Objective Morality is not God's Work

It is indeed my opponent’s P1 that is in question. Unfortunately my opponent and I differ in one regard of his preliminary assessment. It is by no means a grand difference but it will be up to the audience to decide which of us presented the fairer epistemological representation. By objective I refer to the idea that moral facts are true independent of varying opinions, but that only through humans are they defined. An objective moral code, for the purposes of the naturalist, describes actions that promote his survival as being good, while actions that go against his survival as being bad.A warning to our audience: Con has anticipated my argument and countered it, thereby seeking to weaken the framework of my argument before it has even been presented. “Peace is good because it is advantageous to our survival” are not my words and are his own interpretation of what he has doubtlessly faced before in this subject. Please keep an open eye for any such further attempts at debasing my yet to be formed arguments. It must also be noted that my opponent often uses the word atheism to cloud my position. Let me clear: This is not an argument about God’s existence. This is an argument about whether or not moral standards are God’s creations. For all we know God threw a set of die and let the odds decide on the parameters of our world. For all we know God itself is subject to these laws. For all we know...who are we kidding? We know nothing about God and basing morality on something that we know nothing about is treason against the human mind. My opponent has cast his argument against the faceless scruples of atheism, something that was never part of my stance. 1. The individual is his own ultimate endMan is the highest of values—to nothing else can be attributed a higher measure of worth. Love, joy, peace, kindness and patience cannot be valued for their own sake. I ask of my audience to consider what force of nature could best explain our valuing of ourselves? Is it because some intrinsic external force has instructed us of our own importance, the same external force that my opponent has agreed is an unknowable entity? Or would it be more rational to explain that we as humans have reasoned our own importance because pleasure is good and pain is bad, and that we are its recipients? Or, to put it another way, that we are the measure of this universe? The latter puts an emphasis on the individual’s need to survive. My opponent claims that there must be some ultimate explanation for the distinction between the good and the evil. However, when does an explanation become an ultimate one? When my opponent says so? Why doesn’t it suffice to say that humans are capable of deriving a moral objective code that depends on their survival? Our need for survival is observable—God isn’t. My opponent brings into the fold the discussion of Plato’s ‘Forms’. I would have thought that my opponent could stand upon his own reasoning skills to strengthen his argument. How am I to defend myself against the insertion of a multitude of other individuals? For example, I believe that all knowledge is derived empirically—Plato’s Forms by necessity cannot apply to my understanding of knowledge. However, this is an issue for an entirely different debate, and I would hope that my opponent rescinds this as an argument so that we may focus on the issue at hand.2. God best explains human dignity and rights It appears that I must argue against Mr. Copan in this debate as well as my intended opponent. Intrinsic value can indeed come from a random, non-guided process. Our slow, gradual, grinding evolution from a mere atomic soup gave forth to our cognitive realization that we are our own end. Why must our intrinsic value come from an external source? Why can it not be something that exists due to our coming of age? Our need to survive defines the objective good and has given us our system of values because it necessitated them. We cannot survive unless we value our own existence. 3. Our survival is our moral duty This is my opponent’s train of thought: Duty is a social responsibility to others. Duty arrives to us in form of commands from others. Therefore the existence of objective moral duties rests on the existence of God, because duty only arrives to us by commands. But can duty really only be assigned to the responsibilities we have towards others? Do we not have a duty to ourselves, that duty being the need to survive? My opponent then claimed that “the fact that this person is supreme explains why moral duties are objective, and the fact that this person is authoritative explains why moral duties have their obligatory nature.” Basically, my opponent uses a defining characteristic of God to explain that moral duties are objective. Have we not already outlined that God is an enigmatic entity? The introduction of Koukl and Beckwith’s inquiry against naturalism is one of those examples where my opponent has anticipated the nature of my naturalistic argument. Have I claimed that individuals of a species cannot be selfish for fear of harming the species? Of course not, it is yet again another anticipatory attack. To be fair, however, this is indeed a strong objection against naturalism. Why indeed should an individual care for the survival for his species? There’s a simple answer: because the individual fares better if he cooperates with the rest of his species. The individual’s own survival is dramatically affected by his species’ survival, hence why the individual would shy away from bringing injury to others of his species.4. Moral responsibility—to whom? If my opponent and our audience have Microsoft Word then I would recommend that they type into it the word duty, right-click the word, and then search the available synonyms—responsibility is the first match. Regardless of this, I will counter my opponent’s argument via responsibility. Again my opponent attacks my argument by attacking atheism—an egregious tactic that has been his staple thus far. But my opponent is right when he says that moral responsibility does apply to an inanimate object, and I would add that he’s likely okay with extending that to most animals as well. But why does free will prove that God is the reason for objective morality? Again, my opponent says that it is because a supreme being gave us such powers. I would like to contend, however, that free will came along with the realization that we are our own end, which has been shown to be in accordance with our need to survive. Knowing the difference between good and bad for our own survival necessitates our understanding that we can choose between the two.ConclusionRecall my earlier definition of God: an entity that is without definition. My opponent did not deny it, and so our audience must thus choose between my opponent’s ‘because I said God said so’ or ‘because the individual is his own end, that end being survival.’ Note that my opponent went from attacking atheism and his own interpretation of what naturalism is to saying that God exists, it’s a fact, and you might as well accept it.