I saw this photo at Jerry Coyne’s place a couple of days ago and laughed out loud. It’s flippant, but the question actually deserves genuine, serious consideration.
To the theists reading this: When you’re stranded on the throne, why doesn’t God poof a roll into existence for you? He’s surely powerful enough to do it, with less effort than it takes you to lift a finger, so what holds him back?
If your spouse, child, or even a roommate that you didn’t particularly like were in a similar predicament, you would surely be kind enough to rescue them by fetching a roll and placing it outside the bathroom door. Why doesn’t God do the divine equivalent?
Is it for the same reason that he never restores the limbs of amputees?
KN,
Mockery can be quite effective at highlighting the absurdity of certain beliefs. It has its place. You seem to agree.
I’ll bet there are theists (like Mung, for example) who have read this thread, intending to dismiss it as mere mockery from someone who doesn’t understand their beliefs — only to realize that the question it raises is actually serious, and that it’s a question they can’t answer.
God’s supposed omnipotence and omnigoodness predict a world utterly unlike the one we see. Omnitheists remain so despite the evidence, not because of it.
What kind of loving God would refuse, under any circumstance, to “hand” a roll of TP to a toilet-stranded wretch?
Yeah, sometimes I just can’t help myself. That doesn’t mean I’m proud of myself, either.
Right on.
FWIW, there’s a nice theistic replay to the problem of evil by C.S. Lewis (a guy who particularly annoys me) in _Shadowland_. Search for the the youtube vid under “Shadowland God’s Megaphone”
Oh, yes, C. S. Lewis is quite awful. I read Mere Christianity a few years ago just to see what all the fuss was about. I decided that Lewis is for people who already have “faith” and are satisfied with the flimsiest arguments to “defend” or “justify” their faith, but he has nothing to say to those who are prepared to criticize those arguments. Lots of false dichotomies (or false trichotomies), sloppy inferences, suppressed premises, and so on.
Re C.S. Lewis and “pain is God’s megaphone”: When a gazelle is being torn apart in a lion’s jaws, who is God shouting at? The gazelle? To what end? Why is God constantly shouting at animals, all over the world?
When a toddler drowns, is God shouting at her? At her parents? If the former, why does God shout at innocent children? If the latter, why does God drown children simply to shout at their parents? Why doesn’t he shout directly, without harming innocent bystanders?
How is it that 220,000 people, all in the same part of the world, needed to be shouted at simultaneously during the 2004 tsunami? Isn’t that a bit of a coincidence? And couldn’t God have shouted a little less loudly that day?
What an idiotic defense of the omniGod. C. S. Lewis is pitiful.
And, believe it or not, that’s one of his more cogent set pieces. He’s a propagandist and story-teller. He could turn a nice apothegm. That’s about it.
Aslan is on the move!
Whereas C. I. Lewis, on the other hand . . .
I was just thinking, though. Suppose you were some kind of deist who made no claims about God being responsible for what constitutes goodness. In fact, suppose you were a deist who agreed with keiths’ personal subjectivism with respect to moral claims. Then, I take it, there would be nothing definitively wrong about knocking off lots of “innocent” people in a tsunami. (I mean, maybe those victims weren’t actually innocent by God’s equally important lights.)
What I’m getting at is that the argument against theism provided by the problem of evil kind of requires that there BE evil.
walto,
Not quite. The argument doesn’t require that evil exist any more than it requires that God exist. It just says that if you assume what the typical omnitheist does, which includes God’s existence, his goodness, his omnipotence, and the existence of evil, then you’ll have a hard time explaining the abundance of evil and suffering in the world.
There are lots of ways to defuse the problem of evil, but all of them come at a price that many theists (including most Christians) are unwilling to pay.
Conceding that God’s morality is subjective is one way of defusing the problem, but then an obvious question arises: why should God’s subjective morality be binding on us?
Obviously, the kind of deist I described would not think God’s morality was binding on us.
BTW, isn’t there a contradiction here?–
If there is an abundance of evil, doesn’t there have to be evil?
walto,
That’s not at all obvious to me. As a counterexample, a natural law theorist could argue that we are bound by morality, that this morality derives from our human nature, and that human nature was subjectively chosen by God when he created us.
walto,
Yes, but that isn’t a contradiction. Remember, we are taking the omnitheist’s assumptions — including the existence of evil — and showing that they clash with our observations of the world..
Think of it as analogous to a proof by contradiction. In such a proof, we assume something for the sake of argument; we show that it leads to a contradiction; we conclude that the assumption is incorrect. At no point are we asserting the actual truth of the assumption. We’re merely asking this: If the assumption were true, what would the implications be?
Here’s what I said: .
I’m confused. Is your own personal subjectivism consistent with natural law theory?
Do our observations of the world include instances of evil?
walto,
It depends on what you mean by “your own personal subjectivism”. If you mean my belief that we all have subjective moral beliefs (including God, if he exists), and that subjective morality is the only kind that actually has an impact on the world, then yes, I think that is consistent with natural law theory.
If you mean my belief that objective morality doesn’t exist, then no, NLT is not consistent with that belief.
I was responding to this…
…and showing that even someone who accepts that God’s morality is subjective can nevertheless argue that it is binding on us. Specifically, even though God’s morality is just as subjective as anyone else’s, a natural law theorist could argue that it is binding on us because he created us and the natures he chose to gave us reflect his subjective morality. In other words, an NL theorist could argue that we are bound by God’s morality not because it is God’s, but because it is the morality “encoded” in our natures by him in his role as our creator.
keiths:
walto:
Yes, by the typical omnitheist’s standards of evil. That’s what matters for the purposes of the argument.
Keith:
Don’t articles published in philosophy journals on theories of metaethics count as actual effects in the real world?
When you say “subjective morality”, I am never clear if you mean it as a theory how why people do act or as a theory of how people should act.
Do you agree there is difference in these two usages: ie between explaining and prescribing?
If you do, which sense do you mean in your above paragraph.
Bruce,
Sure, but those articles are only affected by the human concept of objective morality, never by objective morality itself. Contrast that to an article about light in a physics journal, which can be affected (indirectly) by the actual nature of light itself and not merely by the human concept of light.
When I refer to “Bruce’s subjective morality”, I’m talking about Bruce’s personal system of beliefs about right and wrong and how he and everyone else should behave in order to lead a moral life.
When I say that morality is subjective, I mean that each of us has such a system, that these systems can differ from person to person, and that there is no way to transcend the subjectivity and determine that one of these systems is objectively better than another.
Here’s a fable to illustrate what I mean when I say that “subjective morality is the only kind that actually has an impact on the world”:
Imagine that it’s objectively immoral to eat turnips. Eating turnips is always wrong, anytime, anywhere, for anybody, even if they are starving. No one should eat turnips; everyone should refrain. Eating turnips is just wrong.
Now imagine that the citizens of Turnipstan love turnips. They eat turnips all the time, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They can’t get enough of turnips. Per capita turnip consumption exceeds a hundred pounds. “Turnip” is a term of endearment for them, and they even named their country after the vegetable.
The Turnipstanis have no idea that eating turnips is wrong, and no way of finding out. They think that eating turnips is perfectly acceptable. Their subjective morality tells them that it’s fine to eat turnips, and they continue to do so. No one feels guilty about it, and no one has any reason to. The fact that turnip eating is objectively immoral has absolutely no effect on their lives. They continue on as always, oblivious to the horrible sins they are committing.
How is this possible? Easy — their subjective morality tells them turnip eating is A-OK. Objective morality has no impact on them because they have no access to it. It might as well be in a separate universe altogether. (Now, if someone could show that we do somehow have access to objective morality — through our consciences, say — then it would be a different story.)
Subjective morality is the only kind of morality that actually has an impact on the world.
I don’t want to get back to the objective debate so let me try to stick with yours.
When you say that “Bruce’s subjective morality” means “his system of beliefs” I take that to mean a description of his beliefs: ie his beliefs as they are.
It is not a description of his beliefs as someone else thinks they should be.
And, in your view of proper usage of “objective”, there is no way someone could claim an objectively better system of beliefs about what Bruce should do.
I don’t think the issue whether or not beliefs are objectively comparable has much to do with the divide between description and prescription. Description is a scientific question. Prescription is a metaethical question.
I suppose your answer to the metaethical question is that there is no objective reason why Bruce should not do what he does do, since there is no objective reason that one moral action is better than another. Possibly that needs a small rider about overall logical consistency with some set of moral axioms that Bruce is supposed to hold, but that would be it. No moral decision could be objectively questioned in any other way.
So if a relativist demanded objective reasons for changing his or her moral norms, by your definition of objective the relativists demand could not be met.
Bruce,
Right. Bruce’s subjective morality reflects his own beliefs, not someone else’s.
Right. One system can be objectively better with respect to a specified (and subjectively chosen) goal, but it can’t be objectively better, full stop.
Agreed.
Or to put it slightly differently, if Bruce is fully committed to a self-consistent set of moral axioms, I have no objective basis for asserting that his axioms ought to be altered or replaced. I can objectively demonstrate that Bruce is wrong about, say, geocentrism, but I cannot do the same for Bruce’s moral axioms.
If Bruce correctly determines that his moral axioms permit the consumption of turnips, then there is no sound argument I can make to show that he is wrong about that, that it is objectively wrong to eat turnips, and that he should change his moral axioms.
Right. Even if turnip eating is truly, objectively wrong, I have no known, reliable access to that fact via my conscience (or otherwise). Thus, I can’t give you, or myself, good objective reasons for eschewing the turnips.
What do you think it would mean for turnip eating to be objectively wrong?
walto,
Well, for a lot of moral objectivists it would mean something like what I described above:
Now, to say “Eating turnips is objectively immoral; no one should eat them” is pretty much a redundancy. The second clause adds no new information to what the first clause already conveyed. That’s kind of the point. There are no independent reasons for asserting that turnip eating is objectively moral or immoral. Science can’t tell you that it’s wrong. Logic alone can’t tell you; there’s nothing logically inevitable about the immorality (or morality) of turnip eating. Your conscience can’t tell you either, because a) consciences are fallible, b) they can’t be cross-checked in the way that other faculties can, and c) there’s no reason to expect consciences to be accurate in the first place. Our consciences were shaped by evolution, and evolution doesn’t give a damn about objective morality — it only “cares” about reproductive success.
So not only do we not know whether turnip eating is moral or immoral, we don’t even know what an answer would look like. Like I said earlier, objective morality might as well be in a separate universe, if it exists at all. It has no effect on this one.
We’re enmeshed in subjective morality (for better or worse), but objective morality doesn’t touch us. Either it doesn’t exist, or it might as well not.
The traditional argument against the existence of God based on the existence of evil goes something like this:
1. Anything that is God must be omnip., omnisc., and omniben.
2. If something existed that were omnip., omnisc, and omniben. there would be no evil in the world.
3. But there is evil in the word.
4. Therefore, nothing is God.
Theists, of course, have mostly concentrated on denying 2 and/or 3. Some have even denied 1.
As I indicated, personal subjectivists have trouble with 3, unless it means something that doesn’t help get 4. I take your recasting of the argument to be something like this.
A. Theists believe that 1 [above]
B. Theists also believe that 3
C. 2 is true
D. If C, anyone who believes that 1 and 3 ought also to believe that 4
Then, if you wanted, to you could point out that anybody who was a theist and believed that 4 was contradicting himself, or maybe violating some epistemic principle.
I know what you’re getting at here, but it’s a messy argument, and it also requires an epistemic ought. In addition, I could be wrong, but it seems like it’d be even easier for theists to deny one or more of these premises. But I’ll let them speak for themselves. My sense is though, it’s not going to produce many converts.
keiths,
I asked what you think “X is wrong” means. You said maybe it means X is always and everywhere wrong. Then you suggested it means no one should do X, but added that that seemed to you a redundancy. So you didn’t think that told us what it meant.
Then you go into reasons for believing that X is objectively wrong. But I still want to know what you think it means.
I also don’t understand your post on natural rights at all. As I said on another thread I really have no clear idea what your position on these matters is and repeating yourself doesn’t help. If I don’t know what you think “X is wrong” means, I’m not going to know what you think “eating turnips is wrong” means.
Keith:
Thanks for the detailed reply. I have a better understanding of “objective” as you see the concept.
As I test of my understanding:
According to Keith as I understand him, the statement “X is wrong” must be taken relative to the speaker of the statement “X is wrong”, ie action A in in circumstances C is not the action I (the speaker) would have taken when acting according to my moral axioms, which I have taken the trouble to make consistent.
I also suspect that Keith thinks the statement “X is wrong” can be considered True or False but only relative to those subjective axioms, not in an objective sense, as Keith understands the term “objective”. Here I mean the truth evaluation in the metaethical sense, ie it is true that X is wrong in my (the speakers) subjectivist morality because the negation of this statement is what I deduce logically from my moral axioms.
Is that right, Keith?
Thanks, Bruce. But let me try to explain why I don’t think that is too helpful in answering my question.
What you have supplied are some specifications that we can use to determine whether a subjective use of “X is wrong” is true. It seems to me that that would be helpful in determining what the objective use means only if
1. We are positivists/instrumentalists in the sense that whatever we use to determine the truth of “P” is what “P” means; and
2. We can derive the the meaning of the objective use from some combo of subjective meanings.
I can’t get keiths to commit to either of those, however. And his agnosticism regarding objective values seems inconsistent with each.
Take an example from science. Suppose someone wants to know the meaning of some term for a theoretical entity. An instrumentalist might say of, e.g., “charmed particles” something like “It means that this guage always goes to at least 7, when we perform the following actions: _______” Then, if the gauge always does go to at least 7, we not only know what the term “charmed particles” means, but that such items exist, that the property “charmed” is actually instantiated.
But what do we do with “objective goodness” on keith’s view? It can’t just mean that everybody assents to it, because then there could be no agnosticism: we’d be able to empirically decide for any action or property whether it was objectively good. He seems to deny that “X is (objectively) good” simply means that everybody approves of X or that it is a prediction that if presented by X everyone will purr contentedly or whatever. Ok, so, then is it, as Moore thought, some intuitable property that keiths grocks but is not sure is actually instantiated? What the hell is it?
Honestly, through his fault or my own, his view seems completely incoherent to me. If he could simply identify it on the Wiki (or some other) list, I think that would be helpful. But, for whatever reason, he obviously prefers not to attempt to do so.
ETA: I also note that his agnosticism regarding the “existence of objective values” is inconsistent with your speculation that ‘Keith thinks the statement “X is wrong” can be considered True or False but only relative to those subjective axioms, not in an objective sense, as Keith understands the term “objective”.’
I personally have exhausted my interest pursing the discussion of whether I agree with Keith’s understanding of how to use the term “objective”. Whether that usage is incoherent or not aligned with objectivity in science is an argument I don’t want to revisit.
So I am just assuming Keith’s usage of objective and trying to understand moral statements in his subjectivist framework.
My motivation is for doing that is partly based on an attitude attributed to Ghandi.
Also, though, if I understand Keith correctly, I suspect that with his approach to metaethics, Keith himself could not use the argument from evil against the existence of God. But I need to make sure I understand Keith correctly before providing a basis for that claim.
Re Gandhi, I’ve always been more of a Tagore guy. ;>}
On the argument from evil, I tried to come up with something the subjectivist might use. As I conceded, it’s kind of a mess, but it was the best I could do.
walto:
walto,
As a subjectivist, I have no problem at all with #3. In my subjective moral system, genocide is evil. Genocide exists in the world. Therefore there is evil in the world, by my subjective standards of what is and isn’t evil.
And even if I didn’t believe that evil exists, I could still use the problem of evil against theists who do believe that it exists. This is an important point that is continuing to trip you up, so please spend some time pondering it.
I’m an atheist — I don’t believe in God. That doesn’t prevent me from using an argument that assumes God’s existence: “Assume that your God exists. If your God exists, it implies that X is the case. We observe not-X. Therefore your God does not exist.”
Just as I don’t have to believe in God before I can assume his existence in an argument, I wouldn’t need to believe in the existence of evil (though I do!) in order to assume its existence for the sake of argument.
Do you understand proof by contradiction in mathematics? It’s the same general principle.
Bruce,
See my reply to walto above.
Theists aren’t asserting anything about YOUR ethical determinations in 1 or 2. If you equivocate, obviously your argument is no good.
Bruce,
That’s right, and well put.
I wouldn’t go quite so far. Truth isn’t relative, so rather than saying that a proposition is true relative to certain axioms, I would say that it is true if the axioms are true. It’s a subtle but important difference.
It’s apparent that your position involves personal relativism. The problems is that that’s pretty much ALL one can tell about it. Ayer’s emotivism is such a relativism, as is Hume’s early subjectivism. But those guys tell us what they take “X is good” to mean (and/or NOT mean). You don’t. That’s why their views can be assessed and yours cannot.
Yes, theists aren’t asserting anything about my moral determinations, just as flat-earthers aren’t asserting anything about my astronomical observations. That doesn’t prevent me from using their assumptions to argue against them.
This is an important point, walto. Instead of dashing off another hasty reply, please pause and think this through carefully.
Keith:
Why should God, being a subjectivist moral Agent, have the same conception of evil as you? For example, there does not seem to be any logical contradiction in God holding the axiom “what is evil for Me is different from what is evil for a human being”. So, as a moral subjectivist, observing something you consider evil only means that if you were God, you would not allow such a circumstance.
This basically amounts to Jobs answer: (why should you, Job, think you may judge Me by your standards?).
Of course, one could argue that one should not worship such a God, but that is a different argument.
In fact, I suppose any moral subjectivist could hold this moral axiom: what is morally correct for me is different than what is morally correct for everyone else. Hence (eg) I may steal but no one else may. Such a person could even believe that everyone could hold the same axiom without contradiction, if he was a metaethical subjectivist.
ETA: Note that I am only making an argument about whether a moral subjectivist could use the argument from evil against the existence of God. I am not arguing here about what a typical religious believer could argue.
Although I suspect one who relied on NLT could make a similar argument (why should God’s purposes be the same as a human’s and hence why should God’s morality be the same as human morality?).
What I mean is, I was trying to come up with a GOOD argument that a personal relativist like yourself might be able to use against a theist. If you’re content to equivocate, I could have saved the trouble.
I think you’re confused about this. What argument does the theist make that is affected by YOUR contention that there is evil in the world?
I put an argument for you where their own views would seem to violate some sort of epistemic ethical principle. But, as indicated, it’s messy, and your views about what is or isn’t evil in the world are irrelevant to it.
ETA: there is “arguing against them,” and arguing successfully against them. I’m trying to make a SOUND argument for you! Obviously, it cannot contain any premise regarding your contentions about evil in the world.
walto,
This is exactly why I’m asking you to slow down and think things through before dashing off another response.
My argument does not depend on my subjective standards of evil.
I’ve already made that point:
I don’t need to believe the earth is flat in order to use that assumption to argue against a flat-earther. Likewise, my own atheism and subjectivism do not prevent me from using the problem of evil to argue against a theist. All that matters is that the theist believes in an omniGod, and that the theist believes there is evil in the world.
Bruce,
No reason. It’s possible for God, if he exists, to have a completely different view of morality from us. For a theist who accepts that possibility, the problem of evil need not be a problem at all.
The problem for many theists is that they don’t think that God’s morality is completely different from ours. For example, most Christians think that genocide is wrong and that God disapproved of the Holocaust and the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, just as we do. For them, the idea that God actually commanded a genocide — the Canaanite slaughter of the Old Testament — is a problem.
If God’s morality overlaps with ours, and genocides and indiscriminate slaughters are as abhorrent to him as they are to us, then believers have a difficult problem on their hands in explaining things like the Canaanite slaughter and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
ETA: For someone like William Lane Craig, the (appalling) solution is to embrace divine command theory. To him, the Holocaust and other human-caused genocides were immoral because they contravened God’s orders, but the Canaanite slaughter and the 2004 tsunami were just fine because God willed and/or allowed them.
As I’ve mentioned to you many times, repeating errors doesn’t magically correct them. Try to state your actual argument against the theist. You will see that you will either have to use something like the template I have given you, or you will–as you have a couple of times now–sneak in an irrelevant premise about there being evil in the world.
If you would like to take a shot at giving an actual argument (instead of, say, “steps”) sometime, or simply repeating that you are accusing them of a (no doubt terrific) reductio, I encourage you to do so. Telling people how great your stuff is, and making weak analogies about flat earthers doesn’t really do much, I’m afraid.
What does “X is (objectively) wrong” mean? (Don’t just tell us there’s no reason for thinking values are objective. Everyone knows that’s your view and it doesn’t answer the question.)
What is the subjectivist’s argument from evil? (Don’t just repeat that this argument is a lot like some other argument you’re sure is really keen. Provide it. )
I’m not asking this to fight. I’d really like to see both of these. They might be instructive!
That is a particularly bone-headed remark, by the way. You may make your argument sensibly or unsensibly. You keep telling me it’s sensible. Let’s see it.
keiths:
walto:
walto,
Try to keep your emotions under control so that we don’t end up back in this situation.
If you disagree with my remark, then our discussion won’t get anywhere. So let’s resolve this disagreement before moving on to your other questions.
What, specifically, is “bone-headed” about my remark? Do you doubt that we can assume things for the sake of argument without actually accepting those assumptions as true?
Of course. The post is boneheaded precisely because that is both obvious and irrelevant.
Meanwhile, why not answer a question or two instead of bickering.
And OMG, I do feel sooooo sorry for your significant other if you have one.
walto:
🙂
Keith
Yes, I agree that the argument from evil can be deployed against those who believe God’s morality must overlap ours in ways we can understand. If a moral theist does not believe we can understand the entirety of God’s morality and how it applies to this world, then they are accepting the reply God made to Job.
That’s not what I was attempting to address.
Instead, I claim that you, Keith, as a moral subjectivist, could not use the argument from evil as a way to argue against the existence of God. Do you agree with that claim? If not, what am I missing?
walto,
You say that it’s obvious, but it apparently isn’t so obvious to you. Read it again:
If that is obvious to you, then it should also be obvious that my own subjectivism doesn’t make any difference to my argument. Yet you continue to say things like:
My “personal relativism” is irrelevant. My argument doesn’t depend on it. Anyone — whether moral subjectivist, moral objectivist, Communist, or harpist — can adopt the theist’s assumptions and show that they conflict with observation.