By Dima Zhyvov
This post is a continuation of the moral argument. Please see Part 1, Part 2, Part3 if you have not read them yet.
Exploring features of morality
I started out my article with the discussion of Lewis’ moral argument, which identifies, albeit implicitly, certain features of morality that are difficult to explain on strictly naturalistic grounds. Let me list some of the prominent ones here and then offer brief considerations of why postulating God’s existence is superior explanatorily to naturalism in each case. Again I can only skim through all of them briefly.
Moral Freedom, Moral Responsibility, Moral Blame and Moral Praise
The notion of moral freedom implies that agents can only be considered morally culpable or responsible for their actions if they are free in the relevant sense at the moment of making their choices. This proposition seems intuitively correct, doesn’t it? In what sense can someone be held responsible for the actions he or she had no control over? This consideration leads us to another, more controversial one: what kind of freedom must be in place for moral responsibility to be viable? There are three basic views on this: indeterminism, compatibilism, and determinism. I think indeterminism gives arguably the most robust view of human free will, making moral responsibility intelligible, and it is thus to be preferred over the other two alternatives, all things being equal. However, whether libertarianism is in fact true is a different story entirely, and it depends on the kind of universe we live in, as well as on what kind of creatures we are. Do we live in a fully deterministic universe where every event, including our choices, is determined or caused by prior events or states? It seems to me that this is the most plausible scenario, given naturalism.[1] Or, are human choices free from the determination or constraints of human nature and environment to the extent that human beings can be said to “own” their choices?[2] Let me illustrate the acuteness of the problem for naturalists who affirm causal determinism for human beings. Suppose you have a choice to cheat on your wife or not. Morality says you shouldn’t. Suppose you end up cheating. On a deterministic picture, your choice was determined, such that, at the moment you made it, the causal conditions and physical laws at work in the world dictated that you do exactly as you did. In those circumstances you could not have done otherwise. To say that you ought not to have cheated, then, is problematic, because you cannot be obligated to do what is impossible to do, and in those circumstances, it was impossible that you could have done otherwise. Moral freedom as well as moral responsibility in a determined world seems utterly implausible if not completely ruled out.
But both moral freedom and moral responsibility are indispensable for a robust view of morality and throwing them out of the picture is tantamount to making the notion of morality incoherent. If, in such a case, we were to carry on using moral terms we currently employ, we need to so radically re-define them that, I am afraid, there will be little, if anything, left of the notion of morality, classically construed.
What follows, however, from theism being true? Well, to begin with, it becomes possible to talk about libertarian freedom of moral agents, which is extremely odd on naturalism. No longer is the system altogether closed and deterministic, especially in the realm of our mind and will. No longer is a counter-intuitive account for our moral choices necessary, because now we can take our moral experience at face value. There is then a real place for genuine moral praise and moral blame. In what sense can our praise of someone for their moral choices be intelligible if what they did was causally determined, independently of the agent, to happen anyway? Equally ludicrous would be a suggestion that one can rationally be blamed for something that they did when there was no real chance for them to do otherwise in the circumstances they were in. Moral blame and moral praise become inexplicable if our actions are causally determined. There is a reason why, for instance, it would be irrational to get angry at nature for the recent tsunami in Japan, which took away many human lives, namely, that nature lacks just those qualities that would make moral blame or praise coherent. There is no ‘ought’ or ‘should’ that can be applied to nature. Nature just is, end of story. It may be uncomfortable to hear it but why, on atheism, is Richard Dawkins wrong when he says, “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.”[3] It seems to me that, on naturalism, there is no reason to think why human choices are any different than any other causally determined natural occurrences. Sure, our choices are more complex and there is a lot that yet remains unknown about how our brains work, etc. But I submit to you that nothing in our inability to predict the actual future choices of human beings even begins to suggest that therefore these choices are somehow free from the same deterministic processes that are at work in nature. This is not to say, of course, that deterrence, rehabilitation, and positive conditioning do not make sense in a determined world. They make perfect sense, but what is absent is any real sense of ownership and personal responsibility on behalf of moral agents. Those uncomfortable with watering such conceptions down have a good reason to take theism seriously.
Those Odd Obligations
But perhaps one salient feature of morality that is the most incongruous in a purely naturalistic world is moral obligation. I noted in the beginning of this article that I am willing to concede that, on naturalism, a plausible evolutionary explanation can be provided to account for one’s feelings of or beliefs in moral obligation. But how, in a godless universe, a collection of atoms could generate and issue genuinely binding moral commands is altogether mysterious. Let us appreciate just what we are dealing with when we talk about this aspect of morality: “Moral duties are thought to confer obligations that we need to perform even if doing so is not something we want to do…Morality doesn’t just tell us to do those things we already want to do. Sometimes it tells us to do what we don’t want to do, or not to do what we do want to do. It’s inconvenient in that way from time to time.”[4] Indeed, it is this aspect of morality that we sometimes find exceptionally hard to accept. 
I remember many times when I have begun to think that moral rules deprive me of fun or of the chance to do what will give me happiness and enjoyment. And when we eventually yield to temptation, as we all invariably do from time to time due to the weakness of will and corruption of character, I think we are all too familiar with our tendency to rationalize our actions. In such circumstances, a rationalization we, or at least I, have been inclined to use is to question whether the action was really wrong after all. When confronted with the fact that our choices fall short of meeting the requirements of morality, one response to the resulting guilt is to acknowledge our moral failure, but another, and here I am speaking from my personal experience, is to lower the standard or even to contemplate the possibility of denying the existence of the moral standard altogether. Because of the authority that morality wields and the guilt it is able to produce, we can begin to resent it. We may start to wonder if morality is anything more than “an internalization of parental teachings, social mores, or mere convention and conditioning.”[5] Unless, contra Michael Ruse (see Part 3), morality continues to be understood to rest on solid foundations, its authority comes into question and, frankly, understandably so. Why should I take seriously, for instance, an obligation to forgo one’s preferences for the sake of another as I often feel morally compelled to do? Or why should I do something that is inconvenient or against my self-interest[6]? Do moral obligations really bind us even if they do not correspond with our cares and interests? If they do, then they indeed seem to be rather odd entities. If such moral facts exist, then a dazzling question arises; namely, how could they ever have arisen in the naturalistic universe? How could bits of matter generate such authoritative demands? Is it any surprise that one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the last century, J.L. Mackie, wrote, “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of properties and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the course of events without an all-powerful god to create them.”[7] In discussing Mackie’s idea, philosophers David Baggett and Jerry L. Wall write, “Mackie had in mind a divinely ordered naturalistic explanation…His idea was that moral facts, as traditionally conceived, particularly those pertaining to obligation, exhibit features so strange that their appearance in a naturalistic world seems nothing less than miraculous. And, unfortunately, miracles do not sit well in a naturalistic world! For these reasons, as an atheist, Mackie himself found the notion of their existence altogether dubious.”[8] Obviously, as I have noted in the beginning of Part 3, any rejection of moral facts a la Mackie, or understanding of them as great delusions, would take the “sting” away from my moral argument for God’s existence. The moral argument is an argument that can only hope to persuade those who have firm convictions about morality. Mackie obviously lost such conviction, but many would disagree with him. They may at times find themselves in doubt about the binding power and authority of morality, especially when the temptations to flout them are great due to conflicting self-interest and preferences, but few of us will go as far as to deny the moral law altogether. At least some moral facts impose an obligation on us that applies irrespective of whether we want to do it or not. Notice that for the moral argument to work, one does not need to postulate the existence of many such non-negotiable moral obligations. Some of such obligations would do. If you think, as I do, that moral argument has such resources at its disposal, then I think you would also agree that it provides good reason to entertain a supernatural worldview.
Click here to see part 5 of the article
[1]One might object that in describing the most plausible view of the universe as deterministic on naturalism, I am building a straw-man and forgetting recent developments in quantum mechanics, which, according to one prominent theory, postulates indeterminacy at the particle level. I am not forgetting this. Rather I think it is premature to embrace this interpretation, given that other fully deterministic models were proposed that account equally well for the empirical data. For more on this, let me refer you to Matt’s article in this series on the cosmological argument where he discusses this in greater detail.
[2]I want to emphasize the word ‘determined‘ here when talking about human choices, because libertarian view does not preclude there being strong influences on the person prior to or at the moment of making a choice. What is precluded on this view, however, is complete determination of what those choices must be given the “inputs” of one’s nature, predispositions, greatest desires, and even God.
[3]Richard Dawkins, “God’s Utility Function,” published in Scientific American (November, 1995), p. 85
[4]Good God, David Bagget and Jerry L.Walls, Oxford University Press, p. 15
[5] Ibid.
[6] There is one objection to the theistic framework for ethics, however, that I wish to address, which is related to the role that self-interest plays in morality. This objection is often mounted against the Kantian version of the moral argument which basically says that morality makes full rational sense only if acting morally is ultimately in our self-interest. To understand Kant here, we must come to grips with something that Henry Sidgwick, the nineteenth-century moral philosopher called the “dualism of the practical reason”: the fact that what might serve the happiness of a given individual might conflict with what might serve the wider population. In Good God David Bagget and Jerry Walls explain Sidgwick’s dilemma:
“Suppose an individual, for the sake of serving the greater good, has to sacrifice his own happiness, or even his life. Would it be reasonable for him to do it? On the one hand, it seems reasonable to make a sacrifice, yet on the other, it seems reasonable not to sacrifice his own happiness”(p.13)
This is a problem, because without a belief that, ultimately, good will triumph over evil, or that those who act morally in difficult situations will be vindicated, the reasonableness of acting upon our moral impulses to sacrifice one’s own immediate interests would be challenged.
It is here that Kant resolves to God as the answer to the “dualism of the practical reason”. For Kant, God could serve the role of ensuring that it’s always in our best interests to be moral. To this, various moral philosophers responded with a similar criticism they use against ethical egoism, namely, that self-interest cannot be the reason to act morally. They highlight that in moral evaluation of an action, motivation of the agent heavily weighs in and it is at this point that seeking a reward in the afterlife falls short.
As Bagget and Walls point out, this criticism, though, is based on a shallow understanding of the argument. “The claim is not that we should be moral to earn a reward: Kant certainly thought no such thing. He was adamant in insisting that our moral motivations could not possibly be mercenary, or they wouldn’t be distinctively moral at all. Rather, the claim is that, in a practical way, we have to believe that morality makes sense, that it’s deeply rooted on solid foundations, and that the context we live in is thoroughly moral after all, if we are going to remain adequately committed to morality. That we must believe morality to be rational, and that it corresponds with our ultimate self-interest, is far from saying that morality demands that we be motivated by nothing but self-interest. To the contrary, it’s likely that self-interested motivation requires the renunciation of pure self-interest.”(p.14)
In short, just as the best way to attain happiness is, paradoxically, to be concerned with something else than happiness, so it is not in our self-interest to be concerned only about our self-interest. To say that morality requires that we often must behave altruistically is not to say that morality ever demands that we must act in a way that goes against our own ultimate self-interest.
[7] The Miracle of Theism (Oxford Press, 1982), J.L. Mackie, p. 115
[8]Good God, David Bagget and Jerry L.Walls, Oxford University Press, p. 17
