Matthew Flanagan fails to demonstrate existence of objective moral requirements

My debate with Matthew has began focusing on his belief that objective moral requirements exist, and cannot be accounted for except by positing God as their point of origin.

Here's Matthew's post and my reply following.  I made my reply short because answering in too comprehensive fashion usually only gives somebody something more to hide behind.

"Matt,
e.
 It’s like answering “which morals am I required to live by in this house?”, by saying “the ones that it would be wrong to omit”. 

Matt replies:

No that again seems to conflate issues, when I ask what morals I am required to live by in this house, I am using the word “morals” in the sociological sense, that is a set of norms a person believes in or accepts.
 But, when I refer to moral requirements I am not referring to moral beliefs. I am talking about what morality in fact requires. Unless you think a person or community is never mistaken in what they believe we ought to do, you have to grant a distinction between what a person or groups thinks and accepts is required and what actually is required.
 The fact you spend so much time and energy arguing that the religious and moral beliefs of ancient Hebrew society or the bible are mistaken and in error, suggests you actually are committed to this distinction.

I had said:

Can you provide a specific example of a moral requirement that you think it is morally wrong to omit? 

Matt replies:

The claim its morally wrong to omit a moral requirement is analytically true, it’s a tautology.

 But here is an example, I think there is a moral requirement to not torture children purely for entertainment. I think this requirement holds even if a person or community thinks it doesn’t so that a community which endorsed and practises child torture would in be mistaken. I also think it’s a categorical requirement so that even if torturing a child for fun met some goal or desire you had, perhaps the sadistic desire to have fun seeing children scream in pain, then the requirement still holds. I think anyone who deliberately does this without some form of mitigation is guilty of not following these requirements worthy of blame and censure, a

 Your free to disagree of course, you can maintain that a community that believes in and practises torturing children for fun doesn’t do anything wrong at all or that such requirements are really hypothetical and don’t apply to people who have sadistic desires, or your free to think people who deliberately and knowingly torture children are worthy of praise and condemnation if you like. If you want to bite that bullet, then you can, but I think ranting about God being a moral monster and how awful it is for ancient cultures to have narratives about killing children ceases to become a terribly plausible past time if you do bite this bullet.

 But all this is irrelevant, because, in the argument, I cited from my response to Carrier, I pointed out the biblical passages you cite, even if your take on them was correct, doesn’t actually provide the slightest reason for rejecting a divine command theory. That attacks the doctrine of inerrancy which is a different and logically distinct position to divine command theories. I note you haven’t responded to it, you have again gone on a long tirade about what you think I argued in a book on a different topic.

-----------------------------------

The short reply I posted there:

Matt,
Again, I've written about 6 pages of point by point reply, but again, I will only reply with what I think is the most critical area we disagree on, since I'm well aware of the risk of the point being lost if too much material is posted.  If you are curious about how I answered every little point, it's at my blog http://turchisrong.blogspot.com

When I asked you for a specific example of what you deem a "moral requirement", you resorted to the classic example of a prohibition on torturing children solely for entertainment.
Several problems: 

Where is the moral yardstick you are using, which you apparently think is violated whenever anybody tortures a child solely for fun? 

Do you say this is immoral because the bible tells you so? 

Do you say this is immoral because the consensus of human opinion on the matter through history says it is immoral, and you think atheists cannot sufficiently account for why that pattern exhibited itself in human values?

--------------------------------
I did not post there my comprehensive point-by-point reply because I felt it was too long and might cause Flannagan to focus on something other than what I thought was the critical shortcoming he overlooked.

But for those who are curious, here is my full reply, available only here as follows: 
--------------------------

Oct 27, 2017 at 6:42 pm
Matt,
e.
“It’s like answering “which morals am I required to live by in this house?”, by saying “the ones that it would be wrong to omit”.
No that again seems to conflate issues, when I ask what morals I am required to live by in this house, I am using the word “morals” in the sociological sense, that is a set of norms a person believes in or accepts.

----------If you were dealing with a person who denied the existence of cars, you wouldn’t be answering the denier’s question (“what is a car?”), by providing a perfectly synonymous word “vehicle”.  He still denies the existence of cars, regardless of whatever different way you choose to describe such things.   So likewise, you think my denial of objective morals is as unjustified as the denial of cars.  If you aren’t beneficially clarifying “cars” by pointing out that they are also called “vehicles”, then you aren’t beneficially clarifying “moral requirements” by pointing out that these are “something that its morally wrong to omit.”  In both cases, you are simply providing a synonymous phrase as substitute.  But thanks to my requests for clarification, you finally answered in a way that infuses more information into your proposition, thus allowing for more focused critique.

“But, when I refer to moral requirements I am not referring to moral beliefs"

----------That’s most unfortunate since you cannot demonstrate that moral requirements have any existence outside of the human mind, that is, if your below-argument about prohibiting child-torture has anything to say about it.

 I am talking about what morality in fact requires.

---------Adding “in fact” to “morality” doesn’t magically broaden morality beyond the human mind that so far appears to be the sole ground of the existence of all morals humans have. 

   "Unless you think a person or community is never mistaken in what they believe we ought to do, you have to grant a distinction between what a person or groups thinks and accepts is required and what actually is required.”

----------My basis for saying Hitler’s moral opinion on treatment of the Jews in WW2 was mistaken, is completely subjective, I do not mean mistaken “in fact”, as if there was some objective moral yardstick to which Hitler’s Holocaust could be compared and found wanting.  It is neither irrational nor unreasonable to be standing solely on a subjective basis when declaring that another person’s moral opinion is mistaken.  Again, when you were a child, if your dad told you to go to bed at 9 p.m. on a school night and you protested, he would be perfectly reasonable and rational to assert “your moral opinion that the proper bedtime for you tonight is something other than 9 p.m., is mistaken”, despite the fact that there is no objective moral yardstick telling anybody what bedtime is proper for such kids.

So my belief that others’ moral opinions are ‘mistaken’, need not imply “what morality in fact” requires.

The fact you spend so much time and energy arguing that the religious and moral beliefs of ancient Hebrew society or the bible are mistaken and in error, suggests you actually are committed to this distinction.

--------------My belief that the OT ethics are mistaken and in error, arises from my entirely subjective beliefs about morals, which I wasn’t born with, but were instilled in my by environmental conditioning.  You appear to under the mistaken notion that if morality is ultimately subjective, we cannot be reasonable or rational to say one moral is “better” or “worse” than another.  Not true.  See above.  Believing yourself to be in possession of an objective moral yardstick helps your moral criticisms sound like they have stronger footing that a completely subjective critique, but alas, whether any such objective moral yardstick actually exists, must be decided first, a thing you should have established, but for whatever reason, chose not to do so far. 

“Can you provide a specific example of a moral requirement that you think it is morally wrong to omit?”  The claim its morally wrong to omit a moral requirement is analytically true, it’s a tautology.

------------Only if we assume that “moral requirement” can be an objective thing that exists outside the human mind.  Had you done what you needed to do (i.e., establish the existence of an objective moral yardstick outside the human mind, then pointed out that “do not torture children solely for entertainment purposes” was written therein) we wouldn’t be having this discussion, as you would have won the debate.  Assuring me that torturing children for fun is objectively immoral doesn’t establish where that moral comes from.

“But here is an example, I think there is a moral requirement to not torture children purely for entertainment. I think this requirement holds even if a person or community thinks it doesn’t so that a community which endorsed and practises child torture would in be mistaken.”

------------What objective standard do you use to determine that those who torture children for fun are mistaken?  The bible?  The consensus view of humanity throughout its history?  What exactly?

“I also think it’s a categorical requirement so that even if torturing a child for fun met some goal or desire you had, perhaps the sadistic desire to have fun seeing children scream in pain, then the requirement still holds. I think anyone who deliberately does this without some form of mitigation is guilty of not following these requirements worthy of blame and censure, a”

1.      I don’t understand what you expect to accomplish here.  You are not establishing an objective moral by simply citing what you think is an example of such and reasons why you’d’ think the gainsayers “worthy of blame and censure…”  The way you establish an objective moral is by first demonstrating the existence of an objective moral yardstick.  THEN you prove certain morals to be objective by simply showing that they appear on such yardstick.  You haven’t done that.  If your moral was “objective”, it would have to originate from some source independent of the human mind.  Your above argument makes no attempt to show that prohibiting child torture for fun is an objective thing with grounding somewhere other than the human mind. 

2.      If that moral requirement is objective (i.e., it’s existence doesn’t depend on my own existence), please tell me where to find it so I can examine it more fully. 

3.      You need to clarify what maximum age the person can be and still be a “child” according to this moral requirement you now give, otherwise we run the risk of disagreeing when I start talking about how the sexual excitement of the Hebrew male in the ANE is just “entertainment” by another word since he need not intend to get the girl pregnant, and the pain his 12-year old bride experiences on their wedding night as her hymen is torn constituted the “torture” of a girl that is still properly call a “child” even if her own culture’s relative viewpoint said she became an adult at that age.

4.      You need to clarify what level of discomfort to the child constitutes “torture”.  A 4 year old little brother screams in pain and says “ouch! quit it you meanie!” when his older brother pinches him solely because the older brother is sadistic and is entertained by inflicting short bursts of temporary pain.  This would fulfill all of your above stated criteria , but most parents would not call this rather typical type of sibling interaction “torture of children for purely entertainment reasons”.  You think such older brothers are objectively wrong, but the older brothers themselves don’t think it objectively wrong, so how do we decide which of you is correct?

5.       How essential is “scream in pain” to your definition of “torture” in the example you gave?  Some kids have greater ability than others to suppress their urge to scream when pain is inflicted, thus raising the problem of whether the older brother who sadistically causes pain to his younger sibling solely for sadistic entertainment, can escape your accusation all because the child did not in fact ‘scream in pain’.   Can your moral be violated even where the child, able to scream, successfully resists the urge to scream?

6.      I can think of real world exceptions:  Many parents have concluded that because the little brother was “asking for it” by constantly teasing and poking fun at the older brother, the older brother’s sadistic infliction of pain sufficient to induce the child to scream “ouch” (usually a pinch, nothing permanent or extreme) is morally justified, despite the fact that the brother has other ways to deal with the child, indicating his infliction of pain wasn’t necessitated but merely desired for its own sake, the very definition of sadism.

7.      A very rich man tells a single mother living in squalor and starvation that if she allows him to pinch her 6-year old diseased daughter (“child”) on the arm to the point that the daughter screams in pain (screaming in pain = your definition of torture), this man will deposit a million dollars in her checking account.  She consents, he pinches, the daughter screams, they receive a million dollars, and mom uses that money to purchase a medical cure for her daughter’s disease, and to purchase homes, food and clothes for 500 other families also living in squalor locally.   Then you come along and say “that man had no other motive in torturing your daughter, than his own sadistic entertainment, so you were objectively wrong to accept his bribe and help facilitate her torture.”  She says “the benefits resulting in relief to so much terrible suffering (reduction of the number of starving homeless children by putting them in houses with money to their families) clearly outweighed whatever immorality was involved in the rich man pinching my daughter for less than 2 seconds.”  How would you convince her that despite the relief of much suffering, the price was too high?  Would you also confront her like this if some of those families she helped were Christians who could be heard praising god for this relief as you walk on your way to confront her?

8.      If the ancient pagans were as evil as you allege (i.e., burning children alive, as evangelical apologist Frank Turek routinely alleges about the Canaanites), they likely harmed children in warfare for their entertainment even when not necessary to the battle, just like they raped some of the female prisoners of war despite this not being necessary to winning a battle.  So a biblical rebuttal to your child-torture prohibition would consist of are all those bible verses in which God admits responsibility for motivating the pagans to do things to the Hebrew kids that constitute unnecessary to winning a battle, which means torture inflicted for entertainment, such as beating them to death (it’s torture causing the child to scream in pain even if only for a few seconds before they actually die) and ripping fetuses out of pregnant women. See Isaiah 13:15-16 and Hosea 13:15-16.  As I informed you earlier, one evangelical scholar commenting on the infamous Psalm 137:9 said beating children against the rocks was typical of ANE warfare, so you cannot escape God’s enabling of pagans to torture children solely for entertainment purposes by pretending Isaiah and Hosea were engaging in hyperbole.  Their threats of woe referred to horrific realities of warfare (2^nd Kings 15:16)  that the Hebrews were well aware could be imposed on them should enemy nations decide to attack.

9.      The teaching in Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32, that you are not allowed to add or take away from the Mosaic law text, strongly implies that the author thought the law was sufficiently exhaustive that any act of a human being not prohibited/condemned in the Law, could not be punished by the elders (i.e., they would have no legal justification to impose such punishment) .  That being the case, there is a law that indicates slave-owners could not be prosecuted for their beating a slave to death, if the slave takes at least 1 day to die:

20 "If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished.

 21 "If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property. (Exod. 21:20-21 NAU)

Evangelical scholars such as J.I, Durham agree that this is immunizing the slave owner here in those cases where there is at least 1 day’s delay between the fatal beating and the slave’s actual death:

The broad stance of our contributors can rightly be called evangelical, and this term is to be understood in its positive, historic sense of a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation, and to the truth and power of the Christian gospel…A slave owner who strikes his slave a fatal blow with a stick or a club (שׁבט) is to be punished unless the slave survives the blow for a day or so. In that case, he is to suffer no punishment beyond his financial loss in the death of his slave.

Durham, J. I. (2002). Vol. 3: Word Biblical Commentary : Exodus. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 323). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Hebrew slave-owners also had kids as slaves (Exodus 21:4).  If we agree with apologists for the sake of argument that Numbers 31:18 is only authorizing Hebrew men to take little girls as house-slaves and not as wives, then because the girls are defined in that verse are virgin, we may assume most of them taken as slaves were between infancy and about 12 years of age.  Now suppose a Hebrew man takes one such girl of 6 years old to his house as house slave, then pinches her on the arm for no other reason than his sadistic entertainment because he likes to hear her say “ouch!” in fluent Midianite.  Her screaming in pain fulfills your above-cited criteria of “torture”, and his doing this for no reason than his sadistic desire to hear her scream, fulfills your above-cited criteria of “entertainment”, and as a 6-year old girl she fulfills your criteria of “child”.  This then would constitute violation of your allegedly objective prohibition against child-torture, but because it doesn’t violate anything in the exhaustive Mosaic law, it cannot be called evil and thus under biblical standards this act wouldn’t be evil.

(the Mosaic law clearly isn’t actually exhaustive, but that truth doesn’t help you, Deut. 4:2 and 12:32 commit you to the premise that the author of the Mosaic law INTENDED for the readers to view it as exhaustive, which is what logically arises from the prohibition on adding to it.  You don’t need to add anything to the laws when they are sufficient to govern whatever civil or criminal case that might possibly arise).

Exodus 22:22-25 forbids afflicting an orphan, but because the death-penalty is imposed where the afflicted cry out to god (v. 23), we either assume the affliction imposed was something more serious than a mere pinch on the arm, or we assume that God would kill a Hebrew slave-owner for nothing more than afflicting an orphan slave girl with a pinch on the arm.  The former seems to accord with Christian common sense the most.

I am very well aware that you didn’t bring up bible inerrancy.  I am arguing that your own commitment to biblical inerrancy logically prevents you from saying God always disapproves of the type of child-torture you describe, and thus what you describe cannot be objectively immoral, had you properly taken into consideration what is required by other presuppositions you hold to.  And yet you insist that objective morals cannot exist independently of God. 

“Your free to disagree of course, you can maintain that a community that believes in and practises torturing children for fun doesn’t do anything wrong at all or that such requirements are really hypothetical and don’t apply to people who have sadistic desires, or your free to think people who deliberately and knowingly torture children are worthy of praise and condemnation if you like. If you want to bite that bullet, then you can, but I think ranting about God being a moral monster and how awful it is for ancient cultures to have narratives about killing children ceases to become a terribly plausible past time if you do bite this bullet.”

-----------I won’t be biting that bullet, you haven’t done anything to establish that torturing children for fun IS this objectively immoral act you claim it to be.  The best you can possibly do is point out that atheists cannot adequately explain why most human beings in history have found it immoral to torture children purely for entertainment reasons, after which you could infer that such atheist-failure makes it likely that this pattern in human morality can only be accounted for by positing a god.  But you didn’t even make THAT argument.

“But all this is irrelevant, because, in the argument, I cited from my response to Carrier, I pointed out the biblical passages you cite, even if your take on them was correct, doesn’t actually provide the slightest reason for rejecting a divine command theory.”

------------I cannot give credence to the DCT theory because I am an atheist and find the concept of God to be incoherent.  If you believe the Christian version of DCT is the most powerful case to be made for DCT, then when the atheist refutes the Christian version of DCT, they have refuted what you think is the most powerful case for DCT.  The mere possibility that a non-Christian god might exist and justify DCT is about as frightful to the atheist as the mere possibility that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  Invoking mere possibilities is not the way debates are made beneficial.  So far, the incoherency of the god-concept appears reasonable, and if so, decimates ANY version of the DCT.

 That attacks the doctrine of inerrancy which is a different and logically distinct position to divine command theories.

----------But you don’t give serious credence to any non-Christian form of the DCT, so if an atheist refutes the Christian or bible-inerrancy based form of DCT, you are disqualified from the game regardless.  You cannot allow that God’s truth is ever disqualified from the game, so my advice is that you honor Christ as highly as possible and insist that the only form of the DCT arguent that will suffice is the specifically Christian version.

Like it or not, my friend, you DO rise or fall with biblical inerrancy.

I note you haven’t responded to it, you have again gone on a long tirade about what you think I argued in a book on a different topic.

-----------yeah I know:  when you blog that apples are fruit, we are “changing the subject” if we reply that apples can also be green or red.  After all, the color of apples is on a topic different than their essential nature as fruit. 

I’ve also asked you before how we might discuss online my specific problems with your beliefs, problems that you haven’t brought up in your blogs.  Are you going to answer?