The problem is about our *knowledge* of morality. Given Moral Platonism, things are good or evil in virtue of facts about abstract objects which we cannot know about. But, this problem can be avoided if God exists. I explain how (in a different context) here: ua-cam.com/video/YJJlSXlLUss/v-deo.html
@@charliethecoyote2896 If morality comes from God, and all of Christianity is true, you can know morality by reading his commands in the Bible. Also the Holy Spirit will lead you. (Apologetics Squared has a vid against Zod and how God didn’t arbitrarily choose morality.)
@@charliethecoyote2896 For the last two questions, I would watch the video I mentioned against Zod. The Holy Spirit is one of the three persons in the one essence of God. God would never contradict himself, or promote evil. (This channel has a vid on why God is not evil.) The Holy Spirit has seven fruits. If you are not being antagonistic, and truly want to know if God exists, I recommend watching this video:ua-cam.com/video/YrXjmHdA1tg/v-deo.html
@@charliethecoyote2896 There are a myriad of reasons as to why I believe the Bible is true. It is like asking someone why they love their mother. I would not do it justice. I am not the one to dictate who God gives his graces to. He is kind and merciful. If he only gave his graces to those that know every truth fully, no one would receive it. A non-Christian can surely give a passionate, Spirit-filled, speech on the importance of, say, giving to the poor. However, he could not give a Spirit-filled speech on why the Bible is false. Because again, God speaks only truth and would not contradict himself. I am most familiar with Aquinas’ second way. The existence of essences is not inherent, and must have been infused by subsistent existence itself, aka God. The First Cause is God. Subsistent Existence is God. It is not shoehorning in the word God, these are simply the definitions of God. Subsistent existence coincides perfectly with God’s divine name: I Am That I Am. The Classical Theist channel has another video on how the Incarnation is compatible with the God you can come to know in philosophy. There are a lot of bases you’d have to cover before you get to understanding animal sacrifice. The Old Testament comes from a vastly different culture than ours. If you read it without a companion that explains the context, you can walk away with very false impressions that do not align with the author’s intent.
@@charliethecoyote2896 I suppose the first part is true, although I began my search with God. I may be missing your point with the second part. The Holy Spirit inspired the authors of the Bible and provided information about himself. Are you suggesting there’s a contradiction? I do recommend watching that video about the second way. I was trying to find simpler ways of writing subsistent existence. To be God is to be “to be”. Other things that he has given existence to participate in it imperfectly. 28 minutes in for the video- Pure existence has something analogous yet not altogether different from intellect and will, which are components of what it means to be personal in the Aristotelian sense of the word. This is because the existence of things is grounded in pure existence, and yet, pure existence cannot be affected or caused by anything to create that which shares existence derivatively, since anything prior to pure existence would necessarily be non-being, so the creation of all things by subsistent existence itself would necessarily have to be a free act. Free action is the definitional principle by which we determine something as willful. So, while will in God is not one and the same as will in humans, say, it cannot be denied that what can be demonstratively be ascribed with God in this sense is at least related to will in humans. This relation is not merely metaphorical. If there is will, there must also be intellect.
"...but we all understand what the special property is, and we've named it morality" "we don't all agree on what the standard is" Hmmm. That seems like saying "we all understand that one color is better than the others, we just don't agree on which color". Does that mean there is a color that is objectively better than the others? At the end you say that we can replace "facts about preferences" by whatever the skeptic tries to reduce morality to. But the thing is, in that case, the skeptic would obviously disagree with premise 2 (since that would be their definition of morality). So this argument has 0 convincing power :/
The color analogy doesn't work because we don't understand that one color is better than the others; we understand that we prefer some colors, but that's it. Morality is obviously more than preference. I don't just prefer to help people; helping people is *actually* good. Also, I think that the formulation I used could be improved; I should reformulate premises 1 and 2 to: 1) If morality has no metaphysically special grounding, then morality is reducible. 2) Morality is not reducible. I think (2) has a lot going for it. Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared The thing is, it's obvious to you that morality is more than preference. It isn't obvious to me at all. In fact, my daily experience of morality is exactly what I would expect if morality was something subjective developed by an evolved species trying to survive. It's obvious to me that morality isn't objective. Of course, how obvious something is to me has no bearing on its truth :) About your new premises, 1 seems now unjustified. Color is not reducible yet it has no metaphysically special grounding. This is also the case for a ton of subjective things. In fact, our subjective experiences are always the best examples of irreducible things. If morality is irreducible, that actually seems to indicate that it is subjective in nature!
@@Nickesponja // The thing is, it's obvious to you that morality is more than preference. It isn't obvious to me at all. // I don't buy that. I don't think you really chalk up your views on rape and torturing children to preference. You know it's something more. // Of course, how obvious something is to me has no bearing on its truth :) // Obviously. :) // About your new premises, 1 seems now unjustified. Color is not reducible yet it has no metaphysically special grounding. This is also the case for a ton of subjective things. In fact, our subjective experiences are always the best examples of irreducible things. // Unfortunately, we've hit an impasse because I do think that the experience of color needs some sort of metaphysically special grounding! I don't think purely physical things, on their own, can give rise to purely mental things like "seeing color." So, we need something like a soul grounding the existence of these mental items. That's another argument for theism! But, I think we can sidestep this disagreement with a distinction: there is a difference between a perception of an irreducible thing, and an irreducible perception of a thing. If I(x)="x is irreducible" and P(x)="the perception of x," we can distinguish between I(P(x)) and P(I(x)). Let's say J is a jigsaw puzzle. Now, it may be true that I(P(J)); my perception of the jigsaw puzzle is irreducible. But that's different from saying that the thing I am perceiving is irreducible, P(I(J)); a jigsaw puzzle can be reduced! I'm not saying that I(P(morality)) (which is true), but that P(I(morality)). We perceive that morality is not reducible to other things. Just as easily as I perceive that a jigsaw puzzle *can* be broken up into puzzle pieces, I see that morality *cannot* be broken up into statements about the state of the universe or counterfactuals. Now, what about my "morally blind" man analogy? Well, I know that humans actually already perceive morality as an irreducible thing. The "morally blind" man analogy was to try to bring this knowledge to the surface, and clarify it (it is a very difficult concept to explain!). I wasn't trying to show that in virtue of the morally blind man's inability to understand morality, we know that morality is irreducible. My goal was to make crystal clear this notion that, starting from the land of "the way things are," it is impossible to traverse to the land of "the way things ought to be." I did this by trying to get my audience to imagine a man starting out in that former land. Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared I don't think morality is "just preference" (I still do not find that claim obvious btw) but I do think that it is subjective in nature (and I do find that obvious). "I don't think purely physical things can give rise to purely mental things" That's a big claim. When you take antidepressants your mental state changes. When you get hit in the head you can lose memories. It seems blatantly obvious that physical things can give rise to mental things. If you want to stick a soul as an intermediary in all of those situations, and claim that the situations are impossible to explain without appealing to a soul, well, that's a BIG claim. Also unfalsifiable, no matter how well we can explain how physical things give rise to mental things, you can always stick a supernatural soul in there. And also useless, since you can't describe the mechanisms by which the soul alters the mind. How could you possibly justify that claim? With that distinction you mention, your first premise would be: "if morality doesn't have a metaphysically special grounding, then we would perceive morality as being reducible". Is this correct? That premise seems much weaker. Why would our personal, subjective perception of morality give us reliable information about its objective nature? Not to mention a lot of people would say that they perceive morality as being reducible, perhaps not to preference, but to some other things. Those people would probably say that what they mean by "morality" is not the same thing to which that man is blind. Matt Dillahunty is one of these, for example.
I'd love to debate the nature of consciousness, but a video on that specifically is on my to-do list so I'm going to defer to then. :) Now my first premise is still that: 1) If morality has no metaphysically special grounding, then morality is reducible. My distinction about perception and irreducibilty was to clarify about color. Our subjective personal perceptions of reality are the only way we learn things about the objective world. I know there is a chair because I have a subjective, personal perception of seeing a chair. I perceive morality is a certain way. My perceptions can be mistaken, but the "default option" is to go off of our perceptions. Otherwise, why believe there is actually a physical universe? If someone thinks morality is reducible, then they may very well be morally blind, or more probably are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I think Dillahunty is in the latter camp. :)
04:33 "we all know and experience that there is one standard which has something more to it" I experience the opposite: different standards of morality in time (eg human/women/gay/animal rights movements ) and space (e.g. christian contries vs islamic ones). Furthermore people from the same location in the same period of time can have different standards (eg trolley problem).
I don't think you understand; you *do* experience that one standard which has something more to it; the standard which people lived by that justified slavery was the wrong one. Those people didn't have a difference of preference; they were *wrong*. Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared I don't think you understand; you do experience that multiple standards and each of them has something more to it; You never proved that the standard which people lived by that justified slavery was the wrong one that those people didn't have a difference of preference but they were *wrong*.
I don't need to prove something to you that you already believe. I'm pretty sure you already believe that a pro-slavery standard is wrong *and* that's not your mere preference. Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared uh you do realize the bible is okay with slavery and even tells people how to treat there slaves so yeah that is not a good example
Objective principles DO NOT need a standard. It’s beyond me why people can’t understand this. Does God have to exist for mathematics to be objective? Could God just flat out change what 2+2 equals or just change the value of pi? No, it’s why mathematics is objective. Objective principles don’t need a standard or a law giver or any such thing. Morality is and has always been about principles and guidelines that we come up to maximize human happiness and productivity in communal environments. How does religion have a monopoly on this? As if religious morals had a great record of success
@Oscar [An angel from the Lord] Perez Once again, if morality is indeed objective, it should need no standard or moral giver. As is the case with mathematics. The fact that there are many ways of leading a life does not mean morality can’t be objective.
@Oscar [An angel from the Lord] Perez dude, when did I say morality and math are the same? Jesus. How can I a have a remotely decent conversation when you don’t even read, let alone understand, what I’m saying? If morality is OBJECTIVE, it should be LIKE math in that regard. It’s NOT dependent upon some authoritarian figure that decides what is and isn’t. As Christians often claims. Once again, for the quintillionth time, objective principles DO NOT RELY UPON SOURCES OF AUTHORITY. How do you determine your morals? How? How do you figure out the OBJECTIVE moral aspect of any moral issue? Enlighten me.
@Oscar [An angel from the Lord] Perez No, it means that finding what’s objective can be very difficult and you have to define the terms. Is a model t objectively inferior to a modern Ferrari? Almost certainly yes. It doesn’t mean the Model T sucked or that it couldn’t be used. This is a rough analogy and morality is far, far more complex and nuanced.
I understand the argument, but I don't think it really holds up when you look at the real world. I might prefer red apples, and you green apples. Unless one of us is being a jerk, we're willing to admit that these are simply preferences. When it comes to moral issues, this is generally not the case. Why try to stop Hitler, after all murdering Jews was his "preference". What makes Jeffrey Dahmer so bad? He just "preferred" raping and killing people. You can contrive whatever argument you want but you and I have some sort of sense that these things are abhorrent. We are willing to say "you are wrong" when we perceive something is wrong. Every time we do that, we appeal to a standard that is beyond ourselves, whether we believe it or not. The Bible says that God's moral law is written on each of our hearts. Even though we may come to different conclusions about what exactly good and evil are, we all have a sense that they exist.
@@Pyr0Ben Another example besides Hitler and Dahmer could include Joshua. Why oppose the genocide of Joshua in the old testament? He just "preferred" to listen to God and utterly destroyed many Canaanite groups. We both have some sort of sense that genocide is abhorrent. It might seem as if we are appealing to a standard that is beyond ourselves, but I'm not aware of any other source besides humanity that produces standards.
@@mesplin3 It seems like we agree. We agree that evil, abhorrent things exist. By what grounds can you and I make that observation and be convinced that we're right? If it's just subjective perspective, neither of us are justified in even having an opinion, much less call anyone else "wrong" for THEIR perspective. However, if "good" and "evil" DID have real, objective meaning, and we were simply making our own observations about it, then now we're getting somewhere! You say you're not aware what external source could provide an objective standard for us to search for. It seems that you at least have some sense that one exists. We all do! I think a moral God could be the best explanation for the good and evil we observe, even if we can disagree which certain things qualify as good and evil.
@@Pyr0Ben I'm of the opinion that we can draw boundaries between things that we consider evil and things we consider good. Many common boundaries are often codified into law or some other standard. For example, it is illegal to murder because most of humanity decided to make murder illegal. However, morality is not often codified into a standard. However, I'll assume that morality is objective. What does this imply? Is morality useful in predicting another being's behavior?
The reality is morality is absolutely subjective and arbitrary, as proved by vegans crying about people eating animals, and us normal people not caring. Morality is a tool, used in different ways to different ends.
But you could just as well argue reality is subjective and arbitrary, as proved by different people's beliefs about religion, truthers, flat earthers, etc.
In the book The Ultimate Proof the concept of morality as a man made construct is broken down. It is the most convincing case for God being the source of morality I have ever read and rebuttals every criticism I found in the comments to this video.
If the book is "The Ultimate Proof of Creation," I highly doubt it. I've listened to the author, and he overstates his position very heavily. Frequently using both fallacious reasoning and inadequate evidence. Additionally, if I remember correctly, he has signed a statement of faith, which would compromise his ability to fully evaluate the evidence and come to the most appropriate hypothesis proportional to what is presented.
How do you know we would ALL say there was this same one standard? Each of us would say some standard was special, but we differ as to which is special. Is abortion permissible? Is capital punishment? Is eating meat? Is $15 min wage? Is slavery? Nuking Japan in WW2? We disagree on a lot of things, but each is confident she is right and the other wrong. Why think there is a metaphysically real special "better" at all? My explanation: each person thinks his own "better" is the REAL TRUE "better".
I agree with you, but I also know that most people actually would agree on what is right and wrong.. it's only that in many situations we as a society don't know some truth or fact, so people are left to make both logical and moral judgements by themselves. If we knew when exactly a baby became conscious, or could feel pain or something, while we may not come to a definitive agreement about if or when abortion is permissible, the scope of this problem would narrow greatly.
@@choppers3474Ok, let’s say that we carried out a survey and discovered that 90% of people agreed on at least one moral claim: the claim that causing harm to an entity incapable of defending itself is wrong. What have we discovered? 90% of people agree on something. Does that make those people correct? If those people *also* agree that the world is flat, it doesn’t follow that the world is flat. To claim that something - anything - is true *because* a majority agree on it is to commit the democratic fallacy. Alongside this, it doesn’t tell us what it is for something to actually *be* morally wrong. We don’t know that all of those 90% all mean the same thing when they agree with each other, and we don’t know *why* they have that belief. Moral philosophers (the only people who have ever taken questions like this seriously) have never managed to agree on what moral language means. The question of what we *ought* to mean when we use it is itself a moral question, and we cannot answer it until we already *know* the answer. If there *is* an argument for God’s existence (and all the evidence indicates that there isn’t) it’s *definitely* not going to be based on ‘morality’.
Morality doesn't "exist". It's a concept about behaviour/actions regarding a certain goal. Therefore it's grounding has always a subjective foundation. A God doens't make it objective. The example you gave of morality in regard of human flourishing is actually a good steel man of (at least according to my view) secular morality. Props! The metaphysical grounding for its morality is our society based on empathy, reason and evidence. Point 4 is a non-sequitur, therefore the argument is flawed.
Can't we just bite the bullet and say that morality doesn't exist and what we experience as what we think are moral values are just really strong subjective preferences?
Why say something that makes no sense at all? Is rape and sexual assault objectively, always wrong? Or is calling rape and sexual assault morally wrong just a subjective preference? Everyone, everywhere knows that those things are always wrong because they are harmful and hurtful to others. It's not a subjective preference.
@@Mire-Drive Psychopaths are abnormal and the violent and emotionally callous psychopaths behave in ways that are morally wrong. Just because they think it's ok to harm others doesn't make it right.
You said in one of the comments that Premise 2, “‘morality’ is more than facts about preferences”, is based on our subjective moral experiences. But that seems to make your idea of ‘morality’ just an extrapolation from all the different “better1”, “better2” moralities that are based on preferences, sort of an imagined Platonic ideal, and you don’t establish that such an ideal exists or even makes sense of talk about (i.e. can you define it and use it without running into contradictions?). Saying that it is a real but mysterious component of the universe that emerges somehow from our subjective intuitions is pretty dubious. As a rough analogy, I might have some ideas about what things are beautiful, based on appearances that are correlated with health and human flourishing. Different people have different preferences related to beauty, of course. I might have a subjective feeling that there is some ideal, absolute, objective Beauty (which resembles my wife closely, of course 🙂), but most people would just dismiss that as a meaningless, undefinable abstraction. Indeed, ideal Beauty and the ideal “morality” that you talk about seem to correspond very naturally to the imagined extrapolations of the human preferences that were developed over millions of years of evolution (with a heaping spoonful of arbitrariness inevitably thrown in), rather than to any real thing that exists in the world, that would need some special metaphysical grounding. After all, if we had evolved to resemble very intelligent black widow spiders, our ideas of beauty and morality would doubtless be very different. At the end of the day, morality may just be nothing more than what we can all agree on, and the desire to proclaim an “objective morality” may be nothing more than an attempt to say that your “better” is better than my “better”. Just like proclaiming an objective Beauty would be no more than an attempt to say that your wife is prettier than mine. (She’s not; mine is objectively prettier. 🙂) Anyway, interesting video and cute graphics. If you do a follow-up, I’d suggest trying to bolster and discuss Premise 2 a bit more. Have a nice day! 🙂
Isnt saying morality is grounded in the outflow of God's nature thr same thing as reducing morality down to simpler concepts ???? Can someone eplain, im really stuck.
@@AnonYmous-yj9ib ??? I agree with the moral argument, I just think some of the premises of this one would end up applying to God. Maybe divine simplicity helps solve it, but either way I don't see how in this argument morality is not being reduced to a simpler concept when it's grounded in God
Why cant moralitys irriducibility be purely due to subjectivity? Like in your morally blind example, if he sees suffering without reason, and knows he himself would not want to suffer without reason, then he can infer that to him personally, such suffering is bad, and the absence of such would be good. Why does morality necessarily have to be any more than that? We all choose what we believe is good or bad, and that choice dictates our actions. Those actions being our only connection between observable reality and our perceptions of morality. And that perception is only applicable to ourselves. What you or I, or any higher power deems is morally good or bad, obserably has no impact on what others percieve as good or bad. Thus, in all practical sense, morality is only a personal, subjective idea of what actions we deem worthy or unworthy, based on our own experiences and perceptions. As nice as it would be for there to be more to it than that, I don't know any reason why there would be.
Yeah, that's because not even God himself can explain why something is inherently good or bad. That's why, in a way of escaping the problem, they explain morality as being part of God's essence, which is just a cope out, and doesn't explain shit. Another thing that I find funny is that the bible held it's position already on the euthyphro problem, as in the context that God says homossexuality, among with other things, is wrong, being that it has nothing inherently neither bad nor good about it.
Morality does require God, but not for the reasons presented here. Morality requires God because morality is made of directives and values - hence why we talk of 'moral directives' and 'moral values'. These are not just anyone's directives and values, however. If I direct you to do X, it does not follow that you're morally obliged to do it; and likewise if I value X, it does not follow that X has moral value. And that goes for you too, of course, and everyone else. What is distinctive about moral directives is that they are directives of Reason. That is why, unlike my directives, you invariably have reason to do what is morally right, and reason not to do what is morally wrong. If you want a fancy term, this is referred to as the 'inescapable rational authority' of moral norms. That is also why it is by reason - the faculty - that we gain primary awareness of matters of right and wrong, good and bad. We do not see, touch, hear, smell or taste morality; morality is something we are aware of by rational intuition. So, moral directives and values and directives and values of Reason. Directives require a director and values a valuer. That is, the idea of a directive floating around by itself is incoherent - as incoherent as the notion of a dent floating around by itself. Likewise for a value. Directives are always someone's and so too are values. But the only kind of entity that can issue a directive or value something is a mind. My mug cannot direct me to drink from it, or value me doing so. Why? It hasn't got a mind. And even if you think mugs can do such things, then that is only because you suppose mugs to have minds. It is minds and minds alone that value things and issue directives. It is the stuff of madness to think otherwise. As Reason, the source of moral directives and values, is singular and an issuer of directives and bearer of values, then Reason is a mind. That just follows as a matter of logic. And that mind - the mind of Reason - would qualify as God. Why? Well, Reason determines what is and is not possible. Why are square circles not possible? Because the idea involves a contradiction and Reason says contradictions are not features of reality. Thus for Reason herself, all things are possible as Reason herself can say whatever she wants. Thus, the mind of Reason is omnipotent. And the mind of Reason would also be omniscient, for knowledge is made of justified true beliefs, and justifications are made of directives of Reason......thus Reason would be the arbiter of all knowledge and thus omniscient. And the mind of Reason would be omnibenevolent as well, because moral values are made of her values and she is omnipotent. Thus, if she disvalued any aspect of herself, she could change it. Therefore, we can conclude that Reason is exactly as she values herself being. And that is just what it is to be maximally morally valuable. Thus, morality requires Reason and Reason is God. Therefore morality requires God.
@@AnonYmous-yj9ib First, learn some manners. Second, I did present the argument. I can only assume you don't really know what an argument is or how to identify premises. Here is the first syllogism. 1. Moral commands are commands that have a single source: Reason 2. Only a mind can be source of commands 3. Therefore, moral commands are commands that have a single mind - Reason - as their source. That's the FIRST step of the argument. Either identify a false premise - and demonstrate its falsity by showing how its negation follows from premises more self-evident to reason than mine - or dispute the validity of the argument.
@@AnonYmous-yj9ib You don't know what 'sound' means. It's a property of valid arguments that have true premises. If the premises of that argument are true, then so is the conclusion.
Morality based in god, is not moral for one simple reason. It comes from the fear of consequences, not from empathy. Morality is doing what’s right regardless of laws, social rules, etc. Someone who only abides to the law because they fear imprisonment is not guided by kindness, and will ultimately not act kind.
If morality is ‘doing what’s right’, then what is ‘right’? How do we work it out? More importantly, why ought we to do the ‘right’ rather than the ‘wrong’ thing?
8:10 You say morality is not reducible, but DCT is reductionist both in terms of values and duties. A reduction is when you have two things that you initially thought to be distinct but it turns out to be one thing; e.g. water and H2O, or the morning star and the evening star. In the case of DCT you have good = God or God's nature, and being obligated to x = being commanded by God to x. It's a reduction. To have a nonreductive view, you need something like Moore's non-naturalism or Cornell realism. But maybe you're thinking of reduction differently.
For my argument to work, you'd need to focus on a DCT where the commands of God are not identical with moral obligations, but automatically and necessarily have the property of "being moral." So, under this DCT, God commanding z is not *identical* (in the strong sense) with an obligation to z, but one is obligated to z iff God commands z. Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared "but automatically and necessarily have the property of "being moral." " You call whatever it is that makes something have the property of being moral and other things not have the property of being moral "the grounding of morality." If God's commands have the property of being moral, then we want to know (according to you) what makes them have the property of being moral. Just claiming that they "automatically and necessarily" have this property does not explain their having it. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the commands themselves explain why they have this property. So, on your own account, you are not telling us anything about the grounding of morality.
@carterwoodrow4805 Ok. Let's take this step by step. God's commands are necessarily moral. This is because God's commands are an outflowing of his essence. How have we determined that his essence is the grounding of morality? The argument is insufficient even if I granted all the premises as it only gets you to probably. Or more accurately, "only possibly because I have no definitive evidence or proof of existence but a negative cannot be definitively proven." This same argument can be used to ground morality in ancient gods or even the devil. Or a metaphysical rock. The idea of an agent grounding morality comes from nowhere besides the preexisting acceptance of the idea or a similar idea.
yes but why should I care about survival? why should anything take my energy for an inkling of care? if nothing truly matters then why bother having morals especially if its not hard wired into my mind to begin with?
What about hurting yourself to benefit others? Is that not objective morality? Because it’s not solely for your benefit and your brain and evolution would only want things to help you, but something acts against that. Isn’t that morality?
How would you defend if someone says that morality is something that is in our minds as a result of evolution. For example, what if evolution made our minds have morality to increase the benefits for all organism. In the same way evolution would make something like reproduction, creatures don't need to reproduce, it's something made for the continuation of the species itself, so for the same reason reproduction exists could not morality exist from evolution to keep the species alive(or at least in a good position)?
That sounds like more of an ad-hoc excuse than a viable explanation. Tons of animals eat their own children and kill each other indiscriminately. By any "evolutionary" standpoint, any metaphysical concept like morality or justice should not exist. But they do indeed exist. Evolution falls short at explaining how a single complex structure could come about by chance, it certainly can't explain these innate aspects of humanity.
@@Pyr0BenOther animals have super refined claws, speed, power, teeth, poison and senses. Humans have super refined social skills, empathy and intelligence.
1. Why should morality need to have a metaphysically special grounding? What if morality doesn't exist, and what we call morality is just our emotional premises trying to justify as being good or bad something that make us feel good or bad, thus, calling this morality? 2. How can God justify practically why murder is wrong? It sounds like a logical problem if we say that because something is (in that case, God's existence), we ought to do something else (act "morally"), and it sounds hypocrite to demand that we justify our moral opinions, but not to demand the same thing from God.
Wonderfully put together video and response when Atheists like Dawkns refer to morality by social construct (agreed upon 'human flourishing'). Your video honestly helps a lot. I'm going through a period of battling doubt and it can be really hard when concepts like moral relativism and postmodernism are shoved down your throat by society every day. God loves us all and wants what's best for us. If there's one thing I've learned trying to determine our own reality/be our own God always fails! Thank you so much for all the time and effort you took to make this video and keep making more please! Thanks to channels like you and Inspiring Philosophy faith is not illogical it is reasonable and not just a leap into the unknown. May God bless your ministry work!
He’s talking a load of nothing, first off he’s assuming everyone agrees on human flourishing a sociopath believes that there life is great to other peoples, second even if god exists it’s arbitrary because he decided what constitutes as wrong and before you say it’s in his nature if god is all powerful and all knowing then he would have to have decided his own nature and if he decided that he can change it. Without god it’s not arbitrary because it’s necessary to our society.
@@valkyrieloki1991 You could easily reject the whole argument by stating that morality is subjective, which we see reflected in shifting moral standards over time and across different cultures. So the evidence is rather in favor of morality being subjective. And the whole idea that morality is "obviously more than just your preferences" is never justified, its just begging the question by assuming what it intends to prove via an argument from incredulity. So fundamentally this is actually an extraordinarily bad argument.
Can our morality just been pinned down to survival, dont kill, dont steal, all things that help the group survive, kinda like the evolutionary morality argument?
The problem with using some contrived evolution-centric grounding for morality is, anyone could do the exact same. I could say that in terms of evolution, cannibalizing small crippled children is perfectly good. After all, I'm getting nutrients, and protecting the integrity of the gene pool. Why is that so wrong? This is the kind of logic Hitler used to eradicate people groups he deemed "less evolved" than the Aryans. I could make an argument that because women are biologically weaker, they ought to be treated as inferior. After all, many aninals do the same thing and it works out for them.
@@ploppysonofploppy6066 if you'd watch the video you'd understand what i meant. morality might have a purpose but its purpose doesn't define everything about it. for example why are we all agreeing that morally, incest is wrong, even when done with protection and 0 chances of a baby being conceived. don see how that would help with survival. we all agree that morally it is the right thing to do for a parent to raise their kids but that doesn't have anything to do with survival. see your idea of what morality is only works on a very simplified level of problems associated with it, but when taken into consideration the more complex issues it doesn't really stand. morality is a rule book for objective right and objective wrong and objectivity can only come from an objective source, which being a god. subjective morality leads the problem where if everyone has their own morality, no one does.
@@affif330 You really think I didn't watch the video? He makes an unsubstantiated assertion within 25 seconds, the rest falls like a hoise of cards. Incest increases the risk of extreme mutations I suppose. Livestock breeders are always keen to bring in "fresh blood" to avoid this. Makes sense that it should be against our instincts. You have made your own assertion that morality comes from God. You're making a lot of assumptions there. I'll copy and paste them from another post I did recently. See what you think. Because I think these assumptions are less likely. 1. That there is an objective morality, (things are seldom black and white). 2. That god is even interested in guiding us on morality, (he may want us to show that we can do it ourselves). 3. That god is the best source of morality, (if we believe the bible, he's done some terrible things). 4. That man is not the source of morality. (Man wrote the bible, but a lot of the morality therein was written elsewhere beforehand). 5. Finally, the big one, we need to know that there is a god in the first place. I've not spoken to anyone who can answer one of these.
@@ploppysonofploppy6066 1. things don't have to be black and white, when i say objective morality i don't mean, for example, since god says killing bad, you cant kill even in self defense. objective morality could include every situation possible. god can(and does) establish a hierarchy of these moralities and rules so make it easier to understand. 2. This has 0 correlation as to why we need god for morality. like it doesn't matter if god is or isn't interested, wed still need a reference point to measure good or bad. 3. God has to be the best source of morality. if god deems that rape is a moral obligation, it becomes a moral obligation, BECAUSE god says so. like the whole concept of god has to be an all powerful intelligent all good deity, a perfect being that transcends the idea of perfect itself. there's no other way to "measure" good or bad, good or evil, literally no basis at all. qualities only make sense when there's a reference. you cant judge what's good or what isn't without a reference point of what is good and what isn't. 4. I agree. 5. Was this the big assertion you were talking about? really dude? i'm baffled if it is, if it isn't, good job. god doesn't have to exist for this argument of "morality without a god doesn't exist". the mere concept of god is enough to get the point across. morality is irrational without a god. as long as we both understand that we are both referring to an all powerful being with omnipotence and omniscience when we say god, that is enough to get the point across. reminder we aren't talking about any god of any religion. were talking of a being that is omnipotent and omniscient. not talking about the christian, muslim, hindu or any god in particular. it is completely negligible of a god really exists or doesn't.
It is likely that morality is an emergent property of some biological species, including humans. We are biologically predisposed to behave in certain ways and favour certain behaviours in others. All that appears to separate human morality from dog morality is complexity. A large aspect of human morality is added by how our awareness of self and our awareness of another's perception of self interacts with our moral sense. There is no need for any metaphysical grounding.
Basically. Christians also get hung up on standards for some reason. Standards are not that compelling. It is trivially easy to have a standard; anyone can have a standard. What is compelling and important is what a standard is composed of and why. Also, people can have the same standard for different reasons.
I have a easier way to explain this. For objective morality to exist. There must be a someone outside humans to establish the standard of morality for all humans to look up to. Otherwise morality is subjective and each person is its own standard, and no standard is better or worse than other because it’s subjective. So in order for you to believe that giving pies to a widows is better than kicking babies objectively for everybody, there must be a standard outside humans. Otherwise your morality is as valid as someone who thinks that kicking babies is better than serving pies.
If your morality is contingent on "someone", it's still subjective. And that definition allows for alien to be "objective" sources of morality as they aren't human.
Think about it like fundamental physical quantities. Like distance. Distance is the length of space between to points. However, length is the measurement of something from one of it's ends to another. This measurement is in fact a distance. Distance cannot be further reduced from the term distance yet it is grounded in the concept of space existing between to objects.
I really enjoyed the clear format of this video but I don’t think you proved that moral truth exists. I know it’s an 8 minute video but it seems pretty central to the argument.
I agree, I just have an issue saying that The God of The Bible fits this description. I too ground morality in God, but I feel like we have very different definitions of God. When you say God, you mean Yahweh, when I say God, I mean Plato's idea of The One, The Good. It isn't a personal god, it is a completly transcendent God from which all things emanate. But I do respect Christianity in a lot of ways, I feel like if Platonism and Hellenic thought wasn't supplanted by Christianity, that it would have reached very similar conclusions, it would have just looked more like Monism than strict Monotheism.
I think this argument is pretty easily debunked by simply pointing out that most atheists are fine with morals being subjective. And from what I gather reading the comments, you don't really have an actual response to this beyond personal incredulity. Since that's not really a logical argument (and actually, argument from incredulity is in general, a logical fallacy), I think your argument fundamentally fails to offer a convincing proof for God. And really the idea that atheists couldn't possibly think raping a baby is more than just preference is kind of silly. Of course we consider it to be stronger than mere preference in the sense of which ice cream flavour we prefer. But no one said that subjective feelings had to have the same lukewarm emotional impact on us regardless what those feelings are about. It is easily possible to say that we can have "weak preferences" and "strong preferences". And moral values could easily be synonymous with strong preferences. Or use whatever word you like. But this notion that it couldn't possibly just be a very strongly felt emotion, that it has to exist somehow in the ether as some "objective value" is silly and baseless, because you're making an emotional argument. Just because I feel something deeply, doesn't mean it really exists in the world. If that were true then that would lead to all sorts of absurd conclusions, like love being physically real and more than just chemicals. Just because you can experience something in your mind does not somehow automatically grant it existence in the world as some objective fact. Crazy people experience hallucinations all the time. You can hallucinate an oasis in the desert if you are dying of thirst. Also in general...I think this argument suffers from the same God of the gaps fallacy as many other theist arguments do. For example, theists will say, I can't think of any other explanation for lightning except Zeus, so Zeus is the explanation. That is bad reasoning. And the same bad reasoning is used in the teleological or fine-tuning argument, where theists will repeat "I can't see an other reason for fine-tuning, except God, so God did it". Unless you have a good cause or reason to think that there really are no other explanations, just assuming that there aren't any except for the one you can think of, is generally invalid reasoning. And it is just as invalid to claim that God explanations are more probable. I mean if you don't know what all the possibilities are...then how can you even begin to logically establish their probabilities? It would be like assigning a probability of rolling a 1 on a die with an unknown number of sides. It fundamentally makes no sense. Similarly with morality. It could easily be the case that objectives might exist morally in some strange way. Heck maybe the universe is a hologram inside of some kind of endless physical computer that has certain moral values baked into it. And it may even be that we discover this hundreds of millions of years into the future. Just assuming that it doesn't exist is just as fallacious an argument as other forms of God of the gaps have been up until now. In conclusion I think its safe to say this an other arguments for God can be easily discarded.
If our moral standard is “don’t kill, rape, and steal” and other stuff along those lines, then personally I think anyone who has a propensity to violent behavior like this will do so with or without an “objective moral standard.” The vast majority of human s aren’t _inherently_ predisposed to violence, they have to be conditioned for it. And by that metric is why I don’t really care if ‘objective morality’ doesn’t really exist, and see the whole argument as just another lukewarm theist argument. Simply put, behavior most people ever would consider immoral still existed even after the establishment of Christianity in all it’s forms.
Moral relativists often point to the is-ought problem, which says no facts about reality logically and intrinsically imply facts about morality. e.g. That something is good or bad for human wellbeing doesn't in itself logically imply that it is morally good or bad. We additionally need the premise that human wellbeing is good to conclude that. But there actually are things about reality that can be intrinsically good or bad. Our feelings can be intrinsically good or bad. We directly experience those qualities of them.
I take a view like Bishop Robert Barron does. That it isn't as much an argument as it is just a fact. He explains really well in an interview he had with Cam Bertuzzi on Capturing Christianity.
Why does the existence of a soul imply that God exists? Are you suggesting that we are all extensions of a cosmic consciousness or something like that? What evidence is there for this?
Maybe this verse does not necessarily apply, but I sort of think about it when it comes to this kind of stuff. Ephesians 3:8 "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;' I think maybe the reason people always go back and forth on any topic of God is because to put it bluntly God is unsearchable. It says the Father is spirit and that Jesus Christ is the expression of the Father. That if you've seen Christ you have seen the Father, but without Christ we would not know of the Father. I think it's because he is spirit that people have a tough time explaining who or what God is. Because he is beyond understanding. Which is not to say there are things we cannot understand about him, but at the same time understanding him would take an infinite amount of time to do so. This world rejects God probably because he is beyond the understanding of this world. He is the creator of it, but like it says the darkness did not understand the Light.
My only critique is the "classic" moral arguement is short and pithy, otherwise, I think you did a good job for building a case for this particular iteration. 😉
@@charliethecoyote2896 I think what you are classifying as moral is really the definition of ethics. The difference is from deduction or induction. If we see a desired goal, we make choices on what the best is: ethical behavior results. However if we acknowledge that their is an objective good at all, we need to rely on some authority to dictate what that is. We don’t debate why 2+2=4, anymore than we debate that violence against the innocent is wrong, or that theft isn’t good in itself. This is a reliance on moral understanding. This would be defined in the nature of reality, perhaps a reflection of the nature of God.
It's pretty silly to claim that objective morality comes from "God" when this "god" is described as a mind thus rendering this standard as subjective, and this standard is also arbitrary because it's based entirely on "God's" whims rather than any solid explanation as to why the standard should be adhered to, except for the reasoning of 'because I told you so'.
Christians needlessly get hung up on the word and concept of "standard". Standards are not that compelling. It is trivially easy to have a standard; anyone can have a standard. What is compelling is what that standard consists of. And people can have the same or similar standards for different reasons.
I personal have been playing with this formation of the Moral Argument 1) If morality is subjective, contradicting views on a moral topic can arise 2) Contradicting views can not both be true in the same sense 3) Morality cannot be subjective 4) If morality can't be subjective it has to be objective 5) What is the standard for this objective morality? 6) That, we call God. (Alternative ending from p. 5): 5) Whatever this objective standard is, we call God. I would be interested on your thoughts on this formation. Do you think it works? Any objections? God bless you, great video. Cheers :)
You need to reformulate (1) and (2), I think: 1) If morality can be subjective, all contradicting moral opinions are equally valid. 2) Some contradicting moral opinions are not equally valid. 3) Therefore, morality cannot be subjective. 4) If morality cannot be subjective, then it is objective. 5) Therefore, morality is objective. Then we go on from there to identify the standard of the objective morality with God. I believe that God's nature does act as the grounding for morality, but the problem with right away identifying the standard with God is that there are other moral theories that you need to deal with, where morality doesn't come from God yet morality is objective. For example, the view I made up in the video; where souls ground morality (somehow). Your argument would conclude with our souls being God! So, your argument needs some way of combatting these other moral theories that have non-God standards. But please don't let my criticisms in any way deflate you! It's great that you're working at formulating an argument. It make me very happy to see! I wish you the best of luck, God bless! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared I truly thank you for your criticism. It doesn't deflate me at all. It inspires me. It was not, by any means the last formation of this argument. God bless you :)
I'll fix some of your premises: 1) If morality is subjective, contradicting opinions on a moral topic can arise 2) Contradicting opinions can be true for each individual ( ie: Person A says chocolate ice cream is the best flavor, Person B says strawberry ice cream is the best flavor) 3) Morality is subjective 4) If morality is subjective it cannot be objective 5) Different people and cultures have different standards for what is moral 6) No god required to determine what your subjective moral opinion is
Morality seems to sit somewhere between objective and subjective. We act according to the drivers of our human nature, and our nature is informed by our biology. Ergo, we find reasonable moral consensus among other humans. Even Christians believe that their god has created us with a moral sense. The difference is rather than that sense coming from a god, it makes far more sense for that sense to have evolved because it is beneficial for the species.
Atheists acting like they don’t need a reason to be a good person just tells me that they don’t know why what they do is good or bad. People who do things for no reason are usually categorized as insane
According to what *objective standard* are you good? You cannot be "good all on your own," that makes ZERO sense. Unless you're talking about subjective good, which is a useless standard.
@@MiloDCso you think what god ordered and condoned in the OT, like slavery and stoning gays and girls who couldn't prove their virginity based on the hymen/blood myth are moral...got it.
@@KasperKatje ok so you have moral values and those dont match christian ones . I am not christain to respond to your bs but the problem where you got those standards from? and you claim its more moral than relgious ones ,could you give me a source ?
Ok im about to throw quite the shocking bomb into this conversation that’s not going to be comfortable to hear but is important to understand. For this reason I will place it in caps and bold just to emphasize its importance but I am not doing so to be condescending or to shout at anyone, I just want to make sure the main claim is well isolated. *THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE MORALITY EVEN IF GOD EXISTS HOWEVER THIS DOESNT MEAN MORALITY DOESNT MATTER* This is a simple fact of how the terms objective and subjective are defined and what they actually mean. And if we’re going to establish morality without god we should also include a third term called intersubjectivity. Establishing these definitions will necessarily be key to the argument which could be a comment unto its own. I will post that below this one later when I have more time.
I've not watched this yet. But I'll say right from the off that morals are like god.....man made. First you need to prove the existence of your particular brand of god, and then show how it is responsible for ANYTHING yet alone our sense of mortality. Secondly, having read the 'good' book, the character of God in said book is one of the nastiest, vindictive, cruel, spiteful, petty beings I've ever heard of.
There are only objectively good moves in chess when a person a) agrees to play at all, b) agrees to the goal of winning and c) agrees to play by the rules given. None is fixed. Nobody is forced to play chess. The statement "There are objectively good moves in chess to beat your opponent" is true, but it smuggles in the above targets. - The error in the argument given for objective morality is that one cannot objectively define flourishing/wellbeeing. This is allready subjective. The claim just shifts the burden of proof from "morality is objective" to "fluorishing is objective" or "wellbeeing is objective". Dont be fooled by the language trick to smuggle in a positive judgement by the word "well" or the by its definition positive connotation of flourishing. Both are still just boxes where each individual (subject) decides what they may contain and what not. - The error in the argument given for the existence of a god beeing necessary for moral to be objective is the same as for the reverse statement that objectivity of moral proves the existence of a god: Both are a non sequiturs. And this cannot be helped by using a definition of a god linking his existence necessarily to the existence of an objective moral. For this definition would in itself still be a claim with the necessity to be prooven. - However, if one uses a definition of a god that is linked in a necessary way to the objectivity of moral, then this god can be disprooven to exist by prooving moral to be subjective. And that has allready been done, each time some persons couldnt agree on what was morally correct.
🙏🏼 I really needed this explaination, thanks! I was talking to a friend about morality and got stuck when he said that it's based off of "do un to others as you'd have them do to you". This was hard to argue against because it's true, Jesus told us that, but now I see the deeper meaning. ✝ Subsribing!
I bet this is the best meta-ethics has to offer. A friendly tip is to investigate subjects for their own sake rather than trying to make them into an argument for God.
This is easy, my argument is the same one you mentioned that the atheist says, while acknowledging that well being as the basis is subjective. We can make objective facts if we agree subjectively that we care about well being. Morality is not objective.
We create things that don't physically exist and refer to them as facts all the time. This can be called an observer dependant fact. Things like money, marriage, government, professions, titles, rights, etc. It really is the case that money is not an inherent aspect of reality but rather a mind dependant fact. So although money doesn't exist it is nevertheless a fact that I have for instance $20 in my wallet, that I owe my bank x amount of money, that Google made hundreds of billions of dollars last year. These aren't subjective claims but rather observer dependant facts that can be verified with different kinds of evidence including empirical and objective evidence. But none of this changes the fact that money doesn't exist in the universe. Its the ability to use language that allows us to create systems of things that otherwise don't exist in physical reality.
Arbitrarily assigning God or souls as the only good grounding for objective morality is baseless. Even if God exists it is not an undeniable fact that "he" is good or objective. Apologists literally just make those claims up. In fact, God is said to have preferences. If that is true, can he be objective? I am also yet to hear a good refutation of the Euthyphro dilemma.
Meta-ethics, as a philosophical field, has shown that moral realism (the idea that there are ‘moral truths’) is problematic. Such truths, if they existed, would have to be of a completely different kind than *any* other statement we can make, and we would end up having to claim that there is a special field of ‘moral truth’ distinct from other kinds of truth, but this doesn’t answer the question and simply puts us back at the beginning again. Please stop assuming what remains under question. We do not know what ‘morality’ is. We only know that the mere existence of the word, and its use, does not necessitate the existence of anything to which it must refer.
The only way that morality could be objective would be if god existed so you can’t you objective morals to prove god otherwise it’s a circular argument
What about the euphyro dilemma? Also, if God's nature forbids rape then that explanation alone can GROUND morality. I don't see how God is needed for moral realism. Have you looked into Russ Shafer-Landau has a good lecture on why God isn't needed with morality. Some argue God undermines moral realism.
contingency plan sums it up pretty well. with the contingency argument youd need an all powerful being who would have 5 qualities. one of them being all powerful. you cant have 2 all powerful beings, that would take out the meaning out of omnipotent and the idea of it is that somethign omnipotent or all powerful would be more powerful than everythign in the universe combined. if you have 2 of them thats a contradiction of characteristics.
@@affif330 Doesn't Christianity have the trinity? The Bible has at least two gods with very distinct personalities and attributes. They don't seem to always be in communication. Jesus isn't sure of God's plans and feels, at least at one point, abandoned by God.
I just don't get why God is able to define morality but humans aren't if we are made in his image. Simply put... What gives God the right to tell humans what is Good and bad ? I mean if I make my own world and call it The Sims or something and have The Sims do things that are sinful inside that game that I programmed It is still morally bad under God's morality even though I have just made my own universe and define the rules for it. Who's to say the rules that I create for The Sims are immoral? And if there was a God above the God of the Bible then the God of the Bible would have to follow that god's morale. Is it simply just because you have more power than everything else that gives you the right to tell people what is good or bad? No because then I could define reality for anything that I made including artificial intelligence. What I came to was the conclusion that God's holiness is what allows him to define morality........ But now I am wondering what exactly gives holiness the ability to do that. My problem with God right now is he does not want to prove anything to me. I want a near death experience or a prophetic dream or to pray for somebody and have them actually be healed but it seems like the Holy Spirit does not want to interact with me whenever I do that Or try to do it.
Oh dear, you are really mixed up about what makes an objective moral law, as opposed to an objectively good strategy for reaching a goal. There is a lot of can-kicking going on. Your syllogism fails on several points but the main one is that there is no such thing as objective morality, this is NOT the same as having rules of behaviour that lead to good results for people because who is to say A: What a good result looks like in all cases and B: that Human flourishing is objectively good. A problem with moral laws derived from any God is that they actually tend to be quite arbitrary - for instance, laws against same sex relationships, which are actually harmful to individual flourishing.
Why completely overlook evolution? The existence of an evolved morality completely breaks your argument. Just as we have intuitions about size or danger, we have evolved intuitions about right and wrong. And these are not objective, only arbitrary to our ancestors environments.
You defined the grounding of morality as "whatever it is that makes some things have the property of being moral and other things not have the property of being moral" (6:34) Suppose moral facts have no truth-maker (as some facts do e.g. "Baal does not exist") wouldn't that mean they don't need a grounding? This would be an objection to premise 1.
I think you can rephrase it in terms of explanations, rather than truthmakers. The upshot to this is that is good practice to not stop explanations prematurely. So, if moral facts are in principle explainable, we should try to explain them. Have a nice day! :)
Ah, yes.. so what you're saying is that I should go ahead and burn and loot villages because the vikings say that allmighty Odin promised that I will go to valhalla if I die as a warrior, and after that I will make a human sacrifice to the Aztec sun God, and then I will avoid eating cows because eating cows is bad in hinduism, and then partake in some cannibalism because isolated tribes do it, but and then I will eat my dog because eating cats and dogs is okay in china, so I guess I'll snack on some of them too, then I will spread hatred towards everyone who is different from me! - Truly.. morals are 100% objective and definitely come from YOUR religion!
this is not an apologetics toward one or another religion. only that a god needs to exist for morality. like i see you sarcastically saying you'd loot and burn villages but we both know that is under the connotations that those things are wrong and you're trying to make the point that since they're wrong god saying they're right is a contradiction. but on what basis is looting or raping or burning a village even objectively 'wrong' to you? if you're atheistic aren't all these morals arbitrary to you? if you truly believe in subjective morality you would have to disagree with the universal part of the 'universal human rights' issued by UN.
I don’t know if this is true, but I think god is like milk for cereal when it comes to morality (at least when ignoring the origination of the milk). It’s better with God, but it doesn’t need God.
Tell them if they don’t they shall be brought out before the camp and the congregation shall throw stones at him until he dies! That’s what God would command if we refer to Numbers and all throughout the Old Testament. Fortunately he had a human sacrifice that ended his thirst for human sacrifice and now we don’t need to sacrifice to him. But now we can threaten them with eternal human sacrifice, HELL! That’ll scare him, because fear is a great means for getting people to do good.
but if morality is objective and is simply an ought to, therefore stripping it of any meaning and any human flourishing is only additional side effects that we humans perceive to be good for us,, so are the bad, then if this is the nature of morality, if genocide was an objectively moral command by the moral standard itself, it ought to be followed and done and deciding otherwise is immoral? Also it sounds to me it's inducing irrationality to morality,, and considering it as universal laws just like laws in Physics, however what makes morality as experienced by each of us ought to be objective when even the basal experience each of us and throughout history has been changed over and over and progressing to more and more moral state if morality was so immutable in the first place, and the very fact that we can interact and change what we collectively determine to be moral ever since we are apes is evidence that it is indeed different from what we see as eternal physics laws that were not changing since we started studying nature, gravity existed before Newton came up with gravitational constant and the concept of gravity itself
'we directly perceive that there are some moral facts like hurting people is wrong and helping people is good', except later in the video you go on to explain that our perceptions of morality can be incorrect. So, how can we show that 'hurting people is wrong' IS a moral fact? Just because we all agree on it doesn't mean that its wrong, there has to be something beyond us to point to, right?
The feeling that objective morality exists is probably just the result of our evolved biological behaviors. So I don't see how you can get from some kind of feeling like that to something else like God existing. To me, whether or not objective morality exists is completely independent from the issue of whether God exists. Back when I was a theist, I didn't perceive morality as coming from God, just that God's nature lined up with what was morally good. If God commanded immoral things such as murder, I would consider that immoral even if it came from God. You could say "well God would never do that because it's not in his nature" but the issue isn't whether he would do that or not, but that you would be logically required to accept that as moral if he did. So if we are to go with what "feels obvious" to people, well it didn't feel obvious to me that God was necessary for morality, even back when I believed in God. Of course, you could then say there are other arguments on top of what is merely our feeling to look at, but then that adds more complexity to the issue, and saying "well you feel objective morality is real, therefore it is" requires more than just that we feel it. So far, I have never heard a good argument for why God has to be the objective basis for morality. It seems arbitrary to me. Exactly what qualities is it that God has that makes what he commands objective? Anything you posit could be dismissed as a subjective preference. And worse, it could lead to reductios most would consider immoral. (God is all powerful, therefore God's word is objective, therefore might makes right; just being one example). So if there are no qualities that make God's commands objectively moral, then it is reduced to "God's commands are objectively moral because he is God" which is no answer at all. I might as well just say my commands are objectively moral because I'm me.
If you aren't saying that morality is reducible to God then I don't think God can ground & explain moral duties and values. Suppose its true that evolution gave people the moral sense of right & wrong and good & bad. I don't think that's ethically interesting because evolution doesn't establish whether something is in fact good & bad or wrong & right. Namely it doesn't ground the objective moral values themselves. Seems like same objection can be turned against your argument.
i havent watched the rest of the video yet, but the 2 premise argument isnt even valid, no? They don't guaruntee the conclusion, even if they are both true
Are you suggesting that morality is an illusion God placed on humans? I think it would be more explanatory if you said, to morality truly exist, things as good and evil would have to exist independtly of the subjective notion of a particular mind, that is, good/evil is actually a property of the thing, what could or could not be discovered by an inquire into the nature of the thing. Now morality would have a ground because it can strive for goodness, because good as a thing exists. Now that all being said, God is hardly an explanation for that phenomena, at least in your definition, because God is essentially good and he does not account for the existence of evil. It would make more sense to talk about a original substance that was separated in a good part and an evil part in my opinion.
The insufferable God concepts have demonstrably caused immeasurable and unnecessary suffering. They are proof that our minds evolved from the muck and are environmentally constructed, playing numerous misinterpretation games on themselves. They will contain vestiges of that journey, from structure to cognition, as long as we use them.
You just contradicted yourself. You said there's suffering caused to people but if you don't believe in objectives then you quite literally believe that theres a value based on human life and that morality isn't about selfishness as the end goal. What's your world view?
So... big word wow! Make a point next time, dont tell it like you assume its fact. Environments do not structure morality. Why did some civilizations sacrifice babies and others not? Why did some civilizations flourish while others die? If you make a subjective argument like that, youll have to also concede that every civilization has been and will be morally incorruptible because there's no system to check.
Premise 4 is just based on you thinking God is a nice explanation for stuff. Seems quite easily mirrored by someone who doesn't think God is a nice explanation of stuff. (Like me)
The moral argument is absolute nonsense and this one is no exception. Why must morality be grounded and not a brute fact of our universe? When intelligent life evolves to a sufficiently advanced state that living organisms can reason about their values, morality emerges without the need to appeal to God. Morality is objective because the emergent property of rationality provides a prescription for itself qua rationality. Furthermore, divine command theory is woefully unequipped to command action because it cannot clarify the subjects of morality. Who is bound by God’s laws? Humans sure, but how about dolphins? Intelligent extraterrestrial beings? Divine command theory has no way to answer questions about inclusion and atrocities are committed in the name of God by an arbitrary principle of exclusion.
i tried to explain this to someone and they went full into the yeah objective morals dont exists and with them people would behave and idk what to anwser next so i had to look it up
@branchleader73 That is arbitrary. Why should an individual simply follow what the majority say is good? Who is correct? We go with the larger group? Morality has to be more than what majority sat and kn fact is. We all have agreed upon standards if right and wrong that simply go beyond group thought.
@accelerationquanta5816 World wide even children know inherently when something wrong has been done. They know theft and murder and have empathy when they see suffering. It's basic morality. The only illusion is the one people create when they pretend morals don't exist. It's one of many thing's that point to God as our creator.
@accelerationquanta5816 No. I proudly stand on God's Revelation man and His promises to us. I will not substitute science alone with it's limitations in favor of your approval.
@@Loganedward29 I don't think it's arbitrary, human phycology and physiology is not arbitrary and even if it were, it would not change the fact that humans are similar creatures, living similar lives in social structures. It makes sense that humans living socially would work cooperatively for the good of the group and therefore themselves as individuals, this would necessitate common bonds and agreement - hence morality.
0:55 You're describing subjective morality. Atheists know this is subjective morality. This is a strawman, though maybe the final point of 'objectively good or bad [actions]' under that framework confused you so I'll let it slide. 2:10 to 2:55 No I am fairly certain you could describe moral actions purely in terms of favorable or non-favorable outcomes. They're purely subjective. Conceptual, even. It is not a sense like sight is, or else you would not have such disagreements on it. 4:30 This is instinctual. 4:46 Nothing. It's not special. Every species does this to an extent. 4:53 We would all be wrong... In your opinion. 5:12 Big 'If'. 5:23 Yes, you can't say it's objectively good for humans to flourish, but you can say you prefer it, precisely. People will often do this by saying "Human flourishing is good." 6:00 Haha, no. Give me 1 example of a 'moral experience' that isn't just emotions. 6:20 to 6:30 This is the very definition of 'Subjective'. Even if I gave all that for the sake of argument, no that doesn't get you to god, because: 6:15 We don't have to know what the grounds are to know of a thing. Nothing 'cries out' for an explanation; to know the answer is an emotional human desire. The answer can simply be 'I don't know.' 6:45 No, he wouldn't, because under the Objective/Subjective dichotomy god is a subject, and his opinion on moral matters is just that. If it is a part of his nature, then *why* is it a part of his nature? Why does *that* not require grounding? Seems simpler to point to whyever *that* is the way it is and cut out the middle man. Or, uh, deity, in this case. 6:55 Need I say anything? 7:16 Non Sequitur. Do I need to point to spiritual atheists? Maybe godless religions with a soul concept? God always get cut on Occam's Razor. Poor guy. In summation: 7:44 Second premise is false. 8:10 Pretty sure that breaks the formula. Either way, see Occam's Razor.
If the true #1 god become the compass of #1 morality, by this standard we can dicredit another #2 or #3 morality set by another group of different faith. In history this scheme has produced many dehumanized event and atrocities made by mankind. The creation of god and its set of morality, cant be denied stand as paragon of value tradition and order for society. Due to mass themelves, oftentimes couldnt think their existence or how why they do their own life.
Morality has always been a huge problem for religion. A religious person can be moral, but they have no way to explain, through faith, why any act is right or wrong. See how badly apologists fail on this. Or can any apologist manage it? All true morality is humanistic.
If morals come from god then they are subjective. Implementing morals can be objective although there may be other ways. Societies define morals...no god is needed.
I think the objectivity of morality grounded by God is supposed to be an intrinsic characteristic of the universe built in during creation. I don’t know why an atheist can’t respond that a natural genesis of the universe has a brute fact of the potential for morality. Any naturally occurring universe that develops rational, intelligent life somewhere will see morality introduced as an emergent property.
Im not convinced of the objectivity of ethics, but even still, not all ethicists are naturalist. Many appeal to some kind of intuition or reason to explain it. Appealing to god only collapses the intuition. First off you're still trying to explain what ought to be with was is, so you're not different from the naturalist in that respect. You just replace the natural world with god. Secondly, it replaces intiutive statements with unintiutive one. What's more intuitive then saying killing babies is wrong? Replace is wrong with "is accordance with an omnipotent being that exists" even if you do believe in god that is less intuitive.
!!!SEE AJ AYERS EMOTIVISM FOR AN EXPLAINATION OF OUGHT!!! There is no good and bad, only selfish and altruistic. These are reducible to the ratio of internal vs external values. I appreciate the is-ought from Hume, but i personally have no attachment to ought and think emotivism does good. It's ALL about values
In the Old Testament of the Bible ( 1 Chronicles 21 ), David sins against God. David did the wrong thing. As a punishment for one Man’s sin, God commands an Angel to kill the Men of Israel. The Angel killed 70,000 Men before God commanded the Angel to stop. We know by our moral conscience that what God did was morally bad and wrong. If such a story was in the Koran, then Christians would have no problem knowing that what Allah did was bad and wrong. So, Christians should not try and make exuses for their God. The point here is, that it is impossible that the moral nature of the God of the Bible is Morally Perfect. The God of the Bible is not the Highest Moral Good. The Moral Nature of the God of the Bible is NOT the Ontological or Metaphysical grounding of or for morality.
Why would Moral-Platonism require God's existence?
The problem is about our *knowledge* of morality.
Given Moral Platonism, things are good or evil in virtue of facts about abstract objects which we cannot know about. But, this problem can be avoided if God exists. I explain how (in a different context) here:
ua-cam.com/video/YJJlSXlLUss/v-deo.html
@@charliethecoyote2896 If morality comes from God, and all of Christianity is true, you can know morality by reading his commands in the Bible. Also the Holy Spirit will lead you. (Apologetics Squared has a vid against Zod and how God didn’t arbitrarily choose morality.)
@@charliethecoyote2896 For the last two questions, I would watch the video I mentioned against Zod. The Holy Spirit is one of the three persons in the one essence of God. God would never contradict himself, or promote evil. (This channel has a vid on why God is not evil.) The Holy Spirit has seven fruits.
If you are not being antagonistic, and truly want to know if God exists, I recommend watching this video:ua-cam.com/video/YrXjmHdA1tg/v-deo.html
@@charliethecoyote2896 There are a myriad of reasons as to why I believe the Bible is true. It is like asking someone why they love their mother. I would not do it justice.
I am not the one to dictate who God gives his graces to. He is kind and merciful. If he only gave his graces to those that know every truth fully, no one would receive it. A non-Christian can surely give a passionate, Spirit-filled, speech on the importance of, say, giving to the poor. However, he could not give a Spirit-filled speech on why the Bible is false. Because again, God speaks only truth and would not contradict himself.
I am most familiar with Aquinas’ second way. The existence of essences is not inherent, and must have been infused by subsistent existence itself, aka God. The First Cause is God. Subsistent Existence is God. It is not shoehorning in the word God, these are simply the definitions of God. Subsistent existence coincides perfectly with God’s divine name: I Am That I Am. The Classical Theist channel has another video on how the Incarnation is compatible with the God you can come to know in philosophy. There are a lot of bases you’d have to cover before you get to understanding animal sacrifice. The Old Testament comes from a vastly different culture than ours. If you read it without a companion that explains the context, you can walk away with very false impressions that do not align with the author’s intent.
@@charliethecoyote2896 I suppose the first part is true, although I began my search with God.
I may be missing your point with the second part. The Holy Spirit inspired the authors of the Bible and provided information about himself. Are you suggesting there’s a contradiction?
I do recommend watching that video about the second way. I was trying to find simpler ways of writing subsistent existence. To be God is to be “to be”. Other things that he has given existence to participate in it imperfectly.
28 minutes in for the video- Pure existence has something analogous yet not altogether different from intellect and will, which are components of what it means to be personal in the Aristotelian sense of the word. This is because the existence of things is grounded in pure existence, and yet, pure existence cannot be affected or caused by anything to create that which shares existence derivatively, since anything prior to pure existence would necessarily be non-being, so the creation of all things by subsistent existence itself would necessarily have to be a free act. Free action is the definitional principle by which we determine something as willful. So, while will in God is not one and the same as will in humans, say, it cannot be denied that what can be demonstratively be ascribed with God in this sense is at least related to will in humans. This relation is not merely metaphorical. If there is will, there must also be intellect.
Just found this channel, good version of the MA. Keep it up!
Thanks! :)
"...but we all understand what the special property is, and we've named it morality"
"we don't all agree on what the standard is"
Hmmm. That seems like saying "we all understand that one color is better than the others, we just don't agree on which color". Does that mean there is a color that is objectively better than the others?
At the end you say that we can replace "facts about preferences" by whatever the skeptic tries to reduce morality to. But the thing is, in that case, the skeptic would obviously disagree with premise 2 (since that would be their definition of morality). So this argument has 0 convincing power :/
The color analogy doesn't work because we don't understand that one color is better than the others; we understand that we prefer some colors, but that's it. Morality is obviously more than preference. I don't just prefer to help people; helping people is *actually* good.
Also, I think that the formulation I used could be improved; I should reformulate premises 1 and 2 to:
1) If morality has no metaphysically special grounding, then morality is reducible.
2) Morality is not reducible.
I think (2) has a lot going for it.
Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared The thing is, it's obvious to you that morality is more than preference. It isn't obvious to me at all. In fact, my daily experience of morality is exactly what I would expect if morality was something subjective developed by an evolved species trying to survive. It's obvious to me that morality isn't objective. Of course, how obvious something is to me has no bearing on its truth :)
About your new premises, 1 seems now unjustified. Color is not reducible yet it has no metaphysically special grounding. This is also the case for a ton of subjective things. In fact, our subjective experiences are always the best examples of irreducible things. If morality is irreducible, that actually seems to indicate that it is subjective in nature!
@@Nickesponja // The thing is, it's obvious to you that morality is more than preference. It isn't obvious to me at all. //
I don't buy that. I don't think you really chalk up your views on rape and torturing children to preference. You know it's something more.
// Of course, how obvious something is to me has no bearing on its truth :) //
Obviously. :)
// About your new premises, 1 seems now unjustified. Color is not reducible yet it has no metaphysically special grounding. This is also the case for a ton of subjective things. In fact, our subjective experiences are always the best examples of irreducible things. //
Unfortunately, we've hit an impasse because I do think that the experience of color needs some sort of metaphysically special grounding! I don't think purely physical things, on their own, can give rise to purely mental things like "seeing color." So, we need something like a soul grounding the existence of these mental items. That's another argument for theism!
But, I think we can sidestep this disagreement with a distinction: there is a difference between a perception of an irreducible thing, and an irreducible perception of a thing. If I(x)="x is irreducible" and P(x)="the perception of x," we can distinguish between I(P(x)) and P(I(x)). Let's say J is a jigsaw puzzle. Now, it may be true that I(P(J)); my perception of the jigsaw puzzle is irreducible. But that's different from saying that the thing I am perceiving is irreducible, P(I(J)); a jigsaw puzzle can be reduced! I'm not saying that I(P(morality)) (which is true), but that P(I(morality)). We perceive that morality is not reducible to other things. Just as easily as I perceive that a jigsaw puzzle *can* be broken up into puzzle pieces, I see that morality *cannot* be broken up into statements about the state of the universe or counterfactuals.
Now, what about my "morally blind" man analogy? Well, I know that humans actually already perceive morality as an irreducible thing. The "morally blind" man analogy was to try to bring this knowledge to the surface, and clarify it (it is a very difficult concept to explain!). I wasn't trying to show that in virtue of the morally blind man's inability to understand morality, we know that morality is irreducible. My goal was to make crystal clear this notion that, starting from the land of "the way things are," it is impossible to traverse to the land of "the way things ought to be." I did this by trying to get my audience to imagine a man starting out in that former land.
Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared I don't think morality is "just preference" (I still do not find that claim obvious btw) but I do think that it is subjective in nature (and I do find that obvious).
"I don't think purely physical things can give rise to purely mental things" That's a big claim. When you take antidepressants your mental state changes. When you get hit in the head you can lose memories. It seems blatantly obvious that physical things can give rise to mental things. If you want to stick a soul as an intermediary in all of those situations, and claim that the situations are impossible to explain without appealing to a soul, well, that's a BIG claim. Also unfalsifiable, no matter how well we can explain how physical things give rise to mental things, you can always stick a supernatural soul in there. And also useless, since you can't describe the mechanisms by which the soul alters the mind. How could you possibly justify that claim?
With that distinction you mention, your first premise would be: "if morality doesn't have a metaphysically special grounding, then we would perceive morality as being reducible". Is this correct? That premise seems much weaker. Why would our personal, subjective perception of morality give us reliable information about its objective nature? Not to mention a lot of people would say that they perceive morality as being reducible, perhaps not to preference, but to some other things. Those people would probably say that what they mean by "morality" is not the same thing to which that man is blind. Matt Dillahunty is one of these, for example.
I'd love to debate the nature of consciousness, but a video on that specifically is on my to-do list so I'm going to defer to then. :)
Now my first premise is still that:
1) If morality has no metaphysically special grounding, then morality is reducible.
My distinction about perception and irreducibilty was to clarify about color.
Our subjective personal perceptions of reality are the only way we learn things about the objective world. I know there is a chair because I have a subjective, personal perception of seeing a chair. I perceive morality is a certain way. My perceptions can be mistaken, but the "default option" is to go off of our perceptions. Otherwise, why believe there is actually a physical universe?
If someone thinks morality is reducible, then they may very well be morally blind, or more probably are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I think Dillahunty is in the latter camp. :)
1. Prove that objective morals cannot exist without God.
2. Prove that objective morals exist.
1. Prove objective morak
@@TheTrueMendoza
I don't believe in objective morak.
@@cygnusustus then there’s not even a moral duty to “prove” anything. Your position is self-nullifying
@@TheTrueMendoza
Correct. You have no moral duty to prove anything.
How does that nullify my position, child?
04:33 "we
all know and experience that there is one standard which has something more to it"
I experience the opposite: different standards of morality in time (eg human/women/gay/animal rights movements ) and space (e.g. christian contries vs islamic ones). Furthermore people from the same location in the same period of time can have different standards (eg trolley problem).
I don't think you understand; you *do* experience that one standard which has something more to it; the standard which people lived by that justified slavery was the wrong one. Those people didn't have a difference of preference; they were *wrong*.
Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared
I don't think you understand; you do experience that multiple standards and each of them has something more to it; You never proved that the standard which people lived by that justified slavery was the wrong one that those people didn't have a difference of preference but they were *wrong*.
I don't need to prove something to you that you already believe. I'm pretty sure you already believe that a pro-slavery standard is wrong *and* that's not your mere preference.
Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared uh you do realize the bible is okay with slavery and even tells people how to treat there slaves so yeah that is not a good example
@@ApologeticsSquaredthe bible supports slavery stupid.
I did not know how much I needed this esoteric, intellectual, minute-physics-style, apologetics in my life. Thank you
Objective principles DO NOT need a standard. It’s beyond me why people can’t understand this.
Does God have to exist for mathematics to be objective? Could God just flat out change what 2+2 equals or just change the value of pi? No, it’s why mathematics is objective.
Objective principles don’t need a standard or a law giver or any such thing. Morality is and has always been about principles and guidelines that we come up to maximize human happiness and productivity in communal environments.
How does religion have a monopoly on this? As if religious morals had a great record of success
@Oscar [An angel from the Lord] Perez Once again, if morality is indeed objective, it should need no standard or moral giver. As is the case with mathematics.
The fact that there are many ways of leading a life does not mean morality can’t be objective.
@Oscar [An angel from the Lord] Perez dude, when did I say morality and math are the same? Jesus. How can I a have a remotely decent conversation when you don’t even read, let alone understand, what I’m saying?
If morality is OBJECTIVE, it should be LIKE math in that regard. It’s NOT dependent upon some authoritarian figure that decides what is and isn’t. As Christians often claims.
Once again, for the quintillionth time, objective principles DO NOT RELY UPON SOURCES OF AUTHORITY.
How do you determine your morals? How? How do you figure out the OBJECTIVE moral aspect of any moral issue? Enlighten me.
@Oscar [An angel from the Lord] Perez How do you even know there’s only one god and not many? What if there are multitudes of Gods?
@Oscar [An angel from the Lord] Perez No, it means that finding what’s objective can be very difficult and you have to define the terms.
Is a model t objectively inferior to a modern Ferrari? Almost certainly yes. It doesn’t mean the Model T sucked or that it couldn’t be used. This is a rough analogy and morality is far, far more complex and nuanced.
@Oscar [An angel from the Lord] Perez A blind man wanting to see color isn't the same as a person wanting to understand objective morality either.
7:45 I'm skeptical of claim #2. I don't see morality as something more than facts about preferences. Do you have anything that supports this claim?
No, they do not.
I understand the argument, but I don't think it really holds up when you look at the real world. I might prefer red apples, and you green apples. Unless one of us is being a jerk, we're willing to admit that these are simply preferences. When it comes to moral issues, this is generally not the case. Why try to stop Hitler, after all murdering Jews was his "preference". What makes Jeffrey Dahmer so bad? He just "preferred" raping and killing people. You can contrive whatever argument you want but you and I have some sort of sense that these things are abhorrent. We are willing to say "you are wrong" when we perceive something is wrong. Every time we do that, we appeal to a standard that is beyond ourselves, whether we believe it or not. The Bible says that God's moral law is written on each of our hearts. Even though we may come to different conclusions about what exactly good and evil are, we all have a sense that they exist.
@@Pyr0Ben Another example besides Hitler and Dahmer could include Joshua. Why oppose the genocide of Joshua in the old testament? He just "preferred" to listen to God and utterly destroyed many Canaanite groups.
We both have some sort of sense that genocide is abhorrent. It might seem as if we are appealing to a standard that is beyond ourselves, but I'm not aware of any other source besides humanity that produces standards.
@@mesplin3 It seems like we agree. We agree that evil, abhorrent things exist. By what grounds can you and I make that observation and be convinced that we're right? If it's just subjective perspective, neither of us are justified in even having an opinion, much less call anyone else "wrong" for THEIR perspective.
However, if "good" and "evil" DID have real, objective meaning, and we were simply making our own observations about it, then now we're getting somewhere!
You say you're not aware what external source could provide an objective standard for us to search for. It seems that you at least have some sense that one exists. We all do! I think a moral God could be the best explanation for the good and evil we observe, even if we can disagree which certain things qualify as good and evil.
@@Pyr0Ben I'm of the opinion that we can draw boundaries between things that we consider evil and things we consider good. Many common boundaries are often codified into law or some other standard. For example, it is illegal to murder because most of humanity decided to make murder illegal. However, morality is not often codified into a standard.
However, I'll assume that morality is objective. What does this imply? Is morality useful in predicting another being's behavior?
The reality is morality is absolutely subjective and arbitrary, as proved by vegans crying about people eating animals, and us normal people not caring. Morality is a tool, used in different ways to different ends.
But you could just as well argue reality is subjective and arbitrary, as proved by different people's beliefs about religion, truthers, flat earthers, etc.
This was really cool! I liked the breakdown of flourishing, standards, "better", etc. It makes sense now!
Glad it helped! :)
In the book The Ultimate Proof the concept of morality as a man made construct is broken down. It is the most convincing case for God being the source of morality I have ever read and rebuttals every criticism I found in the comments to this video.
Perhaps, but I highly, highly doubt it. I find explanations for morality that invoke God to be meaningless or metaphorical at best.
@@wet-readhave you read the book?
@@nogodsnokingsonlymen8538Have you?
If the book is "The Ultimate Proof of Creation," I highly doubt it. I've listened to the author, and he overstates his position very heavily. Frequently using both fallacious reasoning and inadequate evidence.
Additionally, if I remember correctly, he has signed a statement of faith, which would compromise his ability to fully evaluate the evidence and come to the most appropriate hypothesis proportional to what is presented.
@Boundless_Border Fortunate for us the source of his search remains in Scripture which remains infallible.
How do you know we would ALL say there was this same one standard? Each of us would say some standard was special, but we differ as to which is special.
Is abortion permissible? Is capital punishment? Is eating meat? Is $15 min wage? Is slavery? Nuking Japan in WW2? We disagree on a lot of things, but each is confident she is right and the other wrong. Why think there is a metaphysically real special "better" at all? My explanation: each person thinks his own "better" is the REAL TRUE "better".
I agree with you, but I also know that most people actually would agree on what is right and wrong.. it's only that in many situations we as a society don't know some truth or fact, so people are left to make both logical and moral judgements by themselves. If we knew when exactly a baby became conscious, or could feel pain or something, while we may not come to a definitive agreement about if or when abortion is permissible, the scope of this problem would narrow greatly.
@@choppers3474Ok, let’s say that we carried out a survey and discovered that 90% of people agreed on at least one moral claim: the claim that causing harm to an entity incapable of defending itself is wrong. What have we discovered? 90% of people agree on something. Does that make those people correct? If those people *also* agree that the world is flat, it doesn’t follow that the world is flat. To claim that something - anything - is true *because* a majority agree on it is to commit the democratic fallacy.
Alongside this, it doesn’t tell us what it is for something to actually *be* morally wrong. We don’t know that all of those 90% all mean the same thing when they agree with each other, and we don’t know *why* they have that belief.
Moral philosophers (the only people who have ever taken questions like this seriously) have never managed to agree on what moral language means. The question of what we *ought* to mean when we use it is itself a moral question, and we cannot answer it until we already *know* the answer.
If there *is* an argument for God’s existence (and all the evidence indicates that there isn’t) it’s *definitely* not going to be based on ‘morality’.
Morality doesn't "exist". It's a concept about behaviour/actions regarding a certain goal. Therefore it's grounding has always a subjective foundation. A God doens't make it objective. The example you gave of morality in regard of human flourishing is actually a good steel man of (at least according to my view) secular morality. Props! The metaphysical grounding for its morality is our society based on empathy, reason and evidence. Point 4 is a non-sequitur, therefore the argument is flawed.
Morality simply can't be absolute without a parent source. It is God. Prove me wrong.
Morality is not absolute.
@@dotenks You say that as if it's an absolute answer.
@@Loganedward29 it’s supposed to be.
@@dotenks Good. Makes my point better. Only one of us can be correct.
Can't we just bite the bullet and say that morality doesn't exist and what we experience as what we think are moral values are just really strong subjective preferences?
Why say something that makes no sense at all? Is rape and sexual assault objectively, always wrong? Or is calling rape and sexual assault morally wrong just a subjective preference? Everyone, everywhere knows that those things are always wrong because they are harmful and hurtful to others. It's not a subjective preference.
@@ebonyaddison3021 can you explain what you mean by objectively wrong without just pointing to really strong subjective preferences?
@@ebonyaddison3021 psychopaths do not think that either of those things are wrong.
@@Mire-Drive Psychopaths are abnormal and the violent and emotionally callous psychopaths behave in ways that are morally wrong. Just because they think it's ok to harm others doesn't make it right.
A deed objectivally advances this or that goal, but said goal is far from objective.
You said in one of the comments that Premise 2, “‘morality’ is more than facts about preferences”, is based on our subjective moral experiences. But that seems to make your idea of ‘morality’ just an extrapolation from all the different “better1”, “better2” moralities that are based on preferences, sort of an imagined Platonic ideal, and you don’t establish that such an ideal exists or even makes sense of talk about (i.e. can you define it and use it without running into contradictions?). Saying that it is a real but mysterious component of the universe that emerges somehow from our subjective intuitions is pretty dubious.
As a rough analogy, I might have some ideas about what things are beautiful, based on appearances that are correlated with health and human flourishing. Different people have different preferences related to beauty, of course. I might have a subjective feeling that there is some ideal, absolute, objective Beauty (which resembles my wife closely, of course 🙂), but most people would just dismiss that as a meaningless, undefinable abstraction.
Indeed, ideal Beauty and the ideal “morality” that you talk about seem to correspond very naturally to the imagined extrapolations of the human preferences that were developed over millions of years of evolution (with a heaping spoonful of arbitrariness inevitably thrown in), rather than to any real thing that exists in the world, that would need some special metaphysical grounding. After all, if we had evolved to resemble very intelligent black widow spiders, our ideas of beauty and morality would doubtless be very different.
At the end of the day, morality may just be nothing more than what we can all agree on, and the desire to proclaim an “objective morality” may be nothing more than an attempt to say that your “better” is better than my “better”. Just like proclaiming an objective Beauty would be no more than an attempt to say that your wife is prettier than mine. (She’s not; mine is objectively prettier. 🙂)
Anyway, interesting video and cute graphics. If you do a follow-up, I’d suggest trying to bolster and discuss Premise 2 a bit more.
Have a nice day! 🙂
Isnt saying morality is grounded in the outflow of God's nature thr same thing as reducing morality down to simpler concepts ???? Can someone eplain, im really stuck.
@@AnonYmous-yj9ib ??? I agree with the moral argument, I just think some of the premises of this one would end up applying to God. Maybe divine simplicity helps solve it, but either way I don't see how in this argument morality is not being reduced to a simpler concept when it's grounded in God
Why cant moralitys irriducibility be purely due to subjectivity? Like in your morally blind example, if he sees suffering without reason, and knows he himself would not want to suffer without reason, then he can infer that to him personally, such suffering is bad, and the absence of such would be good.
Why does morality necessarily have to be any more than that?
We all choose what we believe is good or bad, and that choice dictates our actions. Those actions being our only connection between observable reality and our perceptions of morality. And that perception is only applicable to ourselves. What you or I, or any higher power deems is morally good or bad, obserably has no impact on what others percieve as good or bad. Thus, in all practical sense, morality is only a personal, subjective idea of what actions we deem worthy or unworthy, based on our own experiences and perceptions. As nice as it would be for there to be more to it than that, I don't know any reason why there would be.
Theists individually can be moral, but they have no way to explain through faith why any act is right or wrong. Unless someone can manage it?
Yeah, that's because not even God himself can explain why something is inherently good or bad. That's why, in a way of escaping the problem, they explain morality as being part of God's essence, which is just a cope out, and doesn't explain shit. Another thing that I find funny is that the bible held it's position already on the euthyphro problem, as in the context that God says homossexuality, among with other things, is wrong, being that it has nothing inherently neither bad nor good about it.
Morality does require God, but not for the reasons presented here.
Morality requires God because morality is made of directives and values - hence why we talk of 'moral directives' and 'moral values'.
These are not just anyone's directives and values, however. If I direct you to do X, it does not follow that you're morally obliged to do it; and likewise if I value X, it does not follow that X has moral value. And that goes for you too, of course, and everyone else.
What is distinctive about moral directives is that they are directives of Reason. That is why, unlike my directives, you invariably have reason to do what is morally right, and reason not to do what is morally wrong. If you want a fancy term, this is referred to as the 'inescapable rational authority' of moral norms.
That is also why it is by reason - the faculty - that we gain primary awareness of matters of right and wrong, good and bad. We do not see, touch, hear, smell or taste morality; morality is something we are aware of by rational intuition.
So, moral directives and values and directives and values of Reason.
Directives require a director and values a valuer. That is, the idea of a directive floating around by itself is incoherent - as incoherent as the notion of a dent floating around by itself. Likewise for a value. Directives are always someone's and so too are values.
But the only kind of entity that can issue a directive or value something is a mind. My mug cannot direct me to drink from it, or value me doing so. Why? It hasn't got a mind. And even if you think mugs can do such things, then that is only because you suppose mugs to have minds. It is minds and minds alone that value things and issue directives. It is the stuff of madness to think otherwise.
As Reason, the source of moral directives and values, is singular and an issuer of directives and bearer of values, then Reason is a mind. That just follows as a matter of logic.
And that mind - the mind of Reason - would qualify as God. Why?
Well, Reason determines what is and is not possible. Why are square circles not possible? Because the idea involves a contradiction and Reason says contradictions are not features of reality. Thus for Reason herself, all things are possible as Reason herself can say whatever she wants. Thus, the mind of Reason is omnipotent.
And the mind of Reason would also be omniscient, for knowledge is made of justified true beliefs, and justifications are made of directives of Reason......thus Reason would be the arbiter of all knowledge and thus omniscient.
And the mind of Reason would be omnibenevolent as well, because moral values are made of her values and she is omnipotent. Thus, if she disvalued any aspect of herself, she could change it. Therefore, we can conclude that Reason is exactly as she values herself being. And that is just what it is to be maximally morally valuable.
Thus, morality requires Reason and Reason is God. Therefore morality requires God.
@@AnonYmous-yj9ib No, what YOU just said had no content. I presented a deductively valid argument - you need to challenge a premise.
@@AnonYmous-yj9ib First, learn some manners. Second, I did present the argument. I can only assume you don't really know what an argument is or how to identify premises.
Here is the first syllogism.
1. Moral commands are commands that have a single source: Reason
2. Only a mind can be source of commands
3. Therefore, moral commands are commands that have a single mind - Reason - as their source.
That's the FIRST step of the argument. Either identify a false premise - and demonstrate its falsity by showing how its negation follows from premises more self-evident to reason than mine - or dispute the validity of the argument.
@@AnonYmous-yj9ib Don't just say it. Show it.
@@AnonYmous-yj9ib You don't know what 'sound' means. It's a property of valid arguments that have true premises. If the premises of that argument are true, then so is the conclusion.
@@AnonYmous-yj9ib Again with the manners. You're just stringing words together and hoping for the best. Address the argument.
Hi, what is your opinion about shelly kagan? Greetigs from Argentina
Greetings! I don’t have much of an opinion on him.
Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared He had a debate with william lane craig about morality. Thanks for respond, greetings and God Bless you
You can derive prescriptions from religious experiences, which informs the inspiration of scripture and forms divine command theory.
Define "religious experience".
Define "divine command theory".
Morality based in god, is not moral for one simple reason. It comes from the fear of consequences, not from empathy. Morality is doing what’s right regardless of laws, social rules, etc.
Someone who only abides to the law because they fear imprisonment is not guided by kindness, and will ultimately not act kind.
If morality is ‘doing what’s right’, then what is ‘right’? How do we work it out? More importantly, why ought we to do the ‘right’ rather than the ‘wrong’ thing?
8:10 You say morality is not reducible, but DCT is reductionist both in terms of values and duties. A reduction is when you have two things that you initially thought to be distinct but it turns out to be one thing; e.g. water and H2O, or the morning star and the evening star. In the case of DCT you have good = God or God's nature, and being obligated to x = being commanded by God to x. It's a reduction. To have a nonreductive view, you need something like Moore's non-naturalism or Cornell realism. But maybe you're thinking of reduction differently.
For my argument to work, you'd need to focus on a DCT where the commands of God are not identical with moral obligations, but automatically and necessarily have the property of "being moral." So, under this DCT, God commanding z is not *identical* (in the strong sense) with an obligation to z, but one is obligated to z iff God commands z.
Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared "but automatically and necessarily have the property of "being moral." "
You call whatever it is that makes something have the property of being moral and other things not have the property of being moral "the grounding of morality." If God's commands have the property of being moral, then we want to know (according to you) what makes them have the property of being moral. Just claiming that they "automatically and necessarily" have this property does not explain their having it. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the commands themselves explain why they have this property. So, on your own account, you are not telling us anything about the grounding of morality.
@@jasonbthibodeauthe have the property of being moral because, they exist as an outflow of God's essence, which is the grounding of morality.
@carterwoodrow4805
Ok. Let's take this step by step. God's commands are necessarily moral. This is because God's commands are an outflowing of his essence.
How have we determined that his essence is the grounding of morality?
The argument is insufficient even if I granted all the premises as it only gets you to probably. Or more accurately, "only possibly because I have no definitive evidence or proof of existence but a negative cannot be definitively proven." This same argument can be used to ground morality in ancient gods or even the devil. Or a metaphysical rock. The idea of an agent grounding morality comes from nowhere besides the preexisting acceptance of the idea or a similar idea.
If you could prevent a murder, would it be immoral to not prevent the murder?
its evolution.
I hurt mate = worse chance of survival
I help mate = better chance of survival
good vid
for example social isolation causes physical pains because evolution hard-wired it in our brains that we should stick together and interact
yes but why should I care about survival? why should anything take my energy for an inkling of care? if nothing truly matters then why bother having morals especially if its not hard wired into my mind to begin with?
@@xirochamber5863 because your brain tells you that you should survive
@@salim5394 and if I obtain the ability to ignore such things what then?
What about hurting yourself to benefit others? Is that not objective morality? Because it’s not solely for your benefit and your brain and evolution would only want things to help you, but something acts against that. Isn’t that morality?
How would you defend if someone says that morality is something that is in our minds as a result of evolution. For example, what if evolution made our minds have morality to increase the benefits for all organism. In the same way evolution would make something like reproduction, creatures don't need to reproduce, it's something made for the continuation of the species itself, so for the same reason reproduction exists could not morality exist from evolution to keep the species alive(or at least in a good position)?
That sounds like more of an ad-hoc excuse than a viable explanation. Tons of animals eat their own children and kill each other indiscriminately. By any "evolutionary" standpoint, any metaphysical concept like morality or justice should not exist. But they do indeed exist. Evolution falls short at explaining how a single complex structure could come about by chance, it certainly can't explain these innate aspects of humanity.
@@Pyr0BenOther animals have super refined claws, speed, power, teeth, poison and senses. Humans have super refined social skills, empathy and intelligence.
Ooh new channel! 🤩 channel was discussed in a CapturingChristianity group. Had to sub 💯
Thanks! It's appreciated. :)
1. Why should morality need to have a metaphysically special grounding? What if morality doesn't exist, and what we call morality is just our emotional premises trying to justify as being good or bad something that make us feel good or bad, thus, calling this morality?
2. How can God justify practically why murder is wrong? It sounds like a logical problem if we say that because something is (in that case, God's existence), we ought to do something else (act "morally"), and it sounds hypocrite to demand that we justify our moral opinions, but not to demand the same thing from God.
Wonderfully put together video and response when Atheists like Dawkns refer to morality by social construct (agreed upon 'human flourishing'). Your video honestly helps a lot. I'm going through a period of battling doubt and it can be really hard when concepts like moral relativism and postmodernism are shoved down your throat by society every day. God loves us all and wants what's best for us. If there's one thing I've learned trying to determine our own reality/be our own God always fails! Thank you so much for all the time and effort you took to make this video and keep making more please! Thanks to channels like you and Inspiring Philosophy faith is not illogical it is reasonable and not just a leap into the unknown. May God bless your ministry work!
This whole video is filled with logical fallacies and terrible arguments.
He’s talking a load of nothing, first off he’s assuming everyone agrees on human flourishing a sociopath believes that there life is great to other peoples, second even if god exists it’s arbitrary because he decided what constitutes as wrong and before you say it’s in his nature if god is all powerful and all knowing then he would have to have decided his own nature and if he decided that he can change it. Without god it’s not arbitrary because it’s necessary to our society.
@@ShaunZZZlike for example?
@@valkyrieloki1991 You could easily reject the whole argument by stating that morality is subjective, which we see reflected in shifting moral standards over time and across different cultures. So the evidence is rather in favor of morality being subjective. And the whole idea that morality is "obviously more than just your preferences" is never justified, its just begging the question by assuming what it intends to prove via an argument from incredulity. So fundamentally this is actually an extraordinarily bad argument.
Can our morality just been pinned down to survival, dont kill, dont steal, all things that help the group survive, kinda like the evolutionary morality argument?
The problem with using some contrived evolution-centric grounding for morality is, anyone could do the exact same. I could say that in terms of evolution, cannibalizing small crippled children is perfectly good. After all, I'm getting nutrients, and protecting the integrity of the gene pool. Why is that so wrong? This is the kind of logic Hitler used to eradicate people groups he deemed "less evolved" than the Aryans. I could make an argument that because women are biologically weaker, they ought to be treated as inferior. After all, many aninals do the same thing and it works out for them.
I do actually think morality is reducible to the flourishing of sentient life.
No.
Morality is the name we give to a set of behaviours that make us more fit to survive.
No grounds, No god.
that is different than morality
@@affif330 It does that though. Prove me wrong.
@@ploppysonofploppy6066 if you'd watch the video you'd understand what i meant. morality might have a purpose but its purpose doesn't define everything about it. for example why are we all agreeing that morally, incest is wrong, even when done with protection and 0 chances of a baby being conceived. don see how that would help with survival. we all agree that morally it is the right thing to do for a parent to raise their kids but that doesn't have anything to do with survival. see your idea of what morality is only works on a very simplified level of problems associated with it, but when taken into consideration the more complex issues it doesn't really stand. morality is a rule book for objective right and objective wrong and objectivity can only come from an objective source, which being a god. subjective morality leads the problem where if everyone has their own morality, no one does.
@@affif330 You really think I didn't watch the video?
He makes an unsubstantiated assertion within 25 seconds, the rest falls like a hoise of cards.
Incest increases the risk of extreme mutations I suppose. Livestock breeders are always keen to bring in "fresh blood" to avoid this. Makes sense that it should be against our instincts.
You have made your own assertion that morality comes from God. You're making a lot of assumptions there. I'll copy and paste them from another post I did recently. See what you think. Because I think these assumptions are less likely.
1. That there is an objective morality, (things are seldom black and white).
2. That god is even interested in guiding us on morality, (he may want us to show that we can do it ourselves).
3. That god is the best source of morality, (if we believe the bible, he's done some terrible things).
4. That man is not the source of morality. (Man wrote the bible, but a lot of the morality therein was written elsewhere beforehand).
5. Finally, the big one, we need to know that there is a god in the first place.
I've not spoken to anyone who can answer one of these.
@@ploppysonofploppy6066 1. things don't have to be black and white, when i say objective morality i don't mean, for example, since god says killing bad, you cant kill even in self defense. objective morality could include every situation possible. god can(and does) establish a hierarchy of these moralities and rules so make it easier to understand.
2. This has 0 correlation as to why we need god for morality. like it doesn't matter if god is or isn't interested, wed still need a reference point to measure good or bad.
3. God has to be the best source of morality. if god deems that rape is a moral obligation, it becomes a moral obligation, BECAUSE god says so. like the whole concept of god has to be an all powerful intelligent all good deity, a perfect being that transcends the idea of perfect itself. there's no other way to "measure" good or bad, good or evil, literally no basis at all. qualities only make sense when there's a reference. you cant judge what's good or what isn't without a reference point of what is good and what isn't.
4. I agree.
5. Was this the big assertion you were talking about? really dude? i'm baffled if it is, if it isn't, good job. god doesn't have to exist for this argument of "morality without a god doesn't exist". the mere concept of god is enough to get the point across. morality is irrational without a god. as long as we both understand that we are both referring to an all powerful being with omnipotence and omniscience when we say god, that is enough to get the point across. reminder we aren't talking about any god of any religion. were talking of a being that is omnipotent and omniscient. not talking about the christian, muslim, hindu or any god in particular. it is completely negligible of a god really exists or doesn't.
It is likely that morality is an emergent property of some biological species, including humans. We are biologically predisposed to behave in certain ways and favour certain behaviours in others.
All that appears to separate human morality from dog morality is complexity. A large aspect of human morality is added by how our awareness of self and our awareness of another's perception of self interacts with our moral sense. There is no need for any metaphysical grounding.
Basically. Christians also get hung up on standards for some reason. Standards are not that compelling. It is trivially easy to have a standard; anyone can have a standard. What is compelling and important is what a standard is composed of and why. Also, people can have the same standard for different reasons.
Morality really does need the divine but not does necessarily mean there only one God, but rather that there needs to be at least one god.
I have a easier way to explain this.
For objective morality to exist. There must be a someone outside humans to establish the standard of morality for all humans to look up to.
Otherwise morality is subjective and each person is its own standard, and no standard is better or worse than other because it’s subjective. So in order for you to believe that giving pies to a widows is better than kicking babies objectively for everybody, there must be a standard outside humans. Otherwise your morality is as valid as someone who thinks that kicking babies is better than serving pies.
If your morality is contingent on "someone", it's still subjective. And that definition allows for alien to be "objective" sources of morality as they aren't human.
@@anthonydesimone502: Yup, when they said "someone outside humans", I guess they meant "someone outside anyone that's not my god".
I don’t get how morality can be irreducible and grounded simultaneously
Think about it like fundamental physical quantities. Like distance. Distance is the length of space between to points. However, length is the measurement of something from one of it's ends to another. This measurement is in fact a distance. Distance cannot be further reduced from the term distance yet it is grounded in the concept of space existing between to objects.
@@konicanrex7153 You are attempting to use physical qualities as a way to measure conceptual qualities.
I really enjoyed the clear format of this video but I don’t think you proved that moral truth exists. I know it’s an 8 minute video but it seems pretty central to the argument.
I agree, I just have an issue saying that The God of The Bible fits this description. I too ground morality in God, but I feel like we have very different definitions of God. When you say God, you mean Yahweh, when I say God, I mean Plato's idea of The One, The Good. It isn't a personal god, it is a completly transcendent God from which all things emanate.
But I do respect Christianity in a lot of ways, I feel like if Platonism and Hellenic thought wasn't supplanted by Christianity, that it would have reached very similar conclusions, it would have just looked more like Monism than strict Monotheism.
I think this argument is pretty easily debunked by simply pointing out that most atheists are fine with morals being subjective. And from what I gather reading the comments, you don't really have an actual response to this beyond personal incredulity. Since that's not really a logical argument (and actually, argument from incredulity is in general, a logical fallacy), I think your argument fundamentally fails to offer a convincing proof for God.
And really the idea that atheists couldn't possibly think raping a baby is more than just preference is kind of silly. Of course we consider it to be stronger than mere preference in the sense of which ice cream flavour we prefer. But no one said that subjective feelings had to have the same lukewarm emotional impact on us regardless what those feelings are about. It is easily possible to say that we can have "weak preferences" and "strong preferences". And moral values could easily be synonymous with strong preferences. Or use whatever word you like.
But this notion that it couldn't possibly just be a very strongly felt emotion, that it has to exist somehow in the ether as some "objective value" is silly and baseless, because you're making an emotional argument. Just because I feel something deeply, doesn't mean it really exists in the world. If that were true then that would lead to all sorts of absurd conclusions, like love being physically real and more than just chemicals. Just because you can experience something in your mind does not somehow automatically grant it existence in the world as some objective fact. Crazy people experience hallucinations all the time. You can hallucinate an oasis in the desert if you are dying of thirst.
Also in general...I think this argument suffers from the same God of the gaps fallacy as many other theist arguments do. For example, theists will say, I can't think of any other explanation for lightning except Zeus, so Zeus is the explanation. That is bad reasoning. And the same bad reasoning is used in the teleological or fine-tuning argument, where theists will repeat "I can't see an other reason for fine-tuning, except God, so God did it". Unless you have a good cause or reason to think that there really are no other explanations, just assuming that there aren't any except for the one you can think of, is generally invalid reasoning. And it is just as invalid to claim that God explanations are more probable. I mean if you don't know what all the possibilities are...then how can you even begin to logically establish their probabilities? It would be like assigning a probability of rolling a 1 on a die with an unknown number of sides. It fundamentally makes no sense.
Similarly with morality. It could easily be the case that objectives might exist morally in some strange way. Heck maybe the universe is a hologram inside of some kind of endless physical computer that has certain moral values baked into it. And it may even be that we discover this hundreds of millions of years into the future. Just assuming that it doesn't exist is just as fallacious an argument as other forms of God of the gaps have been up until now.
In conclusion I think its safe to say this an other arguments for God can be easily discarded.
If our moral standard is “don’t kill, rape, and steal” and other stuff along those lines, then personally I think anyone who has a propensity to violent behavior like this will do so with or without an “objective moral standard.” The vast majority of human s aren’t _inherently_ predisposed to violence, they have to be conditioned for it.
And by that metric is why I don’t really care if ‘objective morality’ doesn’t really exist, and see the whole argument as just another lukewarm theist argument. Simply put, behavior most people ever would consider immoral still existed even after the establishment of Christianity in all it’s forms.
Moral relativists often point to the is-ought problem, which says no facts about reality logically and intrinsically imply facts about morality. e.g. That something is good or bad for human wellbeing doesn't in itself logically imply that it is morally good or bad. We additionally need the premise that human wellbeing is good to conclude that.
But there actually are things about reality that can be intrinsically good or bad. Our feelings can be intrinsically good or bad. We directly experience those qualities of them.
Can you make a video about the argument from Beauty?
I take a view like Bishop Robert Barron does. That it isn't as much an argument as it is just a fact. He explains really well in an interview he had with Cam Bertuzzi on Capturing Christianity.
One of these days. :)
@@ApologeticsSquared I will be waiting for...
:)
Why does the existence of a soul imply that God exists? Are you suggesting that we are all extensions of a cosmic consciousness or something like that? What evidence is there for this?
Maybe this verse does not necessarily apply, but I sort of think about it when it comes to this kind of stuff. Ephesians 3:8 "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;'
I think maybe the reason people always go back and forth on any topic of God is because to put it bluntly God is unsearchable. It says the Father is spirit and that Jesus Christ is the expression of the Father. That if you've seen Christ you have seen the Father, but without Christ we would not know of the Father. I think it's because he is spirit that people have a tough time explaining who or what God is. Because he is beyond understanding. Which is not to say there are things we cannot understand about him, but at the same time understanding him would take an infinite amount of time to do so. This world rejects God probably because he is beyond the understanding of this world. He is the creator of it, but like it says the darkness did not understand the Light.
My only critique is the "classic" moral arguement is short and pithy, otherwise, I think you did a good job for building a case for this particular iteration. 😉
That's true. But the "game of chess" analogy is getting pretty popular. So, I just wanted to throw my hat in the ring. :)
@@charliethecoyote2896 I think what you are classifying as moral is really the definition of ethics. The difference is from deduction or induction. If we see a desired goal, we make choices on what the best is: ethical behavior results.
However if we acknowledge that their is an objective good at all, we need to rely on some authority to dictate what that is. We don’t debate why 2+2=4, anymore than we debate that violence against the innocent is wrong, or that theft isn’t good in itself. This is a reliance on moral understanding. This would be defined in the nature of reality, perhaps a reflection of the nature of God.
@accelerationquanta5816that assumes that the only source of knowlege are logic and science, but that is not only false, it's moronic
It's pretty silly to claim that objective morality comes from "God" when this "god" is described as a mind thus rendering this standard as subjective, and this standard is also arbitrary because it's based entirely on "God's" whims rather than any solid explanation as to why the standard should be adhered to, except for the reasoning of 'because I told you so'.
Christians needlessly get hung up on the word and concept of "standard". Standards are not that compelling. It is trivially easy to have a standard; anyone can have a standard. What is compelling is what that standard consists of. And people can have the same or similar standards for different reasons.
Why is their no sound
halal video
I personal have been playing with this formation of the Moral Argument
1) If morality is subjective, contradicting views on a moral topic can arise
2) Contradicting views can not both be true in the same sense
3) Morality cannot be subjective
4) If morality can't be subjective it has to be objective
5) What is the standard for this objective morality?
6) That, we call God.
(Alternative ending from p. 5):
5) Whatever this objective standard is, we call God.
I would be interested on your thoughts on this formation.
Do you think it works? Any objections?
God bless you, great video. Cheers :)
Your argument is not sound. Premise 3 has not been established.
@@theoskeptomai2535 It was actually a conclusion from (1) and (2), but it isn't logically valid.
You need to reformulate (1) and (2), I think:
1) If morality can be subjective, all contradicting moral opinions are equally valid.
2) Some contradicting moral opinions are not equally valid.
3) Therefore, morality cannot be subjective.
4) If morality cannot be subjective, then it is objective.
5) Therefore, morality is objective.
Then we go on from there to identify the standard of the objective morality with God.
I believe that God's nature does act as the grounding for morality, but the problem with right away identifying the standard with God is that there are other moral theories that you need to deal with, where morality doesn't come from God yet morality is objective. For example, the view I made up in the video; where souls ground morality (somehow). Your argument would conclude with our souls being God! So, your argument needs some way of combatting these other moral theories that have non-God standards.
But please don't let my criticisms in any way deflate you! It's great that you're working at formulating an argument. It make me very happy to see! I wish you the best of luck, God bless! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared I truly thank you for your criticism. It doesn't deflate me at all. It inspires me.
It was not, by any means the last formation of this argument.
God bless you :)
I'll fix some of your premises:
1) If morality is subjective, contradicting opinions on a moral topic can arise
2) Contradicting opinions can be true for each individual ( ie: Person A says chocolate ice cream is the best flavor, Person B says strawberry ice cream is the best flavor)
3) Morality is subjective
4) If morality is subjective it cannot be objective
5) Different people and cultures have different standards for what is moral
6) No god required to determine what your subjective moral opinion is
Morality seems to sit somewhere between objective and subjective. We act according to the drivers of our human nature, and our nature is informed by our biology. Ergo, we find reasonable moral consensus among other humans. Even Christians believe that their god has created us with a moral sense. The difference is rather than that sense coming from a god, it makes far more sense for that sense to have evolved because it is beneficial for the species.
"Morality is doing what is right REGARDLESS of what other people say. Religion is doing what others say REGARDLESS of whether it's right or not."
Atheists acting like they don’t need a reason to be a good person just tells me that they don’t know why what they do is good or bad. People who do things for no reason are usually categorized as insane
Brilliant.
@thehungarywaffleinc.7775 Are you saying the YOU need to be told to good things and what things are good? Is that really what you are saying.
@@StudentDad-mc3pu sure
Aside from the fact that Mencken said 'obedience' and not 'religion' this begs the obvious question how do you know 'what is right'?
Thank you, your videos are very thoughtful and well-made. I like the animations as well!
What about the second premise, morality is objective?
If i needed god to be moral, then i wasnt good to begin with.
Im good all on my own.
According to what *objective standard* are you good?
You cannot be "good all on your own," that makes ZERO sense. Unless you're talking about subjective good, which is a useless standard.
@@MiloDCso you think what god ordered and condoned in the OT, like slavery and stoning gays and girls who couldn't prove their virginity based on the hymen/blood myth are moral...got it.
@@KasperKatje ok so you have moral values and those dont match christian ones . I am not christain to respond to your bs but the problem where you got those standards from? and you claim its more moral than relgious ones ,could you give me a source ?
@@Alhassanlad from me,myself an I and the group I am part of. Just like you.
So which bs exactly?
Ok im about to throw quite the shocking bomb into this conversation that’s not going to be comfortable to hear but is important to understand.
For this reason I will place it in caps and bold just to emphasize its importance but I am not doing so to be condescending or to shout at anyone, I just want to make sure the main claim is well isolated.
*THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE MORALITY EVEN IF GOD EXISTS HOWEVER THIS DOESNT MEAN MORALITY DOESNT MATTER*
This is a simple fact of how the terms objective and subjective are defined and what they actually mean. And if we’re going to establish morality without god we should also include a third term called intersubjectivity.
Establishing these definitions will necessarily be key to the argument which could be a comment unto its own. I will post that below this one later when I have more time.
I've not watched this yet. But I'll say right from the off that morals are like god.....man made.
First you need to prove the existence of your particular brand of god, and then show how it is responsible for ANYTHING yet alone our sense of mortality.
Secondly, having read the 'good' book, the character of God in said book is one of the nastiest, vindictive, cruel, spiteful, petty beings I've ever heard of.
There are only objectively good moves in chess when a person
a) agrees to play at all,
b) agrees to the goal of winning and
c) agrees to play by the rules given.
None is fixed. Nobody is forced to play chess.
The statement "There are objectively good moves in chess to beat your opponent" is true, but it smuggles in the above targets.
- The error in the argument given for objective morality is that one cannot objectively define flourishing/wellbeeing. This is allready subjective. The claim just shifts the burden of proof from "morality is objective" to "fluorishing is objective" or "wellbeeing is objective". Dont be fooled by the language trick to smuggle in a positive judgement by the word "well" or the by its definition positive connotation of flourishing. Both are still just boxes where each individual (subject) decides what they may contain and what not.
- The error in the argument given for the existence of a god beeing necessary for moral to be objective is the same as for the reverse statement that objectivity of moral proves the existence of a god: Both are a non sequiturs. And this cannot be helped by using a definition of a god linking his existence necessarily to the existence of an objective moral. For this definition would in itself still be a claim with the necessity to be prooven.
- However, if one uses a definition of a god that is linked in a necessary way to the objectivity of moral, then this god can be disprooven to exist by prooving moral to be subjective. And that has allready been done, each time some persons couldnt agree on what was morally correct.
🙏🏼 I really needed this explaination, thanks! I was talking to a friend about morality and got stuck when he said that it's based off of "do un to others as you'd have them do to you". This was hard to argue against because it's true, Jesus told us that, but now I see the deeper meaning.
✝ Subsribing!
I bet this is the best meta-ethics has to offer.
A friendly tip is to investigate subjects for their own sake rather than trying to make them into an argument for God.
This is easy, my argument is the same one you mentioned that the atheist says, while acknowledging that well being as the basis is subjective. We can make objective facts if we agree subjectively that we care about well being. Morality is not objective.
We create things that don't physically exist and refer to them as facts all the time. This can be called an observer dependant fact. Things like money, marriage, government, professions, titles, rights, etc. It really is the case that money is not an inherent aspect of reality but rather a mind dependant fact. So although money doesn't exist it is nevertheless a fact that I have for instance $20 in my wallet, that I owe my bank x amount of money, that Google made hundreds of billions of dollars last year. These aren't subjective claims but rather observer dependant facts that can be verified with different kinds of evidence including empirical and objective evidence. But none of this changes the fact that money doesn't exist in the universe.
Its the ability to use language that allows us to create systems of things that otherwise don't exist in physical reality.
This is gold!
Arbitrarily assigning God or souls as the only good grounding for objective morality is baseless. Even if God exists it is not an undeniable fact that "he" is good or objective. Apologists literally just make those claims up. In fact, God is said to have preferences. If that is true, can he be objective? I am also yet to hear a good refutation of the Euthyphro dilemma.
Moral objectivism is ironically evidence against theism.
@@Terrestrial_Biological_Entity agreed. I could easily argue how I am more moral than most if not all gods.
True morality is based ion empathy and justice, something most deities lack.
What is your evidence for that?
@@valkyrieloki1991 Battle of Jericho.
@@valkyrieloki1991 Noah and the flood
@@valkyrieloki1991 crucifying his son
Meta-ethics, as a philosophical field, has shown that moral realism (the idea that there are ‘moral truths’) is problematic. Such truths, if they existed, would have to be of a completely different kind than *any* other statement we can make, and we would end up having to claim that there is a special field of ‘moral truth’ distinct from other kinds of truth, but this doesn’t answer the question and simply puts us back at the beginning again.
Please stop assuming what remains under question. We do not know what ‘morality’ is. We only know that the mere existence of the word, and its use, does not necessitate the existence of anything to which it must refer.
The only way that morality could be objective would be if god existed so you can’t you objective morals to prove god otherwise it’s a circular argument
whats stopping someone from being an anti realist
What about the euphyro dilemma? Also, if God's nature forbids rape then that explanation alone can GROUND morality. I don't see how God is needed for moral realism. Have you looked into Russ Shafer-Landau has a good lecture on why God isn't needed with morality. Some argue God undermines moral realism.
Why not 10 gods? Why just one?
contingency plan sums it up pretty well. with the contingency argument youd need an all powerful being who would have 5 qualities. one of them being all powerful. you cant have 2 all powerful beings, that would take out the meaning out of omnipotent and the idea of it is that somethign omnipotent or all powerful would be more powerful than everythign in the universe combined. if you have 2 of them thats a contradiction of characteristics.
@@affif330 Doesn't Christianity have the trinity? The Bible has at least two gods with very distinct personalities and attributes. They don't seem to always be in communication. Jesus isn't sure of God's plans and feels, at least at one point, abandoned by God.
@@sbnwnc well Christianity is wrong about trinity then? as simple as that cus all sects dont agree on trinitarianism
@@affif330 Christianity is wrong about a lot of things.
@@sbnwnc and why do u feel like i need to know that?
I just don't get why God is able to define morality but humans aren't if we are made in his image.
Simply put... What gives God the right to tell humans what is Good and bad ? I mean if I make my own world and call it The Sims or something and have The Sims do things that are sinful inside that game that I programmed It is still morally bad under God's morality even though I have just made my own universe and define the rules for it.
Who's to say the rules that I create for The Sims are immoral?
And if there was a God above the God of the Bible then the God of the Bible would have to follow that god's morale.
Is it simply just because you have more power than everything else that gives you the right to tell people what is good or bad?
No because then I could define reality for anything that I made including artificial intelligence.
What I came to was the conclusion that God's holiness is what allows him to define morality........ But now I am wondering what exactly gives holiness the ability to do that.
My problem with God right now is he does not want to prove anything to me. I want a near death experience or a prophetic dream or to pray for somebody and have them actually be healed but it seems like the Holy Spirit does not want to interact with me whenever I do that Or try to do it.
Oh dear, you are really mixed up about what makes an objective moral law, as opposed to an objectively good strategy for reaching a goal. There is a lot of can-kicking going on. Your syllogism fails on several points but the main one is that there is no such thing as objective morality, this is NOT the same as having rules of behaviour that lead to good results for people because who is to say A: What a good result looks like in all cases and B: that Human flourishing is objectively good.
A problem with moral laws derived from any God is that they actually tend to be quite arbitrary - for instance, laws against same sex relationships, which are actually harmful to individual flourishing.
First, prove a god exists.
And then, determine if your God drowned babies, like the Bible alleges.
Then, we can discuss morality.
Or supported slavery.
Why completely overlook evolution?
The existence of an evolved morality completely breaks your argument. Just as we have intuitions about size or danger, we have evolved intuitions about right and wrong. And these are not objective, only arbitrary to our ancestors environments.
pretty good but vague on definitions, also morality is reducible but you had no way of knowing that at the time, will check your newer vids
You defined the grounding of morality as "whatever it is that makes some things have the property of being moral and other things not have the property of being moral" (6:34) Suppose moral facts have no truth-maker (as some facts do e.g. "Baal does not exist") wouldn't that mean they don't need a grounding? This would be an objection to premise 1.
I think you can rephrase it in terms of explanations, rather than truthmakers. The upshot to this is that is good practice to not stop explanations prematurely. So, if moral facts are in principle explainable, we should try to explain them.
Have a nice day! :)
Very interesting!!
Ah, yes.. so what you're saying is that I should go ahead and burn and loot villages because the vikings say that allmighty Odin promised that I will go to valhalla if I die as a warrior, and after that I will make a human sacrifice to the Aztec sun God, and then I will avoid eating cows because eating cows is bad in hinduism, and then partake in some cannibalism because isolated tribes do it, but and then I will eat my dog because eating cats and dogs is okay in china, so I guess I'll snack on some of them too, then I will spread hatred towards everyone who is different from me!
- Truly.. morals are 100% objective and definitely come from YOUR religion!
this is not an apologetics toward one or another religion. only that a god needs to exist for morality. like i see you sarcastically saying you'd loot and burn villages but we both know that is under the connotations that those things are wrong and you're trying to make the point that since they're wrong god saying they're right is a contradiction. but on what basis is looting or raping or burning a village even objectively 'wrong' to you? if you're atheistic aren't all these morals arbitrary to you? if you truly believe in subjective morality you would have to disagree with the universal part of the 'universal human rights' issued by UN.
I don’t know if this is true, but I think god is like milk for cereal when it comes to morality (at least when ignoring the origination of the milk). It’s better with God, but it doesn’t need God.
Well I think comes down to, what do we mean by God.
Why don't you just put all this on solid ground to begin with and demonstrate the existence of God?
How do I tell the skeptic that they ought to follow God's command
Tell them if they don’t they shall be brought out before the camp and the congregation shall throw stones at him until he dies! That’s what God would command if we refer to Numbers and all throughout the Old Testament. Fortunately he had a human sacrifice that ended his thirst for human sacrifice and now we don’t need to sacrifice to him. But now we can threaten them with eternal human sacrifice, HELL! That’ll scare him, because fear is a great means for getting people to do good.
but if morality is objective and is simply an ought to, therefore stripping it of any meaning and any human flourishing is only additional side effects that we humans perceive to be good for us,, so are the bad, then if this is the nature of morality, if genocide was an objectively moral command by the moral standard itself, it ought to be followed and done and deciding otherwise is immoral? Also it sounds to me it's inducing irrationality to morality,, and considering it as universal laws just like laws in Physics, however what makes morality as experienced by each of us ought to be objective when even the basal experience each of us and throughout history has been changed over and over and progressing to more and more moral state if morality was so immutable in the first place, and the very fact that we can interact and change what we collectively determine to be moral ever since we are apes is evidence that it is indeed different from what we see as eternal physics laws that were not changing since we started studying nature, gravity existed before Newton came up with gravitational constant and the concept of gravity itself
'we directly perceive that there are some moral facts like hurting people is wrong and helping people is good', except later in the video you go on to explain that our perceptions of morality can be incorrect.
So, how can we show that 'hurting people is wrong' IS a moral fact? Just because we all agree on it doesn't mean that its wrong, there has to be something beyond us to point to, right?
Why ought we use the "better1" standard? Suppose I use another "betterN". What then?
The feeling that objective morality exists is probably just the result of our evolved biological behaviors. So I don't see how you can get from some kind of feeling like that to something else like God existing. To me, whether or not objective morality exists is completely independent from the issue of whether God exists. Back when I was a theist, I didn't perceive morality as coming from God, just that God's nature lined up with what was morally good. If God commanded immoral things such as murder, I would consider that immoral even if it came from God. You could say "well God would never do that because it's not in his nature" but the issue isn't whether he would do that or not, but that you would be logically required to accept that as moral if he did. So if we are to go with what "feels obvious" to people, well it didn't feel obvious to me that God was necessary for morality, even back when I believed in God. Of course, you could then say there are other arguments on top of what is merely our feeling to look at, but then that adds more complexity to the issue, and saying "well you feel objective morality is real, therefore it is" requires more than just that we feel it.
So far, I have never heard a good argument for why God has to be the objective basis for morality. It seems arbitrary to me. Exactly what qualities is it that God has that makes what he commands objective? Anything you posit could be dismissed as a subjective preference. And worse, it could lead to reductios most would consider immoral. (God is all powerful, therefore God's word is objective, therefore might makes right; just being one example). So if there are no qualities that make God's commands objectively moral, then it is reduced to "God's commands are objectively moral because he is God" which is no answer at all. I might as well just say my commands are objectively moral because I'm me.
If you aren't saying that morality is reducible to God then I don't think God can ground & explain moral duties and values. Suppose its true that evolution gave people the moral sense of right & wrong and good & bad. I don't think that's ethically interesting because evolution doesn't establish whether something is in fact good & bad or wrong & right. Namely it doesn't ground the objective moral values themselves. Seems like same objection can be turned against your argument.
i havent watched the rest of the video yet, but the 2 premise argument isnt even valid, no? They don't guaruntee the conclusion, even if they are both true
Are you suggesting that morality is an illusion God placed on humans? I think it would be more explanatory if you said, to morality truly exist, things as good and evil would have to exist independtly of the subjective notion of a particular mind, that is, good/evil is actually a property of the thing, what could or could not be discovered by an inquire into the nature of the thing. Now morality would have a ground because it can strive for goodness, because good as a thing exists. Now that all being said, God is hardly an explanation for that phenomena, at least in your definition, because God is essentially good and he does not account for the existence of evil. It would make more sense to talk about a original substance that was separated in a good part and an evil part in my opinion.
The insufferable God concepts have demonstrably caused immeasurable and unnecessary suffering. They are proof that our minds evolved from the muck and are environmentally constructed, playing numerous misinterpretation games on themselves. They will contain vestiges of that journey, from structure to cognition, as long as we use them.
You just contradicted yourself. You said there's suffering caused to people but if you don't believe in objectives then you quite literally believe that theres a value based on human life and that morality isn't about selfishness as the end goal. What's your world view?
Many big words, caveman Steve very impressed.
Try using an actual argument next time.
So... big word wow!
Make a point next time, dont tell it like you assume its fact.
Environments do not structure morality. Why did some civilizations sacrifice babies and others not? Why did some civilizations flourish while others die? If you make a subjective argument like that, youll have to also concede that every civilization has been and will be morally incorruptible because there's no system to check.
Premise 4 is just based on you thinking God is a nice explanation for stuff. Seems quite easily mirrored by someone who doesn't think God is a nice explanation of stuff. (Like me)
The moral argument is absolute nonsense and this one is no exception. Why must morality be grounded and not a brute fact of our universe? When intelligent life evolves to a sufficiently advanced state that living organisms can reason about their values, morality emerges without the need to appeal to God. Morality is objective because the emergent property of rationality provides a prescription for itself qua rationality. Furthermore, divine command theory is woefully unequipped to command action because it cannot clarify the subjects of morality. Who is bound by God’s laws? Humans sure, but how about dolphins? Intelligent extraterrestrial beings? Divine command theory has no way to answer questions about inclusion and atrocities are committed in the name of God by an arbitrary principle of exclusion.
i tried to explain this to someone and they went full into the yeah objective morals dont exists and with them people would behave and idk what to anwser next so i had to look it up
Morality is just based upon what humans agree on. This sounds simple but it builds up over generations of humans.
@Oscar [An angel from the Lord] Perez Yes, absolutely
@branchleader73 That is arbitrary. Why should an individual simply follow what the majority say is good? Who is correct? We go with the larger group? Morality has to be more than what majority sat and kn fact is. We all have agreed upon standards if right and wrong that simply go beyond group thought.
@accelerationquanta5816 World wide even children know inherently when something wrong has been done. They know theft and murder and have empathy when they see suffering. It's basic morality. The only illusion is the one people create when they pretend morals don't exist. It's one of many thing's that point to God as our creator.
@accelerationquanta5816 No. I proudly stand on God's Revelation man and His promises to us. I will not substitute science alone with it's limitations in favor of your approval.
@@Loganedward29 I don't think it's arbitrary, human phycology and physiology is not arbitrary and even if it were, it would not change the fact that humans are similar creatures, living similar lives in social structures. It makes sense that humans living socially would work cooperatively for the good of the group and therefore themselves as individuals, this would necessitate common bonds and agreement - hence morality.
I don't perceive that there are moral facts.
Prove that there are moral facts.
0:55 You're describing subjective morality. Atheists know this is subjective morality. This is a strawman, though maybe the final point of 'objectively good or bad [actions]' under that framework confused you so I'll let it slide.
2:10 to 2:55 No I am fairly certain you could describe moral actions purely in terms of favorable or non-favorable outcomes. They're purely subjective. Conceptual, even. It is not a sense like sight is, or else you would not have such disagreements on it.
4:30 This is instinctual.
4:46 Nothing. It's not special. Every species does this to an extent.
4:53 We would all be wrong... In your opinion.
5:12 Big 'If'.
5:23 Yes, you can't say it's objectively good for humans to flourish, but you can say you prefer it, precisely. People will often do this by saying "Human flourishing is good."
6:00 Haha, no. Give me 1 example of a 'moral experience' that isn't just emotions.
6:20 to 6:30 This is the very definition of 'Subjective'.
Even if I gave all that for the sake of argument, no that doesn't get you to god, because:
6:15 We don't have to know what the grounds are to know of a thing. Nothing 'cries out' for an explanation; to know the answer is an emotional human desire. The answer can simply be 'I don't know.'
6:45 No, he wouldn't, because under the Objective/Subjective dichotomy god is a subject, and his opinion on moral matters is just that. If it is a part of his nature, then *why* is it a part of his nature? Why does *that* not require grounding? Seems simpler to point to whyever *that* is the way it is and cut out the middle man. Or, uh, deity, in this case.
6:55 Need I say anything?
7:16 Non Sequitur. Do I need to point to spiritual atheists? Maybe godless religions with a soul concept?
God always get cut on Occam's Razor. Poor guy.
In summation:
7:44 Second premise is false.
8:10 Pretty sure that breaks the formula. Either way, see Occam's Razor.
If the true #1 god become the compass of #1 morality, by this standard we can dicredit another #2 or #3 morality set by another group of different faith.
In history this scheme has produced many dehumanized event and atrocities made by mankind.
The creation of god and its set of morality, cant be denied stand as paragon of value tradition and order for society. Due to mass themelves, oftentimes couldnt think their existence or how why they do their own life.
Morality has always been a huge problem for religion. A religious person can be moral, but they have no way to explain, through faith, why any act is right or wrong. See how badly apologists fail on this. Or can any apologist manage it? All true morality is humanistic.
If morals come from god then they are subjective. Implementing morals can be objective although there may be other ways. Societies define morals...no god is needed.
I think the objectivity of morality grounded by God is supposed to be an intrinsic characteristic of the universe built in during creation. I don’t know why an atheist can’t respond that a natural genesis of the universe has a brute fact of the potential for morality. Any naturally occurring universe that develops rational, intelligent life somewhere will see morality introduced as an emergent property.
Im not convinced of the objectivity of ethics, but even still, not all ethicists are naturalist. Many appeal to some kind of intuition or reason to explain it. Appealing to god only collapses the intuition. First off you're still trying to explain what ought to be with was is, so you're not different from the naturalist in that respect. You just replace the natural world with god. Secondly, it replaces intiutive statements with unintiutive one. What's more intuitive then saying killing babies is wrong? Replace is wrong with "is accordance with an omnipotent being that exists" even if you do believe in god that is less intuitive.
!!!SEE AJ AYERS EMOTIVISM FOR AN EXPLAINATION OF OUGHT!!!
There is no good and bad, only selfish and altruistic. These are reducible to the ratio of internal vs external values.
I appreciate the is-ought from Hume, but i personally have no attachment to ought and think emotivism does good. It's ALL about values
Very well done good job 👍
Thank you! Cheers!
What a shitload of logical fallacies. R’Amen!
The Christians here won't agree, but that is only because they have al dente hearts.
In the Old Testament of the Bible ( 1 Chronicles 21 ), David sins against God. David did the wrong thing. As a punishment for one Man’s sin, God commands an Angel to kill the Men of Israel. The Angel killed 70,000 Men before God commanded the Angel to stop.
We know by our moral conscience that what God did was morally bad and wrong. If such a story was in the Koran, then Christians would have no problem knowing that what Allah did was bad and wrong. So, Christians should not try and make exuses for their God.
The point here is, that it is impossible that the moral nature of the God of the Bible is Morally Perfect. The God of the Bible is not the Highest Moral Good. The Moral Nature of the God of the Bible is NOT the Ontological or Metaphysical grounding of or for morality.