Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Tue Apr 12, 2022 7:21 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Apr 12, 2022 3:58 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Tue Apr 12, 2022 3:07 pm
No fact does or can entail a moral conclusion.
That is true, so far. No
mere fact can entail a moral precept.
So even if the Abrahamic god exists, and even if it has a certain nature, and even if we know its nature and what it wants, that still wouldn't mean there are moral facts.
Actually, it would.
Not that it would have to have been like that...if it were some random type of "Supreme Being," it could have created something for no reason at all, with no purpose and to no ends. And it might have no particular view of what should happen therein. It's an odd "god," to be sure; but theoretically, such a thing might be possible...who can say?
So simple fact of the existence of a god might not require that there is morality. So far, fair enough.
But "Abrahamic," you say? Well, then it's the God that creates purposefully, and expresses His moral intentions through revelation. So now you've got quite a different equation.
That God has constituted the universe with purposes, intentions, moral significance and teleological direction, so says
Torah, and so Abraham believed, as a result. And you say it's the "Abrahamic" God, not just any conception of Supreme Being.
So now there's morality, and it's objective.
Not so. Patent and demonstrable nonsense. The claim 'X says this is morally right/wrong, therefore X is morally right/wrong' has no place in a rational moral discussion.
It depends who's speaking. If it's just an ordinary person, right you are.
But if it's God, things are quite different. For the One who made the universe is perfectly capable of saying, and qualified to say, for what purposes He made it, what His Creation aims at, what it was created for, and what actions and attitudes are harmonious with His purposes.
In fact, nobody else really is.
We'd laugh it out of court.
Then it would be a miscarriage of justice, and we'd be proved fools. For we would then have access to the One who could actually speak authoritatively on the answer, and we'd have simply refused to listen at all.
Think about it this way.
Suppose you walk by somebody's house, and he has a huge structure on his front lawn...maybe with some beams and gears and other workings in it, but with no function you can instantly see. Who would be the person who could speak authoritatively as to why that strange structure is there?
There can be only one answer: whoever
put it there. He alone can tell you
why he did it. Moreover, if the strange structure actually has a function, only he can tell you what it is. And when it functions, the only person who can tell you whether it functioned rightly or wrongly is also the creator of it.
Without him, you and I are just guessing. And if the structure simply fell there by accident, we cannot even ask the question
why it's there. There can
be no reason.
The strange structure is the universe. If nobody put it there, it can have no function, and can't misfunction. It cannot achieve its end (telos), or fail to achieve its end, because it was not created for an end. So there is no objective morality in such a universe. It's not even possible for there to be.
But if the universe has a Creator, then He is perfectly able to say what the universe exists for, what its end (telos) is, and whether or not the things within it are functioning toward that end. He can judge its functioning perfectly, as nobody else is even capable to do.
So the question is ultimately not "Is there such a thing as objective morality," but rather, "Does the Creator exist?" The answer to that second question determines the possibility of a positive answer to the first.