1) If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2) Objective moral values exist.
3) Therefore, God exists.
It is possible for me to conceive a creator god that does not lose sleep over the way we live our lives. What makes my conception less plausible than the Christian God? My conception actually seems more plausible when we take our moral experiences into consideration. However, implied in the argument is the idea of a God who is the ground for moral values. This argument is found in the ontological argument that God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being. It is taken for granted that 'goodness' and 'existence' are great making qualities. Many, including myself, disagree with this wholeheartedly because 'great' is a subjective description of a thing and different people would have their own ideas of what makes a thing great. But hey, thank God that we have an accurate definition of God to work with.
Today, I make two arguments:
1) Divine Command Theory does not make morality objective.
2) Objective moral values do not seem to exist.
Divine Command Theory
A is required of S if and only a just and loving God commands S to do A.
A is forbidden to S if and only if a just and loving God commands S not to do A.
A is permitted for S if and only if a just and loving God does not command S not to do A.
The usual objection to DCT is that it makes morality arbitrary. For instance, if God commanded child abuse, would that make child abuse good? No, cries the other side. Why not? Craig argues that "God is essentially compassionate, fair, kind, impartial and so forth and his commandments are reflections of his own character." He then goes on to say that asking such questions are akin to asking whether "if there were a round square, its area would equal the square of its sides".
This analogy confuses me because DCT is supposed to show that the goodness of a act of the will is dependent on God's command. If this is the case, I ask whether God, in the analogy used, was the square or the circle? Unless I am mistaken, the argument seems to be saying that God would not command child abuse because that is as logically incoherent as a square circle. However, that can only be logically incoherent if we have a definition of goodness that is independent of God that automatically makes child abuse wrong and incongruent with goodness. Yet, Craig says "Since our moral duties are grounded in the divine commands, they are not independent of God." We are going around in circles here. It is either they are independent of God or they aren't, and if they aren't, God can command whatever he wants and make it good.
Theists are hesitant to admit this when this argument is taken on its own, but I fail to see how the reality of the conclusion can be escaped when faced with numerous Biblical commands of God to kill, slaughter, and destroy. At least on three occasions, God by-passed commanding it and did the deed himself, wiping out the whole world, Sodom and Gomorrah and all the first-born sons of Egypt. Maybe there were no children in the world or Sodom and Gomorrah, but God can't get away from those Egyptian boys, not to mention the recanted command to Abraham to kill his own son. Was David good to kill in God's name or wasn't he? Euthypro stands undefeated.
Objectivity
What does it mean for something to be objective? "To say that something is objective is to say that it is independent of what people think," Craig says. If this is true, do we have any idea of what is objective? How can we, as human beings, know what is objectively true of anything if at every moment of our existence, we are thinking about it? Contemporary philosophy has tended to accept the reality of the external world, and so do I. However, I do not accept that what we perceive is necessarily objective.
I have come to realise that when we say something is 'objective' we really mean 'universally subjective'. The majority of human beings on the earth perceive this to be the case, therefore, this is the case. The majority of us see the sky as blue, therefore, the sky is objectively blue. But is it, really? Our perception of colour is dependent on the reflection of light and the configuration of our eyes. A portion of our seeing population happen to have eyes that are configured differently from the lot of us and see colours differently than most of us. Who is correct? The majority or the minority? In truth, neither is 'right'. It just makes for more efficient communication that a word be used for a colour that most human beings perceive similarly, even though our perception may be just an illusion. Through the use of value free science, we would like to think we are moving closer to objectivity, but we would never be able to escape our own consciousness to ultimately declare, "Aha! Reality." (See here for a more thorough discussion on the problem of objectivity)
I'd like to mention the Himba tribe who have a different linguistic history than the rest of the world. Their language grants them 5 colour categories while the English speaking world has 11. In an experiment, scientists were able to uncover the direct link between language and perception. When members of the tribe were shown a circle of the same shade of green with the exception of one slightly different shade of green (slightly different to the rest of the world) they were able to spot the difference in the shade much quicker than you or I would because that particular shade of green was in an entirely different colour category in their language that aided them in discriminating. The more exciting phenomenon was when they were shown a circle of green with the one block of sky blue inserted in it and asked to pick out the different colour. If you look at the video, you may probably be like me who shouted "But it right dey! Look the sky blue right dey girl!" as the beautiful Himba girl struggled to see the difference between sky blue and green. Why? Because sky blue was in the same colour category as that particular kind of green, making it difficult for her to discriminate between the two.
It is hard to say that objectivity does not exist, however, it seems clear to me that we do not know whether we have access to it or not.
Objective moral values
Taking all this into consideration, I move on to the meat of my argument. Why do people believe that objective moral values exist? When we look at our moral landscape, we are hard-pressed to find any clear indication of objective morality. We see communities where it is acceptable to cut off the clitoris of a young female without the use of antiseptics or anesthesia of any kind. You just cringed at that thought and if I were to ask you whether you think that practice is objectively wrong or whether it 'just' makes you cringe because you grew up in a different place, you would give the former without hesitation. If I were a sneaky Christian debater, I may have piggy backed on your answer and say "aha! If he thinks it's wrong, she believes in objective moral values. She has to accept that God exists." I am an unbeliever, however, so you won't get that from me.
I agree that if morality is not objective, things are not intrinsically 'wrong' in the usual sense of the word. The usual sense of the word 'wrong' implies objectivity and I suspect that to be the case because of linguistic history. There is a desire in the human heart that things be universal, that what is true here would also be true there. Experience shows us differently in the realm of morality. The assertion that objective moral values exist are not so much made on evidence for it's existence but on our unwillingness to accept it's non-existence for fear that we slip down a wet slope into moral oblivion. We grow fearful of our inability to condemn actions and praise others. This is no small concern, but I think it is a misguided fear.
What do we do in the absence of moral objectivity? Exactly what we have always done - define morality for ourselves. We have always been the ones to define what is good and evil, right and wrong. Even when we believe that God gave specific commandments, we believed them only on the trustworthiness of Moses or the Bible, and still, a large amount of interpretation is left in our hands. It is why some Christians believe that the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' does not apply to the death penalty while others protest against it. It is why Spartans threw differently-abled new-born children off the side of cliffs and why we now call them 'differently-abled' and not 'accursed'. It is why a black man would rather live today than before 1834.
The problem lies in knowing what to value. Do we value human beings based on the idea of inherent human dignity or do we do so based on their usefulness to society? And when we have resolved this issue, how do we translate our answers to the prison system or political administrations? What I am attempting to say, is that morality has always been a subjective affair and the only thing keeping it from being as 'objective' as the colour yellow is time. What is objective is that a man has died because another man killed him; a woman was raped; a little boy's bicycle was taken without his consent. Whether these things are wrong depend on us. Our different cultures developed in different times and places and came out with a seemingly random assortment of 'right' and 'wrong'. However, the world is growing smaller, nations are being forced to touch each other and adapt to suit their needs and as this occurs we move closer and closer to moral objectivity.
Morality as illusion
To close, a small note on the charge that 'on atheism' (though atheism is nothing a person can stand on), morality is an illusion. I'm not sure what this means. I get the feeling that calling morality an illusion effectively makes it unreal and so because it is 'merely' a product of our socio-historical development. Perhaps this is true, but surely the word 'illusion' does more damage than the reality of the situation itself and I smell a genetic fallacy laying around somewhere. Morality is as much an illusion as colour, as much an illusion as sound, appreciate of art, culture. It is difficult to conceive of a morality that is separate from conscious experience. Admitting the origins of our moral sensitivities, we learn there is no need to factor in a divine figure for it to make sense.
Why is it that some choices are seen as morally neutral while others are not? When a person has to choose between wearing a slipper or a sneaker to go for ice-cream on a Sunday evening, whether it should be cerulean blue or moss green, she does not tremble in fear that her salvation hangs in the balance. Somewhere within our assortment of choices, we enter a zone where the words 'right' and 'wrong' come into play. A quick survey across cultures shows that this threshold is different everywhere. And the distinction is not as clear as we would hope. You may venture to believe that violence marks the threshold or pain in all its forms. However, as insignificant and non-violent as it is to you whether you wear a bikini or monokini to the beach, that very option is not available in some parts of the world unless you value having acid thrown in your face.
On a closer look, the differences can be seen between individuals. I ask, does God consider it objectively wrong for my brother to waltz into my room without an invitation from me? It is unknown to me whether he does, but I consider it a wrong, not in itself, but a wrong to me. My brother has wronged me. Why? I place a high value on my own room. I feel as though it is the only thing I can call my own and when someone disregards this, I feel wronged. This is similar to the difference between destroying a random guitar and destroying the same guitar, only this time it belonged to Jimmy Hendrix. Objectively speaking, they are both guitars of the same objective value - same price, same make, same colour etc - but we have grown to subjectively appreciate Jimmy's music, his art and, therefore, the instrument he uses to enter into these things. Bertrand Russel was afraid to admit that the only justification he could find for saying something was wrong was that he did not like it, but I see no alternative, and I am not scared to admit this.
It is impossible to escape 'subjectivity' with regard to morality, but this does not mean we should abandon the whole affair with our hands raised in surrender. Part of the problem, I believe, is the result of thinking about morality in the wrong way, thinking about it as something separate from us that needs external validation. The only moral 'obligations' we have are to ourselves and one another. We would make tomorrow a better place using our own ideas of what 'better' means, whether it be less pain and suffering, or more Beyonce concerts. Our moral landscape has already begun to become more nuanced, extending beyond the human species into that of other animals. I hope I die before this courtesy is extended to mosquitoes, though. My love is limited.
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