Groggy doesn’t understand why the question of morality and the question of the existence of God are intrinsically related:
I never really understood why the question of whether morality was objective was tightly coupled to the existence of God.
For example Sam Harris says morality is objective, and it can be discovered and solved through science alone in The Moral Landscape.
It seems that science deals with the objective, hence science would be a good tool for dealing with morality, if morality were purely objective.
If the 10 commandments just come down from God and are dictated to us, without us having any say, then isn’t that subjective morality, because then morality is just whatever God says it is?
I think J. Peterson would say that God speaking in the 10 commandments is not a literal truth but a deep psychological truth (evolved, even), built into the human mind which needs to come out through religious expression, and is more akin to ‘objective’ morality, I suppose.
For example if God had commanded in the 10 commandments – Thou Shalt Murder, would it be right or wrong? If morality is objective, then murder would always be wrong regardless of what the 10 commandments say.
I just never really understood why “morality is objective” was associated with Christianity and “there is no objective morality” was associated with Atheism. I don’t see the logical connection.
If somebody could explain it I would be very grateful.
The intrinsic connection is because if there is, in fact, a Universal Moral Standard, (or to use the more common term, Universal Law), then logic dictates that there must be a Universal Lawgiver. This is why atheists are driven to deny objective and/or universal morality, due to the implication that if it exists, a Creator God exists too.
The fact that Sam Harris says morality can be discovered and solved through science alone is in itself evidence that it cannot be, because Sam Harris is an inept philosopher and his argument is both illogical and incorrect. I addressed this four years ago, both on this blog and in the appendix of the book On the Existence of Gods.
Unfortunately, Harris appears to have adopted Richard Dawkins’ favorite device of presenting a bait-and-switch definition in lieu of a logically substantive argument. He repeatedly utilizes the following technique:
1) Admittedly, X is not Y.
2) But can’t we say that X could be considered Z?
3) And Z is Y.
4) Therefore, X can be Y.For example, in an attempt to get around Hume’s is/ought dichotomy, Harris readily admits that “good” in the sense of “morally correct” is not objectively definable and that what one individual perceives as good can differ substantially from that which another person declares to be “good.” So, he suggests the substitution of “well-being” for “good” because there are numerous measures of “well-being,” such as life expectancy, GDP per capita and daily caloric intake, that can be reduced to numbers and are therefore measurable. After all, everyone understands what it means to be in good health despite the fact that “health” is not perfectly defined in an objective and scientific manner. Right?
However, even if we set aside the obvious fact that the proposed measures of well-being are of dubious utility – life expectancy does not account for quality of life, GDP does not account for debt and more calories are not always desirable – the problem is that Harris simply ignores the way in which his case falls completely apart when it is answered in the negative. No, we cannot simply accept that “moral” can reasonably be considered “well-being” because it is not true to say that which is “of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong” is more than remotely synonymous with “that which fosters well-being in one or more human beings.”
A Creator God-defined morality can be described as arbitrary, but it cannot be described as subjective. If God had defined murder as good, then an act of murder would be good, in exactly the same way that if the NFL defines a pass that goes out of bounds incomplete, then the pass is incomplete even if the receiver clearly caught it. Groggy’s problem is that he is unconsciously assuming a deeper concept of good by which the objective standard itself is to be judged.