Q&A: Objective Morality as the Laws of Mathematics and God
Objective Morality as the Laws of Mathematics and God
Question
With God’s help,
Hello, honored Rabbi,
People commonly say that morality proves the existence of God, and the Rabbi also uses this proof.
But lately I’ve come across more and more contemporary atheist philosophers who believe in objective morality (and sometimes in various other objective Platonic entities), yet they see no connection at all between morality and God.
If I may ask a few questions:
A. It seems to me that this approach raises an obvious question: how are human beings aware of that external objective entity? It seems that the theory of evolution could not bridge this gap at all, just as it cannot explain the entry of the soul into the human body from a dualist point of view. So although we are entering a very speculative realm, it seems that God can explain this quite well, whereas without God we are left with all sorts of rather puzzling facts that apparently will never have any explanation or connecting thread between them. Does using such an argument sound to you like a classic God of the gaps? And still, does it sound reasonable to you? Because usually we try to explain the world as much as possible, and simply without God it does not seem that we could ever know of another explanation that would sound reasonable to humanity. After all, God is grounding things in something familiar.
On the other hand, how would this be essentially different from Aristotelian teleological explanations, something along the lines that souls in the spiritual world wanted to enter the physical world, and they themselves are able to behold the pleasantness of the Idea of morality? Or deterministic explanations, such as that there is a law that randomly connects the existence of a brain with bringing a soul, and the Idea of morality projects a field of moral information onto human beings.
To me personally, the explanation with God sounds preferable, although seemingly there is no way to justify that. What does the Rabbi think about this?
B. If we assume that there exists an Idea of morality, then we can define that act X is a bad act, but can that explain to us why we ought to refrain from act X?
It sounds much more plausible that an idea by itself can provide us only with informative data, but is much less capable of constituting obligating, commanding information. But on the other hand, a believer who says that one must refrain from act X because God commands it can also be asked: why listen to God? And usually he will claim that this is an axiom. But if so, how is that different from the claim that one must listen to the Idea because that too is an axiom?
C. Do you think there is another way to show a direct connection between the existence of morality and God (were it not for the other proofs), or only what I mentioned earlier?
Answer
I don’t understand this whole thing. I explained at length my view about morality without God. Now you’re asking whether it’s possible? I said no. You ask whether there is another way to show it? Why would there be? I wrote what the way is, in my opinion.
Generally speaking, I’d say that the view you presented here of atheists who advocate morality seems to me like saying that Shakespeare didn’t write Macbeth, but rather his cousin, who was also named Shakespeare. In the proof from morality, God is the entity responsible for and validating morality. As long as they too think there is such an entity, they are not atheists but believers in it.
Discussion on Answer
To say that morality is objective is exactly like saying that taste and smell are objective.
In short, nonsense.
K, take a look at Moshe Ratt’s doctoral dissertation, which deals with exactly this theory. It’s on his website.
First of all, I think I do know your view, even though I don’t know of a single formulation you have for this proof.
Because it seems as though you’ve presented many formulations. For example, sometimes it sounds as though you’re going in the direction of Leibniz’s demand for a sufficient reason for the Idea, in a kind of cosmological proof. Sometimes, following the Euthyphro dilemma, you go in the direction that the Idea is God’s nature and morality is His will and that which validates it, as in Column 278. And sometimes you go with defining the Idea as God, period. But only following the other proofs, together with Occam’s razor, do you add more and more formulations to it until a more theistic worldview emerges. That also seems to come across in external websites that quote you.
I’m asking this because, as I said at the beginning, I’ve come across a series of atheist philosophers who strongly claim that there is no connection at all. And on Wikipedia they’re given descriptions important enough that it seems worth examining their position… as though each one is at least the Aristotle or Kant of his generation, which is why I asked. (Whereas religious thinkers often don’t get such compliments, and moreover some of them don’t even appear in Hebrew, like Alvin Plantinga.)
In any case, that’s why I’m asking whether one can say that an Idea validates morality. It doesn’t sound all that plausible, but to the same extent that the axiomatic assumption that God’s will is capable of validating it sounds possible, maybe it’s also possible to assume that morality alone serves as its own self-validation.
And I also asked question B from the epistemic angle, and regarding that I don’t really remember much of your discussion, truthfully, aside from mentioning that He implanted the laws of morality. But I don’t remember a systematic treatment of this point. For example, whether the hypothesis that there is a God can explain this point better, for all sorts of reasons, than any other theory we don’t know, even though we can imagine them, and so on and so on.
Anyway, I hope you won’t refer me to Column 247 because of this 🙂