Daniel Morgan said:
“3) Circularity doesn't bring home the bacon. Is good/morality/logic/existence contingent upon God's creation of them and direction of them, or are these things which are necessary for God? IE child rape isn't intrinsically evil, only because God commands it so. If God has no frame of reference to be illogical, or define evil, then God is no more logical or moral than a rock. This is the epitome of arbitrary -- if God had commanded murder, then murder would be good, (as you say it is in such passages as Num 31:17 and 1 Sam 15:3)... if God had commanded X, then X is good, regardless of X. Arbitrary to the core, as the simple value of authority makes something right. Hitler's authority to order things, and ability to see them carried out, made nothing "good", no more than your God's does throughout the OT.”
I have to hand it to Danny. It takes a certain amount of undeniable talent to pack so much confusion into such a compact space.
i) All homicide is not murder. There’s such a thing a justifiable homicide, as when a policeman kills a sniper. Or perhaps Danny believes that we should disarm our policemen and give them lollipops instead.
ii) Many things are intrinsically evil in the sense that they are unnatural. That is to say, they are contrary to the way in which God made us as social creatures, with obligations to our Creator as well as our fellow man.
So they are not arbitrary, but grounded in nature.
Some things which are evil would not be evil if God were to change human nature.
Some things would always be evil, such as ingratitude towards one’s Maker.
iii) By contrast, the laws of logic obtain in every possible world.
iv) Is the only difference between a rock and a moral or rational agent the presence of a frame of reference? What about little things like consciousness?
v) Danny is also confusing circular reasoning, which is fallacious, with tracing something back to its source or origin or exemplary standard.
What’s the standard for our time zones? Greenwich Mean Time.
But do we then need a standard for GMT, and another standard for the standard for GMT? And back we go ad infinitum.
There’s a difference between an objective standard and an external standard. GMT is an objective standard.
An objective standard doesn’t need another standard external to the objective standard to be objective. Otherwise we’re lost in a vicious regress.
Do time zones lose all meaning unless we have an independent frame of reference for GMT, as well as an independent frame of reference for our independent frame of reference, ad nauseum, for GMT?
iv) Danny commits the same faulty reasoning with respect to the ultimate source of something.
v) Suppose a houseguest asks me where I got my milk. I say the grocery store.
But, of course, that’s not the ultimate explanation.
If I were Danny, I’d have to tell him that the milk came from the grocery store, which came from the milk truck, which came from the dairy farm, which (skipping over several steps) came from the Big Bang, which came from the oscillating universe, which came from the cosmic turtle, which came from the cosmic subturtle, which came from the…
Or perhaps he’d say the milk came from the cow, which came from the mother cow, which came from the bull that impregnated the mother cow, which came from organic molecules, which came from the Big Bang, which came from the oscillating universe, which came from the cosmic turtle, which came from the cosmic subturtle, which came from the…
Or perhaps he'd say the milk came from the hay, which came from photosynthesis, which came from the sun, which came from the Big Bang, which came from the oscillating universe, which came from the cosmic turtle, which came from the cosmic subturtle, which came from the…
For if the source ever came to an end, why—then the question itself loses all meaning, and things just are as they are, without possible reference to "objective" cows or turtles.
Some things would always be evil, such as ingratitude towards one’s Maker.
ReplyDeleteCareful Steve, or you'll be starting down the slippy slope towards establishing a moral realism that your divine command theory prohibits.
By contrast, the laws of logic obtain in every possible world.
Subject-object relationships are required for logic to exist. The only intelligible definitions of logic thus require a subject (observer) and objects (A) to make remarks such as, "A is A" and "A cannot be A and B". They don't require a subject/object to be God, unfortunately for you.
Obviously, one possible world is the world of the naturalist, a world in which matter and energy have no need of "creation" and undergo transformations without a divine mind willing them.
Is the only difference between a rock and a moral or rational agent the presence of a frame of reference? What about little things like consciousness?
No I didn't say the "only" difference, but obviously, I made it clear that a creature which cannot access decisions or actions which are wrong/evil/immoral is completely amoral, just as a rock is. If a creature cannot choose wrongly, it cannot choose rightly in the moral sense -- this presupposes consciousness, as all morality does.
An objective standard doesn’t need another standard external to the objective standard to be objective. Otherwise we’re lost in a vicious regress.
This was an odd sentiment to read in coming from someone whose blog hosts presuppositional apologists who insist that we "account for" logic/morality/X, and insist that Christianity supplies the only coherent "account of" X.
On the one hand, you demand rigorous transcendental defenses of the existence of logic and morality, and on the other hand, your God is allowed to sneak under the radar. When God does/is/has it, it just IS, but if I say, "logic exists", Manata et al ask, "WHY?" Your axioms are unassailable, but I am not allowed axioms at all (undefended foundational premises).
Classical foundationalism denies that you can use your God's existence as an axiom*, but you presuppose it nonetheless, and subsume all subsequent questions into these meaningless propositions: God is good, God is logical, etc.
* Classical foundationalism demands that axioms be self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to the senses. Of course, theists presuppose that Rom 1 is true, and insist that God's existence is self-evident, although bereft of argument. In Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology, he counters objections to this tactic (of trying to include God's existence in classical foundationalist definitions) with "Quinn's defeater", "The Great Pumpkin", and "The Grounding Objection", which all have atheistic responses, of course. This could go off topic, but I just wanted to point this out as a side note.
For if the source ever came to an end, why—then the question itself loses all meaning, and things just are as they are, without possible reference to "objective" cows or turtles.
I understand quite well the need to stake out certain premises in our worldview without support, but your presuppositional apologetics seem to deny us this. I am willing to subject my premises to scrutiny and reductio ad absurdum, of course, but the circularity of your premises (God exists, we know this and God's character by Scripture, we know by Scripture that you know this as well, thus God's existence is self-evident) prevents a symmetric approach from theists. I hold to epistemic positions tentatively and skeptically, willing to open my mind to the possibility of being corrected and/or being wrong. Perhaps property dualism is a more rigorous and defensible explanation of consciousness than materialism... perhaps there is no oscillating universe, and no multiverses either, and thus the Anthropic principle has some merit.
It seems that theists such as yourself attempt to hide behind the sort of vacuous certainty you are afforded by saying that somehow, some way, i) things are evil because God commands them, ii) things are evil because of man's nature, iii) and things are evil because they just are (see first comment above) -- the latter of which is of course my position.