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Does God ground transcendent moral truths?

In my last 2 entries, I objected to a suggestion made by one of my most excellent high school teachers, Johnston Smith. Johnston claimed that the question of God’s existence is beyond reason and evidence. I showed how existential claims must boil down to a consideration of reason and evidence, even claims about the supernatural.

Johnston took no objection and in fact adopted the idea to make an evidence based case for the existence of God known as the argument from morality. Kudos to him for being prepared to change his mind.

In laying out the argument, Johnston made some common claims that I hear apologists make and which he explained like this: we can’t have universal moral truths without a transcendent moral truth giver. That is, without God, we have a philosophical problem in that moral relativism must win the day because there are no moral truths – just mere human opinion. In that case, whatever moral custom prevails must be a result of popularity or of “might being right”, which clearly isn’t right. We need a God “WHO SEZ” what’s right for everybody.

But I wonder, how does God solve this problem? I mean, who says that what God says is morally true? Isn’t what God says just God’s subjective opinion of what’s moral? Isn’t it just that he is the mightiest? Doesn’t this "solution" just push these problems back a step and project them onto God?

Imagine that in my basement, I can genetically engineer human beings with an IQ of around 65, and I design a few to think that rape is good. When they wonder why that is, I tell them that as their maker, I have made it so and made them so. They have a transcendent source of moral principles, which is just what Johnston ordered to avoid relativism. Is this an acceptable state of affairs absent the philosophical problem alluded to earlier?

When God commands genocide in the Bible (1 Samuel 15:3), or a flood that drowns virtually all men, women, and children (Genesis 6:13), or provides instructions to guide chattel slavery of non-Hebrews (Leviticus 25:44-46), is he endorsing something good? Either way, whoever claims that the Judeo-Christian God grounds moral truth seems to still have a big philosophical problem on his hands.

A transcendent source provides a kind of reason to impose or enforce moral rules on others, but I just don’t see how that source makes those rules really moral and objectively true. And so we arrive at the famous Euthyphro dilemma, attributed to Plato:

"Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?"

If one accepts the first horn of the dilemma, then God doesn't ground moral truths. If one accepts the second horn, then there aren’t moral truths – just what "God almighty SEZ”.

The rebuttal that moral truths stem not from God’s opinion, but his nature, also fails because it just pushes the dilemma back yet another step: 

"Is what is morally good so because it is a part of God’s nature, or is what is morally good a part of God’s nature because it is morally good?"

Furthermore, many Muslims, for example, want to spread and be everywhere governed by what they consider to be transcendent moral rules known as Sharia law. One of these rules is death for apostasy. What has, say, a Christian, got to say to these folks? “My god sez no?!” When a Christian argues with them, he’s apparently arguing with their God. Good luck with that. It seems that the mightiest group will still win. Perhaps they can co-exist, but then religious relativism just replaces moral relativism, and Johnston's problem still exists, repackaged. 

Nobody knows what God says. All we ever hear is what different people say that God says, and since there's no way to know, on divine command theory, we end up with thousands of different religious sects all claiming that God says different things. When what God has apparently said in the past is criticized, believers often respond that his previous moral advice was contextual. If that's not moral relativism, then I don't know what is.

If one wants a universal approach to moral questions, something that everybody can appeal to, the leading candidate has to be reason. There are reasons why certain behavior is morally good or bad, and they have to do with whether the behavior increases the well-being vs suffering of conscious creatures. 

In the debate below, I think that Johnston's concerns are voiced by the infamous Dr. William Lane Craig. On the opposite side, Dr. Shelly Kagan outlines a framework for moral considerations based on reasons that all rational people would and ought to adhere to known as contractarianism. There are others; secular moral philosophers have been keeping themselves busy for hundreds of years doing this stuff, no appeal to God necessary. I encourage you to watch the debate if this topic interests you because it ends with a cross examination that is very friendly and polite and really turns into more of a conversation between these 2 philosophers who are experts at articulating their respective positions. Your best bet at seeing who's most able to defend a position comes not when debaters are giving prepared statements and anticipated rebuttals or even when dealing with audience questions. It's when the debaters have to answer each others questions.

I’m quite partial to Sam Harris’ moral landscape as a way of thinking about an objective moral framework. It shares many similarities with Alonzo Fyfe’s “desire utilitarianism”, which I actually think is the best moral theory out there, but Harris’ work is more available to the masses.

As it is with ontology, so it is with morality: so long as we can draw from reason and evidence, we have an ongoing conversation that gets us closer and closer to the truth. As Martin Luther King (almost) said, “the arc of the moral universe is long but (with religious conservatives often kicking and screaming) it bends toward justice”. In the absence of reason and evidence, divine command theory (the name of the moral framework Johnston is endorsing) requires that we consider something very dangerous ... something other than the well-being and suffering of conscious creatures, namely, the conversation-stopping dictates of mysterious and almighty Gods. This seems much more worrisome to me than the problems Johnston identified.

In a great speech, American President, Barrack Obama, himself, a Christian, seems to agree:

"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."

Are there more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio?

Is the supernatural beyond reason and evidence, safely protected from human investigation? And is God, a supernatural entity, therefore, off limits for "empiric and rationalist" considerations?

I'm going to begin by answering the first question as it might relate to the alleged healing powers of acupuncture. Then, I'll draw those threads together and show how the same considerations actually apply to God, too.

The idea behind acupuncture is that the pathophysiology of the disorder being treated includes an unhealthy bodily flow of Qi ('Chi') - said to be a type of living or vital energy.   The placement of subcutaneous needles in specific locations is supposed to restore the normal flow of Qi, helping to heal the disorder in a biologically active way.

Qi is an ancient and intuitively appealing concept. There must be some important difference between living organisms and dead ones (or inanimate objects), after all, so why wouldn't it be a mysterious quantity and why not call it a type of energy since, in other circumstances, energy is invisible except for the things it makes happen? But we now know better. Vitalism has been thoroughly and completely discredited by science. Life is driven by the usual types of energy that are all well described - the same kinds of energy that drive all chemical reactions, only in the case of life, those reactions maintain homeostasis for at least enough time for a given species to reproduce. No additional or special type of energy is required to explain life, and no reputable or serious biologist thinks otherwise, anymore.

Nevertheless, millions of people still believe in Qi and acupuncture. "Science just hasn't discovered a way to detect or measure Qi, yet," they tell us. But that is a big, smelly, red herring.

It actually doesn't matter whether we can detect or measure Qi itself, for we are told that Qi and its manipulation has effects in this world that are measurable. We are told that acupuncture has the measurable effect of healing people. Accordingly, we can conduct randomized controlled trials where people are randomly assigned to real or sham acupuncture treatments (where the needles don't actually penetrate the skin and are placed at random locations by non-acupuncture practitioners). If acupuncture works, we can make a prediction: the people getting real acupuncture treatments should improve more quickly and/or more thoroughly than the people getting sham acupuncture treatments. It doesn't matter one iota that we can't measure Qi or it's flow patterns directly. All that matters is that we can predict and measure the alleged effects of Qi here and now, in the natural world.

Well, studies of this kind have been done over and over and I'm afraid that it doesn't look good for acupuncture. The outcomes in the 2 groups are largely indistinguishable. One clearly shouldn't think of acupuncture as doing anything biologically active beyond the power of suggestion. While this doesn't disprove the existence of Qi, it certainly proves that acupuncture as a way of beneficially manipulating Qi is useless. Maybe there are other ways of doing so, but until those are discovered, the idea of Qi adds nothing to our understanding of illness and health, and there's absolutely no reason to believe that it does exist.

It's possible that Qi has nothing to do with anything in the natural world. Perhaps it's purely supernatural. But, if it is, then it's of no consequence here, and should be of no concern to anybody; the whole idea is without meaning. If it does have consequences in the natural world, then those consequences should be measurable or detectable.

And so it is with all supernatural claims, including the existence of the Christian God. Maybe we can't directly detect the Christian God, but we can reason from God's alleged qualities to predictions about the way the world ought to be, and then look for evidence of whether the world is as we'd expect, or not. We would expect a universe where the Christian God exists and is omnipotent, morally perfect, perfectly loving, desirous of a personal relationship with us, etc. to look quite different from a world where no such God exists. For example, if the Christian God exists, we wouldn't expect any gratuitous natural suffering, yet we see a world that appears to be overflowing with it. We wouldn't expect there to be billions of non-believers clustered within borders explained by natural and haphazard factors like politics and conquest. If evidence gathered in the world is better explained by the non-existence of God, then the existence of God should seem much less likely to us. At the very least, it should cause us to become very skeptical of the alleged qualities that those failed predictions are based upon. There are very many predictions made by Christian theism that can be tested here on Earth, and I'm afraid that, like acupuncture, the situation doesn't look good at all.

Perhaps the Christian God doesn't exist, but a different God who lives entirely in a theoretical supernatural world does. Perhaps we know nothing about the qualities and capabilities of such a God and he never interferes in this world in any way. This pretty much describes what deists believe. This type of God really is beyond investigation by reason and evidence, but what a useless belief! A universe where this God exists is no different in any way than one where such a God doesn't exist.  It might as well not exist at all.

This reminds me of the parable of the invisible gardener, by John Wisdom:

"Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds, that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other, 'It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.' The other disagrees and an argument ensues. They pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. The believer wonders if there is an invisible gardener, so they patrol with bloodhounds but the bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet the believer remains unconvinced, and insists that the gardener is invisible, has no scent and gives no sound. The skeptic doesn't agree, and asks how a so-called invisible, intangible, elusive gardener differs from an imaginary gardener, or even no gardener at all."

I'm afraid that existential questions seem to always and only boil down to reason and evidence. When there is reason and evidence, a conversation can be had about their merits and meanings.  When reason and evidence are unavailable in either principle or practice, we have a meaningless claim that terminates the conversation.

Believing despite insufficient reason and evidence - believing on faith - is propped up as being incredibly valuable, but why? What's so great about faith? It seems to me that in every domain of human discourse other than religion, believing on faith is rightly frowned upon. Would you cross a street on faith without looking to see if a bus is coming? Look at what believing in the existence of God on faith gets us: thousands of Gods and traditions most of which are mutually exclusive, and balkanized  doxastic communities with a horrible and ongoing history of intolerance, discrimination, and slaughter in the name of those beliefs. This is supposed to be the Zenith of human understanding and the path to the most important 'truths' in the universe? What could the word 'truth' possibly mean in that sentence without reason and evidence?

There may well be plenty more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of by reason and evidence, but without them, I'm afraid it's all just "Words, words, words." (Shakespeare - Hamlet).

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio...

Keanu Reeves as the Prince of Denmark during Winnipeg's MTC production in 1995. Check out that passion.

I recently had a nice discussion with some friends about the challenges of identifying as Catholic given numerous problems that flow from standard Catholic doctrine combined with the hypocrisy and scandal within the organization. Along the way, I received this comment:

“You seem to operate out of a rationalist-empiricist framework. And there is of course nothing wrong with that when one is considering matters subject to the analytical benefits of this sort of world-view. But I suggest that there is plenty of human endeavor and human interest in matters not well suited to this sort of analysis. I mean, would you really mock John Keats because figures on an urn are not really “frozen” there? Or would your smirk at Bob Dylan because the times don’t really change? Would one do a cost/benefit analysis of caring for one’s child?

… since God and belief in God are human preoccupations based upon faith, they are not subject to rationalist/empiricist argumentation. You may call it “irrational” but I might propose calling it “hyper-rational.””

The idea here is that there are matters that are not subject to reason and evidence and that the question of God's existence is one of those matters.

If true, then one's belief in God simply cannot be questioned or challenged. This is a big & bold claim that serves to insulate one's belief from criticism.

Sweet.

But imagine the defendant in a murder trial asserting that there are matters not subject to reason and evidence and that the question of his guilt is one of those matters. The incoming tide of further accusations he would face from judge, jury, and the wider court of public opinion would surely include arrogance, stupidity, & foolishness. I mean, it'd be a great move if one could pull it, but can one really ever pull it? What exactly are these matters that are not subject to reason and evidence, and is the question of God's existence really one of them?

Consider a couple of questions. Do reason and evidence explain why we fall in love with whom we do? Can reason and evidence explain why I don't like anchovies? Emotional matters and personal tastes cannot (yet!) be satisfactorily explained by reason and evidence, but it would be absurd to suggest that questions about the existence or nonexistence of certain entities (or the guilt or innocence of those charged) can be answered using emotions and personal preferences, wouldn't it? Would you believe in the existence of Bigfoot on the basis of emotions or personal preferences?

What I think is lurking behind the comments I quoted is that God is supernatural. That's relevant because it is widely believed that the supernatural is a matter that, perhaps forever (but at least for the moment), lies beyond (and is therefore not subject to) reason and evidence. The supernatural is "hyper-rational". Not surprisingly, I have heard similar claims made by people defending alternative medical treatments. Here's what a friend of mine had to say about the paucity of high quality evidence supporting acupuncture and the wealth of evidence indicating that it's nothing more than the power of suggestion :

" in the chaos of nature, there is more that we don't understand than do, and it is arrogant to think that controlled experiments in hermetically sealed labs can in any way replicate the chaos and uncertainty that occurs in nature."

Ahh, yes. I've heard that first part before, somewhere ...

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Shakespeare, Hamlet

My advice to you? Beware when you encounter this quote. The person using it is probably feeling that their belief is under some significant pressure and the best way to relieve it is to suggest that it's beyond Earth, Heaven, and even reason itself. You can be sure that if reason and evidence were available to establish their belief, you'd be hearing all about it (this is known as apologetics), but when the belief persists in the face of insufficient reason and evidence (the definition of faith?), then this old canard may make an appearance in the conversation. And notice that it is a conversation stopper:

"I'm talking about something that's beyond you, beyond everything, and neither you nor anybody can touch it."

This attitude - that one is in possession of information that transcends reason and empirical evidence - can be harmless, but it can also lead people to accept ineffective treatments when effective ones exist (see here and here), and it lies behind religiously motivated discrimination and slaughter of infidels and perpetrators of imaginary crimes- the most horrible and tragic aspects of faith-based beliefs.

So this important question still stands: Is the supernatural off-limits for reason and evidence? Chime in and let me know what you think. I'll be responding in a few days.