Contents:
We know how human laws come into existence. They are enacted by legislatures or absolute monarchs in some countries who have the authority to pass such laws. How then should the existence of moral laws be explained? It seems plausible to many to hold that they must be similarly grounded in some appropriate moral authority, and the only plausible candidate to fulfill this role is God.
The fact that one can understand the argument without much in the way of philosophical skill is not necessarily a defect, however. If one supposes that there is a God, and that God wants humans to know him and relate to him, one would expect God to make his reality known to humans in very obvious ways See Evans After all, critics of theistic belief, such as J.
How can such an awareness be converted into full-fledged belief in God? One way of doing this would be to help the person gain the skills needed to recognize moral laws as what they are, as divine commands or divine laws. If moral laws are experienced, then moral experience could be viewed as a kind of religious experience or at least a proto-religious experience.
Perhaps someone who has experience of God in this way does not need a moral argument or any kind of argument to have a reasonable belief in God. Even if that is the case, however, a moral argument could still play a valuable role. Such an argument might be one way of helping an individual understand that moral obligations are in fact divine commands or laws.
Even if it were true that some ordinary people might know that God exists without argument, an argument could be helpful in defending the claim that this is the case. A person might conceivably need an argument for the second level claim that the person knows God without argument. In any case a divine command metaethical theory provides the material for such an argument. There are of course many types of obligations: Clearly these obligations are distinct from moral obligations, since in some cases moral obligations can conflict with these other kinds.
What is distinctive about obligations in general? They are not reducible simply to normative claims about what a person has a good reason to do. Mill , — argued that we can explain normative principles without making any reference to God. However, even if Mill is correct about normativity in general, it does not follow that his view is correct for obligations, which have a special character.
An obligation has a special kind of force; we should care about complying with it, and violations of obligations appropriately incur blame Adams , If I make a logical mistake, I may feel silly or stupid or embarrassed, but I have no reason to feel guilty, unless the mistake reflects some carelessness on my part that itself constitutes a violation of a moral obligation. All obligations are then constituted by social requirements, according to Adams.
However, not all obligations constituted by social requirements are moral obligations. What social relation could be the basis of moral obligations? Adams argues that not just any human social relation will possess the requisite authority: Some such demands have no moral force, and some social systems are downright evil. Since a proper relation to God is arguably more important than any other social relation, we can also understand why moral obligations trump other kinds of obligations.
Notice that the DCT Adams defends is ontological rather than semantic: That role includes such facts as these: Moral obligations must be motivating and objective.
They also must provide a basis for critical evaluation of other types of obligations, and they must be such that someone who violates a moral obligation is appropriately subject to blame. Adams argues that it is divine commands that best satisfy these desiderata. Obviously, those who do not find a DCT convincing will not think this argument from moral obligation has force.
However, Adams anticipates and gives a forceful answer to one common criticism of a DCT. The dilemma for a DCT can be derived from the following question: Assuming that God commands what is right, does he command what is right because it is right? These objections can be found in the writings of Wes Morriston , Erik Wielenberg , , especially chapter 2 , and Nicholas Wolterstorff , among others. This is essentially the view that moral truths are basic or fundamental in character, not derived from natural facts or any more fundamental metaphysical facts.
This view certainly provides a significant alternative to divine command metaethics. Specifically, philosophers such as J. Responses to the objections of Wielenberg, Morriston, and others have also been given see Evans , Baggett and Walls, , Although it is worth noting that no single metaethical theory seems to enjoy widespread support among philosophers, so a DCT is not alone in being a minority view.
A variety of arguments have been developed that God is necessary to explain human awareness of moral truth or moral knowledge, if one believes that this moral awareness amounts to knowledge. Swinburne does not think that an argument from moral facts as such is powerful. However, the fact that we humans are aware of moral facts is itself surprising and calls for an explanation.
It may be true that creatures who belong to groups that behave altruistically will have some survival advantage over groups that lack such a trait. It is one of several phenomena which seem more probable in a theistic universe than in a godless universe. Street presents the moral realist with a dilemma posed by the question as to how our human evaluative beliefs are related to human evolution.
It is clear, she believes, that evolution has strongly shaped our evaluative attitudes. The question concerns how those attitudes are related to the objective evaluative truths accepted by the realist. However, this view, Street claims, is scientifically implausible. Street argues therefore that an evolutionary story about how we came to make the moral judgments we make undermines confidence in the objective truth of those judgments. However, her argument, and similar arguments, have been acknowledged by some moral realists, such as David Enoch and Erik Wielenberg to pose a significant problem for their view.
Wielenberg, to avoid the criticism that in a non-theistic universe it would be extremely lucky if evolution selected for belief in objectively true moral values, proposes that the natural laws that produce this result may be metaphysically necessary, and thus there is no element of luck. However, many philosophers will see this view of natural laws as paying a heavy price to avoid theism. It might appear that Street is arguing straightforwardly that evolutionary theory makes it improbable that humans would have objective moral knowledge. However, it is not evolution by itself that predicts the improbability of objective moral knowledge, but the conjunction of evolution and metaphysical naturalism.
Since, it is not evolution by itself that poses a challenge to moral realism but the conjunction of evolution and metaphysical naturalism, then rejecting naturalism provides one way for the moral realist to solve the problem. It does appear that in a naturalistic universe we would expect a process of Darwinian evolution to select for a propensity for moral judgments that track survival and not objective moral truths. Mark Linville , — has developed a detailed argument for the claim that it is difficult for metaphysical naturalists to develop a plausible evolutionary story as to how our moral judgments could have epistemological warrant.
However, if we suppose that the evolutionary process has been guided by God, who has as one of his goals the creation of morally significant human creatures capable of enjoying a relation with God, then it would not seem at all accidental or even unlikely that God would ensure that humans have value beliefs that are largely correct.
Some philosophers believe that the randomness of Darwinian natural selection rules out the possibility of any kind of divine guidance being exercised through such a process. What can be explained scientifically needs no religious explanation. However, this is far from obviously true; in fact, if theism is true it is clearly false. From a theistic perspective to think that God and science provide competing explanations fails to grasp the relationship between God and the natural world by conceiving of God as one more cause within that natural world.
If God exists at all, God is not an entity within the natural world, but the creator of that natural world, with all of its causal processes. If God exists, God is the reason why there is a natural world and the reason for the existence of the causal processes of the natural world. In principle, therefore, a natural explanation can never preclude a theistic explanation.
But what about the randomness that is a crucial part of the Darwinian story?
The atheist might claim that because evolutionary theory posits that the process by which plants and animals have evolved in one that involves random genetic mutations, it cannot be guided, and thus God cannot have used evolutionary means to achieve his ends. However, this argument fails. When scientists claim that genetic mutations are random, they do not mean that they are uncaused, or even that they are unpredictable from the point of view of biochemistry, but only that the mutations do not happen in response to the adaptational needs of the organism.
It is entirely possible for a natural process to include randomness in that sense, even if the whole natural order is itself created and sustained by God. A God who is responsible for the laws of nature and the initial conditions that shape the evolutionary process could certainly ensure that the process achieved certain ends. The Theistic Implications of our Ethical Commitments Ritchie presses a kind of dilemma on non-theistic accounts of morality. Subjectivist theories such as expressivism can certainly make sense of the fact that we make the ethical judgments we do, but they empty morality of its objective authority.
Objectivist theories that take morality seriously, however, have difficulty explaining our capacity to make true moral judgments, unless the process by which humans came to hold these capacities is one that is controlled by a being such as God. The moral argument from knowledge will not be convincing to anyone who is committed to any form of expressivism or other non-objective metaethical theory, and clearly many philosophers find such views attractive. And there will surely be many philosophers who will judge that if moral objectivism implies theism or requires theism to be plausible, this is a reductio of objectivist views.
Furthermore, non-theistic moral philosophers, whether naturalists or non-naturalists, have stories to tell about how moral knowledge might be possible. Nevertheless, there are real questions about the plausibility of these stories, and thus, some of those convinced that moral realism is true may judge that moral knowledge provides some support for theistic belief. Like subjectivists, constructivists want to see morality as a human creation. However, like moral realists constructivists want to see moral questions as having objective answers.
Constructivism is an attempt to develop an objective morality that is free of the metaphysical commitments of moral realism. It is, however, controversial whether Kant himself was a constructivist in this sense. One reason to question whether this is the right way to read Kant follows from the fact that Kant himself did not see morality as free from metaphysical commitments. For example, Kant thought that it would be impossible for someone who believed that mechanistic determinism was the literal truth about himself to believe that he was a moral agent, since morality requires an autonomy that is incompatible with determinism.
When we do science we see ourselves as determined, but science tells us only how the world appears, not how it really is. Humans can only have this kind of value if they are a particular kind of creature. Whether Kant himself was a moral realist or not, there are certainly elements in his philosophy that push in a realist direction. If the claim that human persons have a kind of intrinsic dignity or worth is a true objective principle and if it provides a key foundational principle of morality, it is well worth asking what kinds of metaphysical implications the claim might have.
This is the question that Mark Linville , — pursues in the second moral argument he develops. Clearly, some metaphysical positions do include a denial of the existence of human persons, such as forms of Absolute Monism which hold that only one Absolute Reality exists. Daniel Dennett, for example, holds that persons will not be part of the ultimately true scientific account of things. A naturalist may want to challenge premise 2 by finding some other strategy to explain human dignity. Michael Martin , for example, has tried to suggest that moral judgments can be analyzed as the feelings of approval or disapproval of a perfectly impartial and informed observer.
Linville objects that it is not clear how the feelings of such an observer could constitute the intrinsic worth of a person, since one would think that intrinsic properties would be non-relational and mind-independent. Another strategy that is pursued by constructivists such as Korsgaard is to link the value ascribed to humans to the capacity for rational reflection. The idea is that insofar as I am committed to rational reflection, I must value myself as having this capacity, and consistently value others who have it as well. It is far from clear that human rationality provides an adequate ground for moral rights, however.
Your comment could not be posted. The seventh chapter concerns moral epistemology. This is essentially the view that moral truths are basic or fundamental in character, not derived from natural facts or any more fundamental metaphysical facts. See all customer images. Religious people also had lower scores when it came to seeing how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in other ways, such as in giving money or food to a homeless person and to non-believers. A contemporary argument similar to this one has been developed by C.
Many people believe that young infants and people suffering from dementia still have this intrinsic dignity, but in both cases there is no capacity for rational reflection. Wolterstorff in this work defends the claim that there are natural human rights, and that violating such rights is one way of acting unjustly towards a person. Why do humans have such rights? Wolterstorff says these rights are grounded in the basic worth or dignity that humans possess.
That God is approved of by God? Greg Epstein , a Humanist chaplain at Harvard University , dismisses the question of whether God is needed to be good "because that question does not need to be answered—it needs to be rejected outright," adding, "To suggest that one can't be good without belief in God is not just an opinion It may even be discrimination. Conceptually and in principle, morality and a religious value system are two distinct kinds of value systems or action guides. Singer states that morality "is not something intelligible only in the context of religion".
Atheism is only intrinsically negative when it comes to belief about God. It is as capable of a positive view of other aspects of life as any other belief. That means atheists are not only more than capable of leading moral lives, they may even be able to lead more moral lives than religious believers who confuse divine law and punishment with right and wrong.
Religion gets its morality from humans. We know that we can't get along if we permit perjury, theft, murder, rape, all societies at all times, well before the advent of monarchies and certainly, have forbidden it Socrates called his daemon, it was an inner voice that stopped him when he was trying to take advantage of someone Why don't we just assume that we do have some internal compass?
Philosopher Daniel Dennett says that secular organizations need to learn more 'marketing' lessons from religion—and from effective secular organizations like the TED conferences. This is partly because Dennett says that the idea that people need God to be morally good is an extremely harmful, yet popular myth.
He believes it is a falsehood that persists because churches are currently much better at organizing people to do morally good work. They want to lead good lives So then along come religions that say 'Well you can't be good without God' to convince people that they have to do this. That may be the main motivation for people to take religions seriously—to try to take religions seriously, to try and establish an allegiance to the church—because they want to lead good lives.
Popular atheist author and biologist Richard Dawkins , writing in The God Delusion , has stated that religious people have committed a wide variety of acts and held certain beliefs through history that are considered today to be morally repugnant. He has stated that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis held broadly Christian religious beliefs that inspired the Holocaust on account of antisemitic Christian doctrine, that Christians have traditionally imposed unfair restrictions on the legal and civil rights of women, and that Christians have condoned slavery of some form or description throughout most of Christianity's history.
Dawkins insists that, since Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Bible have changed over the span of history so that what was formerly seen as permissible is now seen as impermissible, it is intellectually dishonest for them to believe theism provides an absolute moral foundation apart from secular intuition. In addition, he argued that since Christians and other religious groups do not acknowledge the binding authority of all parts of their holy texts e. Epstein notes a similar theme in reverse.
Famous apologies by Christians who have "sinned" such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Swaggart "must embolden some who take enormous risks for the thrill of a little immoral behavior: If you're going to do something naughty, you're going to do it, and all the theology in the world isn't going to stop you. Some non-religious nihilistic and existentialist thinkers have affirmed the prominent theistic position that the existence of the personal God of theism is linked to the existence of an objective moral standard, asserting that questions of right and wrong inherently have no meaning and, thus, any notions of morality are nothing but an anthropogenic fantasy.
Agnostic author and Absurdist philosopher Albert Camus discussed the issue of what he saw as the universe's indifference towards humankind and the meaninglessness of life in his prominent novel The Stranger , in which the protagonist accepts death via execution without sadness or feelings of injustice.
In his philosophical work, The Myth of Sisyphus , Camus argues that human beings must choose to live defiantly in spite of their longing for purpose or direction and the apparent lack of evidence for God or moral imperatives. Cases can also be seen in nature of animals exhibiting behavior we might classify as "moral" without religious directives to guide them. These include "detailed studies of the complex systems of altruism and cooperation that operate among social insects" and "the posting of altruistic sentinels by some species of bird and mammal, who risk their own lives to warn the rest of the group of imminent danger.
Greg Epstein states that "sociologists have recently begun to pay more attention to the fact that some of the world's most secular countries, such as those in Scandinavia, are among the least violent, best educated, and most likely to care for the poor". On April 26, , the results of a study which tested their subjects' pro-social sentiments were published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal in which non-religious people had higher scores showing that they were more inclined to show generosity in random acts of kindness, such as lending their possessions and offering a seat on a crowded bus or train.
Religious people also had lower scores when it came to seeing how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in other ways, such as in giving money or food to a homeless person and to non-believers. According to research, adherents of all the major world religions who attended religious services in the past week got higher rates of generosity such as donating money, volunteering, and helping a stranger than do their coreligionists who did not attend services non-attenders.
For the people who were nonreligious, but said that they attended religious services in the past week exhibited more generous behaviors than those who didn't. A number of studies have been conducted on the empirics of morality in various countries, and the overall relationship between faith and crime is unclear. A study by Gregory S. Paul published in the Journal of Religion and Society stated that, "In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies," and "In all secular developing democracies a centuries long-term trend has seen homicide rates drop to historical lows" with the exceptions being the United States with a high religiosity level and "theistic" Portugal.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ethics in religion and Secular ethics. This section does not cite any sources. He ends up discussing what more needs to be investigated in coming to a better secular morality. Here are some comments I made at particular points in reading the book. Numbers in brackets [] are pagination in the Kindle edition. Human beings evolved the capability to obtain moral knowledge. When humans evolved from some form of ape to humans moral knowledge became possible in the reality of real life, not the made up biblical kind.
The question, in short, is whether atheism entails nihilism, which is the denial of all real moral values, duties, and obligations. The Old Testament does not condemn rape, at least not in all cases, and the New Testament is silent on it. So, the Christian can believe that rape is not morally wrong, at least in some cases.
And, marital rape occurs in some Christian marriages. The fact that most theists believe rape is morally wrong is because they feel it is, not that they are command not to.
People when they think that these things are bad, usually have feelings associated with this thinking. Matter of fact this kind of thinking without feeling may not lead to moral behavior, and it maybe that the feelings actually lead to the thought. A reason for people to believe these things are bad is that they, in most cases, would not want them occurring to themselves or are in psychological pain when they observe these situations. So, it is possible that morality does not depend, or at least initially, on an objective standard. I think that it is moral feelings that lead to objectivity in morality.
So, if moral feelings are the basis of morality, how is it that some people do not see some acts that most people consider to be harmful to be immoral? It is because feelings can be overridden by thoughts, especially thoughts that are repeatedly reinforced by others and supposedly sacred texts. This case illustrates a real problem that hospital ethic committees have faced many times and that has been controversial in the past.
So, while hospital ethics committees are useful in their domain, as a general approach to finding out the differing amount of harm among moral choices is not much use. And, while his concept of moral harm as an objective form of morality is on sound footing, it does not negate that it is moral feelings that lead one to see that harming or not preventing harm to others is not the way of moral action.
I think Sinnot-Armstrong firmly and effectively argues against the divine command theory of morality, despite not focusing on this in my comments. I really like the way he approaches the subject. He is respectful of others and refrains from obnoxious attacks like some atheists and theists are prone to do. And, while his conclusions are firm he does not present his exploration as leading to an absolute claim of correctness of his moral theory. I also felt he wrote very well and avoided technical jargon, so that it would be attractive to non-specialists.
I rated this book highly and would recommend it to anyone who is serious about how we can come to moral conclusions that would be acceptable to most people willing to reflect honestly. If you are a Christian he does not attack your beliefs per se, but divine command morality that is often associated with Christianity. Plus he spells out, at least as a beginning, an acceptable moral theory without god.
One person found this helpful. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong makes many outstanding arguments for a non-religious type of morality. This is one of the basic arguments that theist pose to Atheist, Agnostics, and non-believers;"Without god what will give humanity there moral foundation? Not has dense has Richard Dawkins, or Christopher Hitchens books;Sinnot-Armstrong takes a less hostile approach towards those with beliefs. He is critical of people on both sides of the god vs. Although, I strongly agree with the position Richard Dawkins take about people being in free and contemporary societies not giving religion a "special" pass from being challenged or analyzed critical.
Sinnot-Armstrong makes it a point to be critical of religion without going to the low blows and sensationalism of Hitchens, or Dawkins when countering religions beliefs. Any person whether they are a devout Christian, passive observer, or stance Atheist will be enlighten by the ideas of a rational based theory of morality. Anybody who has pondered the question of where do our morals come from,or has been challenged by theists about humans their having morals dictated to them from an omnipotent being will benefit from this book.
Professor Sinnot-Armstrong makes a very compelling case to conclude that we can have moral without God. The arguments are very solid and the theists will have a very hard time refutting them I doubt it. Overall, the book is a well written in a lay and accessible way , successful piece of good philosophy.
I deeply recommend it. First, let me say that I am a practicing Catholic, very committed to my faith. However, this book is very well written, fair, balanced, and honest. Never does Professor Sinnott-Armstrong use ad hominum attacks, make wild assertions, or neglect to show care and concern for theists. I felt nothing but love for his fellow theists while reading this book. This does not, however, mean that Professor Sinnott-Armstrong compromises his position. Of course, there are still arguments that the author makes which I disagree with, but I think Professor Sinnott-Armstrong is a much needed addition or voice, I suppose to the growing body of intelligent, kind, and rational atheists including John Lofton and David Ramsey Steele among others not driven by malice, unlike the new atheists yes, I have an axe to grind with the new atheism.
The goal of this book is basically to show that atheists can be and are moral. In fact, the last sentence of the preface states "[My main goal] is only to show that atheists need not be arbitrary, unreasonable, ignorant, inconsistent, irresponsible, disreputable, uncaring, or, especially, immoral. In fact, at the end of the first chapter, Professor Sinnott-Armstrong lists 5 main claims that he discusses in detail throughout the book. I agree with his beliefs about the truths of all 5 claims except the third one. I think the most accurate way to state my main disagreement with Professor Sinnott-Armstrong is to say that I believe that objective morality has no firm foundation without God.
He does tries to show that the atheist does indeed have a firm foundation for morality apart from God in one of the chapters, which I will discuss a little bit below. I appreciate much of what Professor Sinnott-Armstrong has to say in Chapter 2. This Chapter deals with the question of whether or not atheists are bad people. Unfortunately, many Christians do paint the picture that Professor Sinnott-Armstrong discusses in this chapter of atheists; that is, that they are immoral, indecent, and most oddly claimed to be that they suppress what they really know to be true.
So the fact that Professor Sinnott-Armstrong addresses this topic is not unreasonable. I would say that a more historical and correct understanding of the question is that we are all sinners in need of God's grace and that any good that a theist or atheist does is a grace from God. I am not able to do good anymore than Professor Sinnott-Armstrong is able to do good; it all comes from the source of goodness, which is God. But that is really something more to argue with my fellow Christian brethren.
Professor Sinnott-Armstrong is also reasonable enough to point out the venomous attacks of the "new atheists" of which Professor Sinnott-Armstrong is NOT a member of and how they do more harm than good. I very much appreciated that, and it showed me that he has nothing to hide and believes his position to be correct based on reason rather than intimidation. I also can not convey how much I appreciate the fact that Professor Sinnott-Armstrong is fair and balanced when it comes to the horrible sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
He mentions that the problem is not as widespread as many new atheists make it out to be and even mentions that it is not limited just to the Catholic Church. While smaller numbers and other people doing it certainly does not excuse it, it is a breath of fresh air to read someone who does not use it to clobber us over the head and make the lovely non sequiter that therefore religion is pure evil.
He is also very careful not to confuse correlation with causation this mathematician thanks you! On the same page, Professor Sinnott-Armstrong discusses the possible biblical support that is given for wives being submissive to their husbands Ephesians 5: He then asks to what extent this means that they be submissive and asks whether things like abuse and marital rape qualify. However, I would consult Pope Pius XI's encyclical Casti Connubii for a more proper understanding of what is actually a very beautiful teaching in the entire context of Ephesians 5.
Again though, this is not something that even my non-Catholic Christian brethren are aware of and hence, I think that this "to what extent" question does need to be addressed because so many non-Catholic Christians don't understand it properly. The chapter that I was most interested in reading because I came into this book disagreeing with the premise was how an atheist can ground objective moral values.