My request to Dr. R Scott Smith, a Christian scholar/apologist working at Biola University

On March 7, I read the following written by R Scott Smith, PhD, c/o Biola University, at his blog https://rscottsmithphd.com:

Summary of the Survey
We have surveyed major ethical options for what our core morals are, including:
Are they how we happen to talk?
Are they physical things? Perhaps evolutionary products?
Are they ways of behaving or moving our bodies?
Are they results of a utilitarian calculus?
Are they emotive utterances?
Are they particulars? (nominalism)

But, at least since Hobbes, I’ve argued that none of the views can preserve our core morals of murder and rape being wrong, and love and justice being good.
What Are These Core Morals?

For one, they seem to be objectively real. They seem to exist independently of us as moral principles and values. They also simply seem to be intrinsically valid, and not due to anything else (like, the consequences). That is, they seem to have an essential moral nature. Moreover, they cannot be just physical things or particulars, as we’ve seen. Instead, they seem to be a “one-in-many” – each one is one principle (or value), yet it can have many instances/examples. In sum, they seem to be Platonic-like universals.

That raises many questions, however. Earlier, I remarked that Christine Korsgaard rightly observed that it’s hard to see how such things could have anything to do with us. While she thinks people are physical, it still applies if we are a body-soul unity. Why should these abstract objects have anything to do with us? On Plato’s view, they exist in a heavenly realm of values as brute features of reality.

What makes justice and love character qualities that should be present in us? Why is it inappropriate morally for us to murder or rape? These are normative qualities, not merely descriptive. As we’ve seen, it is hard to see how we can get the moral ought from what is descriptively the case. Yet, that problem could be overcome if humans have an essential nature that makes these moral values appropriate for them, and these acts inappropriate.

Earlier, I argued that the soul as our essential nature provides a sound explanation for how we can be the identical person through change. Body-soul dualists affirm that the soul is our essential nature, and it sets the boundary conditions for what is appropriate for us. For instance, it is inappropriate for us to grow a cat’s tail due to our nature, and it is inappropriate for us to murder due to our nature.

We also saw another reason for the soul’s existence. We do in fact think and form beliefs, yet these have intentionality, which I argued is best understood as something immaterial and having an essence. Now, it is hard to conceive how a physical brain could interact with something immaterial, but that problem does not seem to exist for an immaterial soul/mind.

Moreover, why should we feel guilt and shame when we break these core morals? That doesn’t make sense if these morals are just abstract objects that are immaterial and not located in space and time. Instead, we seem to have such responses in the presence of persons we have wronged morally. Also, retributive justice doesn’t make sense if we repay an abstract principle or value. But it would make sense if a person should be repaid.

There is another explanation we have seen for the grounding of these core morals: they are grounded in God. That helps solve the question of why we feel shame when we break one of these morals. But, that also raises questions, such as: are they good because God commands them, or does God command them because they are good (i.e., the Euthyphro dilemma)? Also, which God would this be?

I will start to tackle these in the next essay. But, first, there is another option for properties besides universals (realism) and nominalism. It is divine conceptualism; properties just are God’s concepts. Justice in us is God’s concept. Yet, concepts have intentionality, but virtues do not. When we think about people being just, we don’t mean they have a concept of justice (though they could), but that they have that virtue present in them. So, offhand, divine conceptualism seems to trade on a confusion.
For Further Reading

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 12

So on the same day I sent him the following message through his blog "contact me" page https://rscottsmithphd.com/contact-us/

Hello,

I would like to ask you a few questions raised in my mind after I read your "Making Sense of Morality: Where Do We Go from Here?", located at https://rscottsmithphd.com, which I read March 7, 2022.

I never seem to get a straight answer from Turek or others who try to argue that the common human repugnance toward murder and rape is more reasonably accounted for by positing "god put his laws into our hearts" than by any naturalistic explanatory mechanism.

I can ask you the questions by email or we can discuss at your blog, or wherever.

Barry

A screenshot of that message is:

Answering R. Scott Smith on murder and rape

 This is my reply to an article by Dr. R. Scott Smith entitled:

Making Sense of Morality: Bentham, Mill, and Utilitarianism 

January 11, 2021/ R. Scott Smith

There definitely is a place for appeals to utility in moral reasoning. E.g., when crafting public policy, we should consider the likely consequences of a proposed action, even when a deontological principle clearly applies.

So when Christian women consider the consequences of their decision to have an abortion (i.e., the child goes immediately to heaven and all chance they might end up in hell is infallibly preempted), then it is clear that the abortion has greater moral good, while allowing the child to grow up, gain freewill, and thus open up the possibility of being tortured in flames forever, is clearly immoral. Especially given that the aborted baby's entry to heaven is necessarily approved by God (how else would he let them in)?  

You couldn't be immoral to murder anybody, because according to Job 14:5, God has set an unchangeable number of days for a person to live.  If you murder somebody, you are necessarily carrying out god's will on what happens to them when their number of days are expired.  Gee, I never knew that obeying the will of God was immoral!

After all, people have to live with such decisions. Moreover, utilitarianism appeals to people, especially in secular societies, as apparently being morally neutral. There is no appeal to God or some other set of values to determine what is moral.

Fair enough. 

However, what gets to count as a “good” or “bad” consequence in the first place? Who gets to decide that?

In America, the "who" are the people who decide whether to vote on proposed legislation.  In certain parts of Africa, it is a witch-doctor.

According to whom is something (or someone) more valuable than another?

See above. 

Biases easily could enter the calculation here.

It would be impossible if they didn't, since morality is ultimately subjective.  There is no such thing as moral neutrality in that group of people who desire to cast a vote about proposed legislation.

To make such judgments seems to presuppose some outside standard, beyond utility.

No, making such judgments presupposes the basic morality of the individual that they have by reason of genetic predisposition and environmental conditioning.  Many people mistake such morals as objective, but they do, in fact, spring from those two sources, no need to posit any moral source that is "above humanity".

Another issue is that utilitarianism seems inadequate in terms of how it treats motives.

Indeed, because morality is relative, there is not going to be any system that will be satisfactory to everybody.  Some people simply prioritize the long-term and others the short-term, and history tells us nothing if it doesn't tell us that we are incapable of creating moral utopia.  There's enough commonality to explain creation of different moral groups (nations, states, towns, clubs, churches) but not enough commonality to justify efforts to unite the whole world in morality.  Exactly what we'd expect on naturalism.

Yet, surely they are morally important. If someone kills another, it makes a major difference if it was done intentionally or accidentally. We rightly recognize that difference in the law.

But only for people who care about the long-term stability of society, not for those of more independent persuasion.  That's a lot of people.  Most people do in fact go faster than the speed limit, cheat on their taxes, and many refrain from calling the police if they have seen a crime, judging the judicial system inadequate to meet their needs.

Relatedly, utilitarianism undermines acts of moral supererogation, ones that are heroic and praiseworthy, yet not required. Suppose someone is jogging but notices another person in danger of being attacked by a third person with a knife. While we should expect that jogger to at least call for help (call the police or cry out, to scare off the attacker), it would be above and beyond the call of duty for that jogger to fight off the attacker and save the would-be victim. Yet, on utilitarianism, that act would be obligatory if it would result overall in net good consequences.

Then have fun refuting utilitarian advocates who think their system covers all possible moral situations.  Count me out.

Perhaps most significantly, utilitarianism makes net utility the basis for what is moral.

That's why it cannot be the answer to all moral situations, as most people do not agree that whatever is best in the long term for the majority of people is best.  People will flout the law for their own personal moral reasons often without caring whether this would help or hurt the larger concerns. 

Consider again our core morals: murder and rape are wrong, and justice and love are good.

Murder is not always wrong, its a question of whether the law which criminalize certain types of killing might end up operating to create a greater injustice, which discussion is not pointless merely because morals are relative.  We live with each other hear on earth, we don't need to claim we speak for God in order to legitimately seek what we believe is moral justice.

If you think rape is always immoral, then you are saying God is morally wrong.  See the Good News Translation of Deuteronomy 21:14.  Christian translators would hardly render the Hebrew as "forced her to have intercourse with you" if they could have grammatically justified any less rape-sounding translation. 

If the good consequences of a murder outweigh the bad, then that act would be justified and even obligatory.

But whether the good consequences DO outweigh the bad, is a moral judgment call that not even Christians can agree on.

The same goes for rape, whether under act or rule utilitarianism.

No, you only establish this "core" value by arbitrarily preempting the opinion held by remorseless rapists.  That's not very objective or clinical, that's nothing more than "those people are yucky so their opinion doesn't count."  And there are plenty of women who have a "rape fetish", and there is counseling available for rape victims who orgasmed during the rape.  But the victim having an orgasm during the rape probably isn't something you hear about in the mass media.  But an atheist could pounce on that as a proof that either your god doesn't exist, or the god who exists is a barbarian.  But that's not difficult anyway:  girls become capable of bearing children when they reach 12 years of age.  The male's sex drive is strongest during their teen years.  Why?  Might it be that your god seriously thought that having a family and working the farm was far more important than literacy, college and capitalism?

But these results clearly are deeply mistaken, to say the least. If this justification held, it could be moral to rape another person,

You don't have an argument indicating that rape is objectively immoral.  You just blindly presuppose that is the case because you know most people will agree with it.  But popularity doesn't equal truth.  You have to ask WHY most people think rape is wrong.  That's easy, the way they were raised:  most of us were not raised to take advantage of other people., and we were raised to believe that we shouldn't be subjecting somebody else to misery unless only a greater evil would occur without it, so since the satisfaction of the rapists sexual drive is not viewed by most people as a high priority, while their being born and raised in a democratic nation tells them the girl doesn't deserve to be raped, most people naturally eschew rape.

or murder a racial minority person who is protesting peacefully for civil rights.

There is no doubt that such a statement as this will garner an awful lot of support for you because America as a whole is steaming over the white cops killing black men.  But again, you have nothing but popularity on your side.  Once again, you cannot prove the objective immorality of a racist cop killing a black man in a way contrary to the applicable state and federal laws.   

But, we deeply know such acts are wrong; otherwise, why would there be such uproars against these acts?

But WHY do we "deeply know" such acts are wrong?  Gee, is it sheer coincidence that our viewpoint on such things is in harmony with the way most of us were raised, and in harmony with the kind of mammalian genetic predisposition most of us are born with (i.e., don't do something which threatens the survival of the group)?

Furthermore, your implied belief that murder is objectively immoral is disproven from the bible, in which God takes personal responsibility for all murders (Deuteronomy 32:39, Job 14:5, see Deut. 28:15-63).  You don't have to be a hyper-Calvinist to argue as a Christian that god is responsible for evil and works it to his own good.  That logically requires that when some white cop guns down a black man, God was more responsible for why the atoms in the cops brain did what they did, than the cop himself.  Biblical statements about God's omnipresence contradict biblical statements supporting libertarian freewill.  There is no place God is absent from, and that includes brain synapses.  Unless you wish to argue that ancient Semitic peoples tended to include exaggeration in their religious texts?  Gee, that wouldn't create a serious problem for inerrancy, would it? A Bible whose statements about God often exaggerate him?  How about a Court of law declaring the Affidavit of some witness "inerrant" despite its containing exaggerations?

Likewise, justice would be reduced to whatever is the result of the calculation. A rape or murder would be just in a society that is predominately one race if that act would maximize the overall benefits for the majority. Yet, if these acts can be just on this moral system, we have lost justice.

No, we'd have lost our current sense of justice.  Once again, your arguments blindly and wrongly presuppose that you DO have unchallengable "core" moral elements.  You don't.  You just have a lot of mammals in the world whose genetic predispositions are similar enough to explain their grouping together, but not similar enough to create moral utopia...exactly what we'd expect in a godless mammalian world where trying to stay alive and thrive is the ultimate purpose.

Indeed, murder’s and rape’s wrongness, and justice’s and love’s goodness, seem to be intrinsically so.

And there you go again appealing to the emotions of the reader, but surely an apologist can do better to prove objective morality, than by remarking that certain morals "seem" intrinsic.

But "intrinsic" doesn't have to imply transcendance.  Morals become lodged in our minds as we are raised by our caregivers.  I'm not seeing why that naturalistic explanation is leaving anything unexplained. 

Answering R. Scott Smith on subjective morality

 This is my reply to an article by R. Scott Smith entitled

Making Sense of Morality: An Introduction to Naturalism 

January 25, 2021/ R. Scott Smith

What should we make of these noncognitivist views? First, by reducing away any cognitive content from moral sentences, they end up being merely descriptive. But, morality deeply seems to be about what is normative, or prescriptive.

"Seems"?  Surely you have something to ground objective morality more than this?  

It also "seems" that Leviticus 21:9 is mere barbarism from an Iron Age culture.  Is "seems" sufficient for argument, yes or no? 

If people protest against a miscarriage of justice (e.g., an unarmed African-American man who was walking down a street, but was murdered by white men), they are not merely emoting. Instead, they deeply believe there was an injustice done, which is why they are upset.

But "deeply believe" doesn't an objective moral make.  The Nazi's "deeply believed" that the Jews deserved to be exterminated.  Christian Reconstructionists "deeply believe" that replacing all American law with the moral commands of the Pentateuch would be morally good.  But surely Christian moral scholars could not possibly agree on whether it was good.   Thus leaving skeptics no reason to think that God's absolute viewpoint is in there somewhere.

Second, moral judgments are not identical with feelings or commands, for the former can occur without the latter.

The show me a moral judgment that isn't identical with a feeling or a command.  Good luck.

We do not need to have any feelings when we state, “Murder is wrong.”

False, feelings reduce to 'thoughts', so you are saying we don't need to have thoughts when we state "murrder is wrong".

But even assuming your logic is correct, then we also don't need to have any feelings when we say "some moral situations would justify disobeying the law and committing vigilante justice."

But again, the wrongness of murder is inherently tied to the moral goodness of the law that is making such killing illegal.  If state law criminalized use of deadly force in self-defense, the fact that it thus became "murder" would not convince most Christians to conform, most would still use lethal force if they thought doing so was necessary to save them from an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm.

So then you can know that murder is sometimes morally good if you can spot moral flaws in the law which criminalizes certain types of killing.  What constitutes a moral 'flaw' is, of course, relative.  But that hardly means it is pointless.  Your liking the taste of some food that others hate is equally subjective, yet that doesn't require that it is flawed.

That's a big problem with you moral objectivists: you always act like the subjectivity of a moral opinion means that opinion is somehow defective.  Not at all. One parent in the neighborhood has her own dogmatic belief that the kids shouldn't be playing outside after 7 p.m., the parent down the street has the same attitude but her limit is 8 p.m.  These moral stances are subjective, but that hardly means that either of them are "flawed".

So stop telling yourself that "subjective" equals "flaw/defective".  It doesn't.  Even if it would make things difficult for inerrantists.

And, we can have feelings without moral judgments.

Sure, but not when it comes to morality.  If the store owner feels like he should call the police about the teen who stole a soda, I'm not seeing how that could possibly be distinguished from his moral judgment that such theft be prosecuted. 

Third, there is no room for any moral education or training on these views, since there is no cognitive content to learn and therefore no real moral disagreement.

No, moral disagreements don't require that at least one party hold to a moral that is objectively real or transcendent.  see above example about parents disagreeing about the latest time in the day to allow their kids to play outside.  Each parent can profitably teach their subjective moral to their kids, even if there is no god who has an absolute time for kids to stop playing outside.

But, this result undermines any training in moral virtue, such as in why we should address examples of injustices in society.

No, there is nothing about subjective morality that "undermines" requiring kids to obey their parents' subjective morals.  The only question is where we draw the line, and this, again, is subjective.  You continually presume that if the moral in question is not objective, then it is either wrong or pointless to deal with it.  This is absurd.

It also wouldn't matter if you were correct.  I too hear about racism in America's police department, and guess what:  I don't "address" those "examples of injustice in society", in the serious way that you obviously intended the word "address".  I might mention some such examples here or there, but I don't "address" them seriously. My life has enough of its own issues without needing to "address" such issues.  What are you going to say now?  All atheists who don't participate in political protest rallies aren't living consistently with atheist morality?

It also does not do justice to the fact that many of us do disagree morally. This is plain to see when we look at the many social and moral issues we deliberate and debate.

Once again, the moral disagreement between two persons doesn't have to implicate objective morals before their disagreements on it can be profitable.  Such as the child who doesn't want to wear the particular shoes the parent wants them to wear.  I can't see any divine oversight about such a trifle, and yet even most Christians would say the parent should discuss this with the child, since maybe one of them will discover some truth (i.e., the shoes give the child blisters, or the child is lying about the blisters, etc).

Brandon failed to establish objective morals

I responded to him here, but in case the comments get deleted, here's what I argued:

This is why I believe in God.

Submitted by Brandon Neifert on April 10, 2020 - 3:47pm

"This is why I believe in God."
----that's a non-starter.  "god" might have a dictionary definition, but it refers to nothing empirically detectable, and therefore takes its place among fairy tales, worm holes, time travel, and fairies.  You are never going to show that an atheist is "unreasonable" to reject anything they cannot empirically detect.

" It is objectively moral to not harm someone."
-----that's the fallacy of argument by assertion.  What you stated shoudl be the conclusion to your argument, not the argument itself.

"Just as it's objectively moral to feed and help other people."
-----But unless you'd admit to feed and help terrorists, then there's an exception to the popular moral belief that we should feed and help other people.  Answer wrong, and expect the NSA to take a second look at you.  Expect everybody else to wonder whether hanging out with you is actually worth the trouble.

"The fact that it's psychologically built in us proves volumes on the evidence for God's existence."
------It is psychologically built into a male cat's brain to rape a female cat.  What are you gonna do now, argue that whether rape is morally good or bad depends on the context?  If so, that would constitute "situational ethics", the very relativism you are trying to avoid.

"There are naturalists---the Nazis for example---who would disagree with this psychological definition, but we often know them to be objectively bad."
-------"we know" is quite a relative standard, as you are simply excluding the Nazi opinioin as if it was inherently and obviously defective.  You haven't shown the Nazi opinion to be contrary to any objective moral, probably because you haven't shown us where this objective standard is.  Once again, all you are doing is appealing to popular moral sentiment.  But that critiera can be used to sandbag you if you aren't careful.

"Though, if given the framework for Darwinian Evolution, the Nazis would be correct in their assumption that improving the human race would be our only moral goal."
-----No, if darwinian evolution is true, there is no objective moral, hence nobody's moral opinion can
be 'correct', it is just a world full of animals competing for resources, period.  "Should" questions are necessarily unresolvable and do nothing more than enable some animals to form groups and otherwise attack each other.  That's all.

"But, the psychological foundation of human virtues is something written within us. It's why every culture, just about, had laws and systems of Crime and Punishment."
------Gorillas and apes also abide by certain virtues.  Were apes made in the image of god?  try that one on a bible-belileving Christian, and discover how belief in God does little more than give other theists a reason to hate you.

"I can find no better proof for the existence of God than morality."
---------A pedophile could say the same thing, while believing it is good to molest kids.

"Freedom is good."
--------But completely unrestrained freedom (i.e., no laws beyond what any person decides for himself to follow) leads to anarchy and social breakdown, which you would probably classify as objectively bad.  So what you really meant was that the right balance of freedom and law is "good".  But that's hardly useful to argument, your own best friend would probably argue with you for hours, or for life, about how these two concerns should be balanced.  Welcome to the world of moral relativity.

"It's because there is a God."
---------A word that has a dictionary definition, but by referring to nothing empirically detectable, thus refers to nothing important, and is on the level of the Big Bang, dark energy, fairies and the Bermuda Triangle.  you are never going to show that the atheist is "unreasonable" for doing what everybody does every second of every day, and prioritizing what their 5 senses detect, over things their 5 senses cannot detect.  That's how you undo all the philosophical resistance to "empiricism" in less than a paragraph.  Those who deny empiricism's truth are complete hypocrites, as they had to depend on their senses of sight and sound in order to formulate their stupid theory that the 5 senses are not as reliable as we'd wish. Sure is funny how reliable they are when one wishes to refute empiricism!

"Sometimes war is necessary."
------Then you just contradicted your first premise that it is moral not to harm someone.  If war is an exception, then whether harming someone is morally good or bad is not subject to absolute determination, but depends on context.  Once again, welcome to the world of relativity.

"It's because there is a God."
--------A word with a dictionary definition, but referring to nothing empirically demonstrable.  When something is not empirically demonstrable, it is reasonable to kick it to the curb.  Just ask any girl what she does when her boyfriend always says he loves her, but she notices that he never actually proves it.  These days, she kicks his ass to the curb...unless she has a pyschologial problem and finds "comfort" in submitting to morally inconsistent men?

"If men get to defining the moral absolutes---we find in this article it's impossible. Because there will always be conflicting opinions. But, if given the context that morals are being discovered, and are discovered by multiple religions and sages, we understand that in fact morality is present, and it is very substantive proof of there being a truth that is beyond our observation."
--------If it was beyond your observation, you wouldn't know enough about it to say "morals are being discovered."  But either way, all you are doing is crediting God with the fact that most human beings think rape and murder are wrong.  But there is a perfectly good naturalistic explanation for the fact that this opinion-pattern exhibits itself in humanity:  enhancing survival and thriving requires we observe such morals.  But then we could ask whether survival and thriving is objectively good, and the first answer is "no, because there is no such thing as objective morals".
The second answer is "you have never demonstrated that any moral code exists outside the brain".

"That truth existing beyond our observation implies intrinsically that there is a God."
-------That's a violation of Occam's Razor, since yoru solution (god) is infinitely complex, when in fact a much less complex and much more likely explanation for morality is available:  Certain actions must be done to enhance survival and thriving.  If you want to have a nice life in the USA, you must avoid disobeying the popular morality in that country, which has been codified into criminal and civil laws.
Once again, you haven't demonstrated that any human moral code exists independently of human brains. 

You also need to be careful.  It's also true that most men desire to have sex with multiple females.  Are you going to be consistent, and say that beacuse this is a popular moral, it must be from God?

"Because once you prove that there is truths beyond our observation"
----------Which is logically impossible....If you can't observe it, you are never going to prove it.


"you move into the realm of Metaphysics, and once you enter into that realm, the existence of God becomes manifest."
----------Atheist explanations for popular moral sentiment down through human history are sufficient. God?  I have no need of that hypothesis.

"The question is, which God is the true God?"
--------nope, you havn't established god's existence yet.  Try again.  And tell Frank Turek he ain't doing so great trying to prove god from morality.

"And only one in history has ever shown Himself. That is Jesus Christ. Only one had ever taught a perfect moral law."
--------If you believe Jesus was God, then you believe Jesus created that perfect moral law.  But even the bible says God's law was imperfect and needed replacing, See Hebrews 8:13.  if the first covenant had been morally perfect, no place would have been sought for the Second.

God also admits he gives laws that are 'not good', Ezekiel 20:25.

And if Jesus is God, then it was Jesus who authored the moral law that says a preteen girl shoud be burned to death if she has pre-marital sex in her father's house.  Leviticus 21:9. 

Moses was far closer to God than you'll ever be, and yet assumed sex within adult-child marriages
was morally acceptable.  Numbers 31:18.  I've extensively researched that verse, and the conservative christians who carp that this is just saying the girls can be used as house-servants, are high on crack.

God also gave the law that allows the soldier who recently killed the female war-captive's parents, to marry her...a law that nowhere expresses or implies he needed her consent.

"That's Christ. It's why I believe. And when people ask me, "How do you know it's perfect?" I tell them to just read Matthew Chapters 5 - 8. Those chapters, if you can disagree with them, it proves you're not right morally speaking."

Try obeying Matthew 5:19, which praises those who obey even the least of the OT commands.
Try obeying Matthew 5:23-24, since the temple was destroyed in 70 a.d. and never rebuilt.
And read Luke 1:6 before you insist we cannot get right with God through the merit of our obedience to Law.

"The chapters demonstrate moral perfection, as the article would say, the 1 + 1 = 2 of morality. Of course, Morality is much more complicated than that. It's, as I've often said, like Quantum physics."
---------Right, several schools of thought which compete with and contradict each other.  Once again, welcom to moral relativism.

"But Jesus' Sermon tells us the basic form of it that we can all agree on."
No, you don't agree that Matthew 5:23-24 applies today, and you certainly don't think the animal sacrifices that were part and parcel of the Temple, have any spiritual significance.

"That's why the rest of the Bible has to be taken on faith."
--------Which means you disagree with Normn Geisler, Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, Josh McDowell, Frank Turek and most other conservative Christian 'apologists' who think the divine inspiration of the bible can be "proved".

"If God on Earth could come to so perfect a moral law,"
-------You think burning preteen girls to death (Leviticus 21:9) is a perfect moral law?  You think kidnapping little girls, killing their parents, then making the girls slave in your house for the rest of their lives (Numbers 31:18, your interpretation) is a perfect moral law?  Most Christians would disagree with you.

"it proves to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the rest of the Bible must be true."
-------What bible?  The Catholic one with the Apocrypha?  The Ethiopian coptic?

Or were you just talking about the plain ol' American bible we've come to know and love, which can be found in motel rooms and placed there by the Gideons?

"Even when I'm questioning why that is, I have faith that the groundwork Jesus laid in those chapters is sufficient evidence enough for me to believe. Even when everything else might seem difficult or questionable."
-----------What you DON'T do is show that the atheist is "unreasonable". 

Rebuttal to Frank Turek on Morality

Frank Turek "explains" why God allows natural disasters. See here. I responded first with Deuteronomy 28:15-63 to remind Christians that their "biblical" god is a far cry from the concerned empathizing Jesus they've invented in their heads.

I then responded with my own argument as follows (this was deleted by unknown person about 5 minutes after I posted it, hence, you no longer wonder why I cross post to my blog here).



Barry Jones1 second ago
Turek's "ripple-effect" argument is not convincing to anybody except the predominantly Christian audiences that are already desperately searching for anything that will help them feel better about their own faith.

Furthermore, the ripple-effect could be used to justify immorality. How do you know that God didn't want my stealing a car yesterday to play an integral role in the reason why African Bush tribes will hear the Christian gospel next year? 

You can tell yourself that the evil act remains evil even if God can use it for a greater good, but since many allegedly "evil" acts also produce morally good effects (the morally bad murder of a family member caused the good of the surviving family becoming Christian in faith), then how the hell do you know which effect determines the moral status of the act and which effect doesn't? 

Is rape evil because it hurts the woman, or good because by ripple-effect it causes Eskimos 5,000 miles away to hear the gospel for the first time 5 years later? 

Is rape bad because it hurts the woman, or good because it taught her to be more careful about walking home late at night? 

Is pedophilia bad because it hurt the child, or good because it came to the attention of a vigilante who later gunned down that pervert before he could molest more kids?

==========================

You will say "the ends don't justify the means", but I really have to wonder how many tears you'd cry if you found out the local pedophile who was recently released on parole was gunned down by unknown person.  Gee, that murder wasn't in conformity to American legal ideals, so you just won't be able to come in to work for a few days while you "get over" it, eh?  NOT.

my reply to Hank Hanegraaff on James Patrick Holding and origins of morality

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On the Bible Answer Man broadcast, host Hank Hanegraaff relates a conversation he had with his daughter who is attending college. While explaining that morality is not dependent on God, one of her liberal professors invoked the Euthyphro dilemma. Not knowing how to deal with this conundrum, she went to Hank's book, The Complete Bible Answer Book Collector’s Edition and was able to answer this objection, and in doing so, stressed the need for apologetics on college campuses. Read our JOURNAL article "Out of the Nest and Off to College: A Time for Exploration" for FREE on our website https://www.equip.org/article/out-of-...

Barry Jones13 seconds ago (edited)
Morality obviously comes from a person's environmental conditioning, and how they react to their environment is governed by their genetic predisposition. The idea that atheists cannot explain morality without borrowing "capital" from Christianity or theism, is absurd. Frank Turek pushes this criticism the most, and I steamroll him at my own blog: https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2018/08/frank-tureks-absurd-belief-in-objective.html I'm so skeptical of the Holy Spirit "moving through argument" that I think conversion to Christianity on the basis of argument has nothing more spiritual to it than becoming convinced by the evidence that a criminal defendant is guilty. While the Christian will insist on leaving room for the biblical "necessity" of the Holy Spirit to move in the heart of the unbeliever, the Holy Spirit is more likely nothing more than a gratuitous afterthought. Thousands of heretical Christians also insist the only reason they converted to the "truth" was the HOly Spirit's prompting, so apparently, this highly esoteric view does not lend itself very well to the cause of truth-discovery, it is merely a Christian refusal to close the door on a "biblical" truth for which there is precisely ZERO evidence.



Barry Jones40 seconds ago (edited)
Hank should also worry about taking the log out of his own eye before he judges others. Hank allows James Patrick Holding to author CRI Journal articles, yet Mr. Holding is a closet homosexual and has been sued multiple times for libel, and has never answered those charges on the merits.

Holding is currently being sued for libel by me. 

It is very reasonable to say that if one's spiritual walk with Christ is more important than 'argument', then Hank needs to fire Mr. Holding until Holding repents of his 20-year long intentional disobedience to Ephesians 5:4, Colossians 3:8, etc. 

Until Hank cuts off fellowship from Mr. Holding, Hank will be guilty of disobeying 1st Cor. 5:11-13, because Holding is a full-time "reviler" and thus is living in sin, not merely having a few spiritual hiccups along the way. 

This is to say nothing of the fact that while Hank's morals are conservative and Evangelical, Mr. Holding is a closet homosexual, or at least he was for most of his "apologetics" career, and if he gave up that sin, he certainly has never evinced the slightest repentance over it, nor any repentance for his ceaseless sins of reviling and slander.  If conservative evangelicals first ask "are you walking in the light of Christ?" before they allow some "teacher" to teach, then CRI needs to fire Holding and repent of their ever having known him.

So, has Hank ever heard of the Matthew 18 process? Or does he disagree with apostle Paul and say "reviling" is not a sin? https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2019/10/my-new-warning-to-another-follower-of.html
https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2019/01/james-patrick-holding-unconscionable.html
https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/06/james-patrick-holding-disqualified-by.html
https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/05/james-patrick-holding-formerly-robert.html

Frank Turek's absurd belief in objective morality

 Christian apologist Frank Turek increased his popularity with his "Stealing from God" book that he supports with book-tours in which he attempts to argue that morals are objective, so since this requires an objective moral law giver, and atheism provides none, the existence of objective morals necessarily implies the existence of God, hence, atheism is false.


Turek says, in an article entitled Atheists have no basis for morality:

Monday night at UNC Wilmington, despite no cooperation from the school (see my last post), just over 200 people showed up for part 1 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. 

Maybe god is punishing you for misrepresenting him and mistaking your marketing bells and whistles for the wooing of the Holy Spirit.  Just a thought.

Several atheists asked questions– actually made statements– and struggled greatly when I asked them to offer some objective basis for morality from their atheistic worldview. 

 Then they were not very educated about matters of morality.  You won't find the atheist writing at this blog to be struggling, to any degree, to answer your ridiculous questions and challenges.

For now, your question was illogically loaded.  The only reason to ask an atheist for an objective basis for morality, is because that atheist thinks morality does indeed have an objective basis.  Any such atheists are wrong.  If atheism is true, morality does not have an objective basis (i.e., a basis that transcends humanity).

Also, the fact that most humans are social mammals logically requires that they find unacceptable any acts that inhibit the thriving and surviving of the members.  Murder reduces the numbers of living things and deceases chances of thriving.  Rape increases the likelihood of additional children that were not planned and thus strain the group's resources.  Since no theory needs to be 100% perfect and explain every last little electron in the universe, the issue is not whether the naturalistic theory is comprehensive, but whether it is reasonable.  It is.  The naturalistic explanations for why most people find rape and murder to be immoral, are reasonable.  Merely calling them 'opinion' does nothing to show the theory unreasonable.  Some moist robots have an atomic configuration that motivates them to care about the survival of others.

On the other hand, the explanatory theory that says "God put his laws into our hearts" is beset by far worse shortcomings and fallacies:

What is the reason we cringe at the thought of burning teen prostitutes to death?  Because the god who required this in other cultures (Lev. 21:9) has put his laws into our hearts?  Or because the culture we are born and raised in can have a very profoundly strong impact in shaping our moral opinions?

Turek's explanation cannot point to any specific empirical evidence of a god putting his laws into our hearts, while the entire business smacks of telepathy and other foolishness that we know is bullshit.  At the same time, the naturalistic theory can point to the lower animal world, those who Turek agrees are not made in the image of god, and we find that those calibrated to care about survival of the group, do indeed also find murder and rape unacceptable.

What standard is Turek using to form his belief that rape is objectively evil?  It cannot be the bible or 'god', since Isaiah 13:16 would then have God causing men to rape women, that is, have God acting contrary to his own nature.

  They kept trying to give tests for how we know something is moral rather than why something is moral. 

That's easy.  Try the Constitutions and Laws of the country you were born in.  They reflect the moral outlook of the majority of the people. 

One atheist said “not harming people” is the standard.  But why is harming people wrong if there is no God? 

If you mean "objectively wrong", then harming people isn't wrong, because there is no objective standard governing the question of which human activities constitute immoral harm.  Furthermore, "harm" is subjective and requires analysis of context.  Doctors cause harm all the time, but most of us say this is justifiable because the harm creates a greater future good.  So it is the same in other areas of life. 

If you "subjectively wrong", then the wrongness of harming people does not go any further back than the human being who is calling it wrong, and perhaps the other human beings in the world who agree with him.  But again, that doesn't establish that the moral opinion is objective.

Another said, “happiness” is the basis for morality.  (After I asked him, “Happiness according to who, Mother Teresa or Hitler?,”  he said, “I need to think about this more,” and then sat down.) 

 Thus indicating that these atheists were woefully uneducated about the matters to justify pontificating about them as they tried.  

This says nothing about the intelligence of these people– there just is no good answer to the question.  

 Incorrect, you appear to have been addressing absolute dolts.  The reason you find a lot of people agreeing with you that morals have an objective basis that transcends humanity is because the vast majority of people have never taken an introductory course in moral philosophy.  You are dishonestly trading on their strong personal views and their ignorance.  Your problem is that the naturalistic explanation for most humans in history agreeing certain acts are immoral, reasonably accounts for all the empirical data, at which point, there is no compelling "need" to invoke god to explain it.

Most humans are social animals who desire the company and fellowship of other humans.  Since unrestrained murder and rape would clearly hamper the human's instinctive goal to both survive and thrive, it is instinctive for humans to view murder and rape as unacceptable behavior.   You don't think the insects are made in the image of god, yet the social insects like wasps will attack you if you do thinks to disrupt their social goals, such as throwing dirt clods at wasp-nests.  The same is true for most of the higher order mammals.  Anything that inhibits their ability to survive or thrive as a group, is automatically deemed unacceptable and deserving of suppression.

You cannot avoid this rebuttal by doing what you do best, and pretending that an endless series of "but how do you know that?" will help you save face. Humans are instinctive social animals, so that is quite sufficient to explain why those who desire most to live in groups agree that things like rape and murder are unacceptable.  Questions about how humans were created, etc, are another topic.

Without God there is no basis for objective morals. 

Correct.  That doesn't mean subjective morals cannot exist.  There is no proving to another person that the subjective morals of modern-day America are "better". All we can say is that if you act contrary to those morals, you will be put in jail or killed. 

And God himself in Genesis 6:6-7 must have come to feel that his prior decision to create mankind was immoral, or else he wouldn't have "regretted" doing so.  No, Turek, there is nothing in the grammar, immediate context, larger context or genre of Genesis 6 to suggest that this oassage is an "anthropomorphism", so it is reasonable to take it equally as literally as the other events in the context.  In that case, your own God contradicts his own morals, since it was HE who created mankind, and HE who later discovered that said creative act was immoral.  If God didn't think creating man was immoral, what does it mean to say God "regretted" making mankind?  If you think your prior decision was morally good, could you ever "regret" it?  No, not unless you start thinking that decision wasn't as good as you had first thought. 

And Christians must be without god, because they are often dogmatic in their moral disagreements with one another:

• Does the Christian god think it morally good for a Christian adult to join a worldly military?  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Does the Christian god think it morally good for voluntary abortion to end a pregnancy caused by rape?  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Does the Christian god think it morally god for married Christian couples to use condoms?  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Is corporal punishment of kids morally good?  How do you know what level of non-lethal pain is the maximum that objective goodness will allow?   Why would Proverbs 22:15 and other passages require striking kids with a "rod", if the level of force it is talking about would not produce any more pain or injury than what could be produced by the "tap" of an open hand that so many Christians think is the limit?  Proverbs 20:30 has only good things to say about beatings that produce bruises, and contrary to popular belief, "immediate context" does not always prevail when dealing with Proverbs.  While some commentators try to get away from a moral nightmare by pretending that the "immediate context" of Proverbs 20:30 restricts that passage to mere judicial beatings of adults in criminal courts:

20:30 In context this is not parental discipline but beatings administered by the king’s officers as punishment for crime. Yahweh can peer directly into a person’s innermost being (v. 27), but the king can touch the criminal’s soul by harsh retribution.

Garrett, D. A. (2001, c1993). Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 179). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 Other equally Christian scholars maintain that the way different Proverbs about different matters are often strung together, you cannot limit what one of them is talking about by appeal to "immediate context":

With the book of Proverbs one can select at random a single verse or two and observe a complete unity of thought in them that may not have any real connection with what precedes or follows. Yet this does not hinder interpretation of its meaning

 Ardel B. Caneday, Qoheleth: Enigmatic Pessimist Or Godly Sage?, 
GTJ—V7-#1—Spr 86—31

• And if Proverbs 20:30 is extolling the goodness of the criminal receiving bruises and welts from the corporal punishment inflicted by a court....do you agree that human courts achieve objective moral good by physically beating convicted criminals, yes or no?  Or did you suddenly discover that god's objective biblical morals don't apply if the culture in question is too different from the biblical culture?  Sound like cultural relativism to me.
• How do you know that vigilante justice is objectively immoral, given that Peter in Acts 5:29 appears to have found an exception to Romans 13?  If there are pacifist exceptions to Romans 13 wherein you can safely disregard worldly law, then how do you know that pacifist exceptions are the only types that exist?  How do you know where to draw the line?  What makes you so sure that God doesn't wish to act through you personally to murder the convicted and self-confessed pedophile living locally in your neighborhood?  Before you answer, ask how many tears you'd shed if you found that this man was found gunned down in a ditch earlier this morning.  You won't exactly be clearing your schedule just to make time to attend his funeral, amen?  And your own bible requires that the person who murdered the pedophile was doing the will of God regardless of how the death was actually achieved (Deut. 32:39, Job 14:5). 
• Is it morally good to torture babies to death?  If not, then you must think your god once violated his own objective morals in torturing to death the baby born to King David and Bathsheba:

  13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:13-18 NAU)

The baby obviously wasn't "deserving" of this torture, and yet v. 18 indicates the torture lasted for seven days.  Oh, did I forget?  This doesn't even qualify as the child being punished for the sins of the father.  Before the child was stuck by God, Nathan the prophet said God had "taken away" David's sins (v. 13).  God's torture of the baby cannot be considered "punishment" in any way, since the "taking away" obviously operated to exempt David himself from the death penalty required for adultery and murder.

• If God really is the author of all murder and death (Deut. 32:39) and has set a specific number of days for each human to live, a number they cannot increase or decrease (Job 14:5), then how can you say murder is immoral?  If a man pulls out a gun and shoots the Christian bank teller dead, this is also God calling that bank teller home...it is not limited to the earthly perspective of "murder".  if those bible passages are true, you are calling God's own actions objectively immoral when you call murder immoral.  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Does god approve of a legislature taking the death penalty, usually applicable only to murder, and extending it to other crimes such as child rape?  Not a few people were angered when a man who nearly fatally raped his daughter, escaped Louisiana's death penalty for that crime when the US Supreme Court found such law to be cruel and unusual. 
• Does God think it is moral or immoral that America's courts have a general rule generally excluding hearsay?  The fact that most of the bible is in hearsay form and allegedly comes from God, requires that the answer is "immoral".  Yet if Christians were to start a movement to overturn the court rule banning hearsay, it would likely trigger a legal war that would produce various degrees of harmful collateral damage, such as wronged Plaintiffs preferring to take the law into their own hands instead of having the matter adjudicated in a court that foolishly allows hearsay.
• If rape is objectively immoral, why does God claim responsibility for causing men to rape women in Isaiah 13:16?  Even conservative Christian commentators admit God was "taking responsibility" for these and other atrocities in the immediate context, such as beating children to death:

 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger.
 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land.
 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.
 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.   (Isa. 13:13-18 NAU)

17–18 As the macabre scene resulting from the cosmic quake passes, the finger points to historical movement. Yahweh calls attention to stirrings among the feared Medes for which He claims responsibility.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary : Isaiah 1-33.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page 198). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

What now, Turek?  Do atheist bible critics have an intellectual obligation to study the convoluted tortured reasonings of Christianity's 500-year old in-house Calvinist-Arminian debate on the biblical extent of God's sovereignty (or the 1500 year old Augustinian/Pelagian debate),  before they can be justified to draw conclusions here?  If so, how long must the atheist study such debates before they can justifiably draw conclusions about it?  2 weeks?  20 years?

And don't forget, Turek:  Calvinists are Christians who say the bible teaches that God secretly wills for us to violate his revealed will:

If someone disobeys God's revealed will, that's because God "secretly" willed them to disobey his revealed will. (Steve Hays, from Triablogue)

• When we jaywalk, would it be objectively morally good to consider this sufficient to prove us guilty of murder?  Before you balk at the stupidity of such a suggestion, read James 2:10-11 for the first time in your life, and ask yourself how feverishly stupid it would be to try and make such careless sophistry apply in real-world situations:

 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.
 11 For He who said, "DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY," also said, "DO NOT COMMIT MURDER." Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. (Jas. 2:10-11 NAU)

Then tell yourself that such sophistry does apply in the allegedly real-world situation of your guilt before god.  Then tell yourself that the only people who are allowed to invoke the mysterious ways of God to get their asses out of a theological jam are Trinitarian bible-inerrancy-believing evangelical Protestants.

It is reasonable to expect that if the Christian god exists and has imposed 'objective' morals on humanity, he would not remain so silent and hidden from his own genuine seekers, as to facilitate such moral division among genuinely born-again Christians.  One reasonable conclusion is that Christians who read the same basic bible and hold the same theological tenets always disagree about moral issues they find to be "important" because there is no objective moral law giver.

It’s just Mother Teresa’s opinion against Hitler’s. 

 That's exactly right.  Most citizens of most countries are civilized and have common sense.  Nation would not likely rise against nation in war if knowing which morals come from God was the pre-skool matter that Turek pretends it to be.

The atheists’ responses to the cosmological and design arguments– the arguments that show us that the universe exploded into being out of nothing and did so with amazing design and precision– were “we don’t know how that happened.”

 Once again, you capitalize unfairly on ignorant atheists.  That would be like the atheist concluding Christianity is false because of all the stupidity he can find in a KJV Only Pentecostal church that allows its members to play with live rattlesnakes.  Stop pretending that defeating an ignorant atheist means defeating atheism.  It is illogical.

As far as the cosmological arguments, Turek has a serious problem:  Genesis 1 and 2  would NEVER have caused its originally intended pre-scientific audience to think the "beginning" started with an explosion, as nothing therein is expressed or even implied.  Nothing could be a more flagrant example of eisogesis than Truek reading modern science's big-bang theory into Genesis 1-2.  He may as well read macro-evolution into it as well.  Not only does the Big Bang contradict Genesis 1 and 2 (which set forth God's work as the result of a carpenter or artist), plenty of conservative bible-inerrancy-believing creationist Christians agree the BB is bullshit, such as Institute for Creation Research.

Now Turek cannot say it is the blinders of atheism and rebellion toward god that cause an atheist to be blind to the Big Bang in Genesis 1 and 2, unless he wishes to accuse his own born-again Christian brothers of being atheists.

   This is simply an evasion of the evidence that clearly points to an eternal, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal and moral First Cause of the universe.   Since nature itself was created, this Cause must be beyond nature or “supernatural.”

Sorry, the arguments for the universe being created, are unpersuasive to say the least, while the evidence that the field of planets and stars extends infinitely in all directions is rather clear from the fact that astronomers continue increasing their estimate of the number of stars with each passing decade:  "There are a dizzying 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, up to 20 times more than previously thought, astronomers reported on Thursday."

Even astronomers who disagree with the infinite-space model agree it is at least possible, and that's a serious problem for the lemon-head apologists who want us to think an infinite universe model is "illogical" or otherwise not a valid option:

GREENFIELDBOYCE: So it goes on, but is it infinite? Chuck Bennett is an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.  

CHUCK BENNETT: It is somewhat unimaginable, but quite possible that our universe simply goes on forever.

The issue is not which cosmological theory is "true", that is a child's approach.  The issue is whether theories of the universe that make it harder for you to "prove god" can be reasonable.  They can.  It isn't like the infinite universe model is on the order of flat-earth or ancient astronauts.

I end with a challenge to the stupid fundamentalists who believe hell's fire is more literal than symbolic, and who deny any possibility of second chances for those who die after knowingly rejecting the gospel:


Suppose you are the parent of a 10 year old girl who hasn't actually believed the gospel just yet, she simply goes through the motions like so many other kids.  She is invited to a church that promotes whatever  specific doctrinal bullshit you consider minimally necessary to true orthodoxy.   She goes, they tell her the true gospel, they ask if she wants to repent, she says no, and on the way home, while having no personal faith in Christ, dies in a car accident.  That is, she died immediately after knowingly refusing to obey the revealed gospel.  God then shows you a vision of her being tormented by the flames of hell, and tells you this torture will go on for all eternity, because God thinks 10 years old is the age of accountability for that particular child.

Suppose every time you attend church thereafter and sing songs about God's eternal 'love', God puts this vision of your daughter's real, current, irreversible and eternal suffering into your mind.  Your daughter is screaming in mindless agony in this torture-by-fire WHILE you are smiling and happily clapping your hands in church to songs about about the wonderfully comforting love of the God who is, at the same time, torturing your child.

Could you continue worshiping God in good conscience if you had that much precise information about the ultimate fate of a deceased child?

Or did you suddenly discover that the biggest problem in your life right now can be solved by suddenly discovering that the age of accountability is 37?

How to make all these problems disappear in one fell swoop?  Become an open theist.

Atheist rebuttal to Crossexamined.org on Objective Morality

This is my reply to an article by Cole James entitled

Objections to Objective Morality

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

I took a philosophy class while I was in college. The topic of this class was on contemporary moral issues, so you know we got into some heated topics. I heard every objection under the sun to objective morality.

No you didn't.  You didn't hear my objections.  You likely also didn't hear the professor ask you whether your refusal to support burning teenage prostitutes alive arises from the moral relativity of the culture you were born and raised in, or if it arises from morals put into your heart by the same God who ordered this atrocity in Leviticus 21:9.  

Everything from it was not very “tolerant,” to different cultures act differently so therefore there cannot be objective morality. I was the minority in this class to say the least!

 I think a moral relativist is stupid if they are pushing "toleration" as strongly as you imply.  There are purely naturalistic justifications for refusing to be tolerant of the practices of other cultures.  I have a naturalistic desire to see my children live and grow into adulthood, this doesn't need to imply any more spirituality than is implied from the fact that lower life forms also desire to see their young survive...lest you end up taking the position that the only reason the insects care about their offspring is because they were made in the image of god?

Objections Objective Morality

Objective morality means that moral statements like “murder is bad” is independent of the person saying it.

So go ahead, prove that "murder is bad" is objectively true, and prove it independently of the person saying it.  That is, prove it without relying on anything else that person says. 

Objective morality means that there is a standard of morality that transcends human opinions and judgements.

Would that be the morality of the god who ordered teenage prostitutes to be burned to death in Leviticus 21:9?  Would it be the morality of the god who "stirs up" the Medes to rape Babylonian women in Isaiah 13:13-17 (i.e., the horrific morality of the OT god is not limited to the Hebrews, God also applies it to Gentile nations)?

Morals are not invented, they are discovered.

That's right.  Little johnny thinks nothing of hurting his baby brother in a toy-war, and doesn't "discover" it is "wrong" until mommy or daddy impose their morals on his impressionable barbaric brain.

Now that our society has seemingly transformed into a “post-truth” society, objective morals have come under attack. A “post-truth” society is a society which is not concerned with objective facts, but rather, right and wrong are based on personal subjective feelings, tastes, and personal belief.

Then Christian apologists take part in such post-truth society.  God clearly approves of men raping women, today's apologists don't.  Everybody changes with the times.

As Christians, one of the best arguments we have for God is the moral argument.

Then it sure is funny that the bible nowhere indicates approval of using such argument to prove god.  Methinks you are so lacking in the Holy Spirit, you care more about all the bells and whistles you can invent to help God do apologetics, than you care about the truthfulness of your own witness in the "power of the Holy Spirit".  The biblical standard of truth takes a direct hit from it's own defenders.

Of all the attacks on Christianity and God, a Christian will most likely hear the most attacks on this subject. Why? Because everyone can relate to this topic. Each one of us every day makes moral judgements and decisions every day, ranging from opening the door for someone to helping someone who just got in a car wreck.

Since you claim such matters involve morals, go ahead: demonstrate that the Christian who refuses to open a door for someone, or the Christian who refuses to help somebody who just got into a car wreck, is objectively immoral for such omission.  Or you can save yourself a lot of headaches by admitting that many moral situations aren't governed by an absolute moral standard.

Just so we can have a basis for what the argument actually is, it goes as follows:

Premise 1: If objective moral values and duties exist then God exists

Premise 2: Objective morals values and duties do exist

Conclusion: Therefore, God exits

 Ok, so since the dictionary defines "objective" as "not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.true for reasons independent of human opinion", you should be able to demonstrate any particular objective moral truth you wish, and do so without needing to hear any human being state their feelings or opinions on the subject.

You think rape is "objectively" immoral?  Go ahead, prove it without considering what any human being thinks or feels about it.   Just like you can prove the objective existence of trees without needing to depend on what other human beings think or feel about trees.

With the argument in mind, consider four objections:

    There are so many different cultures with different values, there can’t be objective morals! Look how different we are!

Off the bat, I agree with this objection. There are many different cultures appearing to be morally different on the surface. However, as one reads between the lines it becomes apparent that these different cultures are not really that different.

 Then because you morally approve of male genital mutilation (circumcision), explain the basis upon which you think female genital mutilation (clitordectomy) is "objectively" immoral.   Wouldn't subjecting female children to a procedure that inhibits the libido they will have as adults, prevent a certain amount of lust/sexual sin?  How can preventing sin be objectively bad?

It is important as we read between the lines to keep in mind that when looking at cultural diversity we need to determine whether differences are really about core morals or instead about application of that core moral truth. For example, what constitutes murder?

That doesn't matter to you, your problems are bigger than that.  The bible makes God's participation in all murders mandatory and unavoidable with the following texts:

 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU)

 5 "Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass. (Job 14:5 NAU)

Suppose a man murders the cashier at a gas station.  Did God set a limit to the number of days this cashier was to live?  If so, how can god "set" that number of days, without himself being intimately involved in the immediate cause of their death (i.e., murder)?

How can you call murder objectively immoral, when God himself has equally as much involvement in murders as do the humans pulling the trigger?

What my classmates did not realize is that these difference were in how morals were applied, not a difference in morals. Peter Kreeft says this,

“No culture has ever existed which believed and taught what Nietzsche called for: a transvaluation of all values. There have been differences in emphasis, for instance, our ancestors valued courage more than we do, while we value compassion more than they did. But there has never been anything like the relativism of opinions about values that the relativist teaches as factual history. Just imagine what that would be like. Try to imagine a society where justice, honesty, courage, wisdom, hope, and self-control were deemed morally evil. And unrestricted selfishness, cowardice, lying, betrayal, addiction, and despair were deemed morally good. Such a society is never found on Earth. If it exists anywhere, it is only in Hell and its colonies. Only Satan and his worshippers say ‘evil be thou my good.’”

Kreeft and you are wasting time pretending that the absurd extremes some moral relativists take, constitutes the best which the moral relativism camp has to say.  Relativity of morals does not mandate that nobody give a fuck about anything except themselves.

Turek is an idiot to insist that all human beings become sociopaths when and if God's existence be denied.  If several sociopaths share a common goal and can see that they can attain it more efficiently by working together and making certain sacrifices for each other, they will.  The phenomena of one life-form cooperating with another to achieve a common goal has nothing about it mandating that God exist or that morals are objective.

It really comes down to a case-by-case basis. For instance, in the Hindu religion, they believe in reincarnation. Some of these people will starve themselves because they will not eat a cow. Why? Because they believe their great uncle died and reincarnated into a cow. Looking on the surface at this, it may look like there are differences in morals, but we need to read between the lines. As we read between the lines we see that the morals of our culture and their culture are the same. They think it is wrong to eat the cow because they believe that is their great uncle, we also believe it is wrong to eat our great uncle. As we can see, this really is not an objection, it is just a matter of not digging deeper.

Then how do you explain your differences with cultures that embrace endocannibalism?  How much reading between the lines must we accomplish before we find out that we and they agree about morality?

How do you explain our disagreement with cultures that eat their enemies?  If we read between the lines long enough, will we discover that we and they agree on the morality of it?

If we can avoid the stigma of what they do, by pretending its significance is limited to the reason why they do it, then why would you object to cannibalism?  That's just their way of dominating their enemy, and even modern American Christians generally support a military that obviously finds it morally good to dominate our enemies.

    Objective morality is not very tolerant! Relativism is much more tolerant of people’s opinions and beliefs.

This objection is entirely problematic. First, it is a self-refuting statement! By someone telling a person that his/her beliefs are not very tolerant, they in turn are being intolerant of the other person’s views. Moreover, this objection assumes that tolerance is really objectively good.

A second answer to this objection is, if relativism were true, why not be intolerant? Why should I be tolerant?

The new age fools who advocate absolute tolerance are indeed stupid, because there's at least one thing they don't tolerate; intolerance itself.  But too much tolerance would go against what the majority of Americans believe in, that is, that our society should be intolerant of certain practices.  This moral is itself relative, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  Bunches of people with shared moral values have been grouping together for centuries, nothing about this requires implying "god".

Do you see where I am going with this?

Relativism is the view that morality is culturally based, therefore being subject to a person’s individual choice. With this view, there is no objective standard that a relativist can point to, to say that someone should be tolerant.

At root, this is merely an emotional objection. The person who puts out this objection probably does not want objective morality to be true because it will change their lifestyle. So called, “tolerance” feels better to them, and indeed it is a good quality (Paul thought so), but again, just because it feels good does not mean I ought to be that way.

I don't object to objective morality that way, so, those concerns are dismissed.

    There are so many different understanding of morals, there cannot be objective morality.

Just because there is widespread disagreement about a particular moral issue, does not mean that truth does not exist.

But the widespread disagreement makes it reasonable to presume that there is no moral "truth" about it, it is nothing but human opinion.  Just because you've never seen the tooth-fairy doesn't mean she doesn't exist, but what fool would rest their skeptical case on this trifling technicality?

Think of it this way, just because eight students have different answers to a math problem does not mean that a right answer does not exist.

 Fallacy of false analogy, answers to math problems are governed by mathematical principles that are universally recognized.  Answers to moral problems are usually controversial because the underlying principles are the subject of widespread disagreement.

Otherwise, you invite the criticism that you can resolve moral disagreements among Christians with the kind of finality with which mathematical problems are resolved.  Wanna go there?  If not, then drop the math-analogy, Einstein.

Philosopher Dave DeSonier says it best,

“Finally, even if one believes that morals (not just facts or practices) do actually differ between cultures, it does not logically follow that there must be no absolute, objective moral standards that transcend cultures.

It doesn't have to logically follow.  It is reasonable, even if not logically necessary, to assume moral disagreements between cultures imply that morality is ultimately relative.  Your above examples were carefully selected; apparently, you were aware of the harm to your case if you had cited suicide bombing or gang violence or torture of prisoners or what crimes deserve the death penalty, since different cultures  disagree with each other about those matters too, yet no amount of reading between the lines is going to indicate other cultures agree with America on basic morals.

Just because five independent observers of an automobile accident give very different accounts of the event, it would be false to conclude that there is not an accurate, objective, and true description of what actually occurred.”

Fallacy of false analogy:  the reasons why Christians find Leviticus 21:9 objectively immoral have nothing in common with the situation of witnesses to an automobile accident.  All DeSonier is doing at this point is blindly assume that moral truths are just like empirical truths.

Even the skeptic David Hume understood this much. He points out,

“the fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes ethical objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity.”

Same answer:  Hume's popularity with skeptics doesn't mean every view he held is considered gospel by skeptics.  My reasons for rejecting ethical objectivism continue to bulldoze your idealistic pipe dreams, whether you can find other atheists who disagree with me or not.  You need to worry more about the specific arguments and less about finding enemies who agree with some of what you believe.  I can find Christians who think god will never send anybody to hell, but why should you give a shit about that?  Then I don't give a shit about you finding atheists who espouse ethical objectivism.

I am very happy to disagree with atheist Dan Barker's arguments for moral objectivity.  Our recoiling from pain obviously doesn't prove anything, otherwise, we should avoid every situation that produces pain, such as visits to the doctor/dentist, and we should never attempt to reset a dislocated shoulder for someone if doing so would case them pain.   The home intruder recoils in pain when we shoot him dead, but what fool would argue that such recoil from pain made it immoral to shoot him?  If some pain can be reasonably said to achieve a higher subjective moral good, Barker's arguments for objective morality fail.

So we can see, that even though common objective morals might sometimes be hard to find or discover, it does not logically follow that therefore, there are no common objective moral values and duties.

Great.  When you plan to actually do what you are required to do, and fulfill your burden to cite an objective moral and the reasons why you think it is mandatory upon all human beings at all times, let me know.  But I'm an asshole, I won't be distracted by your technical trifles about how lack of evidence doesn't mean the tooth-fairy doesn't live on Pluto. If you claim x, you have the burden to prove x. We have no obligation to view you as God, view your opinions as gospel, and then worry about how to prove you wrong.  Get to work.

    I do not believe in God and I am a moral person. So you are saying that atheists cannot be moral people?

You must be a sorry apologist if the only way you can attack ethical relativism is by pretending these stupid amateur skeptical excuses represent the most powerful guns relativists can bring to the fight.  You couldn't prove the objective immorality of torturing babies, to save your life.  All you could do is insist such torture is objectively immoral, and then insist, equally blindly,  that anybody who disagrees with you is therefore too mentally unstable to be worthy of reasoning with.  But that's hardly "argument". Go ask Matthew Flannagan.  Every time I asked him what moral standard he is using to justify his belief that some human act is objectively immoral, he either disappeared, or his website conveniently decided, right at that point, to ban me for suspected but non-existent spam.  He denied in private email that he caused this, but he also didn't indicate he'd be trying to rectify this, and, shock, surprise, I still cannot post on his blog.  His apathy toward my inability to post at his website sure is convenient toward achieving the goal of ducking the bullet.

When you are faced with an adversary you cannot refute, just stop communicating.  It works for Matthew Flannagan, so it will also work for you and anybody else who prioritize the need to sell books above the need to be accurate.

This is NOT at all what objective morality means! Of course, an atheist can be a good moral person.

Then you apparently have never read your bible, which says nobody is good:

 18 And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. (Mk. 10:18 NAU)

  12 ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE." (Rom. 3:12 NAU)

What’s ironic is that I know some atheists who are actually more moral than many Christians!

That's not ironic, a person's morality arises from a combination of their genetic predispositions and their environmental conditioning.  And since god doesn't exist, seeing no moral improvement in the lives of those who claim to have "accepted Jesus" is nothing new.  All they did was join a club and sign the local creed, which had about as much spirituality to it as joining the cub scouts does.  

A person does not have to believe in God to be a good person. This is more of an objection of epistemology, or how we know something. The atheist can know morality, but they cannot justify or provide logical grounds for it.

 Sure we can.  I require my son to take out the garbage because

a.  the garbage needs to be taken out, because I personally don't like a dirty smelly house;
b. his obeying me keeps chaos out of the house, and keeping chaos at bay is required if we are to live happily with each other;.
c. his obeying me instills in him an appreciation that obeying an employer leads to the productive job-retention we all need in order to pay rent/mortgage and keep a stable place to live.

Why would you think a reasonable atheist needs anything more than this to justify saying it is morally good to ask their child to take out the garbage and for the child to obey?

From the Christian worldview, we believe God fabricated a moral code into our DNA (Romans 2:15), other people think we know morality because of evolution. Again, this is a question of how we know something, not why I ought to do something.

 Again, that's technically true, but if morality does come from evolution, then that leaves you in the lurch, with nobody having any reason to link morality to anything higher, like god.

This objection confuses ontology (is there a moral reality) with epistemology (how do we know morality). On the naturalistic atheist worldview, they cannot justify why someone ought to be moral.

And moral relativism is a good explanation for why Christians often fail to convince other Christians on moral issues like age of consent, death penalty, military service, assisted suicide, abortion etc, even if relativism isn't the only possible explanation.

There is no objective standard for the naturalistic atheist to point to.

There's no objective standard for the Christian to point to either.  Your moral disagreement with Leviticus 21:9 proves the point, as does your inability to convince other Christians that their specific morals are wrong.

This objection is just a common misunderstanding of the argument. A simple clarification of what you mean by the moral argument will handle this objection.

As I mentioned earlier, in our “post-truth” society it is inevitable that a Christian will run into one of these objections.

But if I have any say in it, Christians will routinely run into MY objections, and they will need to up their game, or concede defeat, the way Matthew Flannagan did with his dishonestly preventing me from posting further at his blogs after I asked the question moral objectivists cannot answer.

As Christians, we have to be prepared to answer these objections and to show that belief in God is rational and reasoned (1 Peter 3:15).

 You are also commanded to avoid wrangling words (2nd Timothy 2:14) and it wouldn't be very difficult to show how the ceaseless back and forth bantering required when Christian moral objectivists debate atheist moral relativists, is a fine illustration of said prohibited "wrangling".  See how I hammered the ever-mouthy female Christian apologist Lydia McGrew with that verse here.

What I have seen in dealing with the students in my class who opposed objective morality is that it is more of an emotional problem.

 Then you need to get out of class more often.  I've steamrolled moral objectivity several times at this blog, and none of my objections are as simpleminded as the stupefied drunks you prop up here.

As I mentioned in objection three, the students in my class did not want objective morality to exist because it would have to demand a change in their way if living.

Maybe so, but your argument sucks because all you are doing is refuting two-year olds.  When you learn enough of this topic to play with the big boys, let me know.

Hopefully, after reading this, you will be prepared to give a defense of one of the most relatable and fundamental arguments for the existence of God.

Sure...if your Christian readers anticipate that their only opponents will be atheists who have a very superficial understanding of these issues.  But you only do your students much harm if you are trying to prepare them to ward off my own attacks.  You gave them precisely nothing to take on me.

 I now reply to some of the replies that article generated:

    Andy Ryan says:

    July 21, 2017 at 3:14 am

    “Premise 1: If objective moral values and duties exist then God exists”

    That’s a non sequitur. What’s the connection between objective morality existing and Gid existing?

    Second, never mind swatting objections, where’s your evidence that OM actually exists?

    “Therefore, God exits”

    That’s a funny typo!

Good call!  I already steamrolled Christian apologist Matthew Flannagan by getting down to business and asking him what standard he uses to justify saying parents have an objective moral duty to avoid harming children.  Suddenly, I wasn't able to post there anymore, and Flannagan didn't reply to that question either
 While he denied via private email he had banned me by choice, he also refused to carry on the conversation through my blog or private email.  Let's just say Flannagan is nowhere near the moral objectivity warrior he thinks he is.  He is also the new father of conveniently timed accidents

        Butch says:

        July 28, 2017 at 10:13 am

        The connection is simple and it’s a shame you’re blinded to not see it. Without God it’s just your opinion.

 So what?  How does re-characterizing the morals of most Americans as "just opinion" operate to show any deficiency?  Yes, morals are absolutely nothing but opinions.  So what?

        As for your other question; Why is it only relatively wrong to torture babies for fun?

Because the only highest demonstrable authority for calling it immoral is human opinion.

And you have no business asking that question anyway, since your God could have killed King David's baby quickly, but instead decided to torture the child with a great sickness for 7 days before finally killing it.  If your god tortures children, then you cannot cite child-torture as a case of objective immorality:

 10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:10-18 NAU)

 Now what?  Did you suddenly become an open-theist?

I think any honest person knows it’s objectively wrong. Not relatively wrong.

 In other words, the only people your argument could convince, are people who already accept it.  That's the sign of a horrifically weak argument.

        If you hold it’s only relatively wrong then you have a serious problem that needs checked out!

So apparently god has a problem that needs checked out, since baby torture, being objectively immoral, doesn't allow for any exceptions?

And can’t say anything is wrong. Including raping your daughter and torturing her.

 Do you think the rapist continued to have sex with his victim after he was forced to marry her in accord with God's will?

 28 "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered,
 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days. (Deut. 22:28-29 NAU)

Deuteronomy 22 is talking about the man who seizes the non-engaged girl (Hebrew: taphas, the same word used in Deut. 21:19 to describe forceful arrest of a resisting criminal). 

The rape-interpretation of the “seize and lay with her” of Deut. 22:28 is confirmed by the “he violated her” in v. 29.  The Hebrew word for violated is עָנָה/anah, which means to be bowed down, afflicted.  Every other time this word is used to describe two people interacting, it is always describing a man forcing a woman to have sex against her will (i.e., rape):

It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled (Hebrew: anah)  her. (Deut. 21:14 NAU, see chapter ? for detailed exegesis of this passage)

But the men of Gibeah rose up against me and surrounded the house at night because of me. They intended to kill me; instead, they ravished (Hebrew: anah) my concubine so that she died. (Jdg 20:5 NAS)

 However, he would not listen to her; since he was stronger than she, he violated (Hebrew: anah) her and lay with her. (2Sa 13:14 NAS)

Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David's brother, responded, "Do not let my lord suppose they have put to death all the young men, the king's sons, for Amnon alone is dead; because by the intent of Absalom this has been determined since the day that he violated (Hebrew: anah) his sister Tamar. (2 Sam. 13:32 NAU)

They ravished (Hebrew: anah )the women in Zion, The virgins in the cities of Judah. (Lam 5:11 NAS)

You can’t claim anything is evil. Including the God you seem to not believe in.

We can claim something is evil if it is reasonable to use our subjective standard of good and bad.  I claim rape is evil, because it interferes with her rights as they exist in this country.  I don't need to prove that America's hatred of rape reflects a transcendent morality in order to be reasonable to say rape is evil.

You are merely fallaciously assuming that nothing but an absolute standard of right and wrong will suffice.  You couldn't be more wrong.  You could never host a garage sale.  After all, there's no absolute guide to how much a used dvd player is worth, so that puts you in Shitsville for the rest of your life.

                Terry Lewis says:

                August 16, 2017 at 10:46 am

                Hey Andy!

                Thinking someone blinded is not an insult; it’s an assessment of their abilities. Or do you think there’s something insulting about being blind?

                “That torture causes suffering is a fact that is outside myself.”

                True enough… but this is not a moral statement. It says nothing about whether such suffering should or should not be inflicted on another person. What say you about that?

I think baby-torture is immoral because it takes away from babies everything that my genetic predospositions and cultural conditioning say babies should be allowed to enjoy.  I think this is the part where you say it is objectively unreasonable to go along with one's culture.            

    KR says:

    July 21, 2017 at 6:58 am

    Premise 2 is of course equally problematic. If there are objective moral values, they should be demonstrable facts – yet I’ve never seen such a demonstration. The question I keep asking but never get an answer to is: when people disagree on a moral issue, how do we determine who’s objectively correct?

 By asking what Frank Turek's interpretation of the bible is, of course. If you point out that other evangelicals disagree with his morals or theology, then you probably aren't one of the elect and can be conveniently ignored.