There is a God

He makes an interesting for case that has yet to do anything with the existence of God - though supposedly his establishment of an objective morality will demonstrate that God exists (perhaps to say that only God's existence can account for morality). Other than that, I can't see much of an alternative though I'd be delighted to find one. Either way, I will simply refute the idea that an objective morality exists by showing we have no reason to believe moral facts exist. Simply put, my opponent doesn't make any case for moral objectivism - he has given an argument against moral relativism but this isn't the position I am advocating. Instead, I will be arguing for a form of moral skepticism, moral nihilism/error theory. I will be taking inspiration from J. L. Mackie, probably the most prominent advocate of moral error theory - the arguments I will use come from his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong[1]. ==================== Arguments against the existence of an objective moral law - Problem with motivational internalism ==================== To uphold moral objectivism, you would have to adhere to the thesis of motivational internalism (MI), which claims that "If an agent judges that it is right for her to Φ in circumstances C, then either she is motivated to Φ in C or she is practically irrational[2]. " As you can see, there is a internal, necessary, and a priori connection between the moral obligation to do X and a defeasible motivation to do X. I realize that there are different versions of this thesis, some being more restrictive than their traditional counterparts, so I will offer some basic counterexamples that should cover most of them. I will refer to some two counterexamples that work against the unrestricted version of MI. If my opponent wishes to uphold a restricted version, then he should do so and present and argument for it. Until then, if he fails to clarify then it should be assumed my arguments are succinct to defeat his position unless they are shown to be unsound/invalid. The basic argument is to propose the notion of volitional impossibility, which can be manifested in certain cases. Take the following examples[3]: A soldier believes that were he to flee the scene of the battle at this very moment, he almost certainly would be able to emerge from the conflict unharmed. But he finds it simply unthinkable that he abandon the other members of his platoon, even though there is considerable risk to his well-being as a result of remaining in the engagement. A guard is ordered to take the family members of a political prisoner and execute them without attracting any attention in the process. The guard sincerely believes that he ought to carry out these orders in virtue of his allegiance to the state, and yet when it comes time to actually pull the trigger, he is overwhelmed by the innocence of the prisoner's children and the horrendous nature of the act he is about to perform. As a result, he comes to believe that he is incapable of carrying out the order. These are examples in which agents realize an action A to be morally right and yet they are overwhelmingly averse to doing it; or in other words, they are not motivated. This is usually because of their psychological architecture, such as fear. ==================== Arguments against the existence of an objective moral law - Argument from queerness ==================== This argument can be summed up in this one pivotal line from Mackie: "If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe[1]. " What I am referring to is the argument from queerness, which is meant to demonstrate that we have no sufficient reason to believe in the existence of objective moral values. To be brief, I will supply some points as to why we should doubt moral objectivism: Our ordinary moral discourse purports to refer to intrinsically prescriptive properties that somehow influence and motivate us to do actions irrespective of our desires - indeed, think of esoteric concepts such as obligations and here we have these, frankly, weird properties that are universal and yet prescriptive. Furthermore, these moral properties seem to supervene upon the natural world which would beg for a mysterious metaphysical connection between the two - very similar to the mysterious connection between the mind and the body in a dualist framework. I ask of my opponent, what is the nature of a moral truth? ==================== Conclusion ==================== I have presented what I believe to be two major faults for moral realists; I would like to see my opponent show otherwise. Furthermore, I want to make a last observation that my opponent really hasn't shown any argument for moral realism except for an argument against moral relativism. ---References--- 1. Mackie, J. L. Ethics Inventing Right and Wrong. New York: Penguin (Non-Classics), 1991. Print. 2. . http://plato.stanford.edu... 3. . http://www.wfu.edu...