The Moral Argument for God's Existence

@divegeester

It’s a pity that you are unable to extrapolate quality thinking like this to your own entrenched dogma about evil, hell and eternal torture.

If you could just STOP.. for one moment and read your own words you could actually gain a new and enormously helpful perspective.

@rwingett said
Without creatures capable of conceptualizing "good" and "bad" there are no such things. In a world populated solely by animals, there can be no good or bad. There can only be natural phenomena devoid of value judgements.

@dj2becker said
The moral argument for the existence of God is the argument that God is necessary for objective moral values or duties to exist. Since objective moral values and duties do exist, God must also exist. The argument is not claiming that people who don't believe in God cannot do kind things or that atheists are generally morally worse people that religious people are. The argum ...[text shortened]... a real standard of good does exist to make "doing good" possible.

https://carm.org/moral-argument

@lemonjello said
The discussion provided on your link is same old same old apologetic drivel regarding one of the dumbest theistic arguments ever put forth. It’s a variant of the intellectually vapid argument that includes a premise of the sort “The existence of God is necessary for [enter here something of high existential import]”. As already discussed on these boards, it’s a more inte ...[text shortened]... ous lack of intellectual merit. Already been discussed in some detail: Thread 169581.

@LemonJello

I read your paragraphs. So you think that that is so good a refutation of the Moral Argument for God's Existence ?

Your post said that the very consideration of the argument is an insult to one's intelligence. You refer to some terms like Escapism and the Absurd. But I didn't read any tremendously effective rebuttal there.

Now I am going to go back now and read it a second time. My first impression is that you're blustering behind some big names in philosophy.

@LemonJello

Let me take on your link a section at a time.

Where in this section is the effective argument that the Moral Argument for God's Existence is certainly false ?

Such arguments across the board are bad to the point of insulting the intellect. They have next to nothing to recommend them in terms of logical and evidential assessment. And yet they are trotted out time and time again with feverish passion. I would tend to argue that it is easier to understand the sticktoitiveness behind the proffering of such arguments in reference to escapism from "The Absurd".

Some of you will be familiar with absurdism as it is referenced to the works of Camus (in particular The Myth of Sisyphus ), the works of Kierkegaard, and similar elements running throughout the works of the Existentialists, etc. For what's it is worth, I prefer the characterization of Thomas Nagel. See for instance his short but outstanding essay The Absurd (The Journal of Philosophy 68(20) 1971) . Here are some salient elements of his characterization.

First, absurdity in this context is marked by the introspective feeling that life is meaningless sub specie aeternitatis (that is, in the grand scheme of things, or more literally, taken from the perspective of eternity). At the same time, rational arguments designed to support that feeling invariably fail to do so:

"Most people feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some feel it vividly and continually. Yet the reasons usually offered in defense of this conviction are patently inadequate….Yet I believe they attempt to express something that is difficult to state, but fundamentally correct."

@sonship said
I see some cheerleading type of self-congradulations.

The real meat of the refutation is below I assume.

"Most people feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some feel it vividly and continually. Yet the reasons usually offered in defense of this conviction are patently inadequate….Yet I believe they attempt to express something that is difficult to state, but fundamentally correct."

Fleeting feelings of absurdity may be idiosyncratically realized, but Nagel focuses his attention on a philosophical conception of the absurd that is more general:

"If there is a philosophical sense of absurdity, however, it must arise from the perception of something universal – some respect in which pretension and reality inevitably clash for us all. This condition is supplied, I shall argue, by the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt.

We cannot live human lives without energy and attention, nor without making choices which show that we take some things more seriously than others. Yet we have always available a point of view outside the particular form of our lives, from which the seriousness appears gratuitous. These two inescapable viewpoints collide in us, and that is what makes life absurd. It is absurd because we ignore the doubts that we know cannot be settled, continuing to live with nearly undiminished seriousness in spite of them.

This analysis requires defense in two respects: first as regards the unavoidability of seriousness; second as regards the inescapability of doubt.'

@sonship said
But if I am missing something I am going to go over this again. Are you just pointing to places that impressed you and we should trust that these places refuted the moral argument for God's existence?

Nagel then goes on to work toward a defense in both respects. A particular aspect specific to beings like us who possess self-awareness is the capacity to introspect on our own lives and commitments:

"Yet humans have the special capacity to step back and survey themselves, and the lives to which they are committed, with that detached amazement which comes from watching an ant struggle up a heap of sand.

Without developing the illusion that they are able to escape from their highly specific and idiosyncratic position, they can view it sub specie aeternitatis – and the view is at once sobering and comical.

The things we do or want without reasons, and without requiring reasons – the things that define what is a reason for us and what is not – are the starting points of our skepticism. We see ourselves from outside, and all the contingency and specificity of our aims and pursuits become clear. Yet when we take this view and recognize what we do as arbitrary, it does not disengage us from life, and there lies our absurdity: not in the fact that such an external view can be taken of us, but in the fact that we ourselves can take it, without ceasing to be the persons whose ultimate concerns are so coolly regarded."

I suppose at this point, the motivation of theistic escapism is to dissolve this conflict by taking that bedrock and purporting to place it in something external to us and our world, such as God or something equally as mysterious, where the bedrock here concerns moral grounding or value and meaning, etc. Somehow, so the story goes, without God or whatever we are left with this debilitating skepticism towards these matters of high existential seriousness; whereas with God we find our solid footing again. This seems just a way of projecting agency onto the view sub specie aeternitatis , since that just is the view of God in a sense. Clearly enough, though, this sort of escapism does not work. I mean, it may work on some psychological level, the mental equivalent of how sweeping dust under the nearest rug "works" at cleaning the floor. But, I mean, come on: there's still the same dust on the floor. See the balance of the Nagel essay for a clear reading of why escapism fails on a philosophical level:

https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/The%20Absurd%20-%20Thomas%20Nagel.pdf

At any rate, I think such a characterization of "The Absurd" can help us make some sense of cases where one is confronted with argumentative hysterics to the effect that in the absence of God all of our normative and evaluative bedrock crumbles under feet; and then one is subsequently confronted with the most bizarre ramblings when pressing for some rational explication as to why that would be the case.

@sonship said

Nagel then goes on to work toward a defense in both respects. A particular aspect specific to beings like us who possess self-awareness is the capacity to introspect on our own lives and commitments:

And that self awareness came from where?
Did enough atoms collide together for a long time until self awareness arose from these random forces?

Did self ...[text shortened]... outside of all of us as the final Governor bestowing some of this capacity on His higher creatures.

I suppose at this point, the motivation of theistic escapism

is to dissolve this conflict by taking that bedrock and purporting to place it in something external to us and our world, such as God or something equally as mysterious, where the bedrock here concerns moral grounding or value and meaning, etc.

Somehow, so the story goes, without God or whatever we are left with this debilitating skepticism towards these matters of high existential seriousness; whereas with God we find our solid footing again. This seems just a way of projecting agency onto the view sub specie aeternitatis , since that just is the view of God in a sense. Clearly enough, though, this sort of escapism does not work. I mean, it may work on some psychological level, the mental equivalent of how sweeping dust under the nearest rug "works" at cleaning the floor. But, I mean, come on: there's still the same dust on the floor. See the balance of the Nagel essay for a clear reading of why escapism fails on a philosophical level:

@lemonjello said
The discussion provided on your link is same old same old apologetic drivel regarding one of the dumbest theistic arguments ever put forth. It’s a variant of the intellectually vapid argument that includes a premise of the sort “The existence of God is necessary for [enter here something of high existential import]”. As already discussed on these boards, it’s a more inte ...[text shortened]... ous lack of intellectual merit. Already been discussed in some detail: Thread 169581.

@dj2becker Good deeds+good people=God exists? If we stay with that logic...Equation no.2: Evil deeds+Evil people=God exists?? According to this formula, God is either not infallible or not invulnerable (all powerful). You are saying God's presence, or a better word maybe is His essence, His existence is causing all this morality in people. Then why is this morality so misguided? Example: Terrorists believe flying planes into buildings to kill innocent people is morally right. Or something most people would never even consider; now, or 500 yrs ago...Introduce the Christian God to different civilizations- and if they don't convert, genocide and bye-bye. This was morally righteous in their eyes. Morality in people comes from within the belief structure they were born into. When you do a good deed, you are looking to benefit or profit, even on a minuscule level. Hold the door open for a lady- your reward is hoping for a smile and she better say 'Thank you'. Anything that doesn't reward immediately, you want Him to know about it so you'll get a better seat on the bus to heaven. Why would God want us to point to His existence as the manufacturer of our morality?