to deny that it is human judgment that determines what is right and wrong. Or rather, it is to say that belief in the concept of "morality" (as popularly defined and used here) entails a denial that human judgment determines what is right and what is wrong. Rather, human judgment should aim to adjudicate based on what is right and what is wrong.

The statement that the principles of morality are observed is also very significant. For, if the principles of morality are observed, then they are not made. This is to say that belief in the concept of "morality" (as popularly defined and used here) entails a denial that morality is created by humans. One might object by saying that morality can be first culturally constructed and then subsequently observed. While there is no logical contradiction in such a sentence, it does render morality relative. This is where we should note again the position of Chris, who says that "[their] is a standard to the way the morality of any given society is formed, but not to specific morals themselves".

Chris, I hate to play semantics, but a morality that is relative is scarcely a morality at all. That is, it is not "morality" as popularly defined.

For morality that is relative is at odds with the essential attributes of morality as stated above, accordingly:

1. "Relative morality's" principles determine what is preferred and not preferred (rather than what is right or wrong)
2. It's principles are created (rather than observed)
3. It's constitution can metamorphose among a group of people (morality is not something that can be deviated from by a group, because as the group changes so does its morality; for the moral relativist it's not as if morality exists as some objective standard out there in the ether)
4. It's principles are that by which actions are described
5. It's presence in something cannot be

The last point is worthy of elaboration. If morality is relative, then it is not the type of thing that can be said to be in something. Another way to put this is that relative morality is not the proper ordering of objects. Rather, relative morality is an artificial standard generated by an individual. So to make any moral judgment (e.g. rape is wrong) you are not saying anything about the rape. You are in actuality saying something about how you perceive rape. So, to be accurate you should say "rape is not an action that conforms to my sense of right and wrong". Only, even this statement implies that right and wrong is something that you sense. Really, you should say "rape is not an action that conforms to my created system of right and wrong".

Needless to say, "relative morality" is an oxymoron. You are welcome to deny the existence of morality, but let's not fudge widely held definitions here.

STAGE 1.5: Relative Morality Explored
There are also obvious difficulties with such relativistic systems. For example, let's pretend that there lives a ruthless dictator who has convinced an entire nation that it is a superior race, and that it is good to kill "inferior" peoples like, let's say... Jews. Because there is no moral law inherent in reality, no transcendent standard, no objective morality (i.e. no morality), the behavior of such a hypothetical nation cannot be judged as "wrong". At the very least it is not blameworthy or evil.

Who gives other people groups the authority to extend their culturally constructed "morality" over the Jew killers? The relativist might say that authority is also a cultural construction. In which case it can only be said that if enough of the outside world had the desire to stop such behavior, there is no real reason why they shouldn't. In fact, there really aren't any shouldn'ts. So if other cultures valued such dictums as "don't hurt Jews who haven't hurt you", then they are free to violently stop the Jew killers. But they cannot call such practice "evil" in any meaningful way.

Furthermore, this boils down "oughts" into "cans", and the result is the rule of the strongest. For, no one can call a terrorist "morally wrong" for flying a hypothetical plane into a building. In fact, no one can say that if terrorists gained enough power to take over the free world it would be "evil". To be accurate they would have to say that they do not like it, do not prefer it, or are simply choosing to react violently toward it.

There is also a troublesome meta-ethical problem here. This is really the problem I have been trying to demonstrate, but let me at it from another angle. Consider an atheist's "moral" system I recently came across online:

Google says "do no evil". What exactly does that mean?...

I've found a satisfactory answer to the question above that works for me personally. I'd say a "reasonable" position is one where you give more than you consume. Suppose some action (A) results in some subjective harm (B) through a series of complex interactions (like eating a hamburger which has resulted in the death of a cow). Now, as a result of you doing action A, some other series of events (C) happens which result in a more subjective good (D) (for example, that more cows than the number of burgers you've eaten end up being alive). Then I'd say your action (A) is reasonable and you've done "good".

Now you just have to average and integrate over your lifetime and then see whether the reasonableness standard above applies. I think humans generally are designed in a flawed manner who end up consuming a lot more than they give. So a lot of the elements of the design have to change in the future. Working on that aspect itself and making progress towards it is a way of giving back. People do give back consciously (like scientists trying to invent ways to curb pollution) and unconsciously (farmers who feed the scientists and janitors who clean their offices).

Regarding defining what "good" and "harm" in the first place is also a difficult problem. I primarily use the golden rule and its negation to figure this out, usually putting myself in the place of the subject being evaluated. For example, would I mind/accept being eaten to ensure the survival of another species? The application of this rule also prevents the overuse of "ends justifies the means" actions. So while I may be okay with eating a hamburger to satisfy my hunger through the tortured analysis above, I won't be okay with killing another human being to ensure my own survival.

Overall, I apply the analysis above to every action I undertake and while I also have other ethical standards, this is a guiding principle of the overall path my life has taken.

-Prof. (Rev.) (Dr.) Ram Samudrala, Ph.D., of University of Washington in Seattle

The bolded emphasis is mine, by the way. Now, while this may be called a "system of morality", it begs a very important question:

Why is it wrong to transgress the golden rule?

So, while it proposes a moral, it does not give grounds for it. The moral is selected because of criteria that is completely subjective and meaningless.

In fact, whatever your ethic, you will always have to answer the question of why. Consider the following dialogue with an atheist:

L: Do you think murder is wrong?
Atheist-man: That is a wrong-headed question, as murder is defined as "wrongful killing"
L: Ok, then do you think murder is possible?
Atheist-man: Of course! Criminals murder every day.
L: So it is possible to kill in such a way that it can be called "wrong"?
Atheist-man: Yes of course.
L: Under what circumstances?
Atheist-man: Well, an easy one to judge would be the case on the news last week where a man took his infant by the feet and slammed the baby's head onto the toilet bowl. That was clearly morally abhorant.
L: Why was it wrong?
Atheist-man: Because infants should not have their lives intentionally taken from them, especially without reason.
L: I disagree. I think it is perfectly acceptable to wantonly drive around and put babies on spikes, for example.
Atheist-man: You wouldn't have wanted someone to do that to you.
L: So. I allow myself to behave in ways I would not like other to behave.
Atheist-man: You shouldn't do that.
L: Why not?
Atheist-man: Because if everyone did that, violent anarchy would ensue.
L: Why is violent anarchy morally wrong?
Atheist-man: Because it could end the human race.
L: Why is it a moraly good thing to keep the human race alive?
Atheist-man: Because I personally do not want to die.
L: Honestly, I am good at killing infants secretly, and my actions will not ultimattely cause violent anarchy, really. And besides, you are an adult, I won't kill you. I have nothing binding me to the ethic that I should behave in ways that would still allow society to function if everyone adopted them. I just do what I want.
Atheist-man: Well, I still think it's wrong.
L: It is "wrong" for you, but not "wrong" for me.
Atheist-man: Well, I am going to vote in favor of legislation that aligns with my own personal "right" and "wrong". The law enforcement will stop you.
L: You are welcome to do that. But you cannot call my actions or beliefs "evil". Moreover, I happen to be stronger than you, as I have hired an army, and my revolution will put me in charge of America. MY legislation will be passed and enforced. Your own individual, arbitrarily selected "morals" will be meaningless. You have no grounds for morality.
Atheist-man: Then you answer yourself; why is it wrong to kill infants?
L: I believe that morality is objective, and it consists of the intentional proper ordering of things (i.e. it flows from God's very character). You and I both happen to perceive plainly that it is wrong to kill infants. But my worldview is more coherent, because I can make definite claims about morality. More specifically, I believe that every human is an image of God Himself, and bears intrinsic value and worth. It is objectively right to respect every human for this reason. I do not value humans based only on sentiment or function, for how would that be grounds for calling infant-kiling wrong? As long as it is done in a way that doesn't harm society as a whole, then who cares? Babies take up resources without putting back into the economy until later. But if I can't raise it properly, then it will probably not work anyway. It will end up homeless like me. Why can you impose your sentiment on me, if I don't have the means to support a baby, and I just want to kill my own baby?

Under these beliefs, who would take care of the homeless, the old, the prisoners on death row? It would be functionally better for society as a whole to stop their draining of our resources and kill them. And the Muslims? Why not kill them all to take care of any threat? Well, my view is that violence is destructive and that is wrong because God Himself is orderly. Even Muslims are made in His image, and therefore have intrinsic value and worth. I have beliefs that ground human rights and objective morality.

See, we both see certain things as "wrong", but my "wrong" actually means something. Shouldn't your very own comittment to calling certain actions incontrovertibly wrong tell you something?

Let it be known, that I am not accusing atheism as ineveitably leading to anything immoral. What I am saying however, is that no atheistic system of morality can be meaningful or theoretically grounded in anything. I know I haven't explained what God has to do with it yet, but bear with me. I am still exploring the difficulties with relative morality.

At Cal High, were I went to school, I had an English teacher named Scott Atkinson. He was a staunch atheist and said that we didn't need religion in order to have morality. Rather, morality could be summed in the statement "don't hurt anybody". While that is basically a good claim, he had no grounds for why it is wrong to hurt people. Aside from the difficulties presented in determining what it means to hurt somebody, and whether there is ever a justification for violently stopping one man from killing other men, it leaves open the meta-ethical question.

I remember another conversation I had with Chris in which he gave another argument for the relativity of morality that went something like

"if I was forced to take a stand on whether I believe morality to be objective, I would have to say 'no', because there has never been even one ethic that every culture has agreed on."

I don't remember my reply, but I thought I might mention that arguments like these don't entail their conclusions. I can give a counter-example. Imagine a time before satellites and other complex or helpful technologies with regard to cartography. Now, suppose we checked back through all the records of civilizations' understanding of the shape of Europe. It is not hard to imagine that it could be possible that every map might be different. But that perceptions of the geography varied would not imply that the very nature of the reality of the geigraphy was relative. The shape is what it is, whether or not it is mapped. This is not meant to constitute an argument for the existence of objective morality, but only to point to the difficulty in arguing for moral relativism, and really a charge to abandon the term "morality" if you want to call such a thing relative.

Like I promised, permit some citations of the cleverest and most coherent atheists ever to live.

Morality as a pose—that offends our taste nowadays. That's also progress, just as our fathers progressed when religion as a pose finally offended their taste, including hostility to and a Voltairean bitterness against religion (and everything that formerly went along with the sign language of free thinkers). It's the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, which makes the sound of all Puritan litanies, all moral sermons, and petty bourgeois respectability sound out of tune.

-Nietzche, Beyond Good and Evil

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

Life has no meaning the moment you loose the illusion of being eternal.

-Sartre, (well-known quotes)


Human freedom is always oriented towards some goal that is at least implicitly practical. "This absolute end, this imperative which is transcendent yet acquiesced in, which freedom itself adopts as its own, is what we call a value." Sartre says, "man has to be considered as the being through which the Good comes into the world"; yet he says that the Good is universal. Therefore, the morals of the world are universal, but the people in the world decide what is right and wrong. "Man us the source of all good and all evil and judges himself in the name of the good and evil he creates. Therefore a priori neither good nor evil."

-The Philosopher's Lighthouse on Sartre on Morality

It is really no secret that atheists like Nietzche and Sartre have called on all atheists to stop talking about things like morality and meaning, because they don't exist. Why do modern atheists continue to talk about these things? I believe that it is because there is a natural moral law built-in to us and inherent in reality, becaue God exists. These other guys have had to do significant work to get to a place in which they were comfortable denying meaning and morality. Well, I dunno if going crazy by the end of one's life can be considered comfortable...

So it can be seen then, that morality (if it exists) is objective, and it is incoherent and problematic to try to form a system of "oughts" while affirming otherwise.

Chris, as to your statement that there are many secular explanations of morality, I have a note. Nietzche wrote a book called "The Genealogy of Morals" in which he attempts to demonstrate how it is that this "fictitious notion" called "morality" evolved in us. This may be an explanation of morality as a concept, but I hope to show that there cannot be an atheistic explanation for the existance of morality itself. Hopefully I will show that if you agree that morality exists, then you should believe that God exists.

STAGE 2: That Morality Comes From Persons
In the above quotation of Sartre, we find "man has to be considered as the being through which the Good comes into the world". I spoke with Derek on the phone the other night, and he admitted that "without agents, there is no morality". I believe that this is similar to what Sartre means. For, without any persons there is nobody to care, no judge, no creator of morals, no rational souls, no reasons, no meaning. Even my understanding of Chris' position is that morality is relative to individual persons.


STAGE 3: Therefore God Exists
Derek also made the admission: that the fact that humans can perceive that one thing is right and another is wrong demonstrates that a transcendent morality exists. But really, the fact of the matter (as seen in stages 1 and 1.5) is that what we mean when we say "morality" is something profound and outside ourselves; someting permanent, something worth enforcing.

So it the argument becomes natural:

1. Morality can only come from a person
2. Objective, permanent morality (morality) exists
3. There must therefore be an everlasting Person - a moral lawgiver

So, while someone can perceive something as right or wrong, it is incoherent to admit this and deny that it points to God at the same time. What else could the the source of an eternal value?

Romans 3:21, "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it".

See also:
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/meta-eth.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-arguments-god/