Thinking to Believe

April 3, 2015

23 Responses to “Why Moral Platonism Is Not a Good Explanation for Objective Morality”

1. stanrock Says:

   
   April 3, 2015 at 2:53 pm

   Agreed that Platonism here sucks.

   But here are two assertions I make as a Christian:

   (1) Morality defined against the interests of God is not purely objective, as it uses God for its interest referent.

   (2) What is explanation for why we are morally obliged to obey God? The answer is given to us by Ecclesiastes: Because he’ll punish us if we don’t. Alternative answers proposed by pure moral objectivists are foreign to Scripture. The reduction of morality into power struggle is what you’d expect if purely objective morality is false, as purely objective morality is a language bug and utile stopgap: http://stanrock.net/2015/03/02/invoking-the-universe/

   So, I agree with most of this post, but a couple of these complaints are just “the interest-impasses and bland power struggles intrinsic to any coherent meta-ethic” that we cannot pretend get extricated by purely objective proposals.

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2. SonofMan Says:

   
   April 3, 2015 at 4:34 pm

   stanrock:

   I lovw your twist of words that actually confuse; like, “the interest-impasses and bland power struggles intrinsic to any coherent meta-ethic” that we cannot pretend get extricated by purely objective proposals.” What does that even mean?

   i don ‘t know about anyone else but this is such a convoluted obfuscation that I am not sure you eben know what it means. !!! 🙂 Hly Cow Batman.

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3. SonofMan Says:

   
   April 3, 2015 at 4:36 pm

   Edited version:

   “I love your twist of words that actually confuse; like, “the interest-impasses and bland power struggles intrinsic to any coherent meta-ethic” that we cannot pretend get extricated by purely objective proposals.” What does that even mean?

   I don ‘t know about anyone else here but this is such a convoluted obfuscation that I am not sure you even know what it means. !!! 🙂 Holy Cow Batman.”

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4. Bob Mason Says:

   
   April 4, 2015 at 4:49 am

   Same song, second verse. Yet another posting advocating the grounding of morals in God rather than the ethic of reciprocity. I was half expecting Frank to start quoting Scripture to justify the argument, but I see stanrock beat him to it. Maybe Frank will chime in later. I also noted the lack of the term “atheist” in the discussion, except in the links. Was that done on purpose? All the other theist websites refer to this as “atheistic moral Platonism”, as if that somehow strengthens the theist’s logic arguments.

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5. SonofMan Says:

   
   April 4, 2015 at 2:37 pm

   Moral Platonism has formed the basis of Christianity, oddly enough.
   Platonism influenced Christianity through Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and the Cappadocian Fathers. St. Augustine was heavily influenced by Platonism as well, which he encountered through the Latin translations of Marius Victorinus of the works of Porphyry and/or Plotinus.

   Platonism was considered authoritative in the Middle Ages, and many Platonic notions are now permanent elements of Christianity.

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6. stanrock Says:

   
   April 8, 2015 at 10:46 am

   SonofMan:

   You asked, “What does that even mean?”

   My apologies if the density made it confusing. Allow me to unpack it!

   I said, “A couple of these complaints are just ‘the interest-impasses and bland power struggles intrinsic to any coherent meta-ethic’ that we cannot pretend get extricated by purely objective proposals.”

   Meta-ethics is “how morality works, underneath.” There are all sorts of different meta-ethical proposals.

   Our sense of morality is a “song” that combines (1) our deeply-felt moral intuitions, plus (2) inherited stipulative laws, plus (3) rational decisionmaking in explicit service of goals and interests. Played together, this “song” has all sorts of collisions that sound horrible. Indeed, it’s a bit like playing 3 songs atop one another, and enjoying when they harmonize, and wincing when they don’t.

   Coherent meta-ethics involves constructing a refined “solving song” that (A) reminds us strongly of the old song, (B) hits all the ‘really important’ movements and chords and melodies, (C) doesn’t contain disharmony. But, as should be obvious, #1 and #2 are somewhat arbitrary. The composer must take liberties, and will do so as he sees fit.

   “Solving songs” include:

   – Virtue ethics buttressed by consequential fall-backs.

   – Kant’s categorical imperative.

   – Multi-level utilitarianism.

   – Etc.

   These are all different “shots” at A+B+C (but many agree Kant’s fails at B). Any song that “does okay” at A+B+C is what I mean by “any coherent meta-ethic.”

   Any coherent meta-ethic has interest referents. In other words, it eventually makes appeals to subjective processions (even if you invoke the Great Subject). This yields inherent problems that are inescapable, except by means of adding incoherence.

   One problem is zero-sum interest impasse. Let’s say we’re both poisoned, and a drop of antidote is needed, but only one drop exists. That’s a problem, assuming we’re both wholly interested in self-preservation. Such a situation devolves into battle — a bland power struggle. Again, this is inherent to any coherent meta-ethic because of the interest referents that fuel any coherent meta-ethic.

   So, let’s revisit what I said:

   “A couple of these complaints are just ‘the interest-impasses and bland power struggles intrinsic to any coherent meta-ethic’ that we cannot pretend get extricated by purely objective proposals.”

   What I’m saying is that a couple of these complaints are things that come with the territory of coherent meta-ethics.

   Imagine a street preacher standing on the corner. He shouts at folks walking by, saying, “You ground-standers and ground-walkers! Shame! I implore you: Hover above the ground as I do.”

   You look at his feet. He’s not actually hovering. But he’s not lying, either; he has fooled himself into thinking that he hovers, and as such preaches hypocritically without realizing it.

   That’s what is happening here. Purely objective morality is a deluded position (espoused by some of the most brilliant thinkers in history, like many deluded positions). It doesn’t survive analysis. It certainly isn’t Biblical, where morality is always described in terms of debts and threats/rewards and covenants and other exchanges of interests, and as ultimately groundless (see Ecclesiastes).

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7. SonofMan Says:

   
   April 8, 2015 at 11:55 am

   stanrock

   Thanks for “unpacking” it. But I had to chuckle as I struggled to unpack the “unpacking”, that made sense btw, by the song analogy until I came to the sentence: “What I’m saying is that a couple of these complaints……” then I have to pause and ask myself….well, what are the “complaints” then referred to? For there are three claims being espoused in the post although the grounding in God is the writer’s position.

   So then, are the complaints

   1. that moral objectivity cannot be grounded in Platonism because of the 8 reasons given above; or,

   2. the reasons against objective morality in the opening preamble that “virtually all moral theories end up with a subjective version of morality (including evolutionary explanations of morality), in which moral values have their genesis in the human will in one way or another” (the complaints); or,

   3. that morality is grounded in abstract objects in some Platonic realm

   4. that moral objectivity exist in the abstract like Platonism but in fact the abstract is the concept called God.

   While # 1 may seem to be the complaints against # 3 it may also seem a complaint against # 4 itself, at least partially if not wholly; and # 3 the complaints against # 2 and # 4, the complaints of #2 against # 3 and # 4.

   And by now I become lost in semantics.

   However I believe you are saying that morals fall into one of 4 possibilities

   1. are not grounded in the bible;

   2. are not grounded in God;

   3. are groundless as Ecclesiastes indicates;

   4. can only have its genesis in humans;t

   My position is that # 4 is the appropriate answer because morals can only have its genesis in humans for only in humans can all three aspects of the song be played as “this is inherent to any coherent meta-ethic because of the interest referents that fuel any coherent meta-ethic.” Without humans, no interest referents matter and morals are irrelevant. Humanity is the case against the God concept and the Planonism abstract.

   Am I missing or mixing your points?

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8. jasondulle Says:

   
   April 9, 2015 at 5:26 pm

   Stanrock,

   I’m not sure I understood your first claim. Please clarify.

   As for your second, why we should obey is not the question. The question is moral ontology. Specifically, if moral values exist, what are they grounded in? This post examines the idea that they are grounded in the Platonic realm of abstract objects.

   Having said that, I think you have confused motiviation for reason. While our personal motivation for obeying God may be our fear of punishment, the reason we should obey God is because He is a legitimate authority as the source of moral goodness.

   Jason

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9. jasondulle Says:

   
   April 9, 2015 at 5:26 pm

   Bob Mason,

   Yes, this post does advocating grounding moral values in God, but only indirectly by showing that the only alternative – Moral Platonism – does not work. As for the “ethic of reciprocity” that you mention, if I understand what you are referring to correctly (do to others what you want them to do to you), this is not an objective version of morality and thus cannot ground objective moral values.

   As for not including “atheist,” I could have included it but I don’t think it’s necessary. I think some include atheist because virtually no theist would ever affirm it. It’s an atheist’s way of grounding moral values in reality, not the theist’s.

   Jason

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10. Bob Mason Says:

    
    April 10, 2015 at 4:48 am

    Jason,

    All you say is true, if one accepts the validity of objective morals. I do not. Still, there is some value to these discussions. They have at least forced me to assess where my own beliefs lie. They are also a never ending source of ideas for books to read to explore the interactions of science, philosophy and religion. Thanks. Keep at it.

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11. THE TAKEAWAY Says:

    
    April 10, 2015 at 5:57 am

    I think stanrock’s first claim: “(1) Morality defined against the interests of God is not purely objective, as it uses God for its interest referent.”

    It’s like using the Bible to prove the Bible: “The bible is true because the bible says it is the word of God and the Word of God is true; therefore, the bible is true.” Axiom of Equality.

    The Bible affirms the Bible is true.

    “I am unanimous in that”.

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12. Naz Says:

    
    April 10, 2015 at 6:25 am

    Mr. “TAKE AWAY”, looks like you’re having an identity crisis again with all these names 🙂 I like your original name LTG (Leo the Greater), or should I say LTL 🙂

    Everyone thinks what they say or believe is true. The question is whether it is or not.

    Leo, we all have a personal disposition to what we believe. I hope that we are not just trying to win an argument but rather going to where the truth leads us. We will only do this if we love the truth and not just love ourselves.

    Naz

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13. jasondulle Says:

    
    April 14, 2015 at 12:06 am

    Bob Mason,

    Why don’t you think objective moral values exist? Do you really think that all moral claims are just personal preferences? Is the moral value that rape is wrong just a cultural preference that we have agreed to? Is there nothing inherent to the act of rape that is morally evil? What about torturing a child for fun? If there was a culture in which they believed this was a moral good, would you agree with them?

    Jason

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14. THE TAKEAWAY Says:

    
    April 14, 2015 at 12:47 am

    2 And God said, ‘Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you,'”(Gen. 22:1-2).

    What morality is justified here? Rape and the spoils of war completely moral, biblically. Suffer not a witch to live…completely moral; presumably. Killing babies and even the livestock of the enemy. Completely and Godly moral.

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15. monistictheist Says:

    
    October 10, 2016 at 3:50 am

    I can refute the oppositions to moral Platonism given here. I’d like to see your criticisms of my criticisms and a defense of theistic personalist moral realism, as I find it untenable, even though I have considered it in the past.
    1. We believe anything exists because the very concept of that thing’s existence seems to have power over us. We could very easily believe that there is no world at all beyond our own experiences and that the things we see spontaneously generate themselves in response to our choices, but because the existence of some kind of physical world beyond our own experience seems to hold predictive power, we grant its existence. In the same fashion, we could pretend that mathematical and qualitative entities like the sphere or the color red are only concepts made up as abstractions of particulars, but that would not have any power to explain the efficacy of mathematics in physics or grammar in discusssing things which are not immediately present nor cognizable, nor would it account for phenomenological eidetic unities and multiplicities which even give us the idea of a physical world or objects in the first place. It would be very strange for two things to exist without two itself existing in some sense. Without these ideal aspects, we would have no ability to cognize anything to begin with. Thus, the idea of platonic objects has power over us, in the same sense that the idea of a physical world does, so they are real in some sense. Moreover, given the important role of these categories in giving us a subject-object gap and allowing us to have anything at all beyond blind, meaningless, disjunct, sensation, these objects can be said to be intrinsically more real than any physical objects we presume ourselves to encounter, and are thus *very* concrete
    2. Only with a question begging conception of ideas or universals as being inert and causally ineffective can one consider platonic objects to not be the sort of thing that can be moral. A consideration of being as power, expressed above by the idea that we say things exist when their notions hold some form of power within our experiences would reveal that far from being causally inert objects, these objects have strong causality over ourselves. The law of noncontradiction stops reality from being everything and nothing simultaneously. Redness allows you to know what a red object even is. It follows then that justice and goodness allow you to understand what a good action is in like manner. Justice itself is just by providing us with discernment between “right” and “wrong” actions. Moreover, to consider anything at all to be somehow mind dependent is to ignore the obvious conclusion that there is no separation inherent in experience – the sole arbiter of reality we actually know- between what is truly dependent upon our minds and what isn’t. Even our thoughts are structured by society external to ourselves, our physical human conditions, and the nature of being as such. There is no third person perspective to begin with, since persons can only possess first person perspectives. Our tendencies are to take objects within our experience and their properties and act as if they were somehow also extent beyond experience, despite the fact that we not only have no ability to verify such a thing, but that anything which is truly beyond experience as an ontological category is literally inconceivable, since conception is a phenomenal process, and literally illogical, since logic is likewise a category of phenomenal existence. With that in mind, we can, however, clearly cognize things which persist within experience, which make cognition possible (and therefore are required to make sense of experience), and which appear to be the same for multiple perspectives. We do not live in a world of ontological chasms jumping from experience to nonexperiential being (which is a category error), rather, we share a world of experience, with some of us having different structures of experience than others, such as the colorblind. If we grant, then, that by reality, we are referring explicitly to that world which we know and share by experience, the problem of mind-dependence disappears, as it is exposed to be grounded in a faulty phenomenology which does not account for the shared nature of our experiences. The forms, then, become those transcendental, yet recognized, experiences which govern the very nature of properties of experiences.
    3. This question is as illogical as asking why some platonic objects refer to things philosophy today calls (inaccurately) qualia, like red, while others refer to structural properties like circularity. The underpinnings of morality, the very ideas of goodness, are by necessity of their nature moral existents, the same way the color red is a color existent.
    4. The nature of the objects themselves govern morality in the same way the nature of color itself governs what color something is. Just as something can be red or blue, some action can be good or bad. Unless someone has the moral equivalent of color blindness or blinders, this can be clearly perceived in a given situation the very same way color can. Punishments and rewards are unnecessary, though, just as color can be useful in determining what animals can be poisonous, morality can be useful in determining what actions can benefit or harm you (regardless of what you believe to be your preferences).
    5. The objects can ground moral duties for the precise reasons above and for another reason. The Good is that which all good things participate in. What makes one intuitively categorize an action such as helping an elderly person across the street as good, is goodness, the same way that what makes one categorize a turtle as green is greenness. What makes one think of pleasure as good is also goodness. The Good is goodness itself. As such, there is literally nothing better, because it is the ultimate end in itself. Attaining that good, then, means doing things which will help one reach it. That, however, implies that there are “duties”, which one has to progress one towards that ultimate goal. These duties can be ignored, but by the very nature of the forms, would result in a less than optimal situation.
    6. This is yet another bare assertion, and has been addressed in number 2. Unless one were to argue that the laws of logic required thought, which would immediately destroy the existence of any material world (since it would have to transcend logic and exist and not exist) and imply some form of idealism, one would have to admit the plausibility of these existing separately from human or God/Absolute thought as well.
    Moreover, it would make no sense to say that there is an objective right or wrong with God and no platonic right or wrong, since the whole point of platonic right and wrong is that for these to exist would mean for objective right and wrong to exist. If God existed without goodness itself existing, God logically could not be good, just as God could not be one without one existing, as the statement “God is one” presumes that “one” actually exists in some sense. In the end, God without platonic Good would be equivalent with the Nietzschean übermensch- you have “moral” duties to him because He says so and will beat you if you disobey- not because there’s an actual good out there that He embodies.
    7. Returning to the notion of being as power,, and of the importance of Platonic objects in giving us eidetic unities, cognition, and any notion of a separate self, we see that abstract objects have direct potency over our lives. They are prior to the physical world in our comprehension, not secondary. When we say that “the physical world exists” we already admit knowledge of the Platonic object of Existence. To truly live without cognition of abstract objects is to live without any concepts, without any sense of self or existence, or of nonexistence, or of any needs, or really of anything. Life simply becomes incomprehensible. We are aware of these objects because they are primary experiences through which we have cognition of other experiences which we term sensations, physical objects, minds, and thoughts.
    8. What is good is akin to what is yellow. What is right is what, pragmatically speaking, would be the best way for us, given our current situation, to seek the Good in our actions. Once we’ve contemplated the empirical implications of this notion of rightness, we see it to be what we mean when we say the word right. If a man is about to get hit by a train, for instance, we know that there will be guilt and shame if we let him get hit, and that this would mean that given this current situation, we will be disconnected from goodness and virtue if we do not jump in and at least try to rescue him. This makes rescuing the man right. Our clear perception of which of our future actions are good and to which extent said action is good, lets us clearly perceive what is right.

    While I am a theist (a classical theist, like Aquinas or Feser) I have defended moral Platonism as grounds that could easily be taken up nontheistically, and once one has the proper phenomenology and phenomenologically based ontology, one can see how this theory is correct, even in one’s direct experience. This theory (and Platonism) can easily be adapted to a materialist context, though it seems to fit better into a radical empiricist or neutral monist context. An important context of determining what things exist is to determine, in a way that assumes no ontological prejudices, what the word “exists” even means, and to work with the tools in one’s experience to construct a metaphysical system answering that question, rather than just starting from some assumptions (like materialism or theism or an ontological subject/object gap) and basing everything off that.

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16. Jesuspeake Says:

    
    October 10, 2016 at 7:45 pm

    monistictheist:

    That was a lovely academic exercise in futility; a romantic discourse in philosophical abracadabra‎ that only a scholar of academia would appreciate but the reality of Jesus Christ whose campaign was to revolutionize religion, is way above academia.

    The simplicity of Jesus is way to straightforward compared to your offering of scholarly theology. You are in a dimension other than THE NORMAL HUMANITY OF THIS WORLD and for all your jargon you offer only a superficial adjunct to reality.

    Now here is reality:

    Regarding the message of Jesus…it’s not complicated…it’s rather simple actually.

    When it comes to supernaturalism, clergy cannot justify any of it logically of course, so they hide behind smoke and mirror words like “transcendent” while carefully stoking our most primitive fears because they need to point us in the wrong direction away from the path of intuitive knowledge; to make us shrink ourselves in our own minds and to make us feel helpless and in need of guidance when the truth is we don’t need guidance from them anymore than we need a miner’s helmet to see our way around in broad daylight because it’s right there for us anytime we want it and it always has been.

    For those who would call themselves Christian: “Do unto others as you would be done by” and “seek the Kingdom of heaven within” is the message of Jesus; That’s it! The rest of it, all of it, is just embroidery and none of it is there for our benefit. There’s nothing complicated or arcane or mysterious about the message of Jesus. It doesn’t need to be interpreted, explained or filtered by any self appointed philosophical middlemen and there is nothing that any of us need to transcend except our own gullibility and the criminally self serving anti humanity of organized religion.”

    That’s it!

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17. Scalia Says:

    
    May 25, 2018 at 9:46 pm

    monistictheist:

    My replies will correspond with the points you raise.

    1) You write, “Thus, the idea of platonic objects has power over us, in the same sense that the idea of a physical world does, so they are real in some sense.” You later describe yourself as a classical theist like Aquinas and Feser. That being the case, you really don’t believe in “platonic objects,” do you? As a classical theist, you believe that God is simple and as such, is the ground for all existence. All creaturely perfections are eminently in God and He is the ontological ground for every perfection we possess.

    2) You write, “The forms, then, become those transcendental, yet recognized, experiences which govern the very nature of properties of experiences.” If you’re using the word “form” to obliquely refer to God’s perfection, then yes, we are governed by forms in the sense that we are actualizing the potentials given us by our Creator.

    3) The underpinnings of morality, the very ideas of goodness, are by necessity of their nature moral existents, the same way the color red is a color existent.

    You offer no argument here, so perhaps you can make yourself clearer. What is the “nature” of morality? You refer to the “necessity of their nature” (morality and goodness), but a concept is merely our idea. We can, of course, abstract from what exists to identify universals, but that doesn’t lead us to a platonic realm; it leads us to God.

    4) Unless someone has the moral equivalent of color blindness or blinders, this can be clearly perceived in a given situation the very same way color can.

    That’s clearly a stretch. One man’s atrocity is another man’s progress. In place of argument, you’re accusing those who disagree with you of wearing blinders. Such an appeal is unnecessary if you’ve demonstrated your point. Where does “red” come from? Similarly, where does morality or goodness come from? How, precisely, are morality and goodness defined? Aquinas answered those questions.

    5) The Good is that which all good things participate in. What makes one intuitively categorize an action such as helping an elderly person across the street as good, is goodness, the same way that what makes one categorize a turtle as green is greenness.

    Yes, we can recognize the good in helping somebody in need to cross a street, but that has nothing to do with platonic forms.

    6) Moreover, it would make no sense to say that there is an objective right or wrong with God and no platonic right or wrong, since the whole point of platonic right and wrong is that for these to exist would mean for objective right and wrong to exist. If God existed without goodness itself existing, God logically could not be good, just as God could not be one without one existing, as the statement “God is one” presumes that “one” actually exists in some sense.

    Are you assesrting that right and one exist apart from God? If so, then you are not a classical theist. God is infinite knowledge, goodness, truth, etc. He does not possess goodness; He IS goodness. He does not possess knowledge; He IS knowledge.

    7) You keep referring to matters of morality as “abstract objects.” This is clearly incompatible with Thomism.

    8) You’re repeating your above points in another way.

    So, you are either indirectly using platonic forms to really point us toward God, or you really believe that things like “goodness” are abstract objects and exist in some realm apart from God. If God is not good by virtue of His essence, then His existence is somehow defined and determined by something other than Himself. If that is the case, then He is not God and cannot be the ontological ground of all being. As noted repeatedly above, this is not classical theism.

    On classical theism, good is convertible with being. For creatures, a perfection is the actualization of a potential. We thus participate in a perfection in a partial or limited manner. And as Aquinas said, “…whatever is found in anything by participation must be caused in it by that to which it belongs essentially.” Aquinas here is getting at the efficient cause which is God. A participant in this sense is by definition a composite of essence and existence and thus in need of a concurrent cause which we know to be God.

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18. TheTakeaway Says:

    
    May 26, 2018 at 9:54 pm

    Moral values are not objective; they are merely common subjectivisms in the same way that most ethnicities tend to smile; in the same way emote in similar fashion.

    Subjective commonality shows our species humanity as Pavlov’s dogs salivate in common fashion; morality is no more objective than salivation. Objective morality is merely an argument to support the theist belief system that their pet caricature creature they call God is the source of morality; hence, a supernatural reality cause.

    Get over it; what’s the point of trying to prove ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY by academia saturation that few people even understand what you’re trying to communicate with flowery monotone prose. It’s like playing classical music to a rock and roll audience…………..It is what it is and that’s all that it is and third graders just put on the blinders to remain in the absence of light.

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19. Scalia Says:

    
    March 12, 2019 at 11:45 am

    TheTakeaway writes:

    Moral values are not objective; they are merely common subjectivisms in the same way that most ethnicities tend to smile…

    This is asserted without argument and as such, is an empty claim. Moreover, since objective moral values is argued above, merely denying they are objective appears to sidestep the point.

    Subjective commonality shows our species humanity as Pavlov’s dogs salivate in common fashion; morality is no more objective than salivation.

    This again sidesteps the argument and fails to offer a counter argument why morality is thus grounded.

    Get over it; what’s the point of trying to prove ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY by academia saturation that few people even understand what you’re trying to communicate with flowery monotone prose.

    Are you absolutely certain of that statement? If so, then why complain about absolute certainty in other areas. If not, then your statement amounts to pixels in bandwidth which bear no relevance to anybody. Skepticism self-implodes. We can know facts objectively and derive accurate conclusions based on that knowledge, including the ground for all knowledge—God.

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20. Scalia Says:

    
    July 5, 2019 at 4:40 pm

    @stanrock

    You write:

    Morality defined against the interests of God is not purely objective, as it uses God for its interest referent.

    If God is objectively Good, then it follows that a conscious, deliberate act against what is objectively Good is immoral. The argument is rather whether God is objectively Good. According to theism, if God isn’t objectively good, then He isn’t God.

    What is explanation for why we are morally obliged to obey God? The answer is given to us by Ecclesiastes: Because he’ll punish us if we don’t.

    This is woefully incomplete. Although it is true that everybody will face the consequences of disobedience, to state or imply that is the only reason is simply untrue.

    You stated that you at one time followed Catholicism. You either didn’t absorb what they teach with respect to goodness, ethics and morality or you are for some reason ignoring that here. Since you have a history of side-stepping debate, I won’t elaborate unless you reply or unless somebody else asks for clarification.

    Alternative answers proposed by pure moral objectivists are foreign to Scripture.

    Well, no they’re not, but you don’t explain, you’re making an empty claim.

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21. Scalia Says:

    
    July 5, 2019 at 4:42 pm

    The last sentence of Post 20 should read:

    “…but since you don’t explain, you’re making an empty claim.”

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22. stanrock Says:

    
    July 5, 2019 at 9:38 pm

    Scalia, you wrote, “If God is objectively Good, then it follows that a conscious, deliberate act against what is objectively Good is immoral. The argument is rather whether God is objectively Good. According to theism, if God isn’t objectively good, then He isn’t God.”

    That doesn’t strictly follow from theism at all, particularly if “objectively good” is not a coherent term. I assert that it is not coherent. This was exhaustively shown by philosopher of language R. M. Hare in the mid-20th century. I’d recommend his “The Language of Morals” as a primer.

    You wrote, “This is woefully incomplete. Although it is true that everybody will face the consequences of disobedience, to state or imply that is the only reason is simply untrue.”

    Yeah, you’re absolutely correct here when you called me out for a woefully incomplete answer. There are a number of additional reasons for this obligation stated in Scripture, most obviously the fact that we owe him because he made us.

    You wrote, “You stated that you at one time followed Catholicism. You either didn’t absorb what they teach with respect to goodness, ethics and morality or you are for some reason ignoring that here.”

    I came to reject their moral philosophy, which I suppose counts as a failure to absorb it, in a sense. The reason I left Catholicism was because I was earnestly trying to defend its stance on contraception, and this led down a rabbit hole of studying Humanae Vitae, the politics of the issue re: the Canadian bishops, and discovering that their teaching authority was unreliable. Many teachings in Catholicism depend on that teaching authority for support, so the whole thing started to unravel. It was heartbreaking to me after converting to Catholicism at great cost 6 years earlier from a relatively anti-Catholic support network. Another example where their moral philosophy doesn’t come together is how they struggle with the Rahab/Schindler question.

    You wrote, “Well, no they’re not, but you don’t explain, you’re making an empty claim.”

    My original post here from a year ago was a bit of a flyby. I’m not sure if I was tired at the time or what. In any case, my position is that purely objective morality does not appear to be coherent, and seems to have been superimposed upon Scripture by Christian tradition in the wake of Hellenic syncretism from the 2nd to 5th centuries. When we read the Bible with this “hypothesis” everything makes quite a bit more sense (not something I expect you to believe yourself until/unless you try it).

    Another way to say it is: “So far, debating this issue over the years, I have not seen proposals from pure moral objectivists that don’t appear to be foreign to Scripture and superimposed by that later syncretism.”

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23. Scalia Says:

    
    July 5, 2019 at 11:41 pm

    stanrock writes:

    That doesn’t strictly follow from theism at all, particularly if “objectively good” is not a coherent term.

    I never said it strictly follows theism. What “follows” is what I said it follows. One more time: If God is objectively Good, then disobeying God is objectively bad.

    Pointing me to a book isn’t what discussion is about. Either you know the material and can defend it or you don’t know it and cannot.

    With respect to Catholicism, I think you’re aware that I’m not Catholic. I, like Jason, am a Oneness Pentecostal. I accept most of Aquinas’ metaphysics, but I don’t buy the Trinity and a host of other Catholic doctrines. So, the fact that you left their church does not in itself imply that you left everything they taught.

    Given that the majority of Christians affirm the metaphysical framework of the Good, it seems natural that you would directly address it instead of directing your fire at generalities.

    …my position is that purely objective morality does not appear to be coherent, and seems to have been superimposed upon Scripture by Christian tradition in the wake of Hellenic syncretism from the 2nd to 5th centuries.

    I will grant that some versions of “objective morality” are incoherent, but without an argument that touches my account, I’ll have to again label your comment an empty claim.

    When we read the Bible with this “hypothesis” everything makes quite a bit more sense (not something I expect you to believe yourself until/unless you try it).

    On the contrary, cosmic moral subjectivism makes little sense from both a philosophical and a scriptural standpoint. Existence itself is incoherent without the Absolute Existence who is the perfection of being. Similarly, good is nonsensical without the Absolute Good by which finite goodness may be measured. Aquinas elucidates all of this, and I’m of course assuming you’re familiar with his arguments. So, if you’re going to offer a critique, it’s probably best to fire at the biggest target and tell us why you find it missing on the range.

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