Q&A: Morality Without God + The Justification for Divine Morality
Morality Without God + The Justification for Divine Morality
Question
I read column 456, which explains your claim that if there is no God then there is necessarily no moral realism, and if there is moral realism then it necessarily comes from God. Two questions came up for me:
Where does the justification for God’s morality come from? Why is moral realism necessarily divine? I read the entire column and it wasn’t clear to me why God is different from morality derived from the products of evolution. Suppose this is an eternal, omnipotent God, and He has moral demands of us. What characteristic of God makes Him the correct morality?
Second question: what do you think atheists should do regarding morality? If you were an atheist—or, in a completely theoretical sense, if the existence of God necessarily meant that there is *no* moral realism—what would you do? After all, God Himself comes from the physico-theological argument, and your view about His existence does not depend on your feelings if you are a rational person, so what would happen if the conclusion really were that there is no moral realism? I’m asking purely out of curiosity.
Answer
The first part contains a collection of different questions that I don’t understand. Formulate one more concrete and clearer question.
If I were an atheist, I assume I would behave according to the rules of morality, as many atheists do. But if you are asking what they ought to do, the answer is: nothing. Whatever they feel like. I didn’t understand the rest of the paragraph, and I understood even less how it connects to the first part of the paragraph.
Discussion on Answer
What makes God the objective and correct morality? God is not morality, nor does He become morality. God gives validity to the laws of morality (in column 457 I also explained that in my view He does not determine them. They are imposed on Him).
I do not understand the rest of your questions here. Everything was explained there, and I do not see the difficulty you are raising.
Okay, so He gives them validity—but why exactly? What gives Him the right to give validity to the laws of morality? It’s not clear to me how God differs from any other atheistic proposal for a material source of moral validity.
That is what column 456 is devoted to. I answered that there. No law has any validity without a lawgiver. 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 will not be able to do so without belief in a lawgiving factor. I’m just repeating myself. If nothing new comes up here, then I’m done.
Does that mean that He necessarily demands moral duties from us? And if so, is that religion in your view? Or could it be that a God who created the world does not care at all about the morality by which we conduct ourselves? I’m asking because you said it is rational to believe that God exists and demands moral duties from us. It wasn’t clear to me whether you meant religion, or whether He necessarily demands duties from us by virtue of His very existence.
In one message you wrote that in your view “He does not determine them,” and then you wrote that “no law has validity without a lawgiver.”
So does He legislate them or not?
Or do you mean that He does not determine them, and nevertheless they are binding because He exists (are they emanated from Him? Is the world that emanates from Him such that there is a necessity that these be the laws of morality?)
I referred you to column 457. There I explained the difference.
Sorry for the misunderstanding; I’ll try to clarify.
The first question is: what makes God the objective/correct morality that you talked about in the column and in the debate with Enoch? What I’m getting at is that moral realism does not exist and cannot exist according to the definition of morality. If it does exist and you ground it in God, then it is subjective according to God. What is the justification for the claim that the correct and moral morality is God rather than something else? I’m copying 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’m asking why God is the only possible basis. Why is He a basis at all? What is the justification?
Let’s leave aside the second question; I understood the answer (that atheists have no justified moral obligation).