J. W. Wartick has written a nice article evaluating the case for atheistic ethics, particularly as presented by philosopher Louise Anthony. She represents a brand of atheists (such as Sam Harris and Michael Shermer) who refuse the nihilism of an earlier generation of atheists who admitted that if there is no God, there are no objective moral values. She thinks God does not exist but moral values do. Or so she says. When she defines what those moral values are and how they are determined, it becomes clear that they are subjective, not objective. Something has value if she values it, and something is wrong if it causes suffering. But these are mind-dependent, and thus subjective by definition. For meaning and morality to be objective, it must have an existence independent of human thinkers such that even if conscious beings did not exist, moral values and meaning would still exist.
Ultimately, atheists can only put forward various ways that humans can know what is moral (epistemology); they cannot explain what makes those moral values moral. Secular ethics lack an objective foundation.
Thinking to Believe 
March 2, 2012 at 11:44 am
I rebut W.T. there! He just asserts that we naturalists have no ontology for ethics whilst I note how we do in detail.
Read my commentary there to see that he has no case whatsoever, and that his is egregious simple subjectivism.
Ultimately, supernaturalists still cannot overcome the Euthyphro,yet continually play their word games!
What makes values true is a basic fact :consequences that make for that ontological and axiological grounding in reality, not that of those men of yore who just mades up commandments will-nilly!
People already had the good ones as reality -that ontological ground- comes forth in our moral sense that we have to refine.
I carefully point out there and now here how we humanists ground humanism.
Ading God,despite W.T., means nothing as might makes right means nothing moral, We don’t need omniscience to see wrongs and -goods!
That hateful for the most part morality of the Tanakh, we have replaced with a humane one. Morality is not static.
LikeLike
March 2, 2012 at 2:46 pm
As an aside, Griggs… could you please get my name right! It’s J.W.! Not any of the variants.
Anyway, I responded briefly to the points on my blog (I’ll not respond here again)–it’s fair to say Griggs’ case is based purely on assumptions that theism is false with some hand waving towards Occam’s Razor.
LikeLike
March 2, 2012 at 4:26 pm
No, I make points with substantial force with which you might not be familiar as I’m not with all points others make. No, the point about the Ockham is that the God-term is so loaded with so many questionable assumptions that it can hardly be a factual meaningful term,albeit a semantic meaningful one.Like, Ptolemy’s epicycles, the term ever gets more convoluted with more mysteries such that it becomes so otiose that it as Carneades would note as he did with the term as the Epicureans and the Stoics did, that it is otiose.
No assumptions lies behind the atelic argument that no intent appears for Him in the Cosmos as scientists find none, and thus to appeal to intent-agency- contradicts science instead of complementing it.
No assumption lies behind the fact that astrophysicists find Existence eternal in that the Big Bang,despite Craig’s misunderstanding, was just an transformation of what was there.
No assumption lies behind the scientific fact that Existence is all and thus, one cannot compare it with anything else as to probabilities concerning it, and thus, no transcendent God can exist.
To keep averring that we naturalists cannot ground our ontology errs,because I have substantially shown that we can. To dismiss glibly such thus boomerangs on supernaturalists!
No longer, do we let supernaturalists have their groundless assumptions! Give evidence for Heaven and Hell and such. People’s revelations are their own mental processes at work.
Yes, supernaturalists like Plantinga can imagined their sophistry as true whilst dismissing such important arguments as the one from physical mind about which we naturalists credit him for that very sophistry!
Projecting onto naturalists your intuitions does your case no good!Repeating that lack of ontological grounding after we show it,constitutes no kind of argument but instead groundless assumptions!
J.W,. the different spellings were quite unintentional.
I’ll deal with this matter at one of my blogs in a few moments. Her, I’ll defer to AW and others on this subject.
http://fathergriggs.wordpress.com
I still recommend this blog as a counterweight to atheist ones.
LikeLike
March 2, 2012 at 4:34 pm
[…] viaWhy Atheists Can’t Have Objective Morality « Theo-sophical Ruminations. […]
LikeLike
March 2, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Anthony notes the Euthyphro to make the valid point that morality is perforce independent of the supernatural. Adding He says so adds no validity at all!
As the dilemma makes clear to have Him as the source is subjectisim at work, hardly the intersubjectivity -that true objectivity open to all- of science or -of morality.
The real query is how to get people to act morally better. What morals are right/ We’ve gone a long distance from stoning to rehabilitation. Hamaneness has increased, despite some statements that we’re delving into immorality. Being for the LBGT community, I endorse the rational morality behind the movement instead of that subjectivism inherited from tribal times of those mere men. No one can ever vouchsafe their revelations!
Again, on this query of ontological grounding, others can come forth.
I’ve much to read about moral realism from Brink and others.
LikeLike
March 3, 2012 at 11:20 am
I am unaware of Louise Anthony’s thoughts on morality and have not yet read J.W. Wartick’s thoughts. Though I do see you repeating, here, a bafflegab that is the heart of the apologetic argument from morality. I am not making the case that morality can exist without god, though I may return to do so. I questioning whether Christian morality truly assures that objective morality exists.
First you write:
“But these are mind-dependent, and thus subjective by definition.”
Which establishes that mind independence is the standard of objectivity.
Then you write:
“For meaning and morality to be objective, it must have an existence independent of human thinkers such that even if conscious beings did not exist, moral values and meaning would still exist.”
Note, your use of the word ‘human’ before thinkers which seems to exclude the Christian God from the category of ‘conscious beings’. This is more a word trick than a valid defense of objectivity.
Further, if the Christian God wrote the moral code into our conscious and also told us to value it as ‘good’, we have no standing to tell whether than code is moral or immoral. The only standing we have is that we claim it is God given.
I’m also questioning of what good morality is without conscious beings. What is the moral validity of ‘though shalt not kill’ – here as a proxy for broader morality – where there are no beings capable of killing or being killed. It seems about as relevant as an order to not telepathically read minds where no such ability exists.
LikeLike
March 3, 2012 at 11:50 am
B.Andrew, that is one of my points that he glosses over. I define objective as inter-subjective as in science, independent of but requiring our minds- the moral sense- to access.
I call attention to the subjective element which has two objective features, requiring us to use our considered judgment instead of our whims and tastes. People can overcome their mere whim that people not be homo- and bisexuals with their considered judgment of the Platinum Rule,by applying the two objective items- universal,applying to all and equity and equality. No matter, whether one takes paradoxically wide reflective subjectivism as underpinning an objective morality or not, humanists can ground theirs in ontology of consequences. Read my previous posts here to see more about this.
http://carneades-georgia.hubpages also contains this covenant morality for humanity- the presumption of humanism.
I’m looking forward to ponder your take. We don’t need Being Itself for morality as we have enough consciusness and conscience to find it.
LikeLike
March 3, 2012 at 11:58 am
http://carneades-georgia.hubpages.com However, that other leads to my blogs.
Again, ours is refined so much that those barbarians who out of their own whims just made up that egregious simple subjectivism would not fathom how we could find theirs so immoral!
Putative God has nothing to do with moral progress!
LikeLike
March 5, 2012 at 12:39 pm
B. Andrew,
Yes, I do qualify it to refer to human thinkers, and yes, I am excluding God, but no, this is not a word trick. It would only be a word trick if I thought things become moral or immoral based on God’s thoughts. I don’t. That is a radical form of divine command theory that virtually no Christian scholars have ever held to. We don’t believe that X is good and Y is bad because that is God’s opinion (which could change). Rather, we believe X is good because it accords with the nature of God, and Y is bad because it violates the nature of God. God’s moral commands do not determine the good, but are in accord with the good.
As for the relevance of certain moral rules in the absence of humans, I agree with you. But that does not make these moral rules subjective. There is a difference between the good and applications of the good. The moral principle behind the moral rule “you should not murder” is that “God is honorable.” Murdering someone that is made in His image and likeness is to attack God Himself (Gen 9), and thus dishonors God. God would be honorable even in the absence of other conscious beings, but once conscious beings come on the scene, there are a host of ways that they can fulfill their moral obligation to honor God and a host of ways that they can violate it. If we were Elves rather than humans, perhaps those moral rules would have different applications. But what is changing is the application of a moral principle, not morality itself.
But none of this is to show that naturalism provides an objective basis for morality. Granted, atheists can come up with moral rules that apply to everyone, but that does not make them objective because they are and will always remain the product of human invention. They are no more objective than the rules of Monopoly.
Jason
LikeLike
March 5, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Jason, then your argument self-refutes,because He would then act as we do, no differently. This is why one horn of the dilemma rings around His saying rape would be just marvelouus should he say so.
His rules then are no better than the rules of Monopoly, and should Yahweh be Him,then they are in a far worse position.
Why attribute what those misanthropists say as His words? No reason. Just the we just say so of faith.
LikeLike
March 5, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Murder is wrong,because it harms people,not because of His honor. Morality does not center around the Being Itself but what the consequence for sentient beings are- that’s objective as anyone with a good moral sense can realize.
Stoning children for cheekiness never was objective! That is independent of people’s mere whims.
Those writers put words into their Yahweh that refelcts there misanthropy, not objectivity whatsoever!
Why the Orwellian nightmare?
LikeLike
June 19, 2012 at 9:14 am
Not even Christians can agree on what is morally objective. No two Theists can agree on what is morally objective. That is why there are over 3,000 variants of Christianity, because they can’t agree. Morals cannot be proven to be objective. This stance you hold has no foundation to back your claim on, nothing of God’s nature can be shown, just guessed at. You assume God’s honor, God’s character, and God’s nature. None of which you know nothing about. Truth is, no one know if Morals are objective or subjective, we just provide a lot of opinions on the subject.
And to still believe that there is a guy in the sky with arms and legs and a head looking down on us, is a very 2,000 year old way to look at things. We were not created in God’s image, the God of the Bible was created in our image. God is not physical in any sense of the word.
LikeLike
June 19, 2012 at 10:26 am
Jason,
You are confusing moral ontology with moral epistemology. Whether there are such things as moral laws is not at all the same thing as how we come to know them. It could be the case that it is very difficult for humans to know what the moral laws are, but that does nothing to show that they do not exist.
The objectivity of moral laws are self-evident. Anyone who cannot see that torturing a child for fun is morally wrong in and of itself has something wrong with him. While some moral laws are not so evident, they don’t need to be in order to know that there are at least some objective moral laws.
Jason
LikeLike
February 4, 2013 at 10:55 am
[…] Why Atheists Can’t Have Objective Morality […]
LikeLike
May 7, 2013 at 8:06 am
“And to still believe that there is a guy in the sky”
Who said God is a man ? I don’t think you correctly understood what the Bible teaches about this. Do you know that it uses anthropomorphism ?
“with arms and legs and a head looking down on us”
Again, that’s not what the Bible teaches.
“is a very 2,000 year old way to look at things”
I agree on this, but… that’s not what Christianity teaches.
“the God of the Bible was created in our image”
Spiritual image ? Physical image ? Stop thinking that paintings of God have something to do with what the Bible teaches.
You’re just criticizing a straw man.
LikeLike
March 9, 2015 at 3:37 pm
[…] Why Atheists Can’t Have Objective Morality […]
LikeLike
April 3, 2015 at 2:16 pm
[…] of God as the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values elsewhere (here, here, and here), I will limit my thoughts to why moral Platonism fails as an adequate moral theory. […]
LikeLike