Moral Values and Duties Cannot Be Objective if Atheism is True

Just as I feared; I was hoping that you weren't... [Cue disappointment music] lol. No shame in being influenced by Craig and Plantinga! I’ll just say I feel similarly about Sam Harris, and we’ll call it even :) This is why I was deliberate in pointing out... Sure, as I said I’m aware of those other definitions; but I’m not talking about a mere lack of belief in my proposition, I’m talking about the implications of God really not existing. If there are people completely devoid of God... No problem here. I don’t deny that people can have moral systems without belief in God. My argument is that if God does not exist, whatever moral values and duties people believe in are subjective, rather than objective. ...I don't think it wise to simply insert, say... No worries, my argument doesn't insert Yahweh or Allah or any specific religion’s God. My argument seeks to establish some of the necessary attributes of a foundation for objective moral values and duties, and then show how those attributes are best filled by a generic theistic God, and that there aren’t really any other viable alternatives.We can find examples of genuine moral... I am cool with all this - you've elaborated upon the evolved social instincts that I mentioned in my opening statement. However you describe the behavior of animals as “genuine” moral behavior, which I assume is a way of saying that their moral values and duties are objective? Correct me if I am wrong. Whatever you meant by that you did not explain or establish it so much as just assert it. Do you have any argument for why any of these instincts/behaviors would be founded upon objective moral values and duties?You quote Michael Shermer’s book “The Science of Good and Evil". I'll point out that in this book he admits that, assuming no God, ethical systems can be at best a pretty good fit. In his introduction he says, "Chapter 6. How We Are Moral, reviews the various absolute and relative ethical systems that have been developed throughout human history, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each one, and concluding that because of the complexity of human society and culture, no single ethical system can be all encompassing or thoroughly consistent; this chapter also presents a science of provisional ethics that is neither absolute nor relative, arguing that moral principles can be applicable to most people, in most circumstances, most of the time." You also quote Richard Dawkins. I think he, along with Shermer, would actually agree with me that evolved behaviors do not ground any kind of objective moral values or duties. Dawkins says in "River Out Of Eden", "In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” [emphasis added]Sam Harris...argues that our moral compass is predicated on Human well-being...There is so much to say, darn this word limit! I will just focus on problems in Harris’ very first step which render his moral landscape untenable. Sam builds his naturalistic moral landscape upon one initial assumption, which is this: he asks us to agree that the "worst possible misery for everyone" is “bad”. If we agree to that, then he claims we have redefined moral good and moral bad in terms of well-being, and can make objective statements about how best to maximize well-being. Behold, Four Fatal Flaws in the Initial Assumption of Sam Harris’ Moral Landscape 1. He uses the words “bad” and “good” equivocally. 2. He falls into the is/ought fallacy. 3. His denial of free will renders moral agency impossible.4. He smuggles in pre-existing, ungrounded moral values. 1. Sam says that by equating "worst possible misery for everyone" (hereafter called ‘wpmfe’) with “bad”, we have now successfully redefined moral good and evil in terms of well-being, and we can make moral decisions on the basis of avoiding the “wpmfe”. I think virtually everyone would agree the "wpmfe" is “bad”, but that's because it's clearly an example of something bad, as in yucky, terrible. But would we so easily agree that it's an adequate, comprehensive definition of “morally bad”? He's pulled a bait and switch. We use the word “bad" sometimes to mean “awful” and sometimes to mean “wrong”, but those two uses are not equivalent in meaning. Harris is sliding between the two senses of the word. 2. A state of affairs does not have the property of moral rightness or wrongness. It may suck unimaginably, but that sucky state of affairs is not itself morally wrong. This is called the Is/Ought Fallacy, usually credited to David Hume. We cannot derive what ought to be from a description of what is without some other justification. However, Harris presents his theoretical state of affairs ‘wpmfe’ as a foundation for what ought not to be. He tries to derive an ought directly from a state of affairs, which is just a description of what is. Does he have a justification to bridge the is/ought gap? Perhaps he'd say that one ought to act one way rather than another so as to achieve a certain goal - this would be practical though, not necessarily moral. Besides which, in Harris' deterministic universe, there's no free will and thus no possibility of goal-oriented behavior. Harris has nothing but plea for us to agree that if “bad" applies anywhere, it applies to the ‘wpmfe’. As we have seen though, he uses the word “bad” equivocally! 3. The self-destructive implications of Harris’ determinism continue. Sam’s initial assumption that the ‘wpmfe’ is morally bad assumes the possibility of moral action. As we have seen, a state of affairs is not morally good/morally bad in it’s own right - yet we might say something like “the Holocaust was morally bad/wrong” becasue we feel it ought never to have happened - meaning the actors involved ought never to have committed those horrific crimes. We assume the presence of moral agents , which are necessary for any situation to have a moral dimension. But moral agents don't exist if there is no free will, and Harris does not believe in free will. In what sense, then can anyone be morally responsible for anything? He can't say it's wrong to move toward the ‘wpmfe’ if there are no moral agents. 4. When Sam argues that to move in the direction of the ‘wpmfe' is morally wrong, we may agree, but why do we agree? It's not because he has explained the objective wrongness of moving toward the ‘wpmfe’, it is because we bring our preexisting moral sensibilities to the question. He depends upon us, then, to import from elsewhere the moral values/duties he claims to establish. No objectivity there!I'm unaware of anything that is truly "objective"... So you don't deny that objective facts can exist, but you are skeptical of our ability to ascertain them because everything we consider passes through our personal filters of subjectivity, right? I agree we don't ever fully escape our box, but are you implying that our attempts to consider possible foundations for objective morality are entirely futile? If that's what you think, then it's equally as damaging for your arguments as mine. So it is very odd to posit a religious notion... It’s not clear to me how you jumped from our being trapped in subjectivity to this claim about God being particularly problematic as a ground for moral objectivity - what are the steps in your thinking here? Again, if you are skeptical of the entire conversation because we can never fully escape our subjective filters, then your naturalistic arguments fall under the same knife. More importantly - this side discussion has veered off into moral epistemology - that is, how we come to know what is right and wrong, but our topic of debate is moral ontology - what is the basis in reality for objective moral values and duties.