August 14, 2007

Objective Morality

Posted at 12:11 am by Richard and tagged , , , , , , . Popularity: 36% [?]

I hadn’t really come across the argument from morality much before - at least not enough to seriously think about it. I’d heard people ask “if you don’t believe in God, then where do your morals come from?”, but rather than answer the question (I’d say honestly “I don’t know”), I’d retort with the observation that Christians “pick and choose” their morals from the bible, and clearly their morals come from the same place as mine - and it’s not the bible (an idea I’d always had, but one that Dawkins helped me articulate).

For those not familiar with the argument from morality, it basically goes like this1:

  1. If God does not exist, then there are no objective (i.e. independent of human opinion) moral values and duties.

  2. There are objective moral values and duties.

  3. Therefore God exists.

My gut instinct when I first thought about this argument is that the first point has issues. I’ve asserted before that we can have morality without religion2, and I still believe that a moral code independent of religion is superior, but as for where this morality could come from - I have no idea. I seem to remember Dawkins talking about how morality could have evolved, but that wouldn’t be objective morality, would it?

Which as got me thinking about the idea of objective morality as a whole, and I can’t help but ask - do we really have objective morality (point 2)? Zach Moore says that, at least at a debate lecture he attended, the idea the objective morality exists seems to be generally accepted, but I can’t help but feel that there’s something wrong with that, too.

What morals do we have that are objective? “Murder is bad” - Surely there’s some times it’s justified3? “Do no harm” - but what if my survival is at stake? “Do the greatest Good” - but, what IS good? Even the golden rule isn’t objective (although the rule itself seems to be the most universal law of morality) - “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” relies on our own opinions! Perhaps I really wouldn’t care if you stole my girlfriend?4

Do we really have objective morals? If so, what?

  1. Moore, Zachary (2007) Dr. Craig Meets Dr. Zach [↩]
  2. See my three part series on morality. [↩]
  3. or is that just when we don’t call it murder? [↩]
  4. Try it, and I’ll kill you! ;) [↩]

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