Richard Dawkins: A world with no God would be immoral

[afleitch]

DC and RFayette are getting to the key point.

The dumb version of the God-and-morality argument is the one Dawkins made, that belief in God is necessary for people to act morally. This is an insult to both nonbelievers whose morality is negated despite clear evidence to the contrary, and to believers whose morality is reduced to a transaction. It's a thoroughly contemptible line of argument.

The more interesting version of the argument is the one about the conceptual foundations for morality. It speaks to the underlying question, "what does it mean for something to be right or wrong?" Abrahamic religions provide a clear and decisive answer to that question, which is usually called divine command theory: right is what God wants, wrong is what God doesn't want. This clarity is very useful for those of us who feel the need to truly understand morality as something universal that transcends material reality, rather than just following our intuitions. I don't think there's any secular moral theory that provides this kind of clarity, although some IMO do provide for a solid basis (I'm especially fond of ideal observer theory and its potential connection to virtue ethics).

Following our intuitions (if that is what we do) is a more moral foundation for ethics in that case?

I keep returning to this but it tends to be left hanging when I do;

Sin by it’s definition is an action against god; a sin need have no grounding in whether that action is right or wrong. If things are ‘good’ because god says that they are good, or because they line up with his will things are ‘good’ or just, then morals are arbitrary and subjective.

'Good’ means nothing. Saying ‘god is good’ is simply saying he is god. It says nothing meaningful about his actions because god would be ‘good’ no matter what he does.

Not only does this rob good of its goodness, it also robs god of its glory. Why should there be praise for god if he would be equally praised even if he did the complete opposite? If what is arbitrary replaces what is just or reasonable, then all justice is, if anything, is what is pleasing to god.

So if things are good for another reason, if goodness needs to have value, then it cannot come from god.  Saying that morality is actually grounded in god’s nature and expressed in his commands and we run off and ‘betray that’ by sinning doesn’t avoid this problem. Whatever it was god’s nature to prefer would still be right by definition and still diminish the significance of moral terms. So saying god is good would just be saying that god accords to his own nature which isn’t really an accomplishment. I accord to mine.

[afleitch]

They aren't arbitrary and subjective because God is not an arbitrary and subjective being. God in the Abrahamic religions is all-knowing, all-powerful and, you know, the creator of everything. From these premises, it's reasonable to come to the conclusion that what He has to say matters in a more fundamental way than what anyone else does. If He designed the very plane of existence we exist on, then His will is its very organizing principle, and therefore can claim the status of a universal law.

How are gods laws not arbitrary when it is arbiter of the laws? That doesn't follow. There's no other overseer.

Well yeah, from a DCT perspective it's obviously impossible for human beings to assess God's actions morally. "God is good no matter what he does" is a really improper way to say it, though, because God isn't just acting randomly. God has a will which is eternal and unchanging in pursuit of His purposes, and which explains all of His actions. "No matter what he does" implies that God would just do anything, but no serious Christian believes that. God would only do certain specific things that accord with his will.

Which is what I argued. Whatever god determines is 'good', so there's nothing exceptional or praise worthy about what god choses to do. If it's constrained by an 'eternal and unchanging will' then if anything it's less equipped to situationally react than we are. Unless you think god has established morality which it is
now bound by which means it exists outside of god.

Good is what ought to be. Saying God is good is saying that God is the judge of what ought to be. You're perfectly in your right to find that definition unsatisfying (so do I, in case that wasn't clear), but it is a logically consistent and meaningful definition. Secular morality still has trouble coming up with one.

Is god 'good'?

Theistic morality is a form of subjectivism. Saying that morality is actually grounded in god’s nature and expressed in it's commands doesn’t avoid this problem. Whatever it was god’s nature to prefer would still be right by definition and still diminish the significance of moral terms. Hence god simply 'accords'. If it's nature were different, or the complete inverse; if it was omnimalevolent god would still be 'good'.

[afleitch]

Anyway, yeah, I understand why this bothers you since (as I said later in that post) it bothers me too. All I'm saying is that I understand why people might prefer a morality grounded in divine arbitration over a morality grounded in nothing at all.

I don't think the alternative to divine arbitration is 'nothing at all.' Even if it was 'nothing at all' why is that necessarily a bad thing? if there is no third party, then goodness is already arbitrary as you can't defer to anything else to morally rationalise god's command as that deferral would not require there to be a god. Interesting, we can do that as a species and I think we do it quite well, so I don't see why it's really a problem. Unless people really are arguing that 'there must be a definite source for right and wrong otherwise I'm going to go mad and kill you all.'

The reason I asked, 'is god good' is because if you accept that god has love and compassion and other affirmative characteristics, there're not good because of any other reason than because god has them; they 'reflect god.' So when you and I are are doing good things, you're not 'doing' them, there's no moral reasoning going on; you're just 'reflecting god.'

So you aren't providing any reasoning for those moral actions and it also flows from this that god cannot have reasons behind what it is doing because otherwise you're grounding the moral value of the action.

Unless you think god has established morality which it is
now bound by which means it exists outside of god.

It's my understanding--I'm hoping one of our Jewish posters can correct me if I'm mistaken about this--that in certain currents of Jewish thought this is the position of the Torah, a covenant binding on God as well as on humanity; the moral logic underlying the mitzvot isn't conditional on God's continuing to uphold it, it just is, the way laws of physics just are (or, for that matter, the way God Himself just is). I was saying to Antonio privately the other day that I think this is at least as strong an a priori definition of what morality is as divine command; he observed that the problem with it is that it still doesn't provide any non-revealed grounds for getting at the content of moral facts.

It's something I'm a little familiar with (and the closed model Islamic tahwid too which has been something I've enjoyed this year) which is why I threw it in there. One of my concerns with divine command theory is that it's a piss poor model for Christian ethics (and I have some sympathy with Aquinas here) Christianity has 'divided' god, and has given a New Testament. So DCT doesn't tie this together as adequately as it tries to ascertain.

[afleitch]

Hang on. Are you arguing in favourof DCT all this time? I was wondering why you were getting overly defensive. Let me think about this.