Morality without God + Justification for Divine Morality
I read column 456, which explains your argument that if there is no God, there is necessarily no moral realism, and if there is moral realism, it necessarily comes from God. Two questions came to my mind:
Where does the justification for God’s morality come from? Why is moral realism necessarily divine? I read the entire column and it was not clear to me why God is different from morality derived from the fruits of evolution. Let’s assume that God is eternal and omnipotent, and has moral demands on us. What characteristic of God makes him morally just?
Second question, what do you think atheists should do about morality? If you were an atheist, or if, in a purely theoretical sense, the existence of God meant that there necessarily *is* no moral realism, what would you do? After all, God himself comes from the physico-theological argument and your opinion of his existence does not depend on your feelings if you are a rational person, so what would happen if there was a conclusion that there really is no moral realism? I ask purely out of curiosity.
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Apologies for the misunderstanding, I'll try to clarify.
The first question is what makes God the objective/just morality you talked about in the column and in the debate with Enoch? I argue that moral realism does not exist and cannot exist according to the definition of morality. If it does exist and you determined it according to God, then it is subjective according to God. What is the justification for the correct and moral morality being God and not something else? I copy from the column: “My argument consists of two steps: A. Moral realism. B. Belief in God as the only possible basis for moral realism.” So I ask why God is the only possible basis? Why is he a basis at all? What is the justification?
Let's leave the second question, I understood the answer (that atheists do not have a just moral obligation).
What makes God the objective and just moral being? God is not moral and does not become moral. God gives validity to the laws of morality (in column 457 I also explained that in my opinion he does not determine them. It is forced upon him).
I do not understand the rest of your questions here. Everything was explained there and I do not see the difficulty you raise.
Okay, so he gives them validity, why exactly? What gives him the right to give validity to moral laws? It's not clear to me how God is different from any other atheist proposal for a material source of moral validity.
This is what column 456 is dedicated to. I answered that there. A law has no validity without a legislator. A collection of molecules has no binding norms. You can, of course, argue about the validity of moral laws. But if you accept their validity, you cannot do so without belief in a legislator. I am just repeating myself. If nothing new comes up here, then I am done.
Does this mean that he necessarily demands moral obligations from us? And if so, is that religion in your opinion? Or could it be that the God who created the world doesn't care at all about the morality by which we behave? I ask because you said that it is rational to believe that God exists and demands moral obligations from us. It was not clear to me whether you meant religion or whether he necessarily demands obligations from us by his very existence.
In one message you wrote that in your opinion ‘he does not determine them’, and then you wrote that ’the law has no validity without a legislator’.
So does he legislate them or not?
Or do you mean that he does not determine them, and yet they are binding because he exists (are they delegated from him? Is the world that is delegated from him such that it is necessary for these to be moral laws?)
I referred you to column 457. There I explained the difference.
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