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.

You underestimate how much I have contemplated and examined these things. And you underestimate the care with which I choose my words when I write here.

Notice how many times I sometimes edit my posts.

@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.

So you agree with this, if there isn't a standard there isn't means by which we can
judge properly?

Romans 7:
7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

@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

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 interesting exercise to consider the underlying psychological factors involved in its recurrence and sticktoitiveness, given its obvious lack of intellectual merit. Already been discussed in some detail: Thread 169581.

@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.

In case you are unaware, becker and fetchmyjunk are one and the same.

@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."

I see some cheerleading type of self-congradulations.

The real meat of the refutation is below I assume.

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

The real meat of the refutation is below I assume.

Don't be so vain. Read the whole thread. Your running commentary on how you had rings run around you on an old thread will presumably stop when you realize that's what happened. I read it all this morning. Read it and then come back with how you think you went wrong or where you could have done better. A running commentary armed with words like "bluster" and "cheerleading" makes you sound out of your depth,

"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."

So though explanations of the sense of the absurdness of like are inadequate. But something difficult to state lies behind this sense.

And that which lies behind it which is difficult to state is fundamentally correct.

I am looking for your argument that the Moral Argument for God's Existence is an insult to our intelligence to even contemplate.

I don't see it yet.

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.'

Is there something here indicating that to argue absolute moral standards indicates a absolute moral Governor - namely God is beneath our intelligence it is SO WRONG ?

I have seen a couple of Theater of the Absurd plays. They didn't seem to refute the existence of God. Waiting For Godot seemed to argue for the absurdity of life if there is no God to expect.

The other one which name I cannot recall seemed to argue that t the play's author (pretty much a silent play) didn't like the absurd manner in which any possible God or arranger of our lives ran things.

"I can't stand the way God(?) is running things " is not quite "There is no God."

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?

That's just like we have to take your word for it.

@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?

Why don't you just read the whole thread?

It's 35 pages long with both you and LemonJello posting on the 35th page. Why are you giving a running commentary that has got you this far half way down the OP on the first page?

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 awarenes arise from the dust. Nagel has some answers?

"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.

And how is it that humans have this special capacity in the first place Thomas Nagel ? Or LemonJello.

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.

Well you have some phrases here which academically evade me. I am not familiar with "sub specie aeternitatis".

But I'm looking for which you seemed to recommend are very OBVIOUS reasons why the Moral Argument for God's Existence fail.

Lots of people in fact do live in escape from a life of absurdity or at least do the best they can. Does that demonstrate Atheism ? Does it demonstrate that there could be no ultimate straight Line against which we measure crookedness?

Moral crookedness has to have moral straightness against which to COMPARE. Who decided what then was the moral straight line ? That is universally straight.

Suggesting God is suppose to be a thought beneath our intelligence ?

Who then determines the absolute straightness against which we notice our moral line is askew with, off, crooked, in need of straightening ?

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."

So a moral argument for God's existence is obviously wrong?

If you can stand outside yourself and I can stand outside myself and everyone can stand outside of themselves ... it stands to reason that the ability was bestowed by a Creator who standing 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:

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.

Aside from the ad hom like dismissals in the end, what do we really have here ? Ie. "Trust me about all these bad philosophical arguments."

I'll digest his conslusion a bit and comment latter.

Maybe LemmonJello could refer to Thomas Nagel specifically arguing against a moral argument for God's existence.

These comments seem to be mostly about escaping the absurd which he apparently feels is not necessary? Or giving some meaning to life is to ESCAPE.

Like if we say 2 + 2 = 4 we are "escaping" into the answer of 4?

I'll think about this.

@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.

Still on the OP?

If LemonJello declines to reprise his cogent arguments on that 35 page thread - for which he provided the link so that we can all see the arguments for ourselves - are you going to declare that you've run rings around him?

I suppose at this point, the motivation of theistic escapism

He calls contemplating that a universal absolute moral standard is attributed to an absolute and universal moral Governor is "escapism".

The implication seems to be a macho attitude about it. Keep a stiff upper lip and embrace the absurd. There is no final OUGHT of human ethics. Get use to it. Buck up like a man.

An appeal to the machismo within us calling consideration of an Ultimate Moral Law Giver "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.

Okay. Nagel's alternative is what ?

There is no ultimate moral being or reference for human beings?

And so what if we have an answer which contains some amount of mystery ?

Is it less mysterious to believe man's moral sense is do to good atoms and bad atoms in the grey matter of the brain? Can he show us a molecule of good and a molecule of bad in a Godless purely material universe?

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:

I'll think about this tonight.

@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.

It’s an insult to your intelligence simply because it doesn’t fit into your way of thinking. Do you believe your way of thinking the only correct way of thinking?

This way of thinking isn’t even consistent with your belief in moral relativism.

@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?