Whatever you bind on earth shall having been bound in heaven... and vice versa.

A. T. Robertson, one of this century's leading Greek scholars, also comments on Matthew 16:19: "To `bind' in rabbinical language is to forbid, to `loose' is to permit. Peter would be like a rabbi who passes on many points. Rabbis of the school of Hillel `loosed' many things that the school of Schammai `bound.' The teaching of Jesus is the standard for Peter and for all preachers of Christ. Note the future perfect indicative..., a state of completion. All this assumes, of course, that Peter's use of the keys will be in accord with the teaching and mind of Christ."2 Dr. Robertson's comment about the use of the future perfect tense is important. If we were to translate the passage very literally (though awkwardly in English), it would read "...whatever you loose on earth shall having been loosed in heaven." This shows that the disciples were not unilaterally to decide a matter, thus binding "heaven" to their decision. It means that their decision, as Dr. Robertson suggests, will be in line with what already was God's mind on the issue.

-http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue1.htm

The God Delusion

When Augustine Sounds Suspiciously Non-Calvinistic

St. Aureluis Augustine

(354-430), Bishop of Hippo (now Annaba, Algeria)

Augustine -- God is not the author of the evil a man does though he is the author of the evil a man suffers.*

Evodius -- Is there some other author of the kind of evil which we do not attribute to the action of God?

Augustine -- There certainly is, for we cannot say that it happened without author. But if you ask who that is I cannot tell you. For there is no one single author. Every evil man is the author of his evil deeds. If you wonder how that is, consider what we have just said: evil deeds are punished by the justice of God. They would not be justly punished unless they were done voluntarily.

From, "On Free Will".

---------------------
*Augustine's conception of evil might vary from that of the modern man. The evil that he says God does to evil men is only an execution of justice. Augustine rightly refuses to affirm that God ever commits or causes moral evil, even though He is often responsible for causing destruction, or has good reasons for allowing moral evil to be committed by other agents.

Although my Calvinist brothers claim Augustine for their own, he comes through for me in the clutch. Here we find him denying that God is the author of the evil a man does, a position contra modern compatibalist Calvinism. Moreover, he affirms that punishment is only just when the action being punished was committed voluntarily.

Before you jump to conclusions read the rest of his work, wherein he likes to do things such as solve Epicurus' puzzle. And remember that he is only here making relatively broad strokes, not trying to elaborate all at once on why destruction and evil often befall men who practice good deeds, or follow Christ. He also delves into the pathology of evil decisions, and the psychology of atheism.

a question for lots of animal rights people.

Tonight at my Starbucks the following exchange took place between myself and a coworker who prides herself on being vegetarian for reasons related to animal rights.

Amber: Hey, do you have any chicken left for me? (I had just eaten some lemon chicken from pick-up-sticks)

Me: No! Sorry, I ate every last bit of my chicken.

Amber: I’m just kidding silly! Don’t you remember I’m a vegetarian?

Me: Oh yeah. (fake laugh)

And then I got to thinking.

In my experience, by and large, those who are animal rights advocates (and not just people who happen to think animals should be treated fairly, but people who are nearly militant about the subject), also happen to support abortion rights. So would they have a problem with eating veal (or any other organism in its fetal state) if we were able to harvest them without doing harm to any other animals in the process? For the person who thinks human organisms have no rights when in the fetal stage, what would be the consistency in thinking non-human organism do?

Or better yet. Peter Singer (bioethics chair at Princeton, author of Animal Liberation) has argued that it’s completely arbitrary to define life in terms of the born/unborn distinction since the born and unborn organism, biologically speaking, is still one and the same organism. In fact he thinks the only non-arbitrary demarcation between life and no-life (when it comes to the endowment of rights) is consciousness; if an organism is conscious it is an organism which has rights. Part of such reasoning is that an unconscious biological entity can hardly be thought of a thing deserving of rights (think of flagellum and tangerines), and furthermore a biologically unconscious entity cannot be self-conscious and hence cannot even value or reckon its own existence, much less feel pain and experience the world. Such entities, Singer thinks, are not the sort of things which we think have rights. A curious implication of this idea is that the right to abortion currently tolerated to various degrees in nearly the entire western world, and almost the whole world, would also include infanticide, since, as empirical psychology has shown, infants are typically not conscious (or at least exhibit no signs of self-consciousness anyway) until the age of two or so.* In such cases Peter Singer thinks that the reasoning (correct, in his view) concerning the right to abortion combined with the only non-arbitrary criteria of life (with respect to rights) justifies the killing of human organisms before they reach the age of two (or whenever they exhibit self-consciousness). God bless empiricism.

So what if scientists were able to clone zygotes (which already exist in laboratory freezers throughout the world) of all the animals humans eat; then harvest them through the fetal stage and through the early stages of infancy; and then replace their brains with a synthetic silicon one that, unlike the brain, does not produce consciousness; and then have them wirelessly hooked up to computers which neurologically get the animals to do all the things animals usually do (but be not conscious, they would be zombie animals); and then when all is ready and plump we stop their biological life (we would kill them), and then we eat them. Assuming that this is all technologically and economically feasible, would the eating of animals be justified? It seems that on Singer’s terms such animals would be in nothing more than fantastic vegetables and vegetarians are okay with eating vegetables. It seems in such a scenario there would be clearly nothing wrong with eating meat.

___________________________
Tangent note:

* I think it’s impossible, on principle, to know whether something is conscious or not from any point of view other than the point of view of the subject whose consciousness is in question (that is, an objective point of view) which would include any and all sciences. To be conscious is never identical to exhibiting conscious behavior, and if something is conscious the only thing that could ever know it is the one who is conscious, or perhaps a mind vicarious enough for such a feat (God’s mind).

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/

contra the Dostoevskian argument…

Throughout the Brothers Karamazov the dictum “there is no virtue if there is no immortality” or “if there is no immortality then all things are permitted” is repeated. In fact the dictum is indispensable to understanding the character development of Ivan Karamazov, which is a crucial subplot to the novel. The purpose of this post is to dissect various interpretations of the dictum and show that they’re all unsound.

Alas, this is pretty difficult move for me to make. Dostoevsky has been a major spiritual and philosophical mentor for me in the last seven years or so. His novels and short stories, specifically the Brothers K and Crime and Punishment, as well as The Dream of a Ridiculous Man have all been pivotal works that help me make sense of the Universe. So disagreeing with him on a central theme of his literary Summa Theologica is definitely no pain free enterprise. But I must side with Aristotle and Jesus here, that the Truth must be honored above my friends…

So what are we to make of the dictum “if there is no immortality then all things are permitted”? The most common reading of it comes with an implied premise that fleshes things out, which would go something like this:

(IP1) If all mankind were not immortal, then at some point in time, say the heat death of the universe, there would be no humanity, in which case how well or how horribly men lived their lives when they existed would not make a difference.

Well, what are we to make of (IP1)? I feel comfortable conceding that at such a point in the universe, when all the energy has depleted and life can no longer be sustained, there won’t be any humanity, and if that’s the case what humans did at one time won’t seem to matter any longer. But how does this fact, a fact about events after the existence of mankind, have any bearing on the facts of earlier time when different facts did obtain? Even if my soul isn’t immortal, and when I die I return to the dust from which I came, how does that change the fact that right now what I do and how I live my life does make a difference? Even if I’m not immortal not all things are permitted simply because certain things can be extremely detrimental to my life in the here and now. For instance, I wouldn’t permit myself to drive recklessly because I don’t want to kill myself or anyone else, simply because doing so will lower the quality of my own life or someone else’s or both, and I just so happen to want my life to be fulfilling, so I won’t drive recklessly. How does a fact about the future, a fact like “I will exist in the future” or “I will no longer exist at some point in the future”, add a variable to my reasoning about whether I should drive recklessly today? So (IP1) seems to be false, and patently so.

So what’s another way or reading “if there’s no immortality then all things are permitted”? One could posit a causal reading, where immortality itself bears (necessary) causal relations to the existence of morality, such that if there is no immortality then morality is impossible. But what in the world could such a premise look like? Immanuel Kant, the notorious atheologian actually came up with one. It went something like this:

(IP2) Immortality is necessary in this way: We are commanded by the moral law to be morally perfect. Since ‘ought’ implies ‘can,’ we must be able to reach moral perfection. But we cannot attain perfection in this life, for the task is an infinite one. So there must be an afterlife in which we continue to make a progress toward the ideal.*

There are two steps in the premise; step 1 is that moral perfection cannot be attained in this life, and step 2 is that the task is an infinite one. I think both steps are false. Step 1 says that moral perfection is impossible in this life, which I think is false.
**amendment**
L pointed out my equivocation on my last argument against step one, so I’ll try again. Step one is a supporting premise for the necessary causal connection between immortality and morality, and thus it needs to show not that immortality might be required for moral perfection for just some circumstances, but that it’s required in all possible worlds. But clearly, if God had so chosen, it could have been the case that certain men would be glorified (and hence become morally perfect) in this life and not the one to come, in which case immortality would not be necessary for moral perfection. If someone were to say that moral perfection is impossible in this life they would need to do more than just say that no man has, because merely insisting on that fact (if it is one) only provides grounds to say that it’s not the case that men reach moral perfection in this life, but rather that it’s necessarily impossible (in the sense that God couldn’t have made it possible) that men could attain moral perfection in this life, since that’s what (IP2) is trying to show.

The second step was to say that the task of attaining moral perfection is in an infinite one so an afterlife is needed to progress towards the ideal. This is certainly a vexed stipulation; if ‘ought’ does imply ‘can,’ then at some finite point moral perfection can or will be obtained, in which case the infinite time line just became a finite subset, in which case an infinite amount of time is not required. And if an infinite amount of time is not required, there is no reason to think that immortality is required for the attainment of moral perfection, in which case step two is also false.


Is there possibly a third reading of Dostoevsky’s dictum? Another causal reading might go something like this:

(IP3): God’s existence is necessary for the existence of morality, and if God exists then immortality is also true, therefore without immortality all things are permitted (there is no morality).

It could be argued that God’s existence is necessary for morality, but one would be hard pressed to distinguish morality’s connection to God’s existence from the existence of everything else in the universe, simply because if God does exist then His existence is necessary to all other things. In other words, one would have to show the salient differences between morality and say, the existence of grapes, for God’s existence would be necessary for grapes just as much as it would be for the existence of morality. I’ve yet to figure out what this nexus might like look like, and until I see it the argument “morality, therefore God” seems no more enlightening than “grapes, therefore God”.

Furthermore, if it was the case that God’s existence was necessary for the existence of morality, what in the world does that fact have to do with the supposed connection between immortality and morality, and how would the existence of morality have any more connection to immortality than it would to God’s omniscience of omnipresence, etc.? So even if there is a successful moral argument Dostoevsky’s dictum still fails the relevancy test.
____________­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________
Notes

* This summary of Kant’s argument can be found in Louis Pojman, Ethical Theory, pg. 602.

Creationism Grounds a Reasonable Environmentalism

[When] it comes to broadening the reach of the environmental movement to red state America, the real savior turns out to be the Rev. Richard Cizik of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, America's most influential Christian lobbying group, representing 45,000 churches and roughly 30 million believers across the country. According to two new documentaries, it is evangelicals like Cizik who may do more to make global warming a front-and-center issue than hundreds of white-wine fundraisers in Bel-Air and Manhattan's Upper West Side.

calendarlive.com: THE BIG PICTURE / PATRICK GOLDSTEIN - Believers preach gospel of green

Genesis 1: 27-28 says "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens nad over every living thing that moves on the earth."

I know of a lady who has dominion over her backyard. She walks out there and says "hello ladies" to her flowers, and smiles. I hear her garden is beautiful. She lovingly waters and feeds her plants, and makes sure to keep the weeds out. She spends lots of time with her backyard. Sometimes she has to cut the rose bushes way back and it almost seems cruel to completely cut off branches and the bushes look barren afterwards, but sure enough they grow back even more full and beautiful.

God pronounced His creation "good" several times. Then He gave us stewardship over it, telling us to have dominion over it, just as He has dominion over us. What a priviledge and responsibility to be faithful caretakers of the earth!

He also made man in His image, and called us "very good", as opposed to just "good". We are set apart from the rest of creation. There is a thick ontological line between man and beast, and between beast and plant, and between plant and earth. Let's not confuse ourselves with nature, but let's take really good care of it.