Q&A: The Argument from Morality
The Argument from Morality
Question
In the notebooks on matters of faith, notebook 4, regarding the argument from morality:
You argued that in order for morality to be valid consistently, and not vary from person to person, an external validator is needed, and that is the God of the argument from morality.
But the claim is still not entirely clear to me. After all, apparently even the existence of God is not enough to generate morality (this is, after all, deriving an ought from an is, the naturalistic fallacy—the fact that God wants people to do something cannot by itself establish that there is a need to do it). If so, additional assumptions are needed anyway in order to validate morality, and it is possible that those additional assumptions would make the above assumption unnecessary.
That is, the existence of God is not a sufficient condition for the existence of morality, and therefore perhaps not a necessary one either.
If you have answered this claim in the past, I would be glad if you could direct me to it.
Moshe Rabinowitz\'
Answer
First, God is not required in order for morality to be uniform among people, but in order for it to have objective validity. That is not the same thing.
Second, if God is a necessary condition for morality, then morality is a sufficient condition for God. That is a simple rule in logic.
And third, the additional assumption that is required is commitment to the will of God. So that too is connected to the existence of God and presupposes it.