This is a continuation of my response to the popular Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Begin with part 1 here. For part 1 of the critique of the moral argument, go here.

In the (mercifully) final section of their chapter on morality, Geisler and Turek (GT) list five areas of confusion within the topic of absolute vs. relative morality. Since the boys have indeed been quite confused about this, perhaps we’ll get some clarity on the issue. The labels in this enumerated list come from their book.

Confusion #1—absolute morals vs. changing behavior

GT tell us that relativists confuse is and ought. You can change what you do, but you can’t change what you ought to do. GT tell us that relativists sometimes preface their outrage at backwards Christian attitudes about issues like sex with, “This is the twenty-first century!” as if morality adapts to the times.

But of course morality has changed over time—consider changing attitudes toward slavery, genocide, and rape, for example. During every time period, society thinks that they have finally gotten on the right side of these issues. GT can fume about it, but morality changes. Given that the Bible’s morality is abysmal, society’s moral evolution away from that is a good thing.

GT respond to charges that our many approaches to morality undercut the idea of a Moral Law, an objective morality.

But that doesn’t mean there is no unchanging Moral Law; it simply means that we all violate it. (page 182)

No, our contradictory moral actions mean that there is no objective, reliably accessible Morality, which they have already admitted. How they imagine this strengthens their claim of objective morality (when the natural explanation works just fine), I can’t imagine.

There’s also a vague reference to the is-ought problem, which I respond to here.

Confusion #2—absolute morals vs. changing perceptions of the facts

GT try to salvage the idea of objective, unchanging morals with the example of witch burning. We used to burn witches but not anymore. A change in morality? The boys tell us no:

What has changed is not the moral principle that murder is wrong but the perception or factual understanding of whether “witches” can really murder people by their curses. (183)

Not really. The KJV of Exodus 22:18 memorably demands of us, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Western society today includes witches (that is, people who so identify and who have corresponding supernatural beliefs), but only the most fringe Christian would demand the death penalty. This is a change in morality, and our modern morality (which is so familiar as to seem like common sense) wins out over a foreign idea in an ancient book.

Confusion #3—absolute morals vs. applying them to particular situations

Even if two victims wind up disagreeing over the morality of a particular act, this does not mean morality is relative. An absolute Moral Law can exist even if people fail to know the right thing to do in a particular situation. (183)

Translation: “Yeah, but I never said that objective morality was reliably accessible.” (But then what good is it?)

The larger point GT make is, “You haven’t proven me wrong.” That’s correct, but that’s not the skeptic’s job. I’ve given a plausible natural explanation for morality. You want to make the remarkable claim that objective morality exists? I’m listening, but not only have you done nothing but assert it, the moral issues you raise are better explained with natural explanations.

Going forward, I’ll leave pointing out the Assumed Objectivity fallacy as an exercise for the reader.

GT move on to imagine people puzzling over a life-or-death dilemma. They come to different conclusions and conclude that morality is relative.

But the dilemma actually proves the opposite—that morality is absolute. How? Because there would be no dilemma if morality were relative! If morality were relative and there were no absolute right to life, you’d say, “It doesn’t matter what happens!” . . . The very reason we struggle with the dilemma is because we know how valuable life is. (184)

Let’s consider the moral options that GT imagine. They reject option 1, some strange form of laissez-faire, “I have my opinion and you have yours, and whatever you do is fine with me” kind of morality. This strawman morality exists only in GT’s imaginations.

GT hope you’ll pick option 2 and say that an objectively correct answer exists, and our only problem, when faced with a moral dilemma, is calling forth this answer from the phlogiston or ectoplasm or wherever it lives. And GT admit that they have no reliable voodoo to do so.

It’s up to the skeptic to point to option 3, the obvious natural explanation: we all share a common sense of morality, and ambiguous or subtle moral puzzles can separate us into opposing camps. There is no objectively correct answer.

The fact that there are difficult problems in morality doesn’t disprove the existence of objective moral laws any more than difficult problems in science disprove the existence of objective natural laws. (184)

Translation: “Ha! You can’t prove me wrong.” That’s not much of an argument.

Yes, there are difficult problems in science, and there are objective natural laws. Science continually pushes through difficult problems and finds those laws. But you say that parallels our search for objective moral laws?

Show me. Science has uncovered many new laws about nature in the last two centuries, so produce one example of a new objective moral law from that time. Eternal aphorisms like the Golden Rule don’t count because they’re old. And if it’s a new development (say, “slavery is bad” or “no genocide”), it can’t be unchanging and is therefore not objective.

The attempted parallel with natural laws fails.

If just one moral obligation exists (such as don’t murder, or don’t rape, or don’t torture babies), then the Moral Law exists. If the Moral Law exists, then so does the Moral Law Giver. (184)

GT are getting desperate now and have ignored the collateral damage. They’ve thrown out of the life raft any claim that their Moral Law is reliably accessible—or even accessible at all. Their objective morality has become a useless bit of trivia—something that exists but might as well not for all the good it does us. They have no explanation for God’s Old Testament rampages and moral errors. As a result, they have discarded any claim to be honestly searching for the truth. This is all to make the claim, “Well, you haven’t proven that objective moral truth is impossible, so God could still exist!”

Would God want to rule the moral wasteland that you’ve left him?

Confusion #4—absolute morals (what) vs. a relative culture (how)

Morality varies by culture—yes, I agree.

Confusion #5—absolute morals vs. moral disagreements

GT note that there are contentious moral issues within society.

Some think abortion is acceptable while others think it’s murder. But just because there are different opinions about abortion doesn’t mean morality is relative. (185)

Not for sure, but it’s a good clue. This is the “You haven’t proven me wrong!” argument again. The burden of proof is yours.

Next up, GT handwave that “each side defends what they think is an absolute moral value.” Redefinition! No one believes in relative morality, and morality is now only absolute morality.

On the heels of that is another redefinition. If you disagree with GT’s anti-abortion stance,

This moral disagreement [about abortion] exists because some people are suppressing the Moral Law in order [to] justify what they want to do. (186)

So if you’re pro-choice, you’re just wrong. As if the arrogance couldn’t get any greater, morality has devolved to become that which GT believe.

I can’t take any more of the same childish errors over and over, so I’m done with this chapter. I’m amazed that the Christian flock is content to be fed such pablum.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/28/15.)

Image from Wikipedia, CC license
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This is a continuation of my response to the popular Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Begin with part 1 here. For part 1 of the critique of the moral argument, go here.

We move on to dabble in history.

Founding U.S. documents

About the U. S. Declaration of Independence, Geisler and Turek (GT) say:

Notice the phrase, “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” In other words, the Founding Fathers believed that human rights are God-given. (page 175)

Nope. “Creator” to the Founding Fathers wasn’t the Yahweh of the Old Testament, it was a hands-off, deist god. The Declaration is of no help to the Christian cause because it makes clear who’s in charge: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Unlike Harry Truman, God doesn’t have a sign on his desk that reads, “The buck stops here.” God is irrelevant to the American experiment.

And an appeal to the Declaration is always a sign that the apologists couldn’t find what they wanted in the Constitution. The Constitution remains the supreme law of the land, while the Declaration is just an important historical document with no role in government today.

Objective morality in the Nuremburg trials

If there were no such international morality that transcended the laws of the secular German government, then the Allies would have had no grounds to condemn the Nazis. (175)

The Allies won, and they imposed their laws—is that surprising? Isn’t that how wars work? Whose laws do you think they should’ve used?

In other words, we couldn’t have said that the Nazis were absolutely wrong unless we knew what was absolutely right. But we do know they were absolutely wrong, so the Moral Law must exist. (175)

Who said the Nazis were absolutely wrong? The Allies said they were regular wrong, we had a trial of 24 German leaders, and we imposed justice from our perspective. This wasn’t a sham trial with summary death sentences for all—half were sentenced to death, three were acquitted, and most of the rest were given prison terms. Centuries from now, future historians might criticize those sentences from their perspective.

The Problem of Evil

GT move on to address what Christians often admit is their toughest intellectual challenge: why does a good god allow so much bad in the world? They answer with an analogy from C. S. Lewis: “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” God’s actions may appear wrong, but that can only be because we’re comparing them against an absolute good.

The only straight lines we can make are imperfectly straight lines; similarly, the only moral standards come from our own not-objective rules. GT have again only allowed themselves the option of imagining one kind of morality, an absolute or objective morality.

Notice also that to make this argument, GT must admit that there is a Problem of Evil, which puts God in a very bad light.

Lewis, like you and me, can only detect injustice because there’s an unchanging standard of justice written on our hearts. (176)

That’s another redefinition—now the Moral Law has become unchanging. But I don’t know what’s unchanging about it. Is slavery wrong? It sure wasn’t back in the Old Testament. Same for genocide. Same for polygamy. I certainly think that slavery is wrong for all time, but the Bible won’t support that.

The Holocaust

GT want to know, how do Jewish atheists argue against the Holocaust? Are a critique about a meal and a critique about the Holocaust both mere opinions?

That works for me. Perhaps there’s a word difference that will capture the universally held or deeply felt nature of judgments about the Holocaust. Regardless, this still doesn’t get GT their desired objective morality. The natural explanation of morality works fine: we have a shared idea of morality, and killing millions of people is almost universally accepted as wrong.

GT can’t let go of the idea of a moral law that’s not objective. They imagine that a claim like “racism is wrong” has no objective meaning without the god-given Moral Law. This chapter is 25 pages long, but they could distill it to a page if they cut out the repeated groundless assertions. For example:

Unless there’s an unchanging standard of good, there is no such thing as objective evil. But since we all know that evil exists, then so does the Moral Law. (177)

If the Moral Law doesn’t exist, then there’s no moral difference between the behavior of Mother Teresa and that of Hitler. (178)

[C. S. Lewis said,] “If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about.” (178)

Suppose I think it’s okay to kill mice in my house, and you say that one must capture them humanely and set them free outside. There’s a moral difference; is that impossible without a Real Morality?

Ordinary, natural morality is quite capable of distinguishing between Mother Teresa and Hitler (let’s assume that Mother Teresa is the shining example of goodness, as they falsely imagine). GT refuse to consider that the natural explanation even exists, let alone explains morality better than any claim to objective morality. This is the Assumed Objectivity fallacy—either assuming without evidence that objective morals exist or assuming that everyone knows and accepts objective morality.

The word “moral” is just another adjective. Can a puppy be cute or a sunset beautiful or a resolution fair without objective definitions of “cute,” “beautiful,” and “fair”? Of course—look them up in the dictionary. The same is true for “moral.” These concepts come from within, not outside, human culture, and they’re not unchanging. Morality is important, like other aspects of culture, but here GT confuse important with supernatural, probably deliberately.

Moral relativists? Hoist by their own petard!

GT imagine a chaotic world where abortion, birth control, and sex were outlawed. What could atheists say about this?

So by rebelling against the Moral Law, atheists have, ironically, undermined their grounds for rebelling against anything. In fact, without the Moral Law, no one has any objective grounds for being for or against anything! (181)

Again, this is the Assumed Objectivity fallacy. We don’t need objective grounds for morality because the regular kind works (and is the only one we have evidence for).

They continue by arguing that excuses for breaking moral rules are evidence for the Moral Law. Excuses like “It was just a white lie” or “I had to steal the bread because I was starving” or even “I had to shoot him because he had a gun himself” point to the Moral Law.

Nope—these excuses point to a shared natural morality. There is no need to imagine an objective morality.

I don’t remember ever seeing so much blather that could be shut down so quickly, in Gordian Knot fashion. Just drop the demand for objective morality, and this empty argumentation blows away like irrational smoke.

Concluded in part 4.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/23/15.)

Image from Wikimedia, CC license

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This is a continuation of my response to the popular Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Begin the critique of the book here. For part 1 of this critique of the moral argument, go here.

Fundamental problems with the Moral Law argument

Geisler and Turek (GT) formulate their moral argument as follows:

1. Every law has a law giver

2. There is a Moral Law

3. Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver

What they don’t mention is that every law giver referred to in point 1 is a material being, but then they switch to an immaterial law giver in point 3. They do nothing to address or even acknowledge the fact that their argument can’t explain the change (thanks to commenter MNb for this insight). The problem with the argument becomes obvious when this is made explicit:

1. Every law has a material law giver

2. There is a Moral Law

3. Therefore, there is an immaterial Moral Law giver

Here’s another variant (from commenter primenumbers) that also skewers GT’s flabby argument:

1. Moral values come from a mind.

2. Objectivity means independence from any mind.

3. Therefore, objective moral values don’t exist.

And are we even using the same definition of “law”? Yes, morality is related to human laws, which are to some extent codified morality, but while laws are arbitrary (that is, not objective), some aspects of morality are innate and (from the standpoint of humans) unchangeable. Examples might be the Golden Rule or a prohibition against unjustified killing. Human laws have law givers, but morality is, in part, programmed into humans by evolution and unchangeable.

The analogy and therefore the foundation of the argument fails, but let’s set that aside and see what else GT have up their sleeves.

More redefinitions

One of the problems so far has been to nail down what this Moral Law actually is. They imagine objective moral laws, but what does that mean? Starting with objective morality as a morality grounded outside humanity—rules valid regardless of whether anyone believes in them—the definition changed to the morality that we feel. Then, they back away from the idea that we can reliably access this morality, so it becomes morality that we only dimly feel. Expect more reversals as their moral theory continues to chafe against reality.

Let’s return to GT’s moral argument.

We can’t not know, for example, that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings for no reason. Some people may deny it and commit murder anyway, but deep in their hearts they know murder is wrong. (page 172)

Uh, yeah—murder is wrong by definition. And the natural hypothesis (see part 1 for the natural morality hypothesis that I defend) is sufficient to explain our revulsion at killing innocent people. The supernatural hypothesis is unnecessary.

Relativists make two primary truth claims: 1) there is no absolute truth; and 2) there are no absolute moral values. (172)

I make neither claim.

“1 + 1 = 2” may be an absolute truth. As for absolute moral values, I’ve simply seen no evidence to overturn the natural explanation of morality. I insist on evidence for objective morality, and I suspect I have a long wait.

GT uses “relative morality” in opposition to objective morality, but because the term has been so clumsily defined by apologists, I prefer to state my position as “not objective morality.” To minimize confusion in this post, though, I’ll stick with GT’s terms, “relativists” and “relative morality.”

Relativists are absolutely sure that there are no absolutes. (173)

Nope. I’m just pretty sure there are no moral absolutes. I keep doggedly asking for evidence, though I get nothing in response.

Relative morality fails?

GT relate the anecdote of a paper written by an atheist student. The student argued, “All morals are relative; there is no absolute standard of justice or rightness,” and the professor gave it an F because of the color of the folder it was delivered in. When the student protested that the reason wasn’t fair, the professor asked, “But didn’t you argue in your paper that there is no such thing?” At that point, the student “realized he really did believe in moral absolutes.”

I don’t, and I doubt any student in that situation would. There are absolute morals, and then there are the ordinary kind as defined in the dictionary. The student appealed to the natural non-objective morality he shared with the professor.

This is the Assumed Objectivity Fallacy. GT assumes that everyone knows and accepts objective morality. We’ll be seeing more of this.

The moral of the story [about the paper graded F] is that there are absolute morals. And if you really want to get relativists to admit it, all you need to do is treat them unfairly. (173)

Treat relativists unfairly, and they’ll appeal to shared, natural morality just like the student.

People may claim they are relativists, but they don’t want their spouses, for example, to live like sexual relativists. (173)

So you think relative morality is no morality? Your “moral relativists” have morals; they just don’t pretend that the morals are grounded outside humanity since there is no evidence for that.

Actually, I’m happy for my spouse to use relative morality for all aspects of her life, both because I know of nothing else and because the natural morality that we all use works pretty well.

This reminds me of an observation from Penn Jillette: “The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.” Natural morality—it’s not perfect, but it serves us pretty well.

GT moves on to the visceral horror we felt from 9/11.

Our reaction reinforced the truth that the act was absolutely wrong. (175)

Another redefinition! We’ve switched to emotional gut feelings, and objective morality is now strongly felt morality.

GT go on to admit that we often betray our moral sense with our actions (the bad things we do), but they claim that the Moral Law is “revealed in our reactions.” Our sense of the Moral Law isn’t good enough to keep us firmly on the right track, but the truth comes out when we react. So now—redefinition!—objective morality is instinctive morality.

GT’s sloppy thinking may work with the flock, but it has consequences. One Amazon reviewer of this book titled his comment, “I don’t have enough intellectual dishonesty to be a Christian.”

Continued in part 3.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/21/15.)

Image from Megan Studdenfadden, CC license
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This is a continuation of my response to I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Though fifteen years old, this book continues to be a bestseller in the category of Christian apologetics. Part 1 of the critique is here.

Morality (Mother Teresa isn’t a good example)

Geisler and Turek (GT) spend 25 pages giving their argument for a divine source for morality. I’ve written a lot about the weak Christian justification for morality before (some of those posts are listed below), but this is the most thorough version of the Christian argument to which I’ve responded.

That doesn’t mean that it’s well thought out. The chapter is titled, “Mother Teresa vs. Hitler,” and we’re already off to a bad start. Mother Teresa isn’t the saint that GT imagine (well, okay, literally, she is). She has received much criticism. She was little concerned about healing her patients or even preventing their pain. She saw her patients’ suffering as a moral crucible and said, “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.” The goal of modern medicine is precisely the opposite—not to celebrate suffering and disease but to fight it.

GT’s moral arguments are shallow, and the same few mistakes are made repeatedly. I’ll give a fair amount of the argument rather than simplifying it, in the hope that this prepares you for similar arguments. Their argument is aimed at the choir. The thinking is confused and sloppy and at best is a pat on the head to assure Christians that they’ve backed the right horse.

The Moral Argument

At this point in the book, GT have given us their Cosmological and Teleological arguments. Their third is the Moral Law argument:

1. Every law has a law giver

2. There is a Moral Law

3. Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver (page 171)

Newton’s Second Law of Motion (f = ma) is also a law. Must there be a physics law giver? GT will say yes, but we need evidence. With GT, we rarely go beyond an intuitive, kinda-feels-right type of argument, but I suppose that works well with their target audience.

One definition of objective morality . . .

The theme running through this argument is a Moral Law that mimics the Greek god Proteus, changing shape whenever we grab it. The Moral Law is a claim of objective morality, but “objective morality” is never clearly defined. Let’s start with William Lane Craig’s definition of objective morality: “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.”

And let me define my opposing hypothesis, the natural morality position. Morality comes from two places. Our programming (from evolution) explains the traits that are largely common across all societies such as the Golden Rule. We’re all the same species, so it’s not surprising that we respond in similar ways to moral challenges. Our customs (from society) explain society-specific attitudes to issues like capital punishment, sex, blasphemy, honor, and so on. I will argue here that natural morality explains what we see better than GT’s Moral Law hypothesis.

More from GT:

Without an objective standard of meaning and morality, then life is meaningless and there’s nothing absolutely right or wrong. Everything is merely a matter of opinion. (171)

Bullshit. Look up “meaning” and “morality” in the dictionary, and you will find no mention of an objective standard. Our colloquial uses of meaning and morality work just fine in supporting a meaningful life. GT denigrate our human evaluation of morality as “merely” opinion, but I await evidence that Christians do things differently. It’s easy to appeal to an objective standard; the hard part is showing that that standard actually exists.

. . . but wait! There are more!

GT don’t feel obliged to stick with just one definition of objective morality.

When we say the Moral Law exists, we mean that all people are impressed with a fundamental sense of right and wrong. (171)

Redefinition! Now the Moral Law is that which we all feel. I suppose this is an appeal to our moral conscience? The focus is now on people, while William Lane Craig’s definition was on a morality grounded outside people.

Everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations. An absolute moral obligation is something that is binding on all people, at all times, in all places. And an absolute Moral Law implies an absolute Moral Law Giver. (171)

How about “slavery is wrong”? Is that binding on all people, at all times, in all places? I wonder why we didn’t get that from God and, indeed, got the opposite. Apparently in God’s youth, coveting needed prohibiting but not slavery.

Let me invent a term that will get some use as we go through this chapter: the Assumed Objectivity Fallacy. GT declares, “Everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations”? Wrong—the Assumed Objectivity Fallacy is either assuming without evidence that objective morals exist or assuming that everyone knows and accepts objective morality.

Back to GT:

This does not mean that every moral issue has easily recognizable answers. (171)

Redefinition! Now the Moral Law is something that we only dimly feel. The Moral Law is binding on all people . . . but we don’t really know for sure what the Moral Law is saying at every moral fork in the road. That seems unfair—to be bound by a law that we don’t understand—but I suppose GT’s god works in mysterious ways.

The challenge I like to give any believer in objective morality is to take some moral issue of the day—abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, capital punishment—and give us a resolution of the issue that is (1) objectively correct and that (2) everyone can see is correct. Like GT, they justify neither the claim that it exists nor that this Moral Law is reliably accessible. I wonder then, what good is it?

GT’s childlike idea that our morality is objective isn’t supported by the dictionary or everyday experience. Being a grownup is apparently easier for some of us than others.

Continue with part 2.

Other posts responding to Christian views of morality:

• Explanation for Objective Morality? Another Fail.
• Morality’s Ruby Slippers
• Bad Atheist Arguments: “Morality Doesn’t Come From God”
• Frank Turek’s Criminally Bad C.R.I.M.E.S. Argument: Morality
• C. S. Lewis Gets Morality Wrong

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/17/15.)

Image from thierry ehrmann, CC license

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