IS THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT MORE PROBLEMATIC FOR THEISM OR ATHEISM? by JONATHAN THIESSEN B.A. Biblical Studies, Columbia Bible College, 2004 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES in the FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY MAY 2023 © Jonathan Thiessen, 2023 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS ii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 1 The Research Problem ............................................................................................................... 1 Hypothesis ................................................................................................................................... 3 Research Strategy ....................................................................................................................... 4 Limitations and Scope ................................................................................................................ 4 Importance of this Study ............................................................................................................ 5 Chapter Outline .......................................................................................................................... 5 Definition of Terms .................................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 1 – HISTORY OF RESPONSES AND DEFICIENCIES ...................................... 8 CHAPTER 2 – WHAT ARE OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE MORALITY? ................. 17 CHAPTER 3 – THE MORAL ARGUMENT ........................................................................... 21 Approach ................................................................................................................................... 21 Criteria for a Successful Argument ......................................................................................... 22 Theistic Proofs .......................................................................................................................... 23 Moral Argument ....................................................................................................................... 25 What is the Moral Argument? ............................................................................................... 26 History of the Moral argument .............................................................................................. 26 Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD) and the Fourth Way ........................................................ 27 Objection from Benjamin McCraw ....................................................................................... 29 Response from Peter Redpath ............................................................................................... 29 Objection from Richard Dawkins .......................................................................................... 30 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Argument from the Need of Divine Assistance ....................... 31 C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) ......................................................................................................... 33 Objection from Erik Wielenberg ........................................................................................... 35 Response from Christopher Shrock........................................................................................ 37 William Lane Craig (1949 - Present) .................................................................................... 39 Objection from Paul Kurtz .................................................................................................... 40 Summary Evaluation of Moral Arguments ............................................................................. 45 CHAPTER 4 – ATHEISTIC MORAL REALISM .................................................................. 46 Atheistic Moral Realists............................................................................................................ 48 What is Atheistic Moral Realism?............................................................................................ 50 Non-Natural ........................................................................................................................... 52 Irreducibly Normative Truths ................................................................................................ 56 When Successful We Discover Rather than Create (Self-Evident) ........................................ 58 Supervenience ........................................................................................................................ 60 The Making Relationship ....................................................................................................... 63 Brute Ethical Facts ................................................................................................................ 66 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS iii CHAPTER 5 – MODIFIED DIVINE COMMAND THEORY ............................................... 71 The Problem in its Strongest Form .......................................................................................... 71 Divine Command Theory ......................................................................................................... 72 Crude Divine Command Theory ............................................................................................ 72 Euthyphro Dilemma............................................................................................................... 73 Modified Divine Command Theory ....................................................................................... 75 Robert Adams (1937- Present) .............................................................................................. 75 Objections.................................................................................................................................. 78 Objection 1: What if God Commanded Something Terrible? ............................................... 78 Objection 2: An Inconsistent Tetrad...................................................................................... 83 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 87 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................ 90 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS iv Abstract There are troubling texts in the Old Testament that depict God commanding the death of innocent people. New Atheists judge that God acts immorally when he makes such commands and expect their judgments to have force. For moral judgments to have force, however, morality must be objective, otherwise, they are merely subjective opinions. If objective morality is required, and atheism is true, then objective morality must be grounded within an atheistic framework. A growing number of atheists attempt to do this through versions of atheistic moral realism. I argue, however, that these attempts do not succeed. Theism, however, does sufficiently ground objective morality as even many atheist thinkers agree. Therefore, New Atheists are left with a dilemma: either morality is subjective, and their moral judgements lack force, or morality is objective, and God is the best explanation for it. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 1 INTRODUCTION The Research Problem Well-known New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett claim that the God of the Old Testament is immoral, that it is immoral to believe in him, and that it is dangerous to follow him. Because of their wit, their charisma, the seriousness of their charges if proven true, and the popularity of some of their writings, the reach of the New Atheists is extensive. Their claims are damaging because they teach that, rather than tolerating religious belief, such belief should be actively opposed. Perhaps the most oft-quoted passage reflecting this opposing view is from Richard Dawkins in his book, The God Delusion: The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.1 While New Atheists are sometimes outspoken against religious belief, there remain a number of others in general who, while they may not be atheists themselves, remain uncomfortable with troubling passages in the Old Testament.2 Over the past two millennia, many attempts have been made from within the Christian community itself to solve the apparent incompatibility between God’s goodness and his commands to kill innocent people. The effect of these troubling passages 1 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London, UK: Black Swan, 2001), 31. See also, Sam Harris, “The idea that the Bible is a perfect guide to morality is simply astounding, given the contents of the book. Admittedly, God's counsel to parents is straightforward: whenever children get out of line, we should beat them with a rod… If they are shameless enough to talk back to us, we should kill them…” Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 8; Christopher Hitchens, “However, one mutters a few sympathetic words for the forgotten and obliterated Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites, also presumably part of the Lord’s original creation, who are to be pitilessly driven out of their homes to make room for the ungrateful and mutinous children of Israel.” Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008), 99; Daniel Dennett, “The Old Testament Jehovah, or Yahweh, was quite definitely a super – man (a He, not a She) who could take sides in battles, and be both jealous and wrathful.” Daniel Clement Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Vol. 14. (New York: Penguin, 2006), 206. 2 Wesley Morriston is such a person; he believes in the existence of God but struggles to see how a morally perfect being could possibly command one nation to exterminate another. Wesley Morriston, “Did God Command Genocide?: A Challenge to the Biblical Inerrantist,” Philosophia Christi 11, no. 1 (2009): 8. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 2 therefore is far-reaching; there is a shared discomfort about them among atheists and theists alike. The New Atheists base their arguments on several oft-cited troubling passages in the Old Testament such as those recording the deaths of innocent people including children in the flood and in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 7:17-21, Genesis 19:23-25), the deaths of the firstborn males in Egypt (Exodus 12:29-30), the command to utterly destroy entire people groups without mercy including men, women, and children (Deuteronomy 7:1-2, Deuteronomy 20:16, Joshua 10:40-41, 1 Samuel 15:2-3), and God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19). New Atheists claim that, since these troubling passages depict a God who commands the death of innocent people, Christian theism is wrong; God cannot be good, as Christian theism claims, and act immorally at the same time. New Atheists seem to have surfaced a powerful question against Christian theism, namely, “How can God be good and simultaneously command the death of innocent people?” As will be shown, many attempts to answer this question have been made from within the Christian community. However, it will also be shown that the responses are either deficient for various reasons, or unable to cover the breadth of the problem when all the Old Testament passages under scrutiny are considered. Because this is the case, a new approach in dealing with the question raised by New Atheists is required. While a direct response to the question will be given in Chapter 5, it should be noted at the outset that this challenge can only be a powerful one if killing innocent people is objectively wrong to begin with. Atheists then, who make moral judgments expecting them to have force, must be able to ground objective morality or satisfactorily explain it. If, however, atheism cannot ground objective morality or satisfactorily explain it within an atheistic framework, then the New THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 3 Atheist’s challenge against God’s activity in the Old Testament lacks force. The research question this thesis will seek to answer then, is this: “Is the New Atheist’s challenge against the actions of God in the Old Testament more problematic for theism or atheism?” Hypothesis To answer this question, this thesis will first seek to show that for New Atheists to be able to make a moral judgment (God acts immorally in the Old Testament) with force, morality must be objective. If morality is not objective, then their assessment of God’s activity in the Old Testament is nothing more than a personal opinion. I will show that moral judgments can only have force if objective morality exists. After showing that objective morality must exist for moral judgments to have force, I will present arguments for objective morality from theists (including versions of the Moral Argument) and from atheists (including versions of Atheistic Moral Realism). Next, I will analyze both sets of arguments for objective morality to determine if they succeed. I will conclude that theism offers a needed foundation for objective morality, something atheism cannot provide. This conclusion will show that the New Atheists’ claim that God acts immorally in the Old Testament in fact creates the opportunity for theists to defend God as the best explanation for objective morality. After this, I will show that Christian theism can also provide an explanation for the times God commands the death of innocent people in the Old Testament. I will do this by proposing a modified version of the Divine Command Theory and argue that it is able to respond to Euthyphro-related objections. To summarize, I will take a three-step approach: 1) show that for moral judgments to have force, morality must be objective, something atheism struggles to ground or satisfactorily explain, 2) show that unlike atheism, theism offers a necessary grounding for objective morality, and 3) show that a modified version THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 4 of Divine Command Theory provides a sufficient response to the alleged incompatibility between God’s character and his commanding the death of innocent people. This approach will show that the New Atheist’s challenge against the actions of God in the Old Testament is more problematic for atheism than it is for theism. Research Strategy My research strategy will include a brief survey of a number of responses to troubling Old Testament passages along with their deficiencies. I will conclude that a new approach is needed. From there, I will research the difference between objective and subjective morality concluding that objective morality is required for moral judgments to have force. Next, I will research the Moral Argument and Atheistic Moral Realism concluding that theism provides a sufficient ground for objective morality while atheism does not. Finally, I will research Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma concluding that Modified Divine Command Theory sufficiently responds to the compatibility issue raised earlier. Most of the views and arguments interacted with will be philosophers, including both atheist and non-atheist ones, although I will also consult theologians and biblical scholars at times. Limitations and Scope It should be noted that my purpose in this thesis is not to do an exegetical study of the Old Testament texts in question but to do an ethical and philosophical analysis of the issue drawing on Old Testament texts when relevant to the discussion. In this way, usage of biblical texts will be in the service of an ethical and philosophical argument not vice versa. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 5 Importance of this Study Providing an explanation for the perennial problem of God’s activity in the abovementioned troubling Old Testament passages has historically been challenging. If this thesis is successful however, the burden of proof will shift from the theist to provide a justification for God’s activity in the Old Testament, to the atheist to provide an explanation for the existence of objective morality. This study is important because it reveals that one must make a choice: either God exists and questions regarding his activity in the Old Testament are secondary, or he does not exist, but then we are left with inadequate explanations for objective morality. In other words, New Atheists cannot have their cake and eat it too; they cannot expect their moral judgments to have force unless morality is objective. On the other hand, if morality is objective, atheism struggles to provide a necessary grounding for it. If God does exist, and therefore objective morality exists, then it is logical that difficult passages in the Old Testament should raise questions; that is exactly what we find. This study will demonstrate that the existence of questions about God’s activity in the Old Testament does not logically lead to atheism. Rather, the existence of questions regarding God’s activity in the Old Testament reveals the existence of objective morality, which then cries out for a foundation. While, at first glance, God’s activity in these troubling passages may seem incompatible with the theist’s claim that God is good, Modified Divine Command Theory, when properly understood, demonstrates otherwise. Chapter Outline Chapter 1 will briefly survey some of the many attempts made in the past to address the troubling Old Testament passages and why those responses are inadequate to address the problem in the manner it is presented by New Atheists today concluding that a new approach is THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 6 needed. Chapter 2 will investigate objective and subjective morality concluding that objective morality is necessary for moral judgments to have force. Chapter 3 will look at theistic explanations for objective morality through various forms of the Moral Argument demonstrating that theism offers a sufficient foundation for objective morality. Chapter 4 will examine Atheistic Moral Realism concluding that it struggles to provide a necessary grounding or satisfactory explanation for objective morality. The argument of this thesis can be articulated the following way: 1. Atheists make moral judgments expecting them to have force. 2. Moral judgments have force only if morality is objective. 3. Atheists must provide a non-theistic grounding for objective morality in order for their moral judgments to have force. 4. Theism provides an adequate ground for objective morality. 5. If objective morality exists but it cannot be grounded or satisfactorily explained within an atheistic framework, then a moral-creator God is the only viable explanation left. 6. Atheism cannot ground objective morality or provide a satisfactory explanation for its existence. 7. Therefore, either morality is subjective and moral judgments lack force or morality is objective and God is the best explanation for it. Finally, even if objective morality is only explainable via theism, there remains a seeming incompatibility between God’s character and his commanding the deaths of innocent people. Chapter 5 will address this incompatibility and will conclude that an application of a modified version of Divine Command theory provides an adequate response to it. Definition of Terms This thesis will not engage in a debate on original sin and whether anyone is truly innocent. When the term “innocent” is used, it is referring to people like infants who died in the flood recorded in Genesis even though they were not conscious of any wrongdoing. In this way, THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 7 those who are caught up in the punishment of God for someone else’s disobedience, in this paper are labelled, “innocent”. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 8 CHAPTER 1 – HISTORY OF RESPONSES AND DEFICIENCIES The problems related to troubling Old Testament passages did not originate with the New Atheists. In fact, over the past 2000 years, many of the problems (and attempts to solve them) have come from within the Christian community itself. One of the earliest acknowledgements of and attempted solutions for the problem is from Marcion, the Bishop in Sinope of Pontus (AD 140 – AD 155). Given the troubling Old Testament passages, Marcion seemingly could not believe the God of the Old Testament was the same God as that of the New Testament. According to the Christian apologist Justin Martyr (c. AD 100 – c. AD 165), one of Marcion’s contemporaries, Marcion taught his followers to believe in “some other God, greater than he who created the world.”1 Likewise, the Church Father Irenaeus (AD 130 – AD 202), in his work Against Heresies, noted that Marcion saw the God of the Old Testament “to be the author of evils, [and] to take delight in war.”2 Marcion’s solution to the God of the Old Testament was to promote belief in two gods, one that was evil (the creator and lawgiver of the Old Testament) and one that was good (represented by Jesus Christ in a redacted version of the New 1 The larger quote from the second century Christian apologist Justin Martyr gives a more accurate picture, not only of Marcion’s teachings, but of Justin Martyr’s sentiment toward him: “There is also Marcion of Pontus, who is even now teaching his followers to profess, that there is some other God, greater than he who created the world. This man, through the assistance of evil spirits, hath caused many in every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that the Creator of the universe was God; maintaining that some one else, of superior power, hath exceeded that Creator by executing greater works.” Justin Martyr, A Translation of the Epistles of Clement of Rome, Polycarp and Ignatius, and of the First Apology of Justin Martyr: With an Introduction and Brief Notes Illustrative of the Ecclesiastical History of the First Two Centuries, ed. Wm. R. Whittingham and trans. by Temple Chevallier, (New York: Henry M. Onderdonk & Co., 1846), Page 151-52 (section 70. Number 35). https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044021114269&view=1up&seq=247&q1=%22some%20other%20god %22. 2 Like Justin Martyr, the larger quote from Irenaeus reveals some of the wider issues related to Marcion’s teachings and the view that his teachings were heretical: “And Marcion; of Pontus came in his place, and extended his school, shamelessly blaspheming Him Who is declared God by the Law and the Prophets: affirming Him to be an evil-doer, and fond of wars, and inconstant also in His judgment, and contrary to Himself: and as for Jesus, that He came from that Father who is above the God who made the world, into Judea in the time of Pontius Pilate..." Saint Irenæus, Five Books of S. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, Against Heresies, trans. by Rev. John Keble, M.A. (London: James Parker and Co., 1872), Book 1, Chapter 27, 2. Page 78. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044025691379&view=1up&seq=10il. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 9 Testament).3 Marcion’s two-god theory and his redacted version of the New Testament, however, are problematic for many reasons. First, the act of removing parts of the Bible that are difficult to explain and promoting belief in multiple gods raises more questions than it answers. Second, the New Testament writers accepted the God of the Old Testament. Even Jesus, whom Marcion claims represents the good God of the New Testament, referenced difficult sections from the Old Testament as legitimate historical examples to warn people of God’s coming wrath.4 Therefore, if the God of the Old Testament is rejected, then the trustworthiness of the New Testament writers is brought into question too. Lastly, Marcion’s teachings significantly diverged from orthodox Christianity, and he was thus rejected from the Christian community as a heretic. Marcion’s views therefore do not represent the orthodox Christian beliefs that the New Atheists are challenging; one might even say Marcion and the New Atheists have much in common in their shared rejection of the God of the Old Testament. While Marcion’s attempt to solve the problems related to troubling Old Testament passages resulted in his expulsion from the church, other non-heretics were afforded the opportunity to avoid dealing directly with difficult Old Testament passages for different reasons. Origen of Alexandria (c. 185 – c. 253 AD), for example, interpreted the Old Testament allegorically. Theologian, Jerome Creach notes that Origen believed, 3 Notice the similarities and differences here between Marcion’s views and those of the New Atheists: Irenaeus’ language describing how Marcion viewed the of the God of the Old Testament is not far off from that of Dawkins’; the difference, however, is that Dawkins rejects all of Scripture whereas Marcion accepts portions from the New Testament. See also Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan, Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God (New York: Baker Books, 2014), 37. See also Judith M. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century, (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 31; See also Adolf Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, trans by John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma (Durham NC: Labyrinth, 2007); See also Sebastian Moll, “Marcion: A New Perspective on His Life, Theology, and Impact,” Expository Times 121 (2010): 281–86. 4 “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” Matthew 24:37-39, NIV. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 10 Jericho (Josh. 6) [was] a metaphor for the present age, to be overcome by the kingdom of God. The city of Ai (Josh. 7–8) represent[ed] the chaos of life and sin Jesus overcame on the cross. Most importantly, the order to place under ban all the residents of the land [was] not an injunction to kill other human beings. Rather, it [was] a figurative way of saying that the Christian must purge the self of all that would hinder pure devotion to God.5 While some have shown that his allegorical interpretations were not motivated by avoidance,6 they nonetheless afforded him (and other early interpreters7) the ability to escape the need to provide an explanation for the Old Testament texts under question had the events in those texts been interpreted literally. Since allegory became the dominant method of interpretation for the several centuries that followed, problems related to a literal reading of troubling Old Testament texts remained relatively dormant.8 Allegorical interpretations may have been mainstream in the past,9 but this approach is deficient in addressing the questions as they are posed by New Atheists today since they challenge the moral character of God based on a literal interpretation of the events recorded in the biblical text. 5 Jerome F. Creach, Violence in Scripture: Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church (Louisville, KY Presbyterian Publishing Corp, 2013), 102. 6 Joseph Trigg notes that “Origen’s importance as the chief theoretician of allegorical interpretation has long been recognized…” but also says, “…nonetheless, Origen’s fame as an allegorist has often distracted scholars from other aspects of his approach to the Bible. His greatness as an interpreter and his influence on subsequent Christian tradition lie even more in his precise attention to detail – akribeia, ‘accuracy,’ is one of his favorite words – and reverence for the text itself. It is this attitude that he recommends in his Letter to Gregory (section 4), saying, ‘We need great application when we are reading divine things, so that we may not be precipitous in saying or understanding anything concerning them.’ Such application means being attentive to what a text has to say even if that is disconcerting…” Joseph W. Trigg, Origen (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1998), Chapter 4, second and third paragraph. E-Library ed. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/lib/sfuebooks/reader.action?docID=168948. 7 Recognizing Origen’s influence, Trigg says, “Most of the Fathers who lived after Origen scarcely did anything but copy his commentaries and other treatises on Scripture” and “…even those who were most opposed to his sentiments could not keep from reading them and profiting from them.” Ibid. 8 Hélène Dallaire notes, “During the 3rd century, Origen’s [allegorical] reading of Joshua became the adopted standard interpretation until the Reformation.” Hélène M. Dallaire, “Taking the Land by Force: Divine Violence in Joshua.” In Wrestling with the Violence of God: Soundings in the Old Testament, ed. Daniel Carroll and J. Blair Wilgus (Indiana: Eisenbrauns Publishing, 2015), 53. 9 Trigg notes that “[Origen] thus provided a way to interpret the entire Bible that was self-consistent and relevant immediately to spiritual needs. Trigg, Origen, Chapter 4, second and third paragraph. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 11 More recent criticisms of, and solutions for, the God of the Old Testament have come from theologians such as Terence Fretheim,10 Eric Siebert,11 and Hélène Dallaire.12 Fretheim says, The [biblical] texts themselves fail us at times, perhaps even often. The patriarchal bias is pervasive, God is represented as an abuser and a killer of children, God is said to command the rape of women and the wholesale destruction of cities, including children and animals. To shrink from making such statements is dishonest.13 Likewise, the headings in the first chapter of Siebert’s book Disturbing Divine Behaviour describe the God of the Old Testament as “deadly lawgiver… instant executioner… mass murderer… divine warrior… genocidal general… dangerous abuser… unfair afflicter [and]… divine deceiver.”14 Both Fretheim and Siebert’s solution to the God of the Old Testament is to distinguish between what they call the “textual God” represented by the words of human authors in the Bible and the “actual God” who transcends the words in the Bible. They argue that the ability to know the actual God happens primarily through experience and imagination under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, not simply through the biblical text.15 Dallaire agrees with Fretheim and Siebert: “The ‘textual God’ who commands the extermination of entire communities in Canaan, rains boulders on the heads of Israel’s enemies, and leads fierce military battles cannot be equated to an ‘actual God’…”16 Her solution, similarly, is that “…the book of Joshua should therefore not be read as an exact description of the events but rather as historical national literature in which the accounts reflect the literary traditions of the day, the rhetoric of military 10 Terence E Fretheim and Karlfried Froehlich, The Bible as Word of God in a Postmodern Age (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002), 116-117. 11 Eric A. Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 181. Copan and Flannagan also critique Siebert, see Copan and Flannagan, Did God Really Command Genocide, 38-41. 12 Dallaire, “Taking the Land by Force,” 47-67. 13 Fretheim, The Bible as Word of God in a Postmodern Age (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002), 100, emphasis original. 14 Eric A. Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 17-31. 15 Fretheim and Froehlich, The Bible as Word of God, 116-17. 16 Dallaire, "Taking the Land by Force,” 49. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 12 records, and the theological language of Israel.”17 By differentiating between the “actual God” and the “textual God”, and advocating that troubling passages are not exact descriptions of the events, Fretheim, Siebert and Dallaire have created a larger problem. If one cannot trust what is written about God’s activity in the historical book of Joshua, then what historical events recorded in Bible should be read as an exact description? Furthermore, especially regarding Fretheim’s solution, if the “actual God” is known primarily through experience and imagination rather than through the biblical text, then how can anyone know if their experience or imagination of God is accurate? Imagine if two people have experiences or imaginations about God that present him in a conflicting way, whose experience or imagination is the right one? There must exist some consistent standard against which someone can measure their experience and their imaginations to be able to determine, “This is the actual God.”18 Finally, substituting the “textual god” for an ambiguous “actual god” does not strengthen the argument against the charges of the New Atheists but simply demonstrates that theologians have discomfort with the way God is depicted in troubling Old Testament passages. Taking a different approach, over the past decade in three of his written works, Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?19 Is God a Moral Monster?20 and Did God Really Command Genocide?21 Christian philosopher Paul Copan has addressed issues related to the God of the Old Testament by claiming that the language in certain biblical texts is hyperbolic rhetoric. In the table below, 17 Dallaire, "Taking the Land by Force,” 66. C.S. Lewis states, “If there is ‘Something Behind’, then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way.” Clive Staples Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 1952), 23. The Christian belief is that God has revealed himself and made himself known through the Holy Scriptures. 19 Paul Copan, "Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?: The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics," Philosophia Christi 10, no. 1 (2008): 7-37. 20 Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Michigan: Baker Books, 2011). 21 Copan and Flannagan, Did God Really Command Genocide?. 18 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 13 Copan shows while there are biblical texts stating total destruction, later in the same biblical text, there are statements indicating that everyone is not destroyed:22 “Extermination” “No Extermination” Joshua 10:20a: “It came about when Joshua Joshua 10:20b: “…and the survivors who and the sons of Israel had finished slaying remained of them had entered the fortified them with a very great slaughter they were cities” (NASB). destroyed…” (NASB). Joshua 10:39: “every person” in Debir was Joshua 11:21: Later Joshua “utterly “utterly destroyed” (NASB). destroyed” Anakites in Debir (NASB). Joshua 11:21: The Anakites were “cut off” Joshua 15:13-14: Caleb “drove out” the and “utterly destroyed” in Hebron—as well as Anakites from Hebron; cf. Judges 1:20, where from Debir, Anab, and “all the hill country of Caleb “drove out” the Anakites from Hebron Judah.” There were “no Anakim left in the (NASB). land of the sons of Israel” (v.22 NASB). Judges 1:8: “Then the sons of Judah fought Judges 1:21: “But the sons of Benjamin did against Jerusalem and captured it and struck it not drive out the Jebusites who lived in with the edge of the sword and set the city on Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived with fire” (NASB). the sons of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day” (NASB). Joshua 11:23: “So Joshua took the whole Judges 2:21, 23: “I also will no longer drive land, according to all that the LORD had them out before them any of the nations spoken to Moses, and Joshua gave it for an which Joshua left when he died… So the inheritance to Israel according to their LORD allowed those nations to remain, not divisions by their tribes. Thus the land had driving them out quickly; and He did not give rest from war” (NASB). them into the hand of Joshua (NASB). Instead of seeing these texts as contradictory, Copan argues that the commands and the reports employed hyperbolic rhetoric commonly used in the Ancient Near East: Like his Ancient Near East contemporaries, Joshua used the language of conventional warfare rhetoric. This language sounds like bragging and exaggeration to our ears… Just as we might say that a sports team ‘blew their opponents away’ or ‘slaughtered’ or ‘annihilated’ them, the author (editor) likewise followed the rhetoric of his day. Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts found in the second and first millennia BC.23 According to Copan, God did not exterminate entire people groups. Rather, commonly used exaggeration language was used. It is the usage of exaggeration that explains what seems at first 22 23 Copan and Flannagan, Did God Really Command Genocide?, 86-87. Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 170-71. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 14 glance to be a contradiction in the biblical text. Copan’s argument seems to provide an adequate solution to some of the difficult passages related specifically to God commanding the Israelites to utterly destroy entire people groups inhabiting the land of Canaan. Like Copan, theologian Richard Hess also addresses the commands from God to destroy the Canaanites. He does this by focusing on the portion from Deuteronomy 20:16 which instructs Israel how to deal with the cities they encounter during their military campaign: “However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.”24 Hess argues, however, that the attacks on the cities like Jericho and Ai, were not on the general population but were targeted against combatants and military leaders. He says, Jericho and Ai, the initial two sites of conquest… may have been military forts guarding the routes from the Jordan Valley up to population centers in the hill country such as Bethel and Jerusalem. Evidence for this conclusion includes (1) the complete absence of references to specific non-combatants such as women and children with the exception of Rahab and her family, who are not killed; (2) the lack of evidence for settlement at Jericho and Ai during the time of Israel's emergence in Canaan, suggesting that these were not cities but military forts; (3) the use of the term melek ‘king’ to mean a military leader in Canaan at this time; (4) the lack of indication in the biblical text that these were large cities unlike Gibeon and Hazor, which are thus described; and (5) the meaning of the name Ai ‘ruin’, which suggests the reuse of earlier fortifications to serve as a temporary fort instead of a more permanent site of habitation.25 Hess’ point here is that it is unlikely the people living in the cities were ordinary civilians, including innocent women and children. Therefore, while the command of God seems to instruct total destruction of all people including the innocent—“do not leave alive anything that breathes”—the fact that the cities, as military posts, were targeted means that innocent people could have fled and preserved their lives. 24 Deuteronomy 20:17, NIV. Richard Hess, “War in the Hebrew Bible: An Overview,” in War in the Bible and Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Richard S. Hess and Elmer A. Martens (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2008), 29-30. 25 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 15 The problem however is this: even if Copan and Hess are correct and the Canaanites were not utterly destroyed, does this vindicate God from the accusation that he acts immorally? Could it not be argued that forcefully displacing people is also immoral? Also, was the fact that some of the Canaanites survived a reflection of God’s desires or a reflection that the Israelites failed at their God-given mission?26 Finally, while Hess and Copan’s arguments address the situation in Canaan, they do not address the other accounts in the Old Testament where innocent people die at God’s command. Even if Copan and Hess’s suggested solutions work for certain situations, they do not cover every instance of this kind of command in the Old Testament. What about the account of Achan and his entire family being stoned to death because Achan stole some of the plunder from Jericho? What about the death of innocent people in the flood or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? Because Copan and Hess only address the specific commands given to the Israelite soldiers to destroy the Canaanites, the other instances where God commands the death of innocent people are unaddressed. Each of the above responses (Marcion’s rejection the God of the Old Testament in favour of the God of the New Testament, Origen’s allegorical interpretation, Fretheim, Siebert, and Dallaire’s argument that the “actual God” is different that the “textual God”, Copan’s argument that the text is hyperbolic rhetoric, and Hess’ argument that the attacks were against military outposts only) fail to address the problem the way it is presented by New Atheists today in several ways: 1) New Atheists today challenge the morality of God based on a literal interpretation of the events recorded in the biblical text but Marcion and Origen avoided dealing 26 Eugene Merrill makes such a comment: “The argument that annihilation could not be meant literally because Canaanites still remained alive is vacuous, since the fact the command was given to kill ‘all’ need not mean that Joshua and the Israelites complied fully with the command, but in fact disobeyed the command as was their policy more often than not.” Eugene Merrill, review of Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God, by Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan, Themelios 40, no. 2 (2015): 272. https://search-ebscohostcom.ezproxy.student.twu.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lsdar&AN=ATLAiGFE160718000655&site=edslive&scope=site. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 16 with the text literally, 2) Fretheim, Siebert, and Dallaire’s argument supports the New Atheists who also claim the “textual God” is wrong (although New Atheists would deny the existence of an “actual God” too), and finally, 3) New Atheists make their case by citing a collection of examples of God’s actions in the Old Testament, but the approaches from Copan and Hess focus only on the specific commands to destroy the Canaanites. To summarize, the above responses are deficient because they either avoid a literal reading of events recorded in the Old Testament, they reject the God of the Old Testament, or they do not address the collection of troubling passages in the Old Testament. Because of this, justifying reasons for God’s activity is lacking and a different approach is needed. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 17 CHAPTER 2 – WHAT ARE OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE MORALITY? To address the New Atheist’s challenge (God acts immorally in the Old Testament), instead of creating a two-god solution (Marcion), allegorizing difficult passages (Origen), differentiating the “actual God” from the “textual God” (Fretheim, Siebert, and Dallaire), hyperbolizing extermination language in the Canaan conquest (Copan), or attempting to demonstrate that innocent people could have spared their own lives by fleeing (Hess), I will seek to show that the argument itself, as it is presented by New Atheists, is problematic. The New Atheists’ problem begins with their need for objective morality to make their argument. I will show that without objective morality, the New Atheist’s claim that God acts immorally in the Old Testament, is nothing more than a matter of opinion, and therefore lacks force. If, however, objective morality is necessary for the New Atheist’s argument to have force, then atheism must explain objective morality, something it struggles to do. The question at hand is this: “What is the difference between objective and subjective morality and is objective morality needed to produce moral judgments with force?” Roughly, subjective morality, states that morality is determined by individual people or groups. For example, philosopher Chris Gowans says, Most often [subjective morality] is associated with an empirical thesis that there are deep and widespread moral disagreements and a metaethical thesis that the truth or justification of moral judgments is not absolute, but relative to the moral standard of some person or group of persons.1 Conversely, objective morality is the view that there exist timeless, universal, unchanging moral principles outside of, beyond, or independent from humanity. Russ Shafer-Landau, an atheist philosopher who argues for objective morality sates that, “…moral judgements enjoy a special 1 Chris Gowans, “Moral Relativism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Stanford University 2017, first published Thu Feb 19, 2004; substantive revision Wed Mar 10, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/moral-relativism/. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 18 sort of objectivity: such judgements, when true, are so independently of what any human being, anywhere, in any circumstance whatever, thinks of them.”2 In his book, Moral Realism, he defends, “…reasons for thinking that we are not the authors of morality, but rather are constrained by moral rules not of our own making.”3 Shafer-Landau believes that morality is objective, that is, not “authored” by people. To further understand the difference between something being objective and something being subjective and how it applies to morality, philosopher William Lane Craig offers this definition: Let me say something as well to clarify the distinction between something’s being objective and something’s being subjective. To say that something is objective is to say that it is independent of what people think or perceive. By contrast, to say that something is subjective is to say that it is not objective; this is to say, it is dependent on what human persons think or perceive. So, for example, the distinction between being on Mars and not being on Mars is an objective distinction; a particular rock’s being on Mars is in no way dependent upon our beliefs. By contrast, the distinction between here and there is not objective: whether a particular event at a certain spatial location occurs here or occurs there depends upon a person's point of view. To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or evil independently of whether any human being believes it to be so.4 According to Craig’s definition, to say that morality is objective is to say that something is morally right or wrong (“good or evil” as Craig puts it), independently of what people think, perceive, or believe. To say that morality is subjective, by comparison, means that right or wrong is determined by an individual or group’s belief system or point of view. Moral subjectivists would see no problem if one person said, “From my perspective, that action is wrong” and another person said, “From my perspective, that action is right”. Objective moralists, however, would state that in this scenario, only one person can be correct; two people holding different opinions about what is right or wrong on a moral issue cannot both be correct. By properly 2 Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2003), 2. Ibid. 4 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 173. 3 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 19 understanding the difference between objective and subjective morality, it becomes clear that for moral judgments to have force, morality must be objective. If morality is not objective, and, as in the example above, any number of perspectives can be correct, then moral judgments are simply a matter of personal or societal opinion. This is problematic for New Atheists who claim that morality is subjective, yet who make moral judgments expecting them to have force. It should be noted here that many atheists believe that morality is subjective. As will be explained more below, they believe this because, by their own admission, if it were objective, then God would be the best explanation for it. Many atheists reject objective morality for this reason. If morality is subjective, however, and moral judgments are reduced to personal opinions then, to be technically accurate, New Atheists’ moral judgments should be reworded to reflect this. They should be stated this way, “In my opinion God acts immorally in the Old Testament,” or “I do not like the way God behaves in the Old Testament.” These statements of course do not say much of anything. Without the existence of objective morality, moral judgments can be made, but they lack force. New Atheists, however, when they claim that the God of the Old Testament acts immorally, expect their moral judgments to be taken seriously. This of course presents the New Atheists with a dilemma: if objective morality is denied, then moral judgments are only a matter of opinion and lack force. If objective morality is assumed, however, then moral judgments may have force, but an explanation for objective morality must be provided. In this way, if atheists hope to be taken seriously when they make moral judgments, they must be able to ground or satisfactorily explain objective morality. Again, the following seven statements capture the argument of my thesis: 1. Atheists make moral judgments expecting them to have force. 2. Moral judgments have force only if morality is objective. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 20 3. Atheists must provide a non-theistic grounding for objective morality in order for their moral judgments to have force. 4. Theism provides an adequate ground for objective morality. 5. If objective morality exists but it cannot be grounded or satisfactorily explained within an atheistic framework, then a moral-creator God is the only viable explanation left. 6. Atheism cannot ground objective morality or provide a satisfactory explanation for its existence. 7. Therefore, either morality is subjective and moral judgments lack force or morality is objective and God is the best explanation for it. If atheists expect moral judgments to have force, premise three is their only recourse—they must provide a non-theistic grounding for objective morality or be able to satisfactorily explain it in some other way; Chapter 4 will argue that such a grounding is difficult to come by. Theism, on the other hand, does provide a grounding for objective morality, as will be shown. If atheists cannot provide a rational explanation or grounding for objective morality, then making moral judgments of any sort with the expectation that they have force is a risk because it opens the door for theists to provide the only reasonable explanation for objective morality. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 21 CHAPTER 3 – THE MORAL ARGUMENT Having shown that objective morality must exist for moral judgments to have force, the question now moves to which view has the best explanation for objective morality—atheism or theism? To answer this question, I will present arguments for objective morality from theists (including versions of the Moral Argument) and from atheists (including versions of Atheistic Moral Realism). Then, I will consider the arguments to evaluate which one offers the best explanation for objective morality. This evaluation will show that theism provides a needed foundation for objective morality, something atheism does not provide. Since the New Atheist claim—God acts immorally in the Old Testament—requires objective morality (something atheism struggles to support) to have force, the claim itself becomes problematic for the atheist who makes it. In effect, atheists end up cutting off the branch on which they sit as they contend the God of the Old Testament is immoral. If objective morality has no foundation, then neither does evil, and thus the charge that God acts immorally loses its force. For the claim—God acts immorally in the Old Testament—to retain its force, atheism must be able to provide a foundation for objective morality or be able to explain how it exists without a foundation. Approach Responding to the issue of how to approach philosophical debates around the topic of morality, atheist philosopher David Enoch states, “Big philosophical disputes are hardly ever settled by knock-out. Much more often, we just have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of competing views, and go for the one that is overall most plausible.”1 The approach that will be taken going forward then, is to present theistic models for objective morality (this chapter) and 1 David Enoch, “Précis of Taking Morality Seriously (Oxford University Press, 2011),” Philosophical Studies 168, no. 3 (2014): 821. doi:10.1007/s11098-013-0215-6. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 22 atheistic models for objective morality (next chapter) to see which one(s) are best able to ground or explain objective morality. Criteria for a Successful Argument When determining which arguments are the most plausible it is important to layout the criteria for evaluation. Keith Loftin, who recently wrote a dissertation on a similar topic notes that criteria should include ensuring that premises made in the arguments are valid, that there are no informal fallacies, and that preferable arguments are those with premises that are known to be more reasonable or plausible than their denials.2 The arguments presented by atheists and theists then will be evaluated based on the plausibility of their premises, their validity, reasonability, and logical soundness (lacking fallacies). With that said, there is still the issue of dealing with bias when any one person tries to decide what arguments and premises are plausible. Craig sees this problem and then offers a solution: Plausibility is to a great extent a person-dependent notion. Some people may find a premise plausible while others do not. Accordingly, some people will agree that a particular argument is a good one, while others will say that it is a bad argument. Given our diverse backgrounds and biases, we should expect such disagreements. Obviously, the most persuasive arguments will be those which are based on premises which enjoyed the support of widely accepted evidence or seem intuitively to be true.3 At this point, it should be noted there are many atheists who believe that given objective morality, God is the best explanation for it (we will look more closely at this later), and therefore reject objective morality. Likewise, there are some theists, albeit a smaller representation, who 2 Keith Loftin, “Michael Martin and the Moral Argument for God’s Existence,” MA thes. (Louisiana State University, 2009) , 8. See also Steven Davis, God, Reason, and Theistic proofs (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1997), 7. This is in agreement with Craig, “What we’re looking for is a comparative criterion: the premises in a good argument will have greater plausibility than their respective denials.” Craig, Reasonable Faith, 55. 3 Craig, Reasonable Faith, 55. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 23 do not believe God is necessary for objective morality.4 To clarify then, the term “Atheistic Moral Realism/Realist” will be used to describe those who hold the view that God is not necessary for objective morality, whether they are atheist or not. Conversely, the term “theism/theist” will be used to describe those who hold the view that God is necessary to ground, or is likely the best explanation for, objective morality. The debate then, is mainly between theists (who for the majority believe God is necessary for objective morality) and atheists (who though not necessarily in the majority, choose to hold objective morality believing that God is not necessary as an explanation).5 Theistic Proofs We will begin by looking at the theist claim that God is the best explanation for objective morality through Moral Arguments. It should be noted that Moral Arguments, also known as axiological arguments, find themselves in the broader field of theistic proofs which include the cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments.6 The word “proofs” however can be 4 Johnson has noted that some, because they are not atheists, choose to label their models of moral realism “godless, non-theistic, or secular” instead of “atheistic”. Adam Johnson, Debate, 4. Wesley Moriston is one such person who calls his model, “Godless Normative Realism.” Wesley Morriston, "God and the Ontological Foundation of Morality," Religious Studies 48, no. 1 (2012): 15-34; See also William Lane Craig, “William Lane Craig’s Final Remarks,” in A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties?, ed. Adam Lloyd Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2021), 187. 5 Adam Johnson says similarly, “… technically, this debate is between those who maintain God is the best explanation for objective morality, which is mostly, but not exclusively, argued for by theists, and those who think God isn't the best explanation for objective morality, which is mostly, but not exclusively, argued for by atheists.” Johnson, Debate, 5. I did not quote him directly here because I am not sure that the first premise is as accurate as it could be. I believe there are many atheists who believe that God is the best explanation for objective morality, who, therefore opt for subjective morality. 6 See J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Westmount, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 463-500. Keith Loftin also provides an array of resources: Keith Loftin, Michael Martin and the Moral Argument, 5. Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1978), 197-221; Stephen Davis, “The Ontological Argument,” in The Rationality of Theism, ed. Paul Copan and Paul K. Moser (London: Routledge, 2003); Donald Burrill, ed. The Cosmological Arguments: A Spectrum of Opinion (New York: Doubleday, 1967); William Lane Craig, ed. The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (London: Macmillan, 1980); William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998); William Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Principle (Oxford: The Clarendon THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 24 misleading; a better descriptor sometimes used for theistic proofs is “natural theology”. The goal of natural theology is not to prove with certainty that God exists—proving anything to the point of certainty in philosophy is nearly impossible—but to demonstrate that belief in God is rational or defensible.7 Well-known philosopher, Alvin Plantinga says, [T]he natural theologian does not, typically, offer his arguments in order to convince people of God’s existence; and in fact few who accept theistic belief do so because they find such an argument compelling. Instead the typical function of natural theology has been to show that religious belief is rationally acceptable.8 Loftin says, “[T]he purpose, aim, or goal of a theistic proof is to demonstrate the existence of God and thus the rationality of belief in God. That is, what a theistic proof aims to do is substantiate the theist’s belief in God, give a good reason for it, show that it is credible...”9 To repeat, the goal natural theology which includes Moral Arguments is not to prove with certainty that God exists but to demonstrate that belief in God is rational and defensible. This is worth mentioning because some have noted that theistic arguments require more evidence than atheistic arguments of the same kind. It is as though, in academic settings atheism enjoys a sort of default Press, 1986); Robin Collins, “The Teleological Argument,” in The Rationality of Theism, ed. Copan and Moser; John Leslie, Universes (London: Routledge, 1989); William Lane Craig (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002); J. P. Moreland, Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument (London: Routledge, 2008); Robert Merrihew Adams, “Flavors, Colors, and God,” in The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Keith E. Yandell, “Religious Experience,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Quinn and Taliaferro, 367-375; Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991). 7 Alvin Plantinga says, “None of these arguments, nor even all of them taken together, I think, can sensibly be called a proof, if a proof is an argument such that it isn't possible to reject it without irrationality. Of course that's not saying much; there aren't arguments of that level of stringency for much of anything in philosophy.” Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley, Knowledge of God (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 6. Philosophers Stephen Evans and David Baggett also state, “Of course views about this are diverse, but most contemporary proponents of such arguments do not see theistic arguments as attempted ‘proofs,; in the sense that they are supposed to provide valid arguments with premises that no reasonable person could deny. Such a standard of achievement would clearly be setting the bar for success very high, and proponents of theistic arguments rightly note that philosophical arguments for interesting conclusions in any field outside of formal logic hardly ever reach such a standard.” C. Stephen Evans and David Baggett, “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Stanford University 2022, First published Thu Jun 12, 2014; substantive revision Tue Oct 4, 2022. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/moral-arguments-god/. 8 Alvin Plantinga, God, freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1977), 2. 9 Davis, God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs, 6. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 25 position. But there is no reason for theists to provide more evidence when defending the rationality or defensibility of their position regarding morality than there is for atheists when defending theirs. In this paper, arguments from theists will not be treated as inferior simply because the ones making the arguments hold to theism; belief in God has already been shown as rational and defensible through the abovementioned theistic proofs. Only after reviewing arguments from both atheists and theists, will an evaluation be made to assess which arguments can ground or explain objective morality. Moral Argument In 1987, philosopher Robert Adams wrote, Moral arguments were the type of theistic argument most characteristic of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More recently they have become one of philosophy’s abandoned farms. The fields are still fertile, but they have not been cultivated systematically since the latest methods came in.10 In 2019, thirty-two years later, philosophers David Baggett and Jerry Walls claimed those same fields are no longer abandoned: The moral argument, on the firm foundation of a history far richer and more extensive than many realize, has seen a real resurgence throughout the twentieth and into the twenty first-century, and it continues to intrigue and incense, gain strength and momentum, and garner adherents and detractors alike.11 Philosopher Adam Johnson agrees, noting that perhaps the renewed interest in the Moral Argument reflects our time: Objective morality has made an incredible comeback here in the early part of the twentyfirst century. This resurgence could be seen as part of western culture’s recent yearning for objective truth in light of what many saw as political truth-spinning in the 2016 American presidential election and the European Brexit controversy…Furthermore, with moral issues taking the forefront in our society’s conversations (abortion, gender identity, 10 Robert Merrihew Adams, The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 144. 11 David Baggett and Jerry Walls, The Moral Argument: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 208. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 26 same-sex marriage, etc.), the topic of how morality can exist objectively is especially pertinent.12 In addition, Craig, who is well known for defending theism with a variety of theistic proofs has found the Moral Argument to be the most persuasive, especially in university campuses. The Moral Argument then has become increasingly relevant during a time when people are searching for truth. What is the Moral Argument? Roughly, the Moral Argument seeks to demonstrate that the existence of morality is rationally explained by the existence of God and that the existence of God is rationally supported by the existence of morality; in other words, without God, objective morality struggles to make sense. Since both parties in this debate assume objective morality, my aim is through the Moral Argument to provide specific premises demonstrating that God is the best explanation for objective morality. History of the Moral argument Recently, Baggett and Walls presented an overview of the history and development of the Moral Argument dating as far back as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. While there is not enough space here to give as comprehensive a historical overview as they have done, it is worth noting the Moral Argument has a rich history of development and acceptance by many brilliant philosophers, and that, in itself, demonstrates credibility. Along those same lines, Johnson notes, For many centuries the predominant view in the west was that God is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral truth. These thinkers believed that God is the ultimate foundation of morality, though they disagreed as to how—by His commands, because of His moral nature, through ideas in His mind, as a moral exemplar, in creating human 12 Johnson, A Debate on God, 5. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 27 nature with a certain purpose, etc. Though they differed on the details, they affirmed that an immaterial and personal God, as the ultimate source of all things, provided a fitting explanation for objective morality, which itself is both immaterial and personal.13 To repeat, the thought that objective morality is best explained by the existence of God has been commonplace throughout history. Though much more could be included, I have chosen the arguments and/or premises from four people that I find most relevant for this thesis. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD) and the Fourth Way14 Although his “Fourth Way” is not technically a theistic proof, many refer to theologian Thomas Aquinas (c1225-1274 AD) as one of the early developers of important premises and key concepts that would later become integral to the formation of formal Moral Arguments.15 In his major work, Summa Theologiae, Aquinas offers five ways the existence of God can be proven true; his Fourth Way states this: The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But ‘more’ and ‘less’ are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.16 13 Johnson, A Debate on God, 5-6. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Project Gutenberg’s Summa Theologica, Part 1 (Prima Pars), The Complete American Edition, Trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, Released January 26, 2006), Accessed March 3, 2023, Part 1, Question 2, Article 3. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17611/pg17611.txt; See also: Keltz, B. Kyle. “Thomistic Moral Arguments.” Christian Apologetics Journal 14, no. 2 (2016): 55–73. https://www.academia.edu/33081290/Thomistic_Moral_Arguments. 15 Baggett and Walls have said, “Aquinas’s famous ‘fourth way’ has been interpreted by some as a type, or at least a potential type, of moral argument.” Baggett and Walls, Moral Argument, 11. 16 Aquinas, Project Gutenberg’s Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 2, Article 3. 14 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 28 In essence, Aquinas argues that if a person can be good, then there must be something that is both maximally good and the cause of goodness; that maximum something Aquinas calls God.17 God is the “something which is the maximum…something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being.”18 For Aquinas, God is that which is “most moral”. God is the highest moral being that exists; nothing is more moral than God. Accordingly, God not only is the “maximum genus… [but also,] the cause of our [moral] being.”19 Therefore, if objective morality is already conceded by both theists and atheists in this debate, then Aquinas’ argument provides a rational explanation: God is the perfect Moral Being grounding objective morality and the one from whom morality derives. In this way, Aquinas offers an explanation for people’s innate sense of morality, what has historically been called, the natural law. Baggett and Walls state, Aquinas is often cast as the original ‘natural law’ theorist, paving the way for the long and distinguished history of natural law in Christian thought ever since… Theistic natural law theorists believe that God has manifested his moral law by writing it into human nature and into other aspects of his ordered creation.20 So far, there are two important premises made by Aquinas that contribute to our discussion: 1) God is the most moral, or morally perfect being who grounds objective morality and 2) morality is derived from God explaining why people have an innate sense of morality. 17 Peter Redpath expands on Thomas’ concept of gradation: “Evidently true for St. Thomas Aquinas is that the material universe in which all human beings live, and all material beings exist, is populated by a hierarchy of qualitatively unequal, more and less perfect/deprived, composite causal wholes: generic composite wholes existing within species composite wholes, existing within individual composite wholes. In short, our material universe is a real genus, organizational whole, a causally-generated hierarchical order of more or less perfectly harmonized generic, specific, and individual perfections and imperfections.” Peter A. Redpath, “Aquinas’s Fourth Way of Demonstrating God’s Existence: From Virtual Quantum Gradations of Perfection (Inequality in Beauty) of Forms Existing within a Real Genus.” Studia Gilsoniana (2019), 708. doi:10.26385/SG.080326. 18 Aquinas, Project Gutenberg’s Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 2, Article 3. 19 Ibid. 20 Baggett and Walls, Moral Argument, 11. This also aligns with what the Apostle Paul says, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” Romans 2:14-15, NIV. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 29 Objection from Benjamin McCraw Philosopher Benjamin McCraw, however, seeing what seems to be an obvious flaw in Aquinas, raises an important objection. He deconstructs Aquinas’ argument into three premises and then presents what he sees as a logical challenge: 1. There are gradations (i.e., graded properties). 2. For any gradation, there exists a measure or maximum for it, such that any object having that gradation has it to the degree it resembles that measure. 3. God is the measure for certain (perfect) gradation.21 Looking at the second premise, McCraw questions whether something can be “truest” as Aquinas states. It would seem to McCraw, correctly, that some things are either true or they are false; there cannot be gradations of truth, such that something could be more true or less true. If McCraw’s analysis is correct, then the second premise is false and the third premise no longer follows, i.e., God is not the greatest measure of truth; truth simply is, with or without the existence of God. Response from Peter Redpath McCraw however, misunderstands what Aquinas is meaning in his usage of the word, “truest”. Philosopher Peter Redpath provides helpful insight: The reason for his [Aquinas’] being able to draw this conclusion is that, following Aristotle, he claims predicating the terms ‘true,’ ‘good,’ and ‘noble’ of beings is simply a different, analogous, way of calling them ‘beings’; and calling them ‘maximally true, good, and noble’ is simply an analogous way of calling things ‘maximally beings,’ or ‘perfectly beings.’22 21 Benjamin W. McCraw, 2016. “Not so Superlative: The Fourth Way as Comparatively Problematic.” Value Inquiry Book Series 289 (February): 177. https://search-ebscohostcom.ezproxy.student.twu.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=115645989&site=eds-live&scope=site. 22 Redpath, “Aquinas’s Fourth Way,” 682. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 30 According to Redpath, Aquinas is using Aristotelian terminology. Aquinas is not using the word, “truest,” in the same sense that McCraw interprets it. Rather, Aquinas is using it as an expression to describe that which is greatest or perfect.23 Therefore, given Redpath’s clarification, premise two still holds; there is a maximum measure for everything that has a greatest measurable version of its genus, and premise three does follow.24 When addressing morality, one can readily say that certain actions or inactions are better or worse than others, for example, it is better to give than to receive, or it is worse to lie than to tell the truth, or it is better to help an elderly woman cross the road than to steal her purse. In other words, morality is measurable. If morality is measurable then there must be something most moral, a maximally-great-moral-something. This greatest maximally-great-moralsomething, Aquinas calls, “God”. In this way, God is the most moral being and has the highest level of moral perfection. Aquinas’ Fourth Way then, explains the existence of objective morality and provides an explanation for the existence of “measurable morality”. Objection from Richard Dawkins Dawkins, however, presents another challenge to Aquinas’ measurability of morality thesis by using a negative example: [Y]ou might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God. Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like, and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion.25 23 Related to this discussion, Craig says he is using “Anselmian theism” or “perfect being theology” which sees God as the greatest conceivable being. This is similar to Aquinas’ view of God defended in the Fourth Way. Craig, William Lane. “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness without God Good Enough?” In Is Goodness without God Good Enough?, edited by Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 168. 24 Redpath expands even more on what is “measurable” throughout his work. See Redpath, “Aquinas’s Fourth Way, 682-716. 25 Dawkins, The God Delusion, 102. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 31 Dawkins believes he has raised a successful challenge to which God, if he is the maximum of everything, must also be the maximum of all that is negative too, but Dawkins misses the point. If there is something “most great” on any scale, then there is conceivably something “least great” on that same scale. This applies to everything measurable, for example the tallest tree in the world is the Red Cedar and the shortest tree in the world is the Dwarf Willow. With Dawkins’ example then, if there is something that is the “smelliest”, then there must also be something the most fragrant. When dealing with morality, since morality is measurable, it is logical to conclude that there is a most-moral being and a least-moral being. Theists agree with this point and would argue that God is the most moral being, and Satan, at the other end, is the least moral being. Aquinas’ argument then, still holds true: Since morality is measurable, there is one who is maximal on this scale. The existence of God, therefore, as a maximally great moral being, correspondingly supports objective morality. Aquinas’ Fourth Way survives scrutiny and presents premises that are reasonable, and logically sound. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Argument from the Need of Divine Assistance Baggett and Walls note that “Kant is widely regarded as the first significant proponent of the moral argument.”26 So enamoured was Kant with the concept of morality, it was written on his tombstone, “Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”27 While Kant presents two distinct moral arguments, the “Argument 26 Baggett and Walls, The Moral Argument, 19. Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, Trans. by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (England: Longmans, Green, 1879), 258. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.ah6pvg&view=1up&seq=13. 27 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 32 from the Need of Divine Assistance” and the “Argument from Providence”28 for sake of space, I will briefly summarize the former, his “Argument from the Need of Divine Assistance”. As a side note, it must be stated there is dispute today about Kant’s religious views, but this should not affect our usage of his argument. Baggett and Walls note: As an ethicist, Kant is often cast as one who embraced a moral law without a lawgiver, which explains why so many secular ethicists try to enlist him to their cause. But such efforts tend to overlook the many and profound ways in which Kant connected God and ethics. Admittedly he didn't connect them with as straight a line as some might prefer, but he nevertheless did see them as integrally related.29 Kant’s religious views notwithstanding, here is how Baggett and Walls present his moral argument from the need of divine assistance: 1. Morality requires us to achieve a standard too exacting and demanding to meet on our own without some sort of outside assistance. 2. Exaggerating human capacities, lowering the moral demand or finding a secular form of assistance aren’t likely to be adequate for the purpose of closing the moral gap. 3. Divine assistance is sufficient to close the gap. 4. Therefore, rationality dictates that we must postulate God’s existence.30 Kant recognizes the existence of a high objective ethical standard against which people fail to live up. He notices that human failure to achieve this standard becomes more pronounced when one evaluates not only outward actions but the insincerity of human motivation even when doing good. Kant writes, For at times it is indeed the case that with the acutest self-examination we find nothing whatsoever that – besides the moral ground of duty – could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that good action and so great a sacrifice; but from this it cannot be inferred with certainty that the real determining cause of the will was not actually a 28 Baggett and Walls label Kant’s arguments this way: “Argument from grace,” and “argument from providence.” Baggett and Walls, Moral Argument, 22. I have labelled “Argument from Grace” as “Argument from the Need of Divine Assistance” because his argument is that because divine assistance is required, it should therefore be postulated. 29 Baggett and Walls, Moral Argument, 21. 30 In the footnotes, Baggett and Walls rightly acknowledge John Hare’s help in the formation of Kant’s argument. Baggett and Walls, Moral Argument, 224. See the formation of Hare’s argument as outlined throughout the body of his work in John E. Hare, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God's Assistance, Oxford Studies in Theological Ethics (Oxford: Oxford Academic, 1997), online edn. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269571.001.0001. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 33 covert impulse of self-love under the mere pretence of that idea; for which we then gladly flatter ourselves with the false presumption of a nobler motive, whereas in fact we can never, even by the most strenuous examination, get entirely behind our covert incentives, because when moral worth is at issue what counts is not the actions, which one sees, but their inner principles, which one does not see.31 What Kant sees is a moral gap, the space between what is and what ought to be. He argues the moral gap cannot be closed by increasing human effort (inclusive of human-to-human assistance) or by reducing moral demands. The gap can only be closed with divine help. He states, Supposing that a supernatural co-operation is also necessary to make a man good or better… how it is possible that a man naturally bad should make himself a good man, transcends all our conceptions; for how can a bad tree bring forth good fruit? But since it is already admitted that a tree originally good (as to its capacities) has brought forth bad fruit, and the fall from good to bad (when it is considered that it arises from freedom) is not more conceivable than arising again from bad to good, the possibility of the latter cannot be disputed. For notwithstanding that fall, the command ‘we ought to become better men,’ resounds with undiminished force in our soul; consequently we must be able to do so, even though what we ourselves can do should be insufficient of itself, and though we should thereby only make ourselves susceptible of an inscrutable higher assistance.32 Kant’s conclusion is that given the fact that there does exist a moral gap between what is and what ought to be, and that this gap, which should be closed, can only be closed with divine assistance that one must postulate God’s existence. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)33 Another version of the Moral Argument is from well-known philosopher and writer C.S. Lewis. In his popular book, Mere Christianity, Lewis presents what philosopher Steven Evans has called “very likely the most widely-convincing apologetic argument of the twentieth 31 Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A German– English Edition, ed. and trans. Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 43. https://search-ebscohostcom.twu.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=357389&site=eds-live&scope=site. 32 Kant, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, 419-20. 33 C.S. Lewis, “Book One: Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe,” in C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 3-32. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 34 century.”34 Lewis begins his argument by giving the example of human quarrelling. Lewis argues that in a quarrel, typically one person accuses the other of having done something wrong while the other denies it. Lewis then says that this exchange makes sense only if both parties are assuming the existence of an innately known objective moral standard.35 From there, Lewis wonders how such a moral standard exists. He states that whatever it is, since it seems to govern humanity, it must exist outside or beyond humanity itself; it cannot find its origin within humanity. The same, he says, is true in the world of science. Science measures that which is empirical and, therefore, can only measure what is inside the material system; it cannot explain the origin of or give meaning to matter. In other words, what is inside the material system (which scientific tools can measure) cannot be the cause of that system; the cause must come from outside the system. Likewise, relating to our sense of morality, Lewis states, “I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law;36 that somebody or something [outside the system] wants me to behave in a certain way.”37 Lewis, then, makes an important point: “We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is.”38 Applying Lewis’ logic, the atheist must either accept that what is simply is without reason or origin or he must admit that there is Something39 beyond the system that is the cause of what is; this applies not only to the existence of matter but also to 34 Evans, “Moral Arguments,” 387. Lewis gives the examples, “They say things like this: ‘How’d you like it if anyone did the same to you?’ – ‘That’s my seat, I was there first’ – ‘Leave him alone, he isn’t doing you any harm’ – ‘Why should you shove in first?’ – ‘Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine’ – ‘Come on, you promised.’ People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.” Lewis, Mere Christianity, 3. 36 See Lewis’ definition of natural law and how it is similar to objective morality in Lewis, Mere Christianity, 5. 37 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 25. 38 Ibid. 24. 39 At this point in the development of Lewis’ argument, he uses the capitalized word “Something” to represent that which seems to be giving direction to and guidance to morality: “I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know—because after all the only other things we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions.” Lewis, Mere Christianity, 25. 35 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 35 the existence of objective morality. Lewis’ argument then, which begins with quarrelling in which people intuitively appeal to an outside, or objective, moral standard, leads to the premise that since people are under some kind of outside moral law, there must be a Law Giver. Objection from Erik Wielenberg Atheist philosopher Erik Wielenberg, however, challenges Lewis’ premise that a Higher Power is necessary for the existence of morality by stating that morality must exist independently of God in order for God to be deemed good.40 Wielenberg bases this statement on philosopher Bertrand Russell’s objection to the Moral Argument: “The only way a being (even God) can be good is by conforming its actions to a moral law of which it is not the author.”41 From here, Wielenberg states, “Some ethical facts are necessarily true and hence require no explanation; the remaining ethical facts are contingent and follow from the necessarily true ethical facts together with certain contingent truths.”42 Wielenberg, here, makes two claims: 1) Ethical facts must exist independently of God if God is to be deemed good and 2) some ethical facts are necessarily true and require no explanation. These are important objections and merit a thoughtful response. A 40 Wielenberg articulates Lewis’ argument the following way and then challenges the basis for premise two stating that necessary moral facts must precede the existence of a Higher Power that is deemed good. Premise 1 – Lewisian moral phenomena [i.e., objective morality] exist. Premise 2 – The best explanation of the existence of Lewisian moral phenomena is the existence of a Higher Power that created the universe. Premise 3 – So: There is a Higher Power that created the universe. Erik J. Wielenberg, God and the Reach of Reason: CS Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Ebook. https://eds-a-ebscohostcom.ezproxy.student.twu.ca/eds/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzIxMzM3M19fQU41?sid=7faba4b2-e4cf-4b2e99e5-380523ee3ca2@sessionmgr102&vid=1&format=EB&rid=1. 41 Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” in Russell on Religion: Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell, ed. Louis Greenspan and Stefan Andersson, (New York: Rutledge, 1999), 83. 42 Wielenberg explains how he distinguishes between necessary and contingent moral fact. He gives the following example to illustrate his point: “[For example,] suppose that it is necessarily true that torturing the innocent just for fun is morally wrong, and that it is contingently true that by pushing a certain button, Bob would be torturing the innocent just for fun; from this follows the (contingent) ethical truth that it would be wrong for Bob to push the button.” Wielenberg, God and the Reach of Reason, 91. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 36 response to the first objection will be given in Chapter 5 in a discussion involving Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma and a more thorough response to the second objection will be given in Chapter 4 when we examine Wielenberg’s metaethical theory Atheistic Moral Realism more closely. In the meantime, for the sake of argument, let us consider Wielenberg’s second objection—ethical facts are necessary and require no explanation. Lewis has already argued that there are only two possible options when one considers all that is in existence (including ethical facts). He put it this way, Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, 2 views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialistic view. People who take that view think that matter in space just happened to exist, and always have existed.... The other view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know.43 Lewis claims there are only two broad categories, the religious and the material. Again, for the sake of argument, let us add Wielenberg’s alternative as a third option. With Wielenberg, then, here are the three possibilities: 1. God is the source of ethical facts (Lewis’ Moral Law) 2. Ethical facts have a material explanation 3. Ethical facts exist on their own and require no explanation (Wielenberg’s claim) Given the three above options, how does one decide which is right? 43 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity: Comprising the Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 31. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 37 Response from Christopher Shrock44 Philosopher Christopher Shrock offers a response. He claims that when Wielenberg and others, offer this third option,45 they misread Lewis and render an incomplete formulation of his argument. Shrock shows that Lewis’ argument, when considered holistically, includes other elements (L1 and L2 below) which are often overlooked,46 but key to understanding Lewis’ logic. With this added information, Shrock formulates Lewis this way: L1. Either theism is true or materialism is true. L2. If materialism is true, then there is no moral law. L3. There is a moral law. L4. Therefore, materialism is not true. (from L2 and L3) L5. Therefore, theism is true. (from L1 and L4) 47 Shrock, recognizing that L1 seems too restrictive given the many other philosophical explanations on offer,48 shows how Lewis anticipates and responds to this. He notes that Lewis sees those philosophies that seem to constitute a third option between the religious group and the materialist group as a mirage,49 and that therefore, all views, broadly speaking, must fit into 44 Christopher A. Shrock, "Mere Christianity and the Moral Argument for the Existence of God," Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal 11 (2017): 99-120. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48579655. Shrock also cites Wielenberg’s critique of Lewis’ argument but since it deals with Moral Realism and the Euthyphro Dilemma, it will be addressed in a later section in this paper. See Wielenberg, God and the Reach of Reason. 45 Shrock also critiques John Beversluis’ view in Christopher Shrock, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, rev. ed. (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007), 99-100. 46 Shrock explains: “Lewis’s critics and his supporters have ignored L1 and L2. To be fair, Lewis intentionally puts off any mention of God as long as possible, so it is easy to overlook L1. But both L1 and L2 are nonetheless there and key to the argument.” Shrock "Mere Christianity and the Moral Argument,” 103. 47 Ibid. 48 Shrock writes, “Western history abounds with non-materialist, non-theistic metaphysical theories. Pythagoras’s transmigrating souls, Plato’s heavenly forms, and Aristotle’s hylomorphisms all seem to defy the constraints of L1. The Greco-Roman world offers a host of mystery religions and anthropomorphic gods, whose immaterial natures bear precious little resemblance to the theistic God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These pagan cults adhere to gods, but their deities hardly fit the description of ‘what is behind the universe.’ Moreover, L1 ignores dualistic religions (like Manicheanism) and pantheistic materialisms (like Stoicism). This is not to mention nonMediterranean religions—Buddhism, Daoism, Zoroastrianism, Germanic paganism, Wicca, and Native American cults.” Shrock, "Mere Christianity and the Moral Argument,” 104. 49 Shrock includes this quote from Lewis: “When people say [that they ascribe ‘purposiveness’ to a Life-Force] we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then ‘a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection’ is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind ‘strives’ or has ‘purposes’? This seems to me fatal to their view.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 26. Schrock adds the comment that this view “appears to carve THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 38 either the religious or material category. According to Lewis then, Wielenberg’s view is not a serious third option but simply a mirage—a materialistic one disguised as something different. In other words, since Wielenberg rejects a religious view, the materialist one is all that remains. In addition to L1, Shrock shows that Lewis also clearly argues for L2,50 that materialism cannot produce morality; matter, by itself, cannot produce moral values. Given the addition of L1 and L2, Shrock shows that Lewis is arguing that a moral law can only exist if God exists. In other words, the moral law cannot come out of materialism (nor can it simply exist all on its own as Wielenberg claims). For the purposes of this thesis, Lewis’ version of the Moral Argument demonstrates that 1) there exists a moral law, i.e., an objective moral standard (something agreed upon by those in this debate), 2) this objective moral standard is known and appealed to intuitively by people from all ages and walks of life, and 3) it seems implausible that a mindless universe simply produced this moral law all on its own. Defending against objections from Wielenberg, Shrock argues that any notion that ethical facts exist independently is a “Lewisian mirage.”51 It seems that coupled with Shrock’s response, that Lewis’ version of the Moral Argument is rational, reasonable, and defensible against criticism. Given the existence of objective morality (what Lewis calls the out a middle ground between the materialist and religious options, but this path turns out to be a mirage.” Shrock, “Moral Argument,” 105. Emphasis added. 50 Shrock includes this quote from Lewis: “Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it, must somehow or other be a real thing— a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves. And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behaviour, and yet quite definitely real—a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.” C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity, 20. Shrock, "Mere Christianity and the Moral Argument,” 106. In addition to this, Lewis also states, “I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know—because after all the only other things we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 25. 51 Shrock does not use this expression but he uses the word “Lewisian” as an adjective elsewhere. See Shrock, "Mere Christianity and the Moral Argument,” 102. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 39 moral law), it is a defensible position that an intelligent and moral being is more likely the source of this moral law than the only conceivable alternative, matter.52 William Lane Craig (1949 - Present) It has been said about Craig that he is “arguably the greatest living Christian apologist.”53 With two doctorates (one in philosophy and one in theology), extensive writing on the topic (over forty books and over two-hundred articles), several debates against prominent atheists, and a high level of respect as a philosopher and apologist, he is qualified to present a rendition of the Moral Argument. In his book, Reasonable Faith, he formulates his argument this way: 1. 2. 3. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. Objective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore, God exists.54 Craig, then, distinguishes between moral values and moral duties. Moral values are things that are good or bad, whereas moral duties are things that are right or wrong (things we ought to do or ought not to do). While something might be good, this does not mean that someone is morally obligated to do that thing. Craig gives the example of a chemist, “It’s a good thing to become a chemist, but that doesn’t imply that it is therefore my duty to become a chemist.”55 Craig explains that premise one in his argument then, is dealing with the question of whether there 52 In his 2004 book, There is a God, former leading atheist Anthony Flew questions, “How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and ‘coded chemistry’?... Living matter possesses an inherent goal or end-centered organization that is nowhere present in the matter that preceded it…[and there has not been enough time for]… abiogenesis to get the job done.” Anthony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese, There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2007), 124. According to Flew, besides the lack of time, there is a lack of pre-existing motivation in dead matter for living matter to have the will to survive and replicate, i.e., where does the will to survive come from? In addition to other reasons, this was enough for Flew to abandon atheism. While the argument from Flew is about the high improbability of dead matter adopting a will to survive and reproduce, by extension, the same reasoning could raise questions about morality, namely, “How can dead matter suddenly become concerned about right and wrong?” 53 Baggett and Walls, The Moral Argument, 204. 54 Craig, Reasonable Faith, 172. 55 Ibid, 173. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 40 would be a discernable difference between good and evil and right and wrong without the existence of God, concluding that there would not.56 Therefore, in light of the existence of moral values and duties, God must exist. Craig also shows that the existence of God provides a foundation for morality. In a debate with philosopher Paul Kurtz, Craig argued that “[i]f theism is true, we have a sound foundation for morality.”57 He then subdivided this argument into three corresponding premises: “First, if theism is true we have a sound basis for objective moral values... Second, if theism is true we have a sound basis for objective moral duties…Third, if theism is true we have a sound basis for moral accountability.”58 If Craig’s premises are true, this means that moral actions in this life, whether good or bad, will be judged by God, thus, as Craig states, “[infusing them] with eternal significance.”59 In this debate, Craig argued that theism provided a telos, which is essential as motivation to be moral. The importance of this notion will be seen subsequently when it is compared with the unlikely view of some Atheistic Moral Realists that autonomous moral facts, alone, can provide an incentive to moral conduct. Objection from Paul Kurtz In the aforementioned debate, however, Kurtz challenged Craig’s first premise, arguing that belief in God is not necessary to be moral.60 To support this, he gave several examples of moral-acting nonbelievers, what he calls “heroes and heroines of human civilization…[including] Socrates, the Epicureans and skeptics, Hume, Kant, Darwin, and 56 Craig, Reasonable Faith, 173. Craig, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate,” 30. 58 Ibid. Emphasis original. 59 Ibid, 31. 60 Paul Kurtz, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness without God Good Enough?” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?, ed. by Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 25. 57 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 41 Freud…John Dewey, Mark Twain, Robert Ingersoll, Thomas Edison, Francis Crick, Isaac Asimov, Sidney Hook, W.V. Quine, and Carl Sagan.”61 Contrariwise, Kurtz says “religion is often an impediment to morality.”62 To support this, he provided several statistics showing that European countries which have a smaller percentage of believers than the United States, also have less crime, less violence, and a higher quality of life.63 Instead of seeing belief in God as a necessity to act morally, he argued that human beings are “potentially moral”64 i.e., all people have the capacity to act morally regardless of their beliefs. Morality is not something that is gained by looking back at the writings from holy books of the past but is acquired through what Kurtz calls, “the method of ethical intelligence.”65 He defined his method this way: We need to learn to reason together and find common moral principles, particularly within the present epic in human history. We need to look beyond the intransigent, intolerant attitudes of the past and develop a new global humanism that transcends the ancient dogmas that divide people.66 Kurtz’s response (that belief in God is not necessary to be moral) represents a common misunderstanding occurring in this debate.67 Craig was not arguing that belief in God is 61 Nonbelievers, Kurtz defines as “agnostics, skeptics, secular humanists, atheists, or just plain ‘backsliders.’” Paul Kurtz, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness without God Good Enough?”, 25. 62 Ibid, 27. 63 France, Britain, West Germany, Norway, and Sweden, Ibid. Richard Dawkins makes a similar argument, see Dawkins, God Delusion, 259. 64 Kurtz, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate,” 28. Italics original. 65 Ibid, 29. 66 The complete quote from Kurtz gives more context to his views regarding scripture and what he sees as the real antidote: “I submit that we cannot look back to ancient documents—the Bible or the Qur’an—for simple moral recipes. We cannot look back to our nomadic and rural forbearers, who wrote those documents. However eloquent, they expressed the experience of their own age—the rudimentary scientific, literary, and moral outlook of ancient times. We have to draw upon wisdom that is relevant to the modern world, and we need to look ahead to the world of the future. Our post-industrial information and global culture presents us with new challenges unlike any we have seen before. Accordingly, I submit that the best method for solving moral problems is the method of ethical intelligence. We need to learn to reason together and find common moral principles, particularly within the present epic in human history. We need to look beyond the intransigent, intolerant attitudes of the past and develop a new global humanism that transcends the ancient dogmas that divide people.” Kurtz, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate,” 29. 67 Both agree that theists and atheists are capable of being good. There has historically been a false belief that atheism automatically leads to evil behaviour as seen in the statement here from John Locke (1632-1704), “Lastly, those at all are not to be tolerated who deny the Being of a God. Promises, Covenants, and Oaths, which are the Bonds of Humane society, can have no hold upon an Atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.” John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 42 necessary to be moral: “Let me just say at the outset, as clearly as I can, that I agree that a person can be moral without having a belief in God, but that is not the topic under debate. We are not talking about goodness without belief in God, but rather goodness without God.”68 Kurtz is addressing the epistemology of morality (that morality is knowable regardless of belief in God) whereas Craig is addressing the ontology of morality (that objective morality cannot exist apart from God). Craig is not arguing that belief in God is necessary for morality, but that God is necessary for morality.69 In his debate with Craig, however, Kurtz went further and argued that goodness without God is not only good enough, it is actually better than having to rely on a divine being for one’s moral views.70 As a secular humanist, he saw that “belief in God is not sufficient to guarantee morality… [rather it depends] on the development of an internal moral sense and, particularly in the young, the growth of moral character, and the capacity for moral reasoning.”71 Craig however, argued that without God as a foundation for morality, it is ungrounded and lacks a rational explanation. He stated, “If theism is not true then humanism still needs to defeat nihilism which states that ‘moral values have no ground at all and are therefore ultimately illusory and nonbinding.’”72 In this way, humanism must defeat both theism and nihilism if it is to be Fund Incorporated, 2010), 52-53. ProQuest Ebook. While perhaps less common than in the past, this belief is still held by some today. In addition, there are ample examples of theists acting immorally and of atheists acting morally. The debate, however, is not about whether one can be good with or without belief in God. The debate is about whether theism or atheism best explains the existence of objective morality; the debate is primarily ontological in nature. 68 Craig, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate,” 29. Emphasis original. 69 In an earlier debate with prominent atheist, Anthony Flew Craig said similarly, “[W]e’ve got to be very careful here. The question is not: ‘Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives?’. I am not claiming that we must. Nor is the question, ‘Can we recognize objective moral values without believing in God?’. I think that we can. Rather the question is: ‘If God does not exist, do objective moral values exist?’” William Lane Craig, “The CraigFlew Debate.” In Does God Exist?: The Craig-Flew Debate, ed. by Stan W. Wallace (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 22. Emphasis original. 70 Kurtz, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate,” 25. 71 Ibid, 25. 72 Craig, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate,” 30. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 43 accepted as a more viable explanation for morality. In response, Kurtz claimed that choosing between humanism, theism, or nihilism is a false trilemma; there are more than three possibilities. Kurtz claimed one could adopt “Buddhism, Epicureanism, Confucianism, Marxism, etc.”73 However, Craig was not suggesting there were only three philosophical positions in existence, but that broadly speaking, humanism must explain how morality exists (it must answer the ontological question related to morality) if it is to be accepted as an alternative to theism or nihilism. Kurtz, however, offered no such explanation. He simply stated, “It seems to me that some form of altruism is basic to the human species—and to our compassionate nature.”74 Again, like Wielenberg, Kurtz believes there is at bottom, a form of altruism, what he calls “basic” i.e., it simply exists all on its own. This is one of the major recurring themes central to this debate and raises the question, “What is at bottom, what is the foundation, basic altruism, God, or something else?” For now, it is at least interesting to note that Kurtz, a secular humanist, and Wielenberg, an Atheistic Moral Realist, hold in common the belief that some form of morality is basic. 75 One of the problems for Kurtz’s claim that altruism is basic, however, is that he also argued that morality changes over time corresponding to the evolution of “human history and civilization”.76 But this raises the question, “How can altruism be both basic and evolve?” If morality changes over time and is relative to human history and civilization, then how can one condemn the actions of others in the past? Craig, seeing this flaw in his reasoning, questioned how, from a humanist perspective, one can condemn the actions of soldiers in Nazi Germany, 73 Kurtz, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate,” 34. Ibid, 35. 75 Although Paul Kurtz is a secular humanist, he is shown by philosopher Siniscalchi to have similar stances as Atheistic Moral Realists regarding basic altruism, “[He] argue[s] that certain moral principles of morality are true regardless of their origin, and generally they are warranted independent of their religious foundations or lack of them.” G. B. Siniscalchi, “Modified Divine Commands, Atheistic Moral Realism, and Thomistic Natural Law,” New Blackfriars 96 no.1064 (2015): 420. See also Paul Kurtz, Forbidden fruit: The ethics of secularism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010), 15. 76 Kurtz, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate,” 35. 74 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 44 who were simply obeying the commands of their superiors. The only way to condemn their actions is to appeal to a moral standard that transcends the accepted morality of this particular civilization. Any reasonable humanist would condemn such actions of the past, but their belief that morality evolves over time cannot support this. They must choose that morality is objective, timeless, and universal, thus enabling them to condemn immoral actions of the past, or that morality is socially conditioned, thus disabling them to condemn immoral actions of the past. So, Kurtz here has argued that altruism is both basic and that it changes over time, but these two concepts are incompatible. Kurtz’s first objection—that people do not need to believe in God to be good—is true, but this is not what the debate is about. The debate is not about whether morality is knowable but about how it exists. Kurtz’s second objection, that altruism is basic, is incompatible with his claim that morality also changes over time. Kurtz therefore failed to present a good reason to reject Craig’s rendition of the Moral Argument. Interestingly, ten years after this debate with Kurtz, Craig debated Wielenberg, but with a modified approach reflecting a shift in the conversation. Craig formulated his argument, when debating Wielenberg, this way: 1. Theism provides a sound foundation for the objectivity of moral values and duties. 2. Atheism does not provide as sound a foundation as theism for the objectivity of moral values and duties.77 Notice the change in Craig’s goal. In this debate, the argument began with the shared assumption that objective morality exists. From this starting point, Craig was no longer attempting to show there is no sound foundation for morality outside of theism but is attempting to show that atheism does not provide as sound a foundation for objective morality when compared with 77 William Lane Craig, “William Lane Craig’s Opening Speech,” in A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties?, ed. by Adam Lloyd Johnson, (New York: Routledge, 2021), 28. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 45 theism. The debate shifted to an evaluation between two options, atheism and theism, to see which provides the best explanation for objective morality. Using elements of Craig’s modified argument along with premises in the abovementioned Moral Arguments, we can see that objective morality is grounded by Moral Arguments. Summary Evaluation of Moral Arguments The contributions from Aquinas, Kant, Lewis, and Craig can be seen in summary in the table below. Aquinas’ Fourth Way Kant’s Argument from the Need of Divine Assistance Lewis’ Moral Argument Craig’s Moral Argument(s) Morality is measurable, therefore there must be a maximally great Moral Being and there must be One from whom our morality derives. There is a moral gap that cannot closed by increasing human effort or reducing the moral demand; this moral gap could be closed with divine assistance; therefore, it is rational to assume God’s existence. People appeal to an objective moral law, therefore there must exist Something moral outside humanity. Since we are under a Moral Law, there must be a Divine Lawgiver. If God does not exist, objective moral value and duties do not exist; objective moral values and duties do exist, therefore, God exists. Also, Theism provides a sound foundation for the objectivity of moral values and duties; Atheism does not provide as sound a foundation as theism for the objectivity of moral values and duties (to be discussed in more detail below). As explained above and summarized here, Moral Arguments, of which I have given four examples, have weathered criticism by providing clear and plausible premises which logically lead to their conclusions. The attention now turns to atheism to see what sort of foundation it can provide for objective morality through Atheistic Moral Realism. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 46 CHAPTER 4 – ATHEISTIC MORAL REALISM Before we begin explaining Atheistic Moral Realism it should be noted, as mentioned briefly above, many atheists see an inevitable connection between objective morality and the existence of God, choosing therefore to reject objective morality. Fredrick Nietzsche (18441900) who famously stated, “God is dead,”1 also said that it is “naivety [to think] … morality could survive when the God who sanctions it is missing!”2 The famous French philosopher JeanPaul Sartre (1905-1980) also stated, … it [is] very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it… If God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct.3 Several years later, well-known American philosopher J.L. Mackie (1917-1981) said, “there are no objective values.” 4 Rather, as stated in his famous “Error Theory,” he believed that it was a mistake whenever anyone appealed to some objective standard outside of humanity to make moral judgments: …the denial of objective values will have to be put forward not as the result of an analytic approach, but as an ‘error theory’, a theory that although most people in making moral judgements implicitly claim, among other things, to be pointing to something objectively prescriptive, these claims are false.5 1 Friedrich Nietzsche used the expression as the words of a madman in The Gay Science, section 108 and 125, but also used it on his own behalf later when he said in section 343, “The greatest recent event – that ‘God is dead’; that the belief that the Christian God has become unbelievable – is already starting to cast its first shadow over Europe.” Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, with a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, ed. Bernard Williams. Trans. Josefine Nauckhoff and Adrian Del Caro, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), sections 108, 125, 343. https://ereader.cambridge.org/wr/viewer.html#book/14cae712-1c4c-4507-afb9adb9120800df/book5. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1968), 147. Johnson calls this famous German philosopher “an unlikely ally to theists in this discussion because his ‘…critique of modern philosophy, and particularly of modern moral philosophy, comes precisely from his conviction that a genuinely objective moral order…would require a God as its foundation.’” Johnson, A Debate on God, 8. 3 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, trans. Bernard Frenchtman and Haze E. Barnes. (New York: Philosophical Library, Inc. 1957), 22-23. 4 J.L. Mackie, “The Subjectivity of Values,” in Essays on Moral Realism, ed. by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 95. 5 Ibid, 109. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 47 As an atheist, Mackie clearly recognized the threat of objective morality to atheism, opting instead for subjective morality: …we might well argue…objective intrinsically prescriptive features… are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events, without an all-powerful God to create them. If, then, there are such intrinsically prescriptive objective values, they make the existence of a god more probable than it would have been without them.6 British Philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001) said the idea of morality apart from God as its foundation is synonymous to “the survival of a concept outside the framework of thought that made it a really intelligible one.”7 Along the same lines, American philosopher Richard Taylor (1919-2003) said “…the concept of moral obligation is unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone.”8 English Philosopher Bernard Williams (1929-2003) reflecting on systems of morality recognised “[t]he law of God applied because God applied it.”9 Philosopher John E. Hare summarizes this collective view well, “I think we should accept the point that there is a deep, historically-based, resonance between obligation or moral law and the notion of… God.”10 Johnson agrees, adding the atheistic view that “…affirming objective morality made sense when people believed in God but since that belief has fallen away, so should the belief in objective morality.”11 What all these late prolific philosophers held in common, which Hare and Johnson affirm, is that if objective morality exists, God is the best explanation. 6 J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and Against the Existence of God (NY: Oxford University Press,1982), 115-116. Emphasis added. 7 G. E. M. Anscombe, Ethics, Religion, and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), 6. 8 Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Hoboken, NJ: Prentice-Hall Publishing, 1985), 84. 9 Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 213. Ebook. https://web-p-ebscohostcom.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzM2MDUyOF9fQU41?sid=bda75e7d-6406-4e6b-b7f3dfe108ee63be@redis&vid=0&format=EB&lpid=lp_173&rid=0. 10 John Hare, God and Morality: A Philosophical History (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009), 261. Ebook. https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/doi/pdf/10.1002/9780470754757.ch6. 11 Johnson, A Debate on God, 9. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS The idea that God is the best explanation for objective morality did not disappear, however, with the passing of these philosophers. Well-known atheist philosopher Paul Draper, for instance, repeats the idea: …if naturalism is true, then a lifeless world is extremely likely to be a world devoid of moral agents… the existence of embodied moral agents are much more probable on theism than on naturalism and hence significantly raise the ratio of the probability of theism to the probability of naturalism.12 In agreement, Craig states that, “If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.”13 So, the idea—if objective morality exists, God is the best explanation—is shared by many theists and atheists, past and present, alike. This is important because it shows that any attempt to explain objective morality apart from a theistic foundation must overcome the commonly held and defended position that such a foundation is precisely what is required. Atheistic Moral Realists Despite this, however, there are a growing number of atheists who do not think that objective morality automatically leads to God. Shafer-Landau, for example says, Most analytical philosophers these days are agnostics or atheists, and so reject theism. But even those who are unkindly disposed towards moral realism do not think that its vulnerability lies in a commitment to theism. The story among non-philosophers is quite different. In that arena, it’s a common thought that the status of morality and religion are very closely connected. On a popular view, morality can be objective only if God exists.14 Note carefully, Shafer-Landau says the latter belief—morality and religion are closely connected, and morality can be objective only if God exists—belongs to non-philosophers. He 12 Paul Draper, “Cosmic Fine-Tuning and Terrestrial Suffering: Parallel Problems for Naturalism and Theism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 41, no. 4 (2004): 313. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20010171. 13 Craig, “The Craig-Flew Debate,” 21. 14 Russ Shafer-Landau, “Moral and Theological Realism: The Explanatory Argument,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 4 no. 3 (2007): 311-12. doi:10.1177/1740468107083247.3. 48 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 49 claims that analytical philosophers today, however, do not think objective morality automatically leads to theism. Rather, there are atheistic explanations for objective morality. Johnson, who has studied this topic extensively states that “[t]hese atheists argue it’s a mistake to think that only God could provide the foundation for objective morality. Maybe something else provides the foundation or maybe objective moral truth doesn’t need a foundation at all.”15 But why the change in perspective? Perhaps this shift has taken place because atheists rightly recognize objective morality is needed for moral judgments to have force. Look for example, what atheist philosopher David Enoch says: Had morality not been objective—had it been, for instance, preference-based—we would have been required to behave in the face of conflicts based on moral disagreements as we are required to behave in the face of conflicts based on mere preferences. That is, we would have been required to step back, go impartial, view our own commitments as just the commitments of one party among others, and compromise. But—and this is a substantive moral premise—we are not required so to behave in the face of moral disagreement and conflict. Often, the party to the disagreement who is right is entitled, and even required, to stand her ground. So morality is not mere-preference-based. Morality is objective.16 Again, Enoch is an atheist. Instead of shying away from objective morality like many of his atheist predecessors, he aims to provide an explanation for it through Atheistic Moral Realism.17 Before exploring Atheistic Moral Realism more deeply, it is noteworthy that given the sheer number of prominent atheist philosophers, both past and present, who argue there is a sure connection between objective morality and the existence of God, those who argue otherwise have their work cut out. Their task will be to show that objective morality can be supported without God. 15 Johnson, A Debate on God, 10. David Enoch, “Précis of Taking Morality Seriously (Oxford University Press, 2011),” Philosophical Studies 168, no. 3 (2014): 820. 17 David Enoch presents his version of Atheistic Moral Realism in David Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press on Demand, 2011). 16 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 50 What is Atheistic Moral Realism?18 As already mentioned, Atheistic Moral Realism is the foremost solution offered by those who believe objective morality exists apart from God. So, what is Moral Realism, and what is Atheistic Moral Realism? Although there are different models of Moral Realism, what they all hold in common, at a foundational level, is the belief that moral facts do exist.19 A moral fact is something that is true independent of what anyone thinks or believes about it. While there may be disagreement on what specific acts are right and wrong (there is debate for example on many ethical issues like abortion, euthanasia, or pornography, etc.), Moral Realists agree that moral facts do exist and are expressed through moral statements. Philosopher Daniel Cole explains, Moral realism is the philosophical belief that morals do exist. So, this is the claim that certain morals are simply true, the way a mathematical equation is true. We call a moral that genuinely exists a moral fact. Moral facts are expressed through moral statements, verbal expressions of morality, and if a moral statement accurately corresponds to reality, it becomes a moral truth.20 A moral fact then, is a statement that accurately corresponds to reality and Moral Realists agree that moral facts exist. Philosopher Geoff Sayre-McCord offers this illustration: Taken at face value, the claim that Nigel has a moral obligation to keep his promise, like the claim that Nyx is a black cat, purports to report a fact and is true if things are as the claim purports. Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. That much is the common and more or less defining ground of moral realism (although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way).21 18 For a 17-page detailed definition of Moral Realism see Richard Swinburne, “How to Define Moral Realism,” Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 22 no. 85 (2020): 15-34. doi:10.22091/jptr.2020.5798.2375. 19 Shafer-Landau says, “There are many different versions of moral realism, and very likely no single description will neatly fit all those theories that have taken the label. At the simplest level, all realists endorse the idea that there is a moral reality that people are trying to represent when they issue judgments about what is right and wrong.” Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford, UK: Oxford Academic Publishing, 2003), 13. Online edn. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1093/0199259755.003.0001. 20 Daniel Cole, “Moral Realism, Truth & Reasoning,” updated December 29, 2021, accessed November 9, 2022. https://study.com/learn/lesson/moral-realism-concept-examples.html. 21 Geoff Sayre-McCord, “Moral Realism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 51 The type or brand of Moral Realism that I will be interacting with is the latter, which does have additional commitments, sometimes called “Robust Moral Realism.”22 These additional commitments must be explained to grasp the atheist’s understanding of objective morality. Enoch offers this definition, which captures some of Robust Moral Realism’s key features: [Robust Moral Realism] is the view, somewhat roughly, that there are responseindependent, non-natural, irreducibly normative truths, perfectly universal and objective ones, that when successful in our normative inquiries we discover rather than create or construct.23 It is this view of Robust Atheistic Moral Realism that will be referred to going forward, henceforth called “Realism/Realist”. Johnson claims there are a growing number of atheist philosophers of this brand of Realism.24 Some of the strongest proponents include philosophers Wielenberg, Shafer-Landau, Enoch, and Michael Huemer.25 It is helpful to note that each of these modern advocates for Realism identify the late philosopher G. E. Moore (1873-1958) as influential in the formation of their models. Regarding the impact of Moore, for example, philosopher Michael Ridge notes …there is widespread agreement that G.E. Moore’s account of goodness in Principia Ethica is a paradigmatically non-naturalist account. Indeed, if a representative sample of contemporary philosophers were asked to name a non-naturalist in metaethics then Edward N. Zalta, (Stanford University, 2021), first published Mon Oct 3, 2005; substantive revision Tue Feb 3, 2015. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/moral-realism/. 22 Philosopher Richard Joyce differentiates between what he calls “minimal moral realism” and “robust moral realism” stating that, “Perhaps the judicious course is to make a terminological distinction between minimal moral realism—which is the denial of noncognitivism and error theory—and robust moral realism—which in addition asserts the objectivity of moral facts.” Richard Joyce, “Moral Anti-Realism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University, 2021), first published Mon Jul 30, 2007; substantive revision May 24, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/moral-anti-realism/. 23 David Enoch, “Metanormative Realism,” in Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume II, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press Incorporated, 2007), 21. ProQuest Ebook Central. 24 Johnson, A Debate on God, 2. 25 It should be noted that there are many other proponents of Atheistic (or Godless) Moral Realism including Michael Martin, William Fitzpatrick, Derek Parfit, Colin McGinn, but the models represented here are the most current and thus most promising attempts to defend objective morality from within an atheistic framework. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 52 Moore’s name almost certainly would predominate. For better or worse, Moore’s discussion of non-naturalism profoundly shaped 20th century metaethics.26 Below, I will look at several common features of this type of Moorean Realism, categorizing them with the following headings: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Non-Natural Irreducibly Normative Truths (Self-Evident) When Successful we Discover Rather than Create Supervenience The Making Relationship Brute Ethical Facts27 Along the way, I will evaluate the claims made by Realists, as I did with the claims made in the Moral Arguments above, to see if they are capable of grounding or explaining objective morality. Non-Natural In Principia Ethica, Moore proposes that moral facts are non-natural. He states, When, therefore, I spoke above of ‘metaphysical’ propositions, I meant propositions about the existence of something supersensible—of something which is not an object of perception, and which cannot be inferred from what is an object of perception by the same rules of inference by which we infer the past and future of what we call ‘Nature.’… I define ‘metaphysical,’ therefore, by a reference to supersensible reality...28 Those “things” that belonged to Moore’s class of “supersensible realities” include “metaphysical propositions”. Moore continues his explanation: 26 Michael Ridge, “Moral Non-Naturalism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University 2019), first published Sat Feb 1, 2003; substantive revision Wed Aug 21, 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#Aca. 27 Some of these headings are from Enoch’s definition, as stated above. Since objectivity of moral truths have already been discussed, time will be spent looking more closely at the remaining features, especially those most relevant to the discussion. The remaining key features from Enoch’s definition will be explored under the headings: “Non-Natural”, “Irreducibly Normative Truths (Self-Evident)”, and “When Successful we Discover Rather than Create”. In addition to these, I have included “Supervenience,” “The Making Relationship,” and “Brute Ethical Facts”, as these, while not included in Enoch’s definition, are important to understand. 28 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (London, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 111-12. Emphasis original. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/53430/pg53430-images.html. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 53 What, then, is to be understood by ‘metaphysical’? I use the term… in opposition to ‘natural.’ I call those philosophers preeminently ‘metaphysical’ who have recognised most clearly that not everything which is is a ‘natural object.’ ‘Metaphysicians’ have, therefore, the great merit of insisting that our knowledge is not confined to the things which we can touch and see and feel.29 According to Moore, moral facts, which he called “metaphysical propositions” exist, but they cannot be seen or felt, or for that matter, measured at all using scientific tools. Moral facts then, exist, but are not physical, observable, or scientifically measurable ‘objects’. Ridge summarizes Moorean non-naturalism this way: “Very roughly, non-naturalism in metaethics is the idea that moral philosophy is fundamentally autonomous from the natural sciences.”30 According to Moore then, moral facts exist but, in a realm, or in a reality of their own, one that is not shared by nature, in a realm that is, what he called, “supersensible”. Connected to this idea, Moore observed what he thought to be a fallacious way of thinking and speaking: people regularly spoke about an object’s goodness or pleasantness synonymously with goodness itself. Moore, however, believed that was a mistake. According to Moore, what made an object good was not the same as goodness itself. He proposed that anytime philosophers spoke about something that was good or pleasant synonymously with goodness itself, they committed what he coined, “the naturalistic fallacy”. Yet a mistake of this simple kind has commonly been made about ‘good.’ It may be true that all things which are good are also something else, just as it is true that all things which are yellow produce a certain kind of vibration in the light. And it is a fact, that ethics aims at discovering what are those other properties belonging to all things which are good. But far too many philosophers have thought that when they named those other properties they were actually defining good; that these properties, in fact, were simply not ‘other,’ but absolutely and entirely the same with goodness. This view I propose to call the ‘naturalistic fallacy’…31 29 Moore, Principia, 110. Ridge, “Moral Non-Naturalism.” 31 Moore, Principia, 10. 30 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 54 Instead of seeing goodness as synonymous with the properties that made something good, Moore argued that goodness was in a separate class. Goodness did not exist as an object limited by the bounds of space and time, yet goodness is something or belongs to a reality that is supersensible. In this way, Moore’s view is Platonic. Consider how he described those other “things” which belonged to this reality, such as numbers and metaphysical propositions: It is quite certain that two natural objects may exist; but it is equally certain that two itself does not exist and never can. Two and two are four. But that does not mean that either two or four exists. Yet it certainly means something. Two is somehow, although it does not exist.32 Moore believed there existed realities such as numbers, metaphysical propositions, and properties such as moral goodness but that they were non-natural i.e., not physical objects. His view then can be described as non-natural and Platonic.33 For Moorean Realists, Platonism is inescapable, and this is problematic because Platonism opens the door to criticism. A number of Realists appear to freely admit Platonism, but do not broadcast it. For example, notice how Enoch in his book, Taking Morality Seriously, concedes his own Platonist leanings: Finally, a point about terminology. Robust Realism and views in its vicinity go by many different names, names which I prefer not to use. ‘Platonism’ as well as ‘Moorean Realism’ suggest historical commitments which I would rather avoid… But here as elsewhere, nothing hinges on the choice of terminology. If switching to a different terminology helps you as you go through this book, feel free to do so. I will not be offended if you call me a Platonist.34 Likewise, Huemer, in an evaluation of the Craig-Wielenberg debate, admitted he and Wielenberg were Platonists but argued that criticism against Platonism was unfounded: 32 Moore, Principia, 111-12. Robust Moral Realists today, such as Wielenberg, admittedly affected by Moore, are also a non-naturalist. Wielenberg states in Robust Ethics, “…my view is non-naturalistic in that it posits the existence of non-natural properties…” Erik J. Wielenberg, Robust Ethics: the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014), 15. Online edn. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714323.001.0001. Johnson also notes, “…it’s important to label Wielenberg properly; he’s an atheist with Platonic leanings but he’s not a naturalist.” Johnson, A Debate on God, 33. 34 Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously, 8. 33 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 55 The biggest problem was supposed to be that Wielenberg’s (and my) form of moral realism commits us to Platonism. Craig is in some famous company in attacking Platonism. Many philosophers (especially many atheists and empiricist's, who make odd company with Craig) disdain Platonism. Yet it is surprisingly difficult to find an actual argument against it. This debate was no exception. Craig repeatedly implies that there is something deeply problematic about Platonism, yet as far as I can tell, he never tells us what it is. He calls the view ‘extravagant’ and ‘strange,’ but these strike me rather as mere expressions of incredulity then as substantive objections. What is strange or extravagant about Platonism?35 Huemer is correct: It is not difficult to find philosophers that disdain Platonism. It is also true that in the debate between Wielenberg and Craig, Craig did not include an argument against Platonism per se. That, however, does not mean disagreement with it is unwarranted. What is “extravagant and strange”, as Huemer states it, about Platonism is its commitment to abstract moral objects. Craig makes the same point, as reflected in his opening speech in the debate: …Godless Normative Realism involves extravagant metaphysical claims which render it very implausible… [Wielenberg’s] view is akin to mathematical Platonism, which holds that in addition to the world of concrete objects, there exists a transcendent realm of immaterial, causally effete, abstract objects, like numbers, sets, and other mathematical entities. Most of us think that such entities have at most a sort of conceptual reality; but for the Platonist these objects are objectively real. Wielenberg holds that moral values are similarly abstract objects of some sort existing independently of human beings.36 The question for Realists is this: “Even if abstract moral-values-objects exist, how did they come into existence?” It seems unlikely that they simply exist on their own. By comparison, Craig notes that “Wielenberg’s view is moral Platonism, which postulates an infinity of abstract moral objects. By contrast, theism is much less extravagant than Platonism, since God, though immaterial, is a concrete object.”37 The challenge with Platonism is that it presents an infinity of abstract moral objects, which have no foundation, no source, no explanation. By comparison, 35 Michael Huemer, “Groundless Morals” in A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties?, edited by Adam Lloyd Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2021), 155. 36 Craig, “Opening Speech,” 32. 37 William Lane Craig, “William Lane Craig’s First Rebuttal,” in A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties?, ed. Adam Lloyd Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2021), 51. Emphasis added. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 56 God as singular concrete object is therefore less extravagant.38 Furthermore, the existence of God as a First Cause, has been well defended through the cosmological argument,39 whereas a successful argument for independent abstract moral objects is yet to be seen. Irreducibly Normative Truths Closely connected to non-naturalism, Moore claimed that moral properties, such as goodness, are sui generis and therefore irreducible to non-moral properties—where non-moral properties are defined specifically as mental, social, biological, or scientific.40 In the words of philosopher Thomas Hurka, “[Moral properties are] neither reducible to or derivable from nonmoral, for example scientific or metaphysical…[properties]; they express a distinctive kind of objective truth.”41 Moral properties then are not caused by or reducible to natural phenomena. Furthermore, Enoch explains that these irreducible truths are normative. Normative, he describes the following way: “Normative truths (or facts, propositions, properties, claims, sentences, and the like) are, at a first approximation, those that fall on the ought side of the is– 38 Johnson offers an important clarification between Wielenberg’s and Craig’s view of concrete objects. He says, "Whereas Wielenberg sometimes describes his brute ethical facts as abstract objects, akin to Plato’s forms, Adams proposed that God, a concrete object, functions as the ultimate Platonic exemplar that everything else is measured by. This brings us to a fundamental difference between Wielenberg and Craig that surfaces often in the debate— Craig believes only concrete objects exist and criticizes Wielenberg for proposing the existence of abstract objects… [generally it is] agreed upon that abstract objects, if they exist, are aspatial, atemporal or everlasting, causally impotent, mindless, and necessarily existing… [they are] abstract objects… said to be impersonal entities: such things as properties, relations, propositions, numbers, sets, and the like… It's important to note that a key part of the common definition of abstract objects is that, unlike concrete objects, they’re non-causal, that is, they cannot enter into the causal chain of events. Concrete objects on the other hand, generally speaking, are understood to be particular items such as cucumbers, planets, and electrons as well as immaterial objects, if they exist, such as angels, God, and souls.” Adam Johnson, A Debate on God, 19. 39 See Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 465-81. 40 Moore, Prinicipia, xii. For a specific definition of non-moral properties related to this conversation, see Ralph Wedgwood, “The Price of Non-reductive Moral Realism,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 2 (1999):199. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1023/A:1009994827047. For the term Sui Generis, as a descriptor of Moore’s moral properties, see Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 1. 41 Thomas Hurka, "Moore’s Moral Philosophy," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University, 2021), First published Wed Jan 26, 2005; substantive revision Mon Mar 22 , 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/moore-moral. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 57 ought distinction, the value side of the fact-value distinction, and the analogous side of analogous distinctions.”42 Enoch then provides several examples to give clarity: That we ought to give money to famine relief is a normative proposition (and, given that it’s true, it’s also a normative truth, and a normative fact); so are that I should go on a diet, that you have a reason to read Kant, that pursuing graduate studies in philosophy is the thing it makes most sense for her to do, that he is a good person, that pain is pro-tanto bad for the person whose pain it is, that you shouldn’t form your beliefs on the basis of wishful thinking, that if he has inconsistent beliefs he’s irrational, that it’s unreasonable to expect everyone to convert to your religion, that we should all care more for our own children than for other people’s children, that it’s your duty to obey the laws of your country, that I have a moral right to free speech, and so on. These examples should suffice, I think, to give an intuitive feel of the normative realm about which I’m a robust realist.43 Enoch also states that moral facts “are deliberatively indispensable…for the project of deliberating and deciding what to do.”44 He then gives the following example, “Deliberative indispensability, I argue, justifies belief in normative facts, just like the explanatory indispensability of theoretical entities like electrons justifies belief in electrons.”45 Moral facts then, Enoch argues, are justifiably normative because they are indispensable or necessary for the act of deliberating or deciding what to do in situations requiring a moral choice. In other words, if moral facts did not exist then there would be nothing to inform someone of what they should or should not do. But, because there is something that informs someone what they should or should not do, then belief in the existence of normative moral facts is justified. In much the same way, Enoch argues, belief in electrons is justified because electrons explain molecular orbital theory. So, like electrons which are invisible, we cannot see moral facts (because they are non- 42 Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously, 2. Ibid, 2. 44 Russ Shafer-Landau, “Metanormative Realism,” in Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume II (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press Incorporated, 2007), 22. ProQuest Ebook Central. 45 Ibid. 43 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 58 natural), but we can see the effects of their existence, and because these observable effects are best explained by their existence, they must exist. Wielenberg summarizes the stance this way: As I see it, there are genuine features of our world that remain forever outside the purview of the natural sciences. Moral facts are such features. They introduce an element of normativity that cannot be captured in the records of the natural sciences. They tell us what we ought to do; how we should behave; what is worth pursuing; what reasons we have; what is justifiable and what not. There is no science that can inform us of such things.46 According to Realists then, moral facts, though they are in no way reducible to the natural world, do exist, are normative, and explain what ought to be done. This is important to take note of: Realists claim that irreducible, normative, moral facts tell us what we ought to do all by themselves. Shafer-Landau says exactly this: “Our moral beliefs are capable of motivating us all by themselves, and usually, but not invariably, do so. Moral obligations constitute reasons for everyone to act as they direct, regardless of whether such reasons bear any relation to ones existing commitments.”47 Moral facts, what Shafer-Landau calls “moral obligations”, are so powerful they override “existing commitments” and direct behaviour. Wielenberg and ShaferLandau’s claim, however, surfaces the question, “How do moral facts ‘direct’ and how do moral facts ‘tell us what we ought to do’ all by themselves?” The answer does not seem obvious. When Successful We Discover Rather than Create (Self-Evident) To understand what Realists mean when they say “[moral facts] when successful… we discover rather than create,”48 it will be helpful to recall the Realist’s belief that moral facts exist 46 Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism, 4. Emphasis original. Ibid, 8. 48 David Enoch, “Metanormative Realism,” in Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume II, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press Incorporated, 2007) 21. ProQuest Ebook Central. 47 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 59 objectively or mind-independently, i.e., moral facts are right or wrong independent from what anyone believes or thinks about them.49 For instance, Shafer-Landau states that, …it is wrong to take pleasure in another’s pain, to taunt and threaten the vulnerable, to prosecute and punish those known to be innocent, and to sell another’s secrets solely for personal gain. When I say such things, I mean that once one really understands these principles…one doesn’t need to infer them from one’s other beliefs in order to be justified in thinking them true.50 Elsewhere, Shafer-Landau says similarly, As I will understand the view here, moral realism stands for the idea that there are some moral claims that are true in a certain way. Their truth does not depend on the attitudes that anyone takes towards their content. Nor are they true, when they are, because being endorsed, implied or entailed by norms that are constructed from our evaluative attitudes.51 Likewise, philosopher G. B. Siniscalchi states, “Almost all… moral realists agree that morality is not strictly based on popular opinion or cultural convention.”52 Moral facts then are not constructed (or created) by individuals but exist objectively. This is what Realists mean when they say moral facts are not created. Now, regarding the statement, “they are discovered,” Realists claim moral facts are discovered via self-evidence and are knowable by intuition. Philosopher Thomas Hurka states, “Closely connected to [Moore’s] non-naturalism was the epistemological view that our knowledge of moral truths is intuitive, in the sense that it… rests on our recognizing certain moral propositions as self-evident, by a kind of direct or immediate 49 Matthew Lutz and James Lenman, "Moral Naturalism," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University 2021), first published Thu Jun 1, 2006; substantive revision Wed May 30, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/naturalism-moral. 50 Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defense, 248. 51 Russ Shafer-Landau, "Moral Realism Moral and Theological Realism: The Explanatory Argument," in Ethics and Moral Philosophy, ed. Thom Brooks (Boston, MA: Brill, 2011), 125. Proquest Ebook Central. https://doiorg.twu.idm.oclc.org/10.1163/9789004215337_009. The objective-mind-independence of moral facts is something theists also agree with. For example, well-known theist philosopher Alvin Plantinga states, “…moral truths are objective, in the sense that they are in a certain way independent of human beliefs and desires. It is wrong to torture people for the fun of it, and would remain wrong even if most or all of the world’s population came to believe that this behavior is perfectly acceptable, and indeed came to desire that it be much more widely practiced.”51 Alvin Plantinga, “Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience,” Faith and Philosophy, no. 3 (2010): 249. 52 Siniscalchi, “Modified Divine Commands,” 420. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 60 insight.”53 A moral fact, then, is obvious (or self-evident) when it is stated in the form of a moral proposition that is true. This agrees with what Shaffer-Landau says, “…moral principles are knowable via self-evidence… if they are true and have been reliably produced.”54 It seems justifiable to believe moral facts are self-evident, and knowable via intuition when they are in the form of a proposition that is true. For example, the statement, “It is wrong to torture innocent people for fun,” seems intuitively and obviously true. However, what is more confusing is the latter part of the statement, “moral principles are knowable via self-evidence… if they are true and have been reliably produced” or like Enoch said earlier, “when they are successful”. What do Realists mean by this? Realists do propose an answer to this question, but before we look at their response, let me summarize the ground that has been covered. The building definition of the type of Realism that engages in this debate includes the belief that moral facts exist independently from nature, are not reducible to or derived from nature, are normative in that they explain moral deliberation, are objectively-mind-independent and therefore are never created but only discovered via self-evidence or intuition when they are true and reliably produced.55 The remaining question, as mentioned, is “What do Realists mean when they say, ‘moral facts are knowable when they have been reliably produced’?” Supervenience Realism’s answer to this question is supervenience. Wielenberg states, “It is widely believed that if moral properties are instantiated, they do not float free of other kinds of properties; instead, moral properties are supervenient properties.”56 To clarify, if moral 53 Hurka, Thomas, "Moore’s Moral Philosophy." Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism, 8. 55 See Ridge, "Moral Non-Naturalism." 56 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 9, Emphasis original. “The final view of the object/property contrast to consider is the view that properties are instantiated, and objects are not…Objects can only be the things that instantiate; they cannot 54 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 61 properties, by definition, have an instance that can be represented by an example it is because they supervene upon other properties. In the realm of morality, supervenience is not an easy concept to understand. Philosophers Brian McLaughlin and Karen Bennett offer this oft-cited explanation: “A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their Bproperties. In slogan form, ‘there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference’”.57 This is a good summary definition, but it is also important to understand that supervenience entails a non-causal dependency relationship between two properties or sets of properties. For example, suppose there are several candles on a birthday cake that happen to be configured in such a way that they form the shape of the number 10, the number 10-shape cannot be changed to the number 9-shape, for instance, unless the configuration of the candles on the cake are also changed. In this way, the number 10-shape supervenes on the configuration of the candles on the cake. The number 10-shape non-causally depends on the configuration of the candles. Supervenience does not state that the configuration of the candles causes the number 10-shape, supervenience is merely a statement of fact; the number 10-shape is at the same time the candles be instantiated. Properties, by contrast, can both instantiate and be instantiated.” Bradley Rettler and Andrew M. Bailey, “Object,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University 2017), first published Thu Oct 26, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/object/. 57 Brian McLaughlin and Karen Bennett, "Supervenience," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University 2021), first published Mon Jul 25, 2005; substantive revision Wed Jan 10, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/superveniencehttps://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entrie s/supervenience/; Philosophers Robert Garcia and Nathan King also describes supervenience this way: “Nonmoral properties are purely descriptive ones; examples include being a killing, being an act of self-defence, being premeditated, being non-consensual, being an act of sexual intercourse, being painful, being in such-and such circumstances, and so on. Moral properties are normative; examples include being wrong, being obligatory, being permissible, begin supererogatory, and so on. Thus, when Swinburne says that a moral property of an action logically supervenes on the act’s nonmoral properties, he is claiming that the type of moral property that an action has is wholly determined by the nonmoral properties of the act in question. Why, for instance does what we call “rape” have the property of being an act of sexual intercourse, being against the will of one of the participants, being painful, and so forth. The action’s moral status is determined by its nonmoral properties.” Robert Garcia and Nathan King, “Introduction,” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough? (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 17-18. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 62 are in a certain way. In philosophical terms, there cannot be a change to A-properties without there being a change to B-properties as McLaughlin and Bennett have noted. What Realists are claiming is that moral properties supervene on non-moral properties such that moral properties cannot be changed without the non-moral properties being changed. In other words, a specific moral property exists when the right base non-moral property/properties exist at the same time. For example, it is A morally good (a moral property) when B a person serves another person purely for the sake of benefitting the other person (a non-moral property). The person B who acts a certain way does not cause moral goodness to come into existence, rather A moral goodness simply is when B properties are present (in this case, a person selflessly serves another person purely for the sake of benefitting the other person). In this way, moral properties exist as a matter of necessity, much like the number 10-shape necessarily exists when the candles are configured a certain way at base. Moral properties—hypothetically represented by the number 10-shape— exist when the correct base properties—hypothetically represented by the candles—are in place. A challenge with this view is revealed when one considers the seemingly innocent question, “How do moral properties supervene on non-moral properties?” In the case with the configuration of the candles and the number 10-shape, these are physical (non-moral) properties supervening on physical (non-moral) properties and therefore relatively easy to visualize and understand, but in the case with moral properties supervening on non-moral properties, it is more complex. McLaughlin and Bennett also see this: Sometimes it is easy to see what explains a supervenience thesis… consider, for example, the fact that the property being water is identical with the property being H20. Still the fact that being water is identical with being H20 explains why there cannot be a difference with respect to being water without a difference with respect to being H20. And supervenience with only nomological necessity can be explained by appeal to laws of nature.58 58 McLaughlin and Bennett, "Supervenience.” THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 63 Explaining the supervenience relationship between water and H20 is simple; explaining the supervenience relationship of moral properties and non-moral properties is not. McLaughlin and Bennett continue: Because we expect supervenience theses to be explainable, it is hard for us to rest content with a supervenience thesis if we do not see what would explain why it is true. If it is claimed, for instance, that moral properties supervene on non-moral properties, we expect there to be an explanation of why this is so. Appeals to unexplainable supervenience theses can thus seem to be mystery mongering.59 So, how do moral properties supervene on non-moral properties? The answer is not yet clear. Wielenberg himself recognizes the challenge present in this type of supervenience: “Still, some have found this sort of view to be deeply puzzling if not wildly implausible… [a] source of much puzzlement and skepticism.”60 Wielenberg leaves his readers anticipating an explanation. The Making Relationship Wielenberg’s explanation, he calls “making” otherwise known as “the making relationship”.61 He states that while supervenience is a non-causal relationship, the making relationship is slightly different. According to Wielenberg, the difference is often missed by philosophers: “A look into the history of the term ‘supervenient’ in philosophy suggests that philosophers have not always been careful to distinguish supervenience… from making.”62 Wielenberg explains the making relationship this way: I suggest that the existence of necessary moral truths is similarly explained by the robust nature of the causal connection that holds between certain natural and ethical properties. For example, it is a necessary truth that inflicting pain just for fun is morally wrong because being a case of inflicting pain just for fun makes (in the sense of robustly 59 McLaughlin and Bennett, "Supervenience.” Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 16. 61 Ibid, 12. 62 Ibid. 60 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 64 causing) the act morally wrong. Every possible act of inflicting pain just for fun is made wrong by being an instance of inflicting pain just for fun.63 In a debate with Craig, Wielenberg offered this illustration: Imagine that on your way home tonight, you encounter a child whose arm is engulfed in flames. Suppose the child is screaming in pain and for help and that nearby is a large bucket of water. No one else is around. Craig and I agree that in this scenario the suffering of the child is bad and that you are morally obligated to try to douse the flames; we also agree that these facts about badness and obligation are objective. We disagree, however, about the nature of the badness of the child suffering and of the obligation to help the child.… In the child-on-fire case, the intrinsic nature of the child’s suffering makes that suffering bad.64 Wielenberg’s comment—the intrinsic nature of the child’s suffering makes that suffering bad— seems correct on certain levels. Even theist philosophers Keith Yandell and Richard Swinburne agree with Wielenberg on this point.65 However, the question needing to be answered is not about the intuitive sense that the child’s suffering is bad, but rather what, precisely, makes notdousing-the-child wrong. The disagreement is not as much about the recognition that the child’s suffering is bad, but about the nature of the obligation to help. Wielenberg’s theory is vulnerable to questions about what makes something like “inflicting pain for fun” (a sin of commission) or “not dousing a child-on-fire with water” (a sin of omission) wrong. There is agreement that sins of commission and sins of omission like this are wrong, but what makes them wrong, what 63 Wielenberg, Con: A Critique, 148. Emphasis added. Erik Wielenberg, “Erik J. Wielenberg’s Opening Speech,” in A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties?, ed. by Adam Lloyd Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2021), 39-40. Emphasis added. 65 Keith Yandell has said, “(I) It is morally wrong to torture people for pleasure…is true even if no one believed them or if everyone believed their contradictories. My problem with Craigs’ inference is to the existence of God in this. If propositions of the sort represented by (I) … [are] true – as I grant they are – then they are necessarily true. There are no possible conditions under which torture for pleasure is right…Its being false is not a possibility, and hence not a possibility that an explanation could be required to rule out. Hence no reference to God’s existence or God’s will is required to explain the truth of a proposition such as (I).” Keith Yandell, “Theism, Atheism and Cosmology,” in Does God Exist?: The Craig-Flew Debate, ed. Stan W. Wallace (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 96. Richard Swinburne also says: “Yet the critic may rightly object that torturing children or genocide are immoral, whether or not God commands them. God's command could not make such actions right.” Richard Swinburne, Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1977), 209. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/lib/sfu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3053289. 64 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 65 makes a certain action or inaction a “sin”? Wielenberg anticipates this question citing J. L. Mackie’s famous “Argument from Queerness”: What is the connection between the natural fact that an action is a piece of deliberate cruelty—say, causing pain just for fun—and the moral fact that it is wrong? It cannot be an entailment, a logical or semantic necessity. Yet is it not merely that the two features occur together. The wrongness must somehow be ‘consequential’ or ‘supervenient’; it is wrong because it is a piece of deliberate cruelty. But just what in the world is signified by this ‘because’?66 Mackie, as stated above, is an atheist who believes there is an inevitable connection between objective morality and God, thus he opts to reject objective morality in favour of subjective morality. The question then, is aimed at Realists who claim that objective morality is explainable in non-theistic terms. In other words, it is not at all obvious how a non-moral property like deliberate cruelty makes that act morally wrong. There is no doubt that Wielenberg accurately recognizes the challenge posed by Mackie because he restates it this way: “Mackie here seems to raise the following challenge for the robust normative realist: explain the nature of the relationship between moral properties and the relevant non-moral properties.” 67 Wielenberg, however, struggles to provide a non-circular answer. Note his response: “I suggest that the answer to Mackie’s rhetorical question at the end of this passage is: making. The natural fact that an act is a piece of deliberate cruelty makes that act morally wrong.”68 It sounds like he is saying, “It is wrong because it is obviously wrong”. If the making relationship is simply another way of saying something is wrong because it is obviously wrong, though, then what is at bottom for the Realist? In other words, why is something obviously wrong to begin with? 66 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 16. J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (MI: Penguin, 1977), 41. Ibid, 16. 68 Ibid. 67 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 66 Brute Ethical Facts The Realists’ response is that ethical facts are brute. As briefly seen in Chapter 3, Wielenberg stated that ethical facts exist out of necessity and therefore require no further explanation. Brute ethical facts, however, raise other issues, which Wielenberg recognizes. He says plainly that brute ethical facts entail two problematic commitments. The first problematic commitment he labels, “Problematic Commitment One (PC1): When a given moral property M supervenes on some set of base properties B, that fact is brute; it has no explanation.”69 In addition to the brute-ethical-fact-with-no-explanation problem, Wielenberg acknowledges another related issue: this stance is uncontroversial among Realists. He cites philosopher Mark Schroeder who states: “[I]t is widely thought to be uncontroversial, or nearly so, that the set of all normative properties and relations supervenes on the set of all non-normative properties and relations over the set of all possible worlds.”70 It is interesting that there is broad acceptance among Realists of brute ethical facts, something recognized as having problematic commitments. So, in PC1, Wielenberg recognizes two issues: 1) brute ethical facts offer no explanation and 2) even though no explanation is offered, brute ethical facts are widely accepted by Realists. So how do Realists respond? Wielenberg offers the perspective of his counterpart: [Enoch] argues that robust normative realism is not committed to PC1. He imagines a legal jurisdiction within which it is illegal for anyone under a certain age to purchase alcohol. Within this jurisdiction, drinking-status properties supervene upon age properties: ‘Within a jurisdiction, there cannot be a drinking-status difference without an age difference’ (2011, 143). Enoch suggests that in this case, ‘[w]hat explains the supervenience [within the jurisdiction] of legal drinking-status on age is simply the content of the relevant legal norms’ (2011, 144). Enoch imagines a person arriving within the jurisdiction, noting the supervenience of drinking-status properties upon age properties, and asking for an explanation of this supervenience. According to Enoch, ‘all we need to do is direct her attention to the relevant legal norms’ (2011, 144).71 69 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 21. Ibid, 21. Mark Schroeder, Slaves of the Passions (Oxford, UK: Oxford Academia, 2007), 70. Online edn. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299508.001.0001. 71 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 21-22. 70 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 67 So, in Enoch’s view, supervenience of legal drinking-status on age as a brute ethical fact is present because of the existence of relevant legal norms in a particular jurisdiction. Interestingly, Wielenberg diverges from Enoch on this point feeling that his response is circular and utilitarian.72 He states, As before, there is no explanation here because the putative explanans just is the explanandum stated differently. [The claim] is just a statement of a simple version of utilitarianism, couched in terms of supervenience. Thus, I don’t think that Enoch succeeds in showing that robust normative realism does not imply PC1.73 The challenge Wielenberg’s response sets up, however, is that overcoming PC1 must include an explanation that is both non-circular and non-utilitarian, since by his own volition, a utilitarian response is inadequate. His solution, again, is differentiating supervenience and the making relationship. He states, I propose instead that recognizing the distinction between supervenience and making can help us see how robust normative realism avoids being committed to PC1. Sometimes two factors X and Y are correlated because they are both effects of a common cause, Z. Suppose there is a correlation between having yellow teeth and having lung cancer. Neither causes the other; instead, the two are correlated because they are both effects of cigarette smoking. Here is a parallel case involving supervenience and making.74 This response, however, does not provide an answer to PC1, rather it surfaces a similar second problematic commitment in place of the original. Surprisingly, Wielenberg recognizes this. He labels the second problematic commitment, “Problematic Commitment two (PC2) ...”75 Look how similar PC1 and PC2 are and then look at Wielenberg’s proposed solution: It might be suggested that my proposal simply substitutes one problematic commitment for another. In particular, my proposal commits the robust normative realist to: Problematic Commitment Two (PC2): When the instantiation of some set of base properties B makes moral property M be instantiated, that fact is brute; it has no explanation. In reply, I deny that being committed to PC2 is problematic… Explanation, 72 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 22. Ibid, 23. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid, 24. 73 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 68 as they say, must come to an end somewhere. Why does being an instance of torturing someone just for fun entail moral wrongness? Because being an instance of torturing someone just for fun makes an act wrong. But why does being an instance of torture just for fun make an act wrong? Perhaps further explanation is available: for example, perhaps torturing just for fun never maximizes utility and failing to maximize utility makes an act wrong. But why does failing to maximize utility make an act wrong? Eventually we hit bottom; no further explanation is available. But I don’t see why possessing this sort of explanatory bottom is a problematic feature for a view to have.76 Ultimately, Wielenberg’s explanation leaves some large questions unanswered, namely, “Is the claim that brute ethical facts are at the explanatory bottom justified?” His claim that something is wrong because it is obviously wrong, and therefore requires no further explanation, begs the question. The issue surfaced in PC1 and PC2—namely, that in both supervenience and in the making relationship brute ethical facts have no explanation—remains problematic. It is precisely here where an explanation is needed but nothing is provided. In Wielenberg’s view, moral facts are left “floating in an unintelligible way,”77 without any foundation, without any further explanation. There is no answer given to the question, “What makes certain acts wrong?”. It is inadequate to stop right where an explanation is needed, and then justify it by saying the explanation must stop somewhere. A flaw then in Realism is its commitment to brute ethical facts, which they claim are at bottom, and have no explanation. The bold assertion made here by Realists is that brute ethical facts are the foundation. This is quite different than the claim that moral facts either do not need a foundation or that something else provides the foundation.78 Stating that moral facts are the foundation themselves is unhelpful. This would be like saying, “Words are foundational.” Words communicate an intelligible message and therefore must come from someone capable of communicating messages; words cannot simply carry meaning by themselves. In the same way, because moral facts communicate a message—what one ought to 76 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 24. Emphasis added. Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 492. 78 See comments from Johnson, A Debate on God, 10. 77 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 69 do—they cannot simply exist by themselves either. If God is not the foundation, namely a moral being that has a nature, a mind, a will, and the ability to communicate, and if nothing else is offered in place of God by Realists, then Realists do not have an adequate explanation for moral facts. With Realism, we are left with the brute-facts explanation which is really no explanation at all.79 Before leaving the brute ethical facts explanation, it is worth noting one other problem with it. Evans notes that the brute facts explanation is expressed without the provision of a formal argument. Because no formal argument is provided to support this claim, there are no premises one can even debate. Evans notes that, “If the claim that such moral facts are brute in nature is simply put forward as a bald assertion, then there is no argument given that one can refute.”80 It is more of an assumption than an argument and a burdensome one at that; it is simply assumed that ethical facts are brute. Realists accept this assumption when they claim that ethical facts are at bottom, not caused by or grounded by an intelligent being. Perhaps this is why so many Realists, as Wielenberg mentioned, simply accept brute ethical facts without explanation; if ethical facts are not brute, then they must be caused or grounded by an intelligent being. Regardless, with this added burdensome assumption, Occam’s Razor comes to mind. Unlike theistic Moral Arguments which provide clear premises, Realism makes assumptions and presents difficult-to-understand concepts.81 This of course does not rule out the possibility that 79 Others, such as Loftin who wrote his dissertation on Michael Martin’s version of Atheistic Moral Realism, have made similar observations: “So, when at the end of his second chapter Martin sketches his two remaining tasks, ‘the positive job of developing and defending an atheistic metaethics’ and ‘the negative labor of showing the difficulties of a theistic-based ethics,’ we are prepared to read his explanation of how it is that there are moral truths, that is, ‘the nonreligious foundation of morality.’ Unfortunately, one is disappointed to discover no such explanation.” Loftin, “Michael Martin and the Moral Argument,” 35. 80 C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 153. Online edition. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696680.001.0001. 81 In addition to these burdensome assumptions comes burdensome semantic challenges. Philosopher Geoff SayreMcCord states, “Whatever one thinks of minimalism, of the importance of explanation, and of mind-independence, THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 70 Realism is correct but when deciding between two options, Occam’s Razor dictates that Moral Arguments are preferable and should be chosen over Realism because of their relative simplicity and because they take on fewer assumptions.82 What becomes apparent from an analysis of Moral Arguments is the presence of actual premises which have been tested and have proven capable of surviving criticism. More importantly, Moral Arguments provide a concrete and needed foundation for objective morality. Unlike Moral Arguments, however, Realism fails to provide arguments with actual premises against which one can challenge. Instead of providing an argument for something concrete as a foundation for objective morality, Realists claim that moral facts are brute, that they exist all by themselves at bottom, as the foundation. While Realists recognize and admit this claim entails problematic commitments, namely the lack of an explanation, they are content to let their argument rest at this point. My conclusion is simply that Realism struggles to provide a muchneeded foundation for moral facts, whereas theism does not. moral realism travels with the burden of making sense of the semantics of moral terms in a way that will support seeing claims that use them as genuinely truth-evaluable.” Sayre-McCord, "Moral Realism.” 82 It is surprising that Atheistic Moral Realists readily concede this point. For example Russ Shafer-Landau states, “Every realist is a cognitivist, though there are many cognitivist theories that reject realism. The different constructivist theories mentioned above—subjectivism, relativism, contractarianism, Kantionism, ideal observer theories—are all forms of cognitivism whose acceptance implies a rejection of realism. One hurdle that stands in realism’s way is to show why we should opt for realism over any of these forms of constructivism.” Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism, 17-18. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 71 CHAPTER 5 – MODIFIED DIVINE COMMAND THEORY So far, it has been shown that moral judgments are forceless without the existence of objective morality. It has also been shown that, in the absence of theism, objective morality lacks an adequate foundation. In this way, New Atheists, when they make moral judgments about the behaviour of God in the Old Testament, open the door for theists to demonstrate that God is the best explanation for objective morality. One objection to a Christian theistic foundation remains to be addressed, however, namely the seeming incompatibility of God’s goodness and the killing of innocent people, as recorded in certain troubling passages in the Old Testament. If God exists and, allegedly, provides the necessary grounding for objective morality, how can it be that God, a perfectly moral being, commands the death of innocent people? How can this be consistent with the moral principles God supposedly grounds? The Problem in its Strongest Form As mentioned above, Copan and Hess provide thoughtful explanations for some of the commands related to the conquest of Canaan, namely, Copan’s exaggeration-rhetoric thesis and Hess’s military-outpost thesis. However, as noted earlier, these responses are not broad scoped enough to address the additional texts which report innocent people dying in events like the flood and Sodom and Gomorrah, nor does it address the problem that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Copan and Flannagan recognize the limitations of their thesis, So even if we accept that God did not command the extermination of all the Canaanites, and even if we grant the type of warfare involved, then it still seems to involve the killing of the innocent in the sense of killing noncombatants. Even if the phrases ‘they completely destroyed everyone in it’ and ‘left no survivors’ are obvious hyperbole, where does that leave us? How many women and children is it acceptable to slaughter before it becomes morally problematic?1 1 Copan and Flannagan, Did God Really Command Genocide, 143. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 72 In other words, how can it be acceptable for God, a morally perfect being, to command the death of innocent people at all? Theists who claim that God is good and accept the reports of the events as they are recorded in the Old Testament seem to be faced with a compatibility issue. For my thesis to be successful, it must be able to show that only theism can ground objective morality and also satisfactorily address the compatibility question. Having addressed the former, the latter is the focus of this chapter. Divine Command Theory Crude Divine Command Theory To answer the compatibility question, the response offered by many theists is Divine Command Theory, also known as theological voluntarism.2 Roughly, Divine Command Theory states that a person’s moral obligations are determined by God’s commands. For example, it is wrong to commit murder because God commands, “Thou shalt not murder,” and it is wrong to steal because God commands, “Thou shalt not steal,” etc. Through God’s commands, come people’s moral obligations. This is Divine Command Theory in its basic form. Philosopher Robert Bass calls this a “Crude Divine Command Theory”3 which meets the following four criteria: 2 Philosopher Mark Murphy explains why he prefers the title “theological voluntarism”: “There is a class of metaethical and normative views that commonly goes by the name ‘divine command theory.’ What all members of this class have in common is that they hold that what God wills is relevant to determining the moral status of some set of entities (acts, states of affairs, character traits, etc., or some combination of these). But the name ‘divine command theory’ is a bit misleading: what these views have in common is their appeal to the divine will; while many of these views hold that the relevant act of divine will is that of commanding, some deny it. So we would do well to have a label for this class of views that does not prejudge the issue of the relevant act of divine will. The label that I will use, following Quinn 1990, is ‘theological voluntarism.’” Mark Murphy, “Theological Voluntarism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University 2019), first published Tue Jul 2, 2002; substantive revision Tue Jun 4, 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/voluntarism-theological/. 3 Robert Bass, "Divine Command Theory without a Divine Commander," The Journal of Value Inquiry (2023): 2. Emphasis original. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 73 1. A command from God is sufficient for the existence of a moral requirement. Thus, stealing is wrong because God prohibits it. 2. A command from God is necessary: there would be no moral prohibition or requirement without a divine command. Thus, stealing would not be wrong if God did not prohibit it. 3. God’s commands do not track or depend upon any prior rightness or wrongness. Thus, God does not prohibit stealing because stealing is, apart from the command, already wrong. 4. Finally, there are no restrictions upon what God might have commanded or prohibited.4 This crude form of Divine Command Theory is clearly vulnerable to Euthyphro-related objections. Euthyphro Dilemma In Euthyphro, a fictional dialogue between Socrates and a character named Euthyphro, the statement is made: “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.”5 This statement has led to what has famously become known as the “Euthyphro Dilemma”. To put the Euthyphro Dilemma into modern language, philosopher Louise Antony articulates it in the form of a question: “Are morally good actions morally good simply in virtue of God favoring them? Or does God favor them because they are—independently of his favoring them—morally good?”6 With the help of Antony’s wording, the two horns of the dilemma become clear. First, if God issues commands because they are good, then there must exist some standard of goodness independent of God. For instance, philosopher Michael Austin states, If God commands a particular action because it is morally right, then ethics no longer depends on God in the way that Divine Command Theorists maintain. God is no longer the author of ethics, but rather a mere recognizer of right and wrong. As such, God no 4 Bass, "Divine Command Theory without a Divine Commander," 2-3. Plato, Euthyphro, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Champaign, IL: Project Gutenberg, 1999), 12. In Public Domain. https://search-ebscohost-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1085327&site=ehost-live. 6 Louise Anthony, “Atheists as Perfect Piety,” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?, ed. Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 71. 5 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 74 longer serves as the foundation of ethics. Moreover, it now seems that God has become subject to an external moral law, and is no longer sovereign.7 Philosopher John Arthur adds, “If God approves kindness because it is a virtue and hates the Nazis because they were evil, then it seems that God discovers morality rather than inventing it.”8 The first horn is problematic then because it presents God as subject to some higher moral authority or standard. At best God recognizes or discovers right and wrong. If this is true, then God cannot be the ultimate standard of and the source of morality as theists claim. Second, if certain commands are good only because God issues them, then his commands are arbitrary. This too is problematic. Philosopher Mark Murphy articulates the arbitrarinessproblem this way: 1. [If Divine Command Theory] is true, then God’s commands/intentions must be arbitrary 2. It cannot be that morality could wholly depend on something arbitrary 3. So [Divine Command Theory] must be false.9 What Murphy means is that if the second premise is correct and God’s commands are arbitrary, then theoretically, God could issue any command, and simply by virtue of that command being issued by God, the action commanded would thereby become good, including lying, stealing, raping, or just any other action. This is especially problematic if God commands something terrible (this will be explored further below). The only way for the theist, purporting the Divine Command Theory, to overcome both horns of the Euthyphro Dilemma then is to show that God’s commands are not arbitrary and to show that morality is not independent of God. 7 Michael Austin, “Divine Command Theory,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A PeerReviewed Academic Resource. https://iep.utm.edu/divine-command-theory/#SH4d. 8 John Arthur, “Morality, Religion, and Conscience,” in Morality and Moral Controversies: Readings in Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005), 20. 9 Murphy, "Theological Voluntarism." THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 75 Modified Divine Command Theory These objections are not unsubstantial, and because of them Divine Command Theory has often been disregarded. Bass notes, “Philosophers often treat divine command theory dismissively”10 and philosopher Robert Westmoreland, in consideration of these objections, has written that the theory was “supposedly laid to rest.”11 Bass, Westmoreland, and others, however, all note the theory has experienced a resurgence after undergoing revisions pioneered by philosopher Robert Adams (1987). Since that time, many notable philosophers including Philip Quinn, Robert Audi, C. Stephen Evans, John E. Hare, Mark Murphy, Linda Zagzebski, William Alston, William Lane Craig, Edward Wirenga, Matthew Carrey Jordan, Janine Marie Idziak, William Wainright, William Mann, Thomas Carson, Alvin Plantinga, David Baggett, Jerry Walls, Paul Copan, and Matthew Flannagan have also presented newer versions of Divine Command Theory. In this chapter I will first examine the principles set forth by Adams and then, with the help of other Modified Divine Command Theorists, offer a number of responses to common Euthyphro-related objections. Robert Adams (1937- Present) In The Virtue of Faith, and later in Finite and Infinite Goods, Adams proposes what is often called, a Modified Divine Command Theory. The modifications of the theory rest primarily on the character of God as the foundation for the commands that issue from him. For example, Adams states “Any action is ethically wrong if and only if it is contrary to the commands of a 10 Bass, “Divine Command Theory,” 1. Robert Westmoreland, “Two Recent Metaphysical Divine Command Theories of Ethics,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 39, no. 1 (1996): 15. 11 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 76 loving God.”12 Notice the emphasis on God’s commands issuing from God’s loving character. Elsewhere Adams states that goodness is an essential characteristic of God; he says, “the infinite or transcendent Good is God.”13 For Adams, the very nature of God is to be good. Drawing upon his own life experience, he notes, “I had grown up in an atmosphere in which religion and ethics were treated as a single, supremely important aspect of life, grounded in the nature, action, and commands of God; and this treatment seemed to me, and still does, to make living sense.”14 To Adams, and to those adhering to Modified Divine Command Theory, God’s commands are grounded in the loving nature of God. For example, Craig, as a Modified Divine Command Theorist influenced by Adams, says, First, theism provides a sound foundation for objectivity of moral values… God’s own holy and loving character supplies the absolute standard against which all things are measured. He is by nature loving, generous, faithful, kind, and so forth. Thus, if God exists, moral values are objective, being wholly independent of human beings. Second, theism provides a sound foundation for the objectivity of moral duties. On a theistic view, objective moral duties are constituted by God’s will or commands. God’s moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of divine commandments which constitute our moral duties or obligations. Far from being arbitrary, God’s commandments must be consistent with His holy and loving nature. Our duties, then, are constituted by God’s commandments, and these in turn reflect His essential character. On this foundation, we can affirm the objective rightness of love, generosity, and self-sacrifice, and condemn as objectively wrong selfishness, hatred, abuse, and oppression.15 According to Adams and Modified Divine Command Theorists like Craig, then, moral duties are constituted by God’s will or commands and are a reflection of God’s moral character. In this way the new version of the theory is in agreement with Aquinas who saw God as the greatest measure 12 Robert Adams, The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 132. Emphasis added. 13 Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3. 14 Ibid. 15 Craig, “Opening Speech,” 31. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 77 of and source of all that is morally good.16 Similarly, Modified Divine Command Theorists often speak of adopting an Anselmian view of God. For instance, in Monologium, Saint Anselm states, It follows, therefore, that all other goods are good through another being than that which they themselves are, and this being alone is good through itself. Hence, this alone is supremely good, which is alone good through itself. For it is supreme, in that it so surpasses other beings, that it is neither equalled nor excelled. But that which is supremely good is also supremely great. There is, therefore, some one being which is supremely good, and supremely great, that is, the highest of all existing beings.17 When they say commands are issued from God, Adams and Modified Divine Command Theorists have the Thomistic and Anselmian God in view—one who by his very nature is supremely good and loving and the source of moral goodness. The title itself then—Divine Command Theory—can be a bit misleading since the theory is not primarily about God’s commands but about God’s loving character. Only secondarily, is the theory about God’s commands. A longer but more accurate title might read, “The Theory of Divine Commands Issuing from an Essentially Loving God”. Understanding that the theory presents God’s commands issuing from his essential loving character is key to seeing how the theory successfully addresses Euthyphro-related objections. It is through this way, Adams and Modified Divine Command Theorists, are able to avoid both horns of the Euthyphro Dilemma. God is not good because he measures up to some independent moral standard; his nature is the moral standard. Nor are God’s commands arbitrary, rather they are good because they are issued from a loving and good God. As will be shown below, modern versions of Euthyphro-related objections, while sophisticated, can be satisfied by a proper understanding of Modified Divine Command Theory. I will address two objections that arise often in this debate, one represented by 16 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a, 2, 3. Saint Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury, Basic Writings: Proslogium; Monologium; Cur Deus Homo; Gaunilo's in Behalf of the Fool 2nd ed, trans. Sydney Norton Deane. (La Salle, IL: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1962), 40. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b45136&view=1up&seq=11. 17 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 78 philosopher Wesley Morriston (with additional contributions for philosopher Kai Nielsen) and the other represented by philosopher Raymond Bradley. Before doing so, it should be noted that I will not be addressing how God communicates his commands. Some have noted that God’s commands could be communicated through the written word, through angelic revelation, through the counsel of another person, through intuition, or through conscience, etc. The point of my argument is simply that God does communicate his commands. It should also be noted that I am not addressing the question of who the commands are communicated to. Much of the literature on this topic is limited to God’s commands to people. However, there are instances in the Old Testament where God also makes commands to angels and to nature. This becomes relevant when thinking about how divine commands may or may not affect our view of God. When we consider divine commands, we should include his commanding water and fire which took innocent life in the flood and in Sodom and Gomorrah respectively. Objections Objection 1: What if God Commanded Something Terrible? Morriston poses the question, “What if God commanded something obviously evil, would we have a moral obligation to do it?”18 Morriston invites his readers to think of such a command as “command X… the gruesome and painful sacrifice of randomly selected ten-yearold children [or] if this is not sufficiently disturbing… to substitute her own example of something a deity worthy of our devotion and obedience could reasonably be expected not to 18 Wesley Morriston, “What if God Commanded Something Terrible?: A Worry for Divine Command MetaEthics,” Religious Studies 45, no. 3 (2009): 249. doi:10.1017/S0034412509990011. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 79 require of us.”19 Morriston sees only three possible approaches a Divine Command Theorist can take in response to such a consideration: 1. Reject the possibility of such a command by appealing to God’s essential goodness 2. Avoid the implication that we should obey such a command by modifying the divinecommand theory 3. Accept the implication that we should obey such a command by appealing to divine transcendence and mystery20 I argue that Morriston’s first approach is the correct one, that God’s essential goodness precludes him from commanding X (I also accept the possibility of the third option, but not quite in the same manner Morriston articulates it; this will be discussed further below). Morriston, however, argues that the theist who accepts the first approach—God’s essential goodness precludes him from commanding X—faces three hurdles. I will look at each of the hurdles in turn. The first hurdle facing the theist who argues that God’s essential goodness precludes him from commanding X concerns God’s omnipotence; Morriston claims that if God cannot command X, then he is not omnipotent. Morriston states that, theoretically, any deity who is unable to command X is less powerful than a deity who could command X. Therefore, if there is, conceivably, a more powerful being, one who can command X, then that deity should be the one defined as omnipotent, not the deity incapable of commanding X. Therefore God, if he is omnipotent, can command X. I have two responses. First, a deity who is unable to command X is not necessarily less powerful than a being who can command X. Since, according to Anselm, goodness and greatness correspond, it could be argued that a being incapable of commanding X is more powerful than one who is capable of it; the Anselmian God is great, in part, because he is also good. It might be helpful to think of this deity’s omnipotence in terms of what he can do within the boundaries of his supreme goodness. Second, the issue may not be about whether God 19 20 Morriston, “What if God Commanded Something Terrible,” 250. Emphasis original. Ibid, 249. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 80 could command X, but whether he would command X. Perhaps it is not impossible for God to command X, but rather that he chooses not to command X. Again, if this is the case, then the deity who does not command X, even though he could, is great indeed, and more worthy of worship than a deity who is capable and does command X. The second hurdle facing the theist who argues that God’s essential goodness precludes him from commanding X, Morriston proposes, is related to God’s transcendence. Firstly, Morriston correctly articulates the Divine Command Theorist’s view of God’s transcendence, stating it this way: …because God is transcendent, mysterious, ‘wholly other’, He can be somewhat unpredictable, and His reasons may be utterly inaccessible to finite intellects. On this view, we can be very sure that God would not command X unless He had excellent reasons for doing so – reasons that are entirely compatible with all His superlatively good moral attributes. What we cannot be sure of is that God could not have such reasons or that He could not choose to command X. So, if (contrary to all expectations) God commands us to do X, then however horrible X might seem from our limited perspective, we will be morally obliged to do it.21 On the theistic view, Morriston rightly claims that because God is transcendent, he could have reasons to command X that we are unaware of, and if he commands X, we are obligated to obey command X. Morriston, however, sees this as a faulty way of thinking. He argues that our intuitions about what is right or wrong would, and should, rightly trump any command given by a deity to do X. He says, “[W]e should never be willing to relinquish our most fundamental moral principles on the basis of some purported revelation. It could never be reasonable to overturn our entire moral outlook in light of supposed new information about God’s requirements.”22 The issue for Morriston is this: even if the possibility of God commanding X is extremely low, if God did command X, he says, “I still see no good reason to accept the 21 22 Morriston, “What if God Commanded Something Terrible,” 252. Ibid, 258. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 81 possibility that X is not wrong.”23 This is Morriston’s main point in this section: because of existing human moral intuition, Divine Command Theory has a weakness because God is not needed to know that X is wrong. He states, rather, that “[b]eing-an-instance-of-X… is a very strong prima facie reason for declaring an act to be morally wrong.”24 Morriston’s claim, however, sounds very similar to Kurtz’s claim that morality is basic and to Wielenberg’s claim that moral facts are brute. Kurtz, Wielenberg, and Morriston all share the common view that certain acts are wrong because they are obviously wrong; moral facts are brute. The issue, again, is that no further explanation is given. Again, if God is not the source of moral facts, then they are left floating in an unintelligible way. While Morriston rightly recognizes that people have the capacity to intuitively know that X is wrong, he errs by stating that X is wrong simply because it is obviously wrong. Divine Command Theorists, on the other hand, begin with the statement, “Theism provides a sound foundation for the objectivity of moral values,”25 which are grounded in God, a morally perfect being. From that grounded source (God’s own holy and loving character), come objective moral duties. It makes sense that if God exists that objective moral values and duties also exist. The third hurdle facing the theist who argues that God’s essential goodness precludes him from commanding X, is about God’s sovereignty and essential goodness. Morriston rightly claims that for theists “to protect the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty…there [can be] no higher law to which He is subject… [and there can be no] independent standard of goodness that 23 Morriston, “What if God Commanded Something Terrible,” 258. Ibid. 25 Craig, “Opening Speech,” 31. 24 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 82 God must satisfy in order to be good.”26 Morriston recognizes that Divine Command Theorists “identify God (or God’s nature) with the Good.”27 Morriston continues, Unfortunately, this proposal generates a new difficult problem. If it is simply God – that is, the individual being picked out by the word, ‘God ’ – who is identified with the Good, we run the risk of trivializing the claim that God is good. God will be ‘good’ simply in virtue of being identical to Himself, which does not clearly rule out anything – not even the possibility of God’s commanding X.28 I will respond to this in a moment but first, it is worth noting that philosopher Kai Nielsen argues along the same lines. He says, For ‘God commanded it’ to be a morally relevant reason for doing something, let alone a definitive moral reason for doing it, it must at least, be the case that God is good. A believer, of course, believes this to be the case, but what grounds does he have for this belief? If he says that he knows this to be true because the record of the Bible, the state of the world or the behaviour of Jesus displays God’s goodness, the believer himself clearly displays by his very response that he has some logically prior criterion for moral belief that is not based on the fact that there is a deity.29 One possible response to Morriston and Nielsen is to say that the statement, “God is good,” is similar to the statement, “Bachelors are unmarried males,”30 what has been called an “analytical [response,]…a truth of language.”31 Anticipating this response, Nielsen states, however, that it is not possible to know that God is good unless that person has a prior knowledge of goodness, the same way that a person could not say a bachelor is an unmarried male unless that person had a prior knowledge of what singleness entailed. Both Morriston and Nielsen claim the statement, “God is good,” must require some prior knowledge of goodness. This may be so. They also claim that this knowledge of goodness must exist apart from God. But why does this follow? Let us suppose for a moment that God is loving and just and good, etc., as Divine Command 26 Morriston, “What if God Commanded Something Terrible,” 252. Ibid. Emphasis original. 28 Ibid, 252-53. 29 Kai Nielsen, Ethics Without God (New York: Prometheus Books, 2010), 22. 30 This is the example used by Michael Austin. Michael Austin, “Divine Command Theory.” 31 Nielsen, Ethics Without God, 22. 27 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 83 Theorists suggest. Let us also suppose, as Aquinas and Anselm do, that God is supremely good, that moral goodness begins with God and flows from God. Let us also suppose that God creates creatures with the capacity to intuitively recognize what is good, regardless of whether they believe God exists. It does not follow that because these creatures can recognize goodness, that God is not the author of goodness, nor does it follow that God and moral goodness cannot be synonymous.32 Just because people can say “God is good,” or just because people can recognize goodness without belief in God, does not lead to the conclusion that moral goodness exists independently of God, nor does it lead to the conclusion that the statement “God is good” is trivial.33 Instead, what Divine Command Theorists argue is that God is both the foundation of moral values and the source of moral duties. Objection 2: An Inconsistent Tetrad One final objection which is often raised against Divine Command Theorists is wellarticulated by philosopher Raymond Bradley, in what he calls an inconsistent tetrad. According to Bradley, “Theists cannot believe in all [of the following] four statements without contradiction.”34 1. Any act that God commits, causes, commands, or condones is morally permissible. 2. The Bible reveals to us many of the acts that God commits, causes, commands, and condones. 32 The same argument could apply to the existence of light. Let us suppose that God is light, the first light, and that he is the ultimate cause of light, that without God there would be no light in the universe and no knowledge of light. The argument that Nielsen and Wielenberg seem to be making is that unless one had previous knowledge of light, that God cannot be light; in order for God to be light, light must exist independently of God. Again, this conclusion does not follow. 33 Interestingly, Morriston seems to recognize this fact later in his paper but does not engage further with it. He says, “That God is His nature is of course one of the implications of the classical doctrine of divine simplicity, a doctrine with a distinguished history that is still vigorously and ingeniously defended by some philosophers. I do not myself think it makes much sense to identify God with His essential properties, or even with a ‘tropish’ instantiation of them, but these are deep waters and I leave it to others to struggle with this difficult doctrine.” Morriston, “What if God Commanded Something Terrible,” 253. 34 Raymond Bradley, “A Moral Argument for Atheism,” in The Impossibility of God, ed. Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), 8. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 84 3. It is morally impermissible for anyone to commit, cause, command, or condone, acts that violate our moral principles. 4. The Bible tells us that God does in fact commit, cause, command, or condone, acts that violate our moral principles.35 This argument has been formulated in different ways by other philosophers.36 In Copan and Flannagan’s version, they notice that the argument rests on what they call a “Crucial Moral Principle”37 which is a moral principle that is said to be universal and exceptionless. In response to this, they reply that the Crucial Moral Principle, however, technically is not exceptionless.38 For example, Craig, observing God’s commanding Abraham to kill his son Isaac, states that “despite the uncomfortableness of this [command]…God has the right to do certain things that would be immoral for a human person to do on his own initiative. For example, I do not have the right to kill another innocent person. But God, as the author and giver of life, has that prerogative.”39 The divine command to Abraham is an exception to the general rule. This command is not to be taken as a timeless, exceptionless principle, but a unique command, given at a point in time, with a specific purpose in a specific situation; it is an exception, or an occasional command. In a situation where there is an exceptional or occasional command like this, it is reasonable to argue that given the Anselmian and Thomistic God in view, there must be a greater-good reason for such a command. In addition, unlike humans who are limited in their 35 Bradley, “A Moral Argument for Atheism,” 135. Wesley Morriston’s argument is structured the following way: (1) God exists and is morally perfect. (2) So God would not command one nation to exterminate the people of another unless He had a morally sufficient reason for doing so. (3) According to various OT texts, God sometimes commanded the Israelites to exterminate the people of other nations. (4) It is highly unlikely that God had a morally sufficient reason for issuing these alleged commands. (5) So it is highly unlikely that everything every book of the OT says about God is true.” Wesley Morriston, “Did God Command Genocide,” in Philosophia Chrsiti,11 no 1. 2009, 8.; See also Randal Rauser’s argument, “Never Ever Bludgeon Babies” in Randal Rauser, “‘Let Nothing That Breathes Remain Alive’: On the Problem of Divinely Commanded Genocide,” Philosophia Christi 11, no. 1 (2009): 27-41. 37 Copan and Flannagan, Did God Really Command, 144. 38 Ibid. 39 William Lane Craig, “Post Debate Comments,” in The Craig-Curley Debate: The Existence of the Christian God (University of Michigan, February 5, 1998), section 21. Available at Reasonable Faith (website). https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/the-existence-of-the-christian-god-the-craig-curley-debate. 36 THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 85 knowledge, God is omniscient and therefore uniquely qualified to issue a command that may seem intuitively wrong to finite beings in the moment (but that he knows is actually good). This should not come as a surprise. Even on a human level, there are many examples of situations where someone thinks a wrong decision has been made, only to find out later, once more information is gained that in fact the right decision was made. Take for example, a referee in a soccer match who “clearly” misses an offside call thereby allowing the attacking team to score a goal. Those viewing the game at home on their televisions are outraged because the player was clearly offside and yet was allowed to score. It is not until a different camera angle is shown that viewers at home can see that the referee made the right call. Another example is when a parent cleans a child’s wound. From the sidewalk, people can only hear a child screaming inside the house. The assumption made by those on the sidewalk who can only hear the screaming is that the child is being abused. When the people on the sidewalk intervene and break down the door, they discover that the parent is actually acting in the child’s best interest and doing the right thing.40 In the same way, given God’s omniscience and omnibenevolence, it is reasonable to believe he has justifying reasons for issuing exceptional and occasional commands that may seem wrong to others in the moment. The reality of this possibility does not threaten Divine Command Theory, rather it offers a reasonable explanation for the exceptional and occasional times in the Old Testament where God does command the death of innocent people. In these cases, it is arguable that God has a greater-good reason to issue such commands, even though we may not know what the reason is. While in this paper I am not proposing what any of the justifying reasons might be (I will leave that up to others), I am arguing that it is fair to say that 40 Illustration from lecture given by Dr. Paul Chamberlain, The Problem of Evil and Suffering, at ACTS Seminary, July 4, 2018. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 86 God, as an omniscient and omnibenevolent being, has sufficient reason for issuing occasional and exceptional commands that would seem immoral to finite beings.41 While there seems to be, at first glance a compatibility problem between God’s goodness and God’s commanding the death of innocent people, with the help of Modified Divine Command Theory, a satisfactory explanation is available. Because Modified Divine Command Theory depends on the Anselmian and Thomistic view of God—a God who is supremely good and the source of goodness—it is reasonable to believe that God has a good reason for issuing all his commands, even those occasional and exceptional times that seem problematic to us. While much more could be said about what these justifying reasons are, I am content to let my argument rest here. When Modified Divine Command Theory is properly understood, the claim that God’s goodness is compatible with the occasional times God commands the death of innocent people as recorded in the Old Testament is defensible. 41 Another worthy thesis topic would be to look at the presence of supernatural signs accompanying divine acts of judgment in the Bible. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 87 CONCLUSION My thesis begins with New Atheism’s accusation that God acts immorally in the Old Testament. The bases for this accusation are Old Testament texts recording the deaths of innocent people in the flood and in Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 7:17-21, Genesis 19:23-25), the deaths of firstborn males in Egypt (Exodus 12:29-30), the command to utterly destroy entire people groups without mercy (Deuteronomy 7:1-2, Deuteronomy 20:16, Joshua 10:40-41, 1 Samuel 15:2-3), and God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19) etc. These texts are widely acknowledged as troubling by atheists and theists alike, a fact which may appear to strengthen the New Atheist charge. Few will disagree that these texts present challenges to theists who make the claim that God is good. Historically, attempts to address these texts have been done in a variety of ways including Marcion’s two-god solution, Origen’s allegorizing difficult passages, Fretheim, Siebert, and Dallaire’s differentiating the “actual God” from the “textual God”, Copan’s hyperbolizing extermination language in the Canaan conquest, and Hess’s attempting to demonstrate that innocent people could have spared their own lives by fleeing. It has been shown, however, that each of these attempts is either deficient in some way or unable to cover the breadth of the issue when one considers all the Old Testament passages under scrutiny. Because this is the case, a new approach in dealing with the problem raised by New Atheists is required. My approach begins with the recognition that when New Atheists make an accusation against God’s behaviour in the Old Testament, they are making a moral judgment, which they believe has force. I have argued, however, that moral judgments cannot have force unless morality is objective. If it is only subjective then moral judgments are reduced to personal opinions, and therefore carry little weight. This means that, if the moral judgments against the THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 88 God of the Old Testament are to carry force, they must be premised upon a foundation of objective morality. In this thesis, I have argued that while some New Atheists are moral objectivists, they struggle to provide a rational foundation for objective morality. Furthermore, I have shown that theism provides an explanation for objective morality that is sufficiently compelling that even many prominent atheist philosophers recognize its force. In fact, some, recognizing the inevitable connection between objective morality and the existence of God, have chosen to embrace subjective morality. In summary, if New Atheists hope to be able to make moral judgments with force, their judgments must be objective judgments which are grounded on an objective moral foundation. This, of course, requires that they must also provide a successful explanation for it. If they cannot do this, then theism remains the only viable option left. A growing number of atheists have attempted precisely this—to provide an atheistic explanation for objective morality—through various versions of Atheistic Moral Realism. I have argued, however, that Atheistic Moral Realism fails to provide a necessary grounding for objective moral judgments. In some cases, its advocates assert that moral facts are simply brute facts needing no further grounding or explanation. I have argued, however, that as an explanation for something, this is inadequate. In fact, it comes across as virtually an admission that one has no explanation, and the use of brute-force terminology is merely an attempt to deny that one is needed. The question of grounding of objective morality, however, is the very question at stake. In this way, Realists fail to ground objective morality. In this thesis I have argued the following seven contentions: 1. Atheists make moral judgments expecting them to have force. 2. Moral judgments have force only if morality is objective. 3. Atheists must provide a non-theistic grounding for objective morality in order for their moral judgments to have force. 4. Theism provides an adequate ground for objective morality. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 89 5. If objective morality exists but it cannot be grounded or satisfactorily explained within an atheistic framework, then a moral-creator God is the only viable explanation left. 6. Atheism cannot ground objective morality or provide a satisfactory explanation for its existence. 7. Therefore, either morality is subjective and moral judgments lack force or morality is objective and God is the best explanation for it. In summary, my thesis has argued that moral judgments made by New Atheists against the behaviour of God in the Old Testament are more damaging for atheism than for theism. Either their moral judgments are subjective and, thus, lack force, or they are objective and, thus, require a foundation which atheism struggles to provide. After making this reply to the New Atheist charge against the God of the Old Testament, my thesis addressed the seeming incompatibility between the claim that God is good and his commands to kill innocent people. I have argued that, while Euthyphro-related objections against Divine Command Theory persist, a careful application of Modified Divine Command Theory can satisfactorily address these objections. Once one understands the nature of the Anselmian and Thomistic God that Modern Divine Command Theorists have in view—that God is both supremely good and the source of all goodness—it is justifiable to think that God has good reasons for commanding the death of innocent people. THE CHALLENGE BY NEW ATHEISTS AGAINST GOD’S ACTIONS 90 BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Robert. Finite and Infinite Goods. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ———. “Flavors, Colors, and God.” In The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology, 243-62. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. ———. The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Alston, William P. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. New York: Cornell University Press, 1991. Anscombe, G. E. M. Ethics, Religion, and Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. 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