We’re just in from the debate at Auckland University where Raymond Bradley and Matt debated “Is God the Source of Morality? Is it rational to ground right and wrong in commands issued by God?” and we see the discussion from those there has started in more than one place on the net – including here. We don’t plan to write much on our own thoughts just yet – we need to wind down first! But for those of you keen to start/keep sharing your thoughts go ahead – the discussion is off to a great start!
- Glenn Peoples, a Dunedin based Philosopher of Religion who many regulars will know as the author of Say Hello to my Little Friend: The Beretta Blog and Podcast, watched a live video feed of the debate via Skype and will be writing a review of his thoughts which we hope to have online in the next few days.
- We plan to publish Matt’s opening statement and Ray’s (if he is agreeable) tomorrow.
- The video will be online in a few weeks once it is edited and uploaded.
[I’ve moved the comments people have already left on the sticky post (which I have now unstickied so it is further down the page) to this thread in case you were wondering how your comment got here.
Tags: Debates · Glenn Peoples · Matthew Flannagan · Raymond Bradley40 Comments
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
Hey Mat well done with the debate!
I thought you were very well prepared! and if I was scoring I would give a points victory to you. but even if I am biased a little you were certainly not outclassed in any way.
Possibly the debate went a little off the moot but at least you answered all of Ray arguments with thought and exegetical accuracy.
Well Done
Matt & Madeline,
Firstly I really enjoyed the debate tonight.
Secondly, I’d like to say that having seen you talk for real Matt, I realise how restrictive a blog forum is for having honest discussion. Not that I’m knocking your blog.
What I mean, is it is really easy to misinterpret what people mean through this technology, but I applaud the effort that you and Madeline put into it, especially with a family and all.
You wouldn’t believe the juggling that had to take place to allow me to attend and we’ve only got two kids!.
I also went to the prior debate: “Religion is owed no respect, but should we tolerate it?” – a talk by Robert Nola, that was really good and thought provoking too.
I’d also like to say that I really respect that you allow people to challange you on your blog, as has been mentioned by others, a large number of other christian blogs don’t tolerate dissenting comments. So thanks for that as well.
Finally, I loved your joint statement that we should all continue to think about the issues raised and I will be pursuing some more reading material at short notice.
Hi! I’m a student at the university, and was at the debate. I was very pleased at Matt’s defense of the eligibility of God for being the source of morality. It was extremely gratifying to see that Matt as the Christian had the advantage when it came to polish, both in presentation and in intellectual rigor.
By the end of the debate, I think that the vacuity of Bradley’s argument was very apparent to all in attendance. He didn’t seem to engage at all with the detailed examination of genre and context that Matt put forward in defense of God’s character (not that I think anyone is in a position to judge God’s character) and failed to properly reinforce the core of his argument after its dismantling in the opening exchange- the exposition of the fallacies in his core argument and focusing on the intellectual substance of the matter at hand was a real strength of the Christian position. Bradley’s catastrophic confusion about the objectivity of divine command morality was particularly irritating to me, and was very well-handled by Matt.
That said, I can’t say that I came away from the debate completely satisfied. While Bradley’s reasons for supposing that God is not the rightful source of morality were handled very well, but I don’t think we got enough positive argumentation for the notion that, indeed, God is the actual source of morality.
During discussion time, the ontological question of the nature of morality was raised, and -that- is the ground that I truly think the debate should have been fought on. Were I not already a subscriber to a divine command account of the ontology of moral law, I would have no reason to accept the connection between God and morality coming away from that debate. Perhaps that is Bradley’s fault, for as the first speaker he is supposed to choose the ground the question will be argued on, but I do think that at least a short laying-out of reasons to suppose that Divine Command Ethics is superior to the alternatives would have very much improved the quality of the debate.
Bradley, I think, lost decisively, but I’m not sure that Matt, arguing for the truth of Divine Command Morality, managed to pull off a win.
I was disappointed the debate was not about what I thought it would be for the moot – “Is God the source of morality”.
I thought the debate would be about whether people who did not believe in God or atheists and agnostic could have morals or have as high morals as those who believe in God.
This was not possible for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Bradley went off topic at the start and changed the debate to whether God exists. Secondly, because of the rules it was not easy for Matt to respond and bring it back on topic.
I think the original moot would make a very interesting debate. I have met some Christians who genuinely believe that people cannot be moral unless they have the incentives and/or disincentives of reward and punishment in an afterlife. I am agnostic and of course do not accept that.
I was also disappointed that the debate was referred mainly to Christians and there was hardly a mention of Moslems.
Chuck,
The Divine Command Moralist might well agree with you that the incentive/disincentive of Heaven and Hell is irrelevant to the question of the nature of morality.
For the divine command moralist, at least as far as I construe them, Moral Law consists in the commands of a God who is innately authoritative, and is fixed by the necessary nature of such a God.
It is opposed to those who think that what we call “morality” consists in mere human convention or social construction. It is also opposed to those who think of morality as some abstract body of laws somehow existing “out there.” The Divine Command Moralist will typically argue that such construals of the moral law somehow rob the concept of morality of its traditional qualities.
Thus, the Divine Command Moralist does not assert that the atheist or agnostic is automatically immoral for not believing in God, Heaven, Hell and the rest. Rather, he asserts that, if the atheistic or agnostic worldview is -correct,- there is no such thing as morality. That which we would call “good” or “evil” would not, on the atheistic/agnostic worldview, be good or evil in any meaningful sense.
That is the really interesting question, I think. Is the Divine Command Moralist correct?
Fair points, Chuck and Anon. Chuck, I totally agree that it would have been more pertinent to the moot (and probably a lot more of the non-theists there) to have discussed in greater depth the meaning of morality without God.
Anon, I would disagree with the usage of the word ‘mere’ regarding social construction, and as Ray briefly touched on there are other possibilities for a common human understanding of a shared morality arising from our ancestry as a species. While that is a proposition we’d probably disagree on, the point still remains that pretty ubiquitously, non-theists hold a tremendous sense of moral value outside of belief in God. What I think you’re saying, Anon, is that even in that circumstance the moral code is still based within God, even if non-theists don’t believe that. But of course that’s only a defensible point from within a theistic framework.
I also disagree that if there is no God there is no such thing as morality. I agree that there would be no enforcement of morality, as I think Chuck was pointing out, but there is still the core of empathy and compassion that is the basis of moral codes. The concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in that sense definitely become more fuzzy, I concur, but in a way that allows people sharing a common morality to still be able to discriminate between human actions that are ‘good’ or ‘evil’ in a broad sense. It’s the grey areas that people get finicky about since actions and their consequences for the people involved are the primary focus for non-theists, rather than interpretation of divine will on a particular topic or issue.
That still leaves the ‘source’ of morality questionable (and of course I doubt this comments board will convert anyone who’s already decided the source for themselves, be it God, biological evolution, or something else.) I do hope, as John Bishop concluded last night, that we can all observe that we do have a common striving to be moral beings, whatever our particular religious background.
A common tactic evident in Ray Bradley’s debates online and which you can see in his written one with William Lane Craig is to talk briefly about the moot but then throw up several passing comments about God, Christianity and the Scriptures that he delivers confidently. Last night was no exception.
His Christian debating opponent will normally have prepared to discuss the topic and will rightly focus on the topic but then it appears to those listening and following along that Bradley has bested his opponent because the dozen or so off-topic criticisms he has levelled at Christianity have gone unanswered. The problem for his opponent is that debates are not won by simply offering the best argument on the moot topic, you have to perform and strut well, you have to joke, you have to play the tactics well and keep in mind that the audience will be swayed by a string of unanswered off-topic jibes so these must be dealt with but that is hard. The opponent has to present his case, answer Bradleys arguments that were on point and somehow manage to deal with the constant barrage of out of context-scriptures, slurs on Christian history and so on all whilst dropping the odd joke and staying on time.
To be fair to Bradley, William Lane Craig makes it pretty impossible for his opponents too as he typically sets up a 5 point argument, insists that his opponent answer all 5 points of he has lost the debate and the opponent then has to try to do that whilst advancing his own all within the time frame. Very hard.
So, I thought that Matt did very well. He did set out and argued the moot (note the full title above – is it rational to ground morality in God) and he did it well but he did have a lot of off-topic Scriptures, jibes and claims about history to deal with too which he also dealt with well. Perhaps he could have closed each of his segments by calling us all back to the moot a little more than he did but we can always poke holes.
I think Matt is definitely someone the New Zealand church should be proud to call their own.
Ash,
If morality is a social construction, I would argue that it loses its moral force. It amounts to saying that if a large enough amount of people believe some system of values to be correct, that system of values is correct by virtue of that belief. It is to say that the preferences of a large number of (perhaps of all) people are able to dictate moral value. I do not think that this squares with moral experience. How do such agreed preferences create moral value? They may govern what the members of the society are raised to –think- is right and wrong, but how does that create real, authoritative right and wrong? How is moral authority related to simply having a large number of people agree on something? If enough people agreed that child murder for fun should be encouraged, does that make it right?
If morality is simply a development out of our biological heritage, we may similarly object to the notion that those preferences which nature bestows upon us are those preferences that we should adopt as morally mature beings. The preferences we have as a result of our nature are still, at the bottom, merely preferences. Why should we regard anyone’s moral preferences binding? Why should we regard our own moral preferences as binding? The moral preferences derived from our biological heritage are simply what people –do- prefer in many cases. I do not think that there are any good arguments for saying that what people –do- prefer is what they –ought- to prefer.
So neither society nor biology can be the ground of morality. At best, they are causes for what we think moral behaviour is, and thereby influence our actions, just as what we are taught in schools influences what we think the world is like and thereby influences our actions. Society and biology, as far as I can see, are not even in the running to be the ground of morality.
You suggest that perhaps our feelings of empathy and compassion form the ground of moral claims. However, I fail to see how such feelings have any authoritative force in themselves. Why not our feelings of hatred and destructiveness rather than empathy and compassion? According to what law should we accord value to these feelings and not others? How is this law authoritative? There doesn’t seem to be an easy answer here, and one would be tempted to say that there is no answer, but for the fact that we do, in fact, in our moral experience, experience the influence of the moral law.
As an alternative to these theories, the Divine Command Moralist proposes that moral values are grounded in the commands and necessary nature of an innately authoritative person. The theory is attractive to me because it preserves all the qualities of morality that we encounter in our moral experience in a way that I think no rival theory manages to do. A Divine Command morality would be authoritative by the innate authority of the Divine Commander. It would make sense to consider it authoritative due to the personhood of the Divine ( after all, how can authority be exercised by the impersonal?). It would be necessary and fixed by the necessary nature of such a being, the very opposite of arbitrary.
You say that this idea is defensible only within a theistic framework, but I strongly disagree. Many atheists have held this to be true. An atheist can quite consistently hold that the only possible ground for moral facts is God, and yet claim that no God exists. Such an atheist would simply have to be a nihilist. I think that, on any system other than theism, nihilism is the most plausible view. This does not mean that such nihilists would in any practical sense behave differently from others in their societies. Theirs doesn’t have to be a practical nihilism, which is pretty much unlivable, but it would be a nihilism that recognizes the pretension of moral justification and value in a non-theistic universe.
@ Anonymous
I think you have just made some excellent points and should be proud to put your name to them.
The idea that morality can be grounded in contemporary preference simply means there is no such thing as right or wrong but rather only what the individual can or cannot get away with at any particular time. Morality is then a tension between what the individual wants to do and what society can prevent him doing and there is no “ought” involved at all.
I find it hard to see how a person can reject the idea that morality is grounded in Gods commands as problematic and then claim the position its grounded in societies commands is not.
Amost every objection critics of a divine command theory raise against a divine command theory apply with greater force against the societal construction one.
One only has to consider the fact that people who push this line seem to think the commands of a perfectly good omnsicent being who is able to order the universe so that virtue and happiness ultimately coincide, is an inadequate basis but the commands of ignorant, often prejudiced, human societies where virtue is not always rewarded is.
Max, apart fromt he objection of “No, it’s just false,” surely you see Matt’s point.
Matt,
While you’re commenting, what arguments would you use to ground morality in the commands of God? The most plausible alternative to Divine Command, in my opinion, is some from of non-materialistic atheistic moral realism. Are there any good arguments to prefer Divine Command over this alternative?
“Amost every objection critics of a divine command theory raise against a divine command theory apply with greater force against the societal construction one. ”
Apart from perhaps the objection that divinity does not exist but the society does…
@ Max
Which is pretty much why Kant [i think] said
‘if God didnt exist it would be necessary to invent Him’
Without God its all just preference, and no ones preference is any better than any one elses.
“@ Max
Which is pretty much why Kant [i think] said
‘if God didnt exist it would be necessary to invent Him’
Without God its all just preference, and no ones preference is any better than any one elses.”
Not at all. You are setting up a false dichotomy where you have God and objective morality on pone side, and no God and subjectivity on the other side. I don’t subscribe to them myself but there are some pretty good naturalistic accounts of objective morality out there.
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@ Max
I agree, except about the dichotomy being false.
Without “absolute truth” there is only “relative truth”, as best i can see all the alternative arguements desperately seek to find a grounding other than God [ and in my opinion fail] or honestly admit all morality is relative.
@ Glen
is you blog site still down?
Glenn, your blog has been down for an abnormal amount of time! Come on, tell us, what’s going on?!?
“Max, apart fromt he objection of “No, it’s just false,” surely you see Matt’s point.”
Yes.
“all the alternative arguements desperately seek to find a grounding other than God [ and in my opinion fail] or honestly admit all morality is relative.”
That seems a fair breakdown of the ways you can go. Some claim to find some sort of grounding in our evolutionary history which provides an objective basis for ethics. And then other faiths, like some strands of Buddhism, believe that there is objective goodness in the universe even though there is no God – so there are a range of ways to go.
Glen sent out a post to his RSS feed about a week ago that explained the issues with his site. I wish it would get back up as well since there are some old podcasts that I’d like to download and give a listen.
@Ash
Thank you for a very good comment. I don’t know what your personal perspective might be, but I appreciate your tone and clarity. I, too, think that we are too often distracted by the very different question of “Can atheists (or a non-theist society) be moral?” The topic of this debate was completely different, “Is God the Source of Morality?” although many seem to miss the difference.
Max, the problem with the “God does not exist” response is that one generally accepted reason for believing in the existence of something is that its existence is implied by the theory that best explains some phenomena. Hence, if Gods commands explain morality better than societies commands that itself provides a reason for thinking God exists. And it seems to me that Gods commands do explain morality better than societies. There are fairly obvious counter examples to a societal command theory where a society mistakenly commands something abhorent which do not apply to God.
Second, it seems to me that if one were to press the “there is no God objection” a hypothetical divine command theory would still be better than a societal one, one would claim that rightness and wrongness consist in agreement or disagreement respectively, with the commands God would have issued if he had existed. This would not presuppose Gods existence but it would provide a better ground for moral duties than societal convention.
Hi Anon,
I think non materialistic realism, faces the problem in that it does not provide a better explanation of moral properties than Gods commands. In both cases moral properties are explained by appealing to something “supernatural”, so non materialistic realism does not provide a more economical explanation that a divine command theory. On the other hand a DC theory, has some explantory advantages, for example it does not face challenges from causal theories of knowledge, Gods existence explains other things along side moral properties, and God existence answers the problems of the moral Gap John Hare writes about, and it solves the overiddingness problem that layman mentions whereas non materialistic realism does not seem to explain these things.
If a naturalist is willing to accept the existence of “supernatural” properties or objects to explain morality the obvious question I would ask is why they object to accepting Gods existence for the same reason.
While you’re commenting, what arguments would you use to ground morality in the commands of God? The most plausible alternative to Divine Command, in my opinion, is some from of non-materialistic atheistic moral realism. Are there any good arguments to prefer Divine Command over this alternative?
Its not my response Matt – all I said was that it was a response which counted against one theory and not the other. You cannot deny this, surely?
As for “what God would have said…” Good luck getting people to agree on that one! That would sink into subjectivity as quickly as any other endeavor.
I’m putting my review of the debate together, and it should be ready by tomorrow evening.
For those who are wondering – my site and blog will hopefully be up and running in the next couple of days, along with an extended explanation of why it was down.
Thanks Glenn 🙂
I so hope you do not remain blogless for much longer.
Ray has given us permission to publish his opening statement and first reply so I will try to get those online tomorrow.
Max, sure its not your objection I get that, I was simply showing why I don’t think its entirely a plausible one. A person who offers a DC theory like Robert Adams for example, could well be arguing that one plausible reason for thinking God exists is that he provides a better explanation for the nature of moral obligation than any alternative. To respond, but God does not exist in this context would beg the question.
As to your comment “good luck on getting consensus on what God thinks” I agree this is a problem, however I am inclined to think its no more a problem than getting consensus on what is in fact right and wrong. I think one can grant that God defined classically as all knowing, allpowerful, perfectly good person would will that people do what is right and will that they refrian from doing wrong, the problem is what is right and wrong. This however is a problem for any ethical theory.
I have a question, regarding building moral consensus, there was a debate between jurgen habermas and charles taylor about this issue, and habermas pointed out that you need to start with secular based reasons to justify establishing agreements on forming a moral consensus, since reasons based on worldly (immanential frame) of reference are more universal than religious ones, because they tend to be based on common identifiers: family, conscience and will; something people normally yearn for or are born with as opposed to belief in the right creeds or god, which seems to be more optional in accessibility and requires an added step of understanding the dogma which in itself can be restricting, because of the subjectivity of the interpretation.
e.g. people generally feel good about live aid concerts or charity galas (christians and non-believers alike) vs. a passion play for charity which only the Christians would understand the significance vs the majority of non-believers who don’t understand
Which has a more broad-based appeal, in your opinion Matt in regards to forming a consensus about a moral issue: is it the Christian Agape principle or Secular Humanitarianism?
“To respond, but God does not exist in this context would beg the question”
I agree. Twas but a throw away comment.
“I am inclined to think its no more a problem than getting consensus on what is in fact right and wrong.”
I think it would be exactly as hard in each case… which kind of makes me ask in what was a DC theory with no actual God is better than people just deciding to come up with a set of morals they can all agree upon. But on the other side of the coin it would be no worse – and you never know their might actually be a God, and he might send a few clues now and then.
As I said in an early post I was disappointed that debate changed from a debate about morals to one about whether God exists. I find such debates pointless. Has anyone on this blog changed their minds or is likely to do so in the future? I doubt it.
I find atheists have a lot in common with Mormons, JWs and a few other evangelists. The world has a major problem with religious fanatics and very few of them are Christians.
I am an agnostic. I might have become an atheist if I seen that the vast majority of scientists were atheists. That is clearly not the case. One just has to Google Stephen Hawking.
I am concerned about two problems facing the world. The first is Muslim extremist who want kill Christians, agnostics, atheists and anyone who dies not worship their paedophile prophet. The second is fanatical liberals.
I think more would be gained by Christians, agnostics, atheists and other religions who do not want to convert others to their beliefs focus on what they had in common than their differences than debating issues that will not be resolved – certainly anytime soon.
@Chuck
Just to put my two cents worth in, on the original topic [ and as a Christian] yes i do think God is the only definite source of moral good. Please refer to my previous comments for reasons.
Does this mean that atheists, agnostics or anybody cannot be morally good or at least try to be—NO of course not. The questions then become— why does anyone hold to a particular standard, is their doing so rationally consistent with their other beliefs, what makes their standard any more valid than anybody else’s, and how does it work out in real life?
Current example , the West to all intents and purposes allows abortion on demand but deplores suicide bombings, both involve the killing of innocents who cant defend themselves from the actions taken against them. Who is right, who is wrong, why and by what standard do we measure.
In the end all this debating is just so much hot air if it doesnt have a practical application in our lives, as individuals, communities and nations.
Hi Alvin, Stephen Smith gave an interesting argument against that idea. He said the secularist who reasons this way is a bit like the daughter who took her father out for dinner. The father said he wanted a meal and dessert, the daughter just wanted to order dessert. After arguing for a while the daughter said, “I guess the consensus is that we will just get dessert, after all we both agree on this, you just want a meal as well” .
Matthew Su, thank you for your feedback its really helpful and interesting to here others feedback. Glad you enjoyed the event.
‘
Matt
“In the end all this debating is just so much hot air if it doesnt have a practical application in our lives, as individuals, communities and nations.”
Jeremy, how does debating abortion with those who believe that all abortion are murder with those who do not believe this particularly very early abortion have any practical application?
I believe many conservation non-Christians have a lot common moral views with Christians. One example would be the importance of marriage in the raising of children. Would not more be accomplished focusing on what we may have in common than focusing on differences that will probably never be resolved?
I am an active member of the ACT party. I do not agree with all ACT policies. By supporting ACT on the policies I agree with I am a lot more likely to be listened to when discussing policies I disagree with.
@ Chuck
Wasnt actually suggesting we debate abortion, that was supposed to be an example to go with the preceeding comments about morality.
The comment about practical application is just that, this has been an interesting blog to read and stimulating but surely the ultimate purpose of being concerned about the source of morality is “what is moral , are we leading moral lives and how do we know?” The answers can be very different depending on the source.
@ Chuck
Furthermore there is a fundamental difference between preference and conviction. The first is readily compromised, the second hopefully not so.
I refer you to Matt’s rely to Alvin, clearly the example is trivial, but the principle regarding compromise is clear. I would suggest that “lowest common denominator” is not really a valid basis for co-operation.
To return to Matt’s example the father missed out on main course [the substantial/important part of the meal].
I do however agree that listening improves your chances of being listened to. I suspect though that you were previously already in substative agreement with the majority of Acts policies.
Jeremy, I do agree with most but by know means all of ACT’s policies. I also agree with most but by know means all of Family First’s policies to the extent that I make a small regular contribution and am attending the forum tomorrow. Bob does not insist that everyone agree everything he says to be a member/supporter.
The Sensible Sentencing Trust is another example of a group that puts practical achievements ahead of blind ideology. I do not know Garth McVicar’s personal view on capital punishment. He wisely does not say. For a start it would be divisive. Secondly, there is no chance of it being introduced so it would not only be divisive but a complete waste of time.
I agree that there are some things one cannot compromise on. However, failure to compromise is one reason there is no conservative party in Parliament. Both major parties pander for the liberal vote and treat families with contempt. If enough conservatives who are very concerned about the direction society is going in a number ways could agree to disagree on some issues and focus on issues they agree on much more could accomplished.
There is no way abortion will be made illegal anymore that it is now except hopefully with underage girls having abortions arranged without parents knowledge. However, the number of abortions could be reduced in a number of ways without making them illegal.
@ Chuck
Sounds like we agree on all sorts of things, awesome, and more power to your elbow within ACT. If you can make a positive influence on these things then I for one will be grateful.
Thanks for taking my name. From now on I have a new name.