Q&A: Why Is the Question "Can God Create a Stone He Cannot Lift" Nonsense?
Why Is the Question "Can God Create a Stone He Cannot Lift" Nonsense?
Question
Hi Michi.
Your view is that the only justification for moral laws is a commanding God.
I don’t understand: this still doesn’t give any reason to listen to moral laws, because how do we know their source is purely from God? Perhaps they are a social / cultural / evolutionary product, and there is no reason at all to commit ourselves to them and act accordingly (aside from utilitarianism, of course). True, if we knew that God commanded them then they would be binding, but how do we know that this is really the case?
With thanks and appreciation
Answer
I don’t understand the question. If in your view morality is not from Him, then don’t obey morality. The argument only says that without belief in God there is no valid morality. That does not necessarily mean that if there is belief in God, there is valid morality. In other words, the argument addresses someone who thinks there is valid morality, and tells him that he is assuming, even if only implicitly, the existence of God.
As for your actual question, this is mere skepticism. About anything I think, you can ask me: how do you know it’s true? If that’s what I think, then the burden of proof is on you to show me that I’m wrong. But as I said, that has nothing to do with the argument.
Discussion on Answer
If I think morality exists and is valid, then whoever wants to argue that it is an illusion bears the burden of proof. What’s unclear about that? Exactly like someone who wants to argue that my eyes deceive me, or that my mind deceives me, on any other subject.
A proposal to explain something in evolutionary terms is indeed not skepticism. But what does that have to do with this?
If you want to say that evolution implanted in me a moral impulse (a conscience) even though it is not valid, then by the same token you could argue that evolution caused me to believe my eyes or my thinking even though they have no substance. Maybe it also caused me to believe in evolution even though there is nothing to it. 🙂
Even someone who doesn’t believe in God is forbidden to steal and murder; it’s just that he cannot know that. Just as a Jew who doesn’t believe in God is obligated in the commandments even though he cannot know that.
I disagree. Ockham taught us with his razor that the starting point is not to add entities / explanations and so on, and if morality can also be understood by what we already know (evolution—and this isn’t some theory, it is fairly clear that such traits would develop), then what grounds are there for inventing ethical realism? The one who makes the claim and introduces something new bears the burden of proof.
Then why invent that vision is reliable, if evolution teaches that it is useful but not necessarily reliable?
Exactly, and therefore there is no basis for morality, and whoever wants to obligate me should prove why an additional thesis should be added—ethical realism, for example.
Right, what I really meant to ask is this: if you think morality exists (it seems strange to me that you would say to someone who doesn’t believe in God that he can murder and steal, but maybe), why is this skepticism? Just as Dawkins’s proposal to use "climbing Mount Improbable" to explain the complexity of a hand is not mere skepticism, because once it is known that evolution took place there is no longer any need to justify the existence of God (and I think you didn’t disagree with the basis of the argument, only that in your view it isn’t sufficient), so too regarding morality: you are the one adding something beyond what is already certain, and it is on you to prove that the existing basis (evolution) is not enough.