Argument from morality
Encyclopedia
The argument from morality is one of many arguments for the existence of God. It comes in different forms, all aiming to support the claim that God
exists with observations about morality
. Its counterpoint is generally the Problem of evil
.
.
In its most general form, the moral argument is that:
One may ask why the required recognition and upholding of moral norms must be carried out by divine intelligence, as opposed to human intelligence. Alfred Edward Taylor
explains that the moral law holds at all times and everywhere, whereas the human mind is limited in its comprehension and scope. Only a sovereign God could properly detect infringements of the moral law and apply sanctions. In his Letter concerning Toleration
, John Locke
contends that one of the few religious stances that the commonwealth cannot tolerate is atheism
; atheists, Locke says, have no motive to act upon their promises and oaths when doing so is against their self-interest.
Here, a transcendental fact is one that cannot be stated entirely in the language of the natural sciences, and that is true irrespective of human opinion. Theism provides the most intelligible explanation for such moral facts via the notion that rightness is one and the same property as the property of being commanded by God (wrongness consists in being forbidden by God).
In order for this argument to work, it should be shown that a non-theistic worldview cannot adequately account for transcendental normative facts.
Critics suggest that this argument appeals to a divine command theory
of ethics. Objections to divine command theories of ethics are numerous, most stemming from forms of the Euthyphro dilemma
. Is an action good because God commanded it, or did God command it because it is good? The first horn would imply that what is good is arbitrary; God decides what is right and wrong in the same way that a government decides which side of the street cars should drive on. The second horn could imply that God made his commands in accordance with transcendental facts that exist apart from God — exactly the types of facts that the theist is asking the non-theist to provide an account for. The argument is thus turned over on its head: the theist must account for the existence of these transcendental facts without invoking God. The non-theist can thus recognize the transcendentality of moral facts and yet still reject premise (3) on the basis that a theistic hypothesis still leaves transcendental moral facts unexplained.
Proponents of the argument maintain that the Euthyphro dilemma can be adequately resolved. Thomas Aquinas
, for example, explains that God indeed commands something because it is good, but the reason it is good is that "good is an essential part of God's nature". In other words, the definition of good becomes "that which is in God's nature".
However, critics respond that Aquinas' solution merely pushes the problem up one level, giving rise to a similar dilemma over what dictates God's nature. If God dictates his own nature (and therefore which things are good), morality again becomes arbitrary. If God can't control his own nature, then morality is again subject to some force external to God.
Friedrich Nietzsche
suggests elaborate explanations of how initially amoral social practices became artificially colored with moral significance. Some thinkers like Richard Dawkins
suggest that similar explanations of the phenomenon of morality are given through fields like Evolution
ary dynamics - for example, research into the Evolution of morality
. In fact, the Science of morality
(based on the philosophy of Ethical naturalism
) attempts to define right and wrong in empirical terms that allow for objective answers to be sought.
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Premises (1) and (2) reflect Immanuel Kant
's belief that behaving morally should lead to happiness. Premise (3) tells us that "ought" implies "can". It cannot be true that we ought to seek an end if there is no chance of our attaining it. Premise (4) points to the fact that the world as it appears to us is governed by morally blind causes. These causes give no hope whatsoever that pursuit of moral virtue will lead to happiness. They do not even give hope that we can become morally virtuous. Agency is beset by weaknesses that make the attainment of virtue — in the absence of external aid — seem impossible. The being postulated in (5) has omniscience and omnipotence combined with perfect goodness. Thus it will ensure that the pursuit of a virtuous state is possible through external aid (as in grace) and will promise an immortality where the moral journey can be completed. It will also ensure that in the long run happiness will result from virtue. Its existence would mean that there is a perfect moral causality at work in the world.
put it thus in a speech:
This form takes Fyodor Dostoevsky
's position expressed in The Brothers Karamazov
that, "If there is no God, everything is permissible." as its first premise. Notably, Jean-Paul Sartre
made an inverse
form of this argument, taking the non-existence of God as a premise and logically deducing the non-existence of objective values.
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
exists with observations about morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
. Its counterpoint is generally the Problem of evil
Problem of evil
In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient . Some philosophers have claimed that the existences of such a god and of evil are logically incompatible or unlikely...
.
General form
All forms of the moral argument begin with the premise of moral normativity, that is, that well-functioning human beings are typically aware of actions as being right and wrong. Furthermore, this awareness binds them to certain obligations, regardless of their personal goals and ends. In this sense, moral qualities have the appearance of objectivity: many times, when someone says "I ought to do a" they do not mean the same as "I would like to do a", or even prudentially, "I ought to do a in order to produce so-and-so". Another aspect of this is that a proposition such as "torturing babies for fun is wrong" is generally regarded as a statement of fact, a position known as moral realismMoral realism
Moral realism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:# Ethical sentences express propositions.# Some such propositions are true.# Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion....
.
In its most general form, the moral argument is that:
- Some aspect of Morality (e.g., its objective force) is observed. (Moral realismMoral realismMoral realism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:# Ethical sentences express propositions.# Some such propositions are true.# Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion....
) - Existence of GodGodGod is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
provides a better explanation of this feature than various alternatives. - Therefore, to the extent that (1) is accepted, belief in God is preferable to these alternatives
Moral sanctions
- Moral norms exist and have authority beyond the socially mediated. It is, for example, perfectly coherent for someone like William WilberforceWilliam WilberforceWilliam Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...
to say "slavery may be approved of by society, but it is morally wrong". - If they truly have such authority, there should be a rational argument why human beings should act in accordance with moral norms, over and above the reaction of society.
- The existence of God, who is wholly just, observes everything relevant about human actions and can attach appropriate long-term sanctions to behavior provides such a rational argument, better than alternatives.
- Therefore, to the extent that (1), (2) and (3) are accepted, belief in God is more reasonable than alternative worldviews that do not offer such explanations.
One may ask why the required recognition and upholding of moral norms must be carried out by divine intelligence, as opposed to human intelligence. Alfred Edward Taylor
Alfred Edward Taylor
Alfred Edward Taylor was a British idealist philosopher most famous for his contributions to the philosophy of idealism in his writings on metaphysics, the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and the scholarship of Plato. He was a fellow of the British Academy and president of the...
explains that the moral law holds at all times and everywhere, whereas the human mind is limited in its comprehension and scope. Only a sovereign God could properly detect infringements of the moral law and apply sanctions. In his Letter concerning Toleration
A Letter Concerning Toleration
A Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke was originally published in 1689. Its initial publication was in Latin, though it was immediately translated into other languages. Locke's work appeared amidst a fear that Catholicism might be taking over England, and responds to the problem of religion...
, John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
contends that one of the few religious stances that the commonwealth cannot tolerate is atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
; atheists, Locke says, have no motive to act upon their promises and oaths when doing so is against their self-interest.
Criticisms
The argument is formally valid but each of (1), (2) and (3) may be disputed.- Some thinkers, such as Thomas HobbesThomas HobbesThomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
in LeviathanLeviathan (book)Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil — commonly called simply Leviathan — is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan...
, suggest that moral norms are entirely socially mediated, through, for example, a social contractSocial contractThe social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that social organization strategies have evolved in various speciesEvolution of moralityThe evolution of morality refers to the emergence of human moral behavior over the course of human evolution. Morality can be defined as a system of ideas about right and wrong conduct. In everyday life, morality is typically associated with human behavior and not much thought is given to the...
. - Others, such as PlatoPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's character SocratesSocratesSocrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
and AristotleAristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, suggest that true happiness lies in following moral norms, irrespective of possible divine sanctions.
Transcendentality of morality
- Moral facts exist.
- Moral facts are transcendentalTranscendental idealismTranscendental idealism is a doctrine founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Kant's doctrine maintains that human experience of things is similar to the way they appear to us — implying a fundamentally subject-based component, rather than being an activity that...
in nature. - The best explanation of there being transcendental moral facts is provided by theism.
- Therefore the existence of moral facts provides good grounds for thinking theism is true.
Here, a transcendental fact is one that cannot be stated entirely in the language of the natural sciences, and that is true irrespective of human opinion. Theism provides the most intelligible explanation for such moral facts via the notion that rightness is one and the same property as the property of being commanded by God (wrongness consists in being forbidden by God).
In order for this argument to work, it should be shown that a non-theistic worldview cannot adequately account for transcendental normative facts.
Criticisms
Divine command theory
Divine command theory is the meta-ethical view about the semantics or meaning of ethical sentences, which claims that ethical sentences express propositions, some of which are true, about the attitudes of God...
of ethics. Objections to divine command theories of ethics are numerous, most stemming from forms of the Euthyphro dilemma
Euthyphro dilemma
The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates asks Euthyphro: "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"...
. Is an action good because God commanded it, or did God command it because it is good? The first horn would imply that what is good is arbitrary; God decides what is right and wrong in the same way that a government decides which side of the street cars should drive on. The second horn could imply that God made his commands in accordance with transcendental facts that exist apart from God — exactly the types of facts that the theist is asking the non-theist to provide an account for. The argument is thus turned over on its head: the theist must account for the existence of these transcendental facts without invoking God. The non-theist can thus recognize the transcendentality of moral facts and yet still reject premise (3) on the basis that a theistic hypothesis still leaves transcendental moral facts unexplained.
Proponents of the argument maintain that the Euthyphro dilemma can be adequately resolved. Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
, for example, explains that God indeed commands something because it is good, but the reason it is good is that "good is an essential part of God's nature". In other words, the definition of good becomes "that which is in God's nature".
However, critics respond that Aquinas' solution merely pushes the problem up one level, giving rise to a similar dilemma over what dictates God's nature. If God dictates his own nature (and therefore which things are good), morality again becomes arbitrary. If God can't control his own nature, then morality is again subject to some force external to God.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
suggests elaborate explanations of how initially amoral social practices became artificially colored with moral significance. Some thinkers like Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
suggest that similar explanations of the phenomenon of morality are given through fields like Evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
ary dynamics - for example, research into the Evolution of morality
Evolution of morality
The evolution of morality refers to the emergence of human moral behavior over the course of human evolution. Morality can be defined as a system of ideas about right and wrong conduct. In everyday life, morality is typically associated with human behavior and not much thought is given to the...
. In fact, the Science of morality
Science of morality
Science of morality can refer to a number of ethically naturalistic views. Historically, the term was introduced by Jeremy Bentham . In meta-ethics, ethical naturalism bases morality on rational and empirical consideration of the natural world...
(based on the philosophy of Ethical naturalism
Ethical naturalism
Ethical naturalism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:# Ethical sentences express propositions.# Some such propositions are true....
) attempts to define right and wrong in empirical terms that allow for objective answers to be sought.
Moral order (Kant)
- The summum bonumSummum bonumSummum bonum is an expression used in philosophy, particularly in medieval philosophy and in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, to describe the ultimate importance, the singular and most ultimate end which human beings ought to pursue. The summum bonum is generally thought of as being an end in...
(Highest Good) is where moral virtue and happiness coincide. - We are rationally obliged to promote (befördern) the summum bonum.
- What we are obliged to promote, it must be possible for us to promote.
- If there is no god or afterlife, it is not possible to realize the summum bonum.
- God (or the afterlife) must exist.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
's belief that behaving morally should lead to happiness. Premise (3) tells us that "ought" implies "can". It cannot be true that we ought to seek an end if there is no chance of our attaining it. Premise (4) points to the fact that the world as it appears to us is governed by morally blind causes. These causes give no hope whatsoever that pursuit of moral virtue will lead to happiness. They do not even give hope that we can become morally virtuous. Agency is beset by weaknesses that make the attainment of virtue — in the absence of external aid — seem impossible. The being postulated in (5) has omniscience and omnipotence combined with perfect goodness. Thus it will ensure that the pursuit of a virtuous state is possible through external aid (as in grace) and will promise an immortality where the moral journey can be completed. It will also ensure that in the long run happiness will result from virtue. Its existence would mean that there is a perfect moral causality at work in the world.
Criticisms
Kant himself asserts that if the summum bonum cannot be attained, then the moral law that bids us to seek it "must be fantastic and directed to imaginary ends and must therefore in itself be false". Critics point out a certain type of circularity: Kant's argument presupposes that both the pursuit of moral virtue and the pursuit of happiness must be rational enterprises; however, this is precisely the sort of thing that may not be true in a non-theistic universe. Kant's conception of God arises as an attempt to harmonize these two conflicting goals, but critics assert that practical reason is not committed to the pursuit of two ends that apparently conflict.Deductive form
William Lane CraigWilliam Lane Craig
William Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher, philosophical theologian, and Christian apologist. He is known for his work on the philosophy of time and the philosophy of religion, specifically the existence of God and the defense of Christian theism...
put it thus in a speech:
- Premise: If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
- Premise: Objective values do exist.
- Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.
This form takes Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
's position expressed in The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger and completed in November 1880...
that, "If there is no God, everything is permissible." as its first premise. Notably, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
made an inverse
Inverse (logic)
In traditional logic, an inverse is a type of conditional sentence which is an immediate inference made from another conditional sentence. Any conditional sentence has an inverse: the contrapositive of the converse. The inverse of P \rightarrow Q is thus \neg P \rightarrow \neg Q...
form of this argument, taking the non-existence of God as a premise and logically deducing the non-existence of objective values.
External links
- Moral Arguments at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- "Kant's 'Appropriation' of Lampe's God", Harvard Theological Review 85:1 (January 1992), pp. 85–108; revised and reprinted as Chapter IV in Stephen Palmquist, Kant's Critical Religion (Ashgate, 2000).