My Response to CARM's Response

"I’m not even sure if there is only one option available to Him that would be the best.  It may be that there are several “very good” options available to Him, none of which are “the best”.   So I don’t think that God is constrained in performing only *one* action per circumstance; rather, He is simply incapable of wrong doing as this is contrary to His nature and that He can perform any number of “good” actions according to His purposes."

This is problematic, but not necessarily insurmountable.  For simplicity sake, let's take an example where an action is going to take place in which God is involved.  God, has the power to do all that power can do, as C.S. Lewis wrote in "The Problem Of Pain".  Meaning, God could not make stone bigger than he can lift or other such actions which could not take place (as they are contradictions).  It seems to me that if God is the perfect standard of Good and all the options are different in any way, there can be no preference involved for God.  To draw an analogy, think of God as a yardstick (a standard) with 36 markers that are 1" apart (in reality the stick has a theoretically infinite number of points, but for arguments sake let's just say there are 36).  The act is like something to measure which has length that is measured exactly in inches, 1"-36".  If God measures it with the yardstick that is like God, there can only be one measurement, which is always correct, regardless of how many possibilities there are or how close they are.  Can you think of a way that it could not be?  If I measure the item a yardstick that is not the perfect standard for measurement, they may be right.  They may be closer than other people.  They may come up with different measurements at different times, in different circumstances, etc.  They may have the option of saying that it's between 22" and 30".  They may just be wrong.  But God doesn't have that ability if he is the perfect standard.  If there is more than one possibility (more than one measurement for the item) it seems to me that there cannot exist any objective good or evil, because objective good and evil must be based on a standard which is perfect (at least one, in other words if there is an objectively good standard it follows that the opposite is true and that there is an objectively evil standard even if that standard doesn't exist as a being).  Of two possible measurements, one may be closer to the standard than another, but both cannot be perfect measurements.  Can you think of a way that there could be more than one perfect measurement?  IF not God cannot perform any number of good actions, he could only do the one.  This would apply to all actions he takes, which means there would be no choice in what he does, anymore than the yardstick can argue that it can measure a 3" item as 4" because it's closer than 36" (still a pretty good measurement comparatively), it must always measure 3".  You could argue that some actions are morally neutral, but I would suggest that if that's the case then there is a problem.  That means that there are no objective standards.  I might like the taste of chocolate, you may like the taste of vanilla more, but if God can act using this type of preference it seems to me that every standard that we believe God holds is completely arbitrary (could God just prefer something which is less Good than something else?).  This is essentially selecting the first horn of the Euthyphro Dilemma ("The pious is good because God loves it").

"But if you accept the Christian worldview then killing your own child would constitute murder, and, is thus, forbidden.  I see the point that you are raising.  However, you must keep in mind that the Scripture is not clear that all infants/children who die necessarily go to Heaven.  That is a plausible position to take (I hold to it myself) but it is not explicitly taught in Scripture.   So I don’t see a person dying in childhood as a guaranteed ticket to Heaven.  It may be or it may not be.  God has seen fit not to reveal this conclusively to us. Let’s assume that it is a guaranteed ticket to Heaven.  It would still constitute murder, one of the gravest of all crimes.  I suppose that you could retort that you may be willing to pay the consequences in order to guarantee your child’s salvation.  But like I said, it would still constitute murder and it would still provide no such guarantee.  God, on the other hand, can take any person’s life-whether young or old-any time He sees fit since He is the giver of life to begin with.  Our lives are His to give and His to take at His good pleasure.  He is under no obligation to prolong any person’s life for even another day.  We intuitively recognize this when we accuse certain people of “playing God” when they take human life."

I think you understood that I wasn't saying "if I were a Christian" but that "I accept the Christian worldview as true" and there is a difference.  This is the best answer I've received, and I hate to sound ungrateful, but this leaves me wanting (not that you didn't answer the question, just that the looming question of where infant's and children's souls go seems like a pretty important point).  I see a few possibilities, but each has (unfortunately) corollaries which don't seem particularly good.  1) If a child dies, they go to heaven, every time (in which case it seems to me that I would want to kill my child to guarantee he goes there, regardless of the consequences) 2) If a child dies, they go to hell.  I can't dispute that this is a possibility, but it seems to me that this goes beyond malevolent and capricious.  I understand that God is the giver and taker of life, but sending kids to hell when they don't know any way not to go to hell seems really unjust.  Admittedly that's purely an emotional reaction.  Even Jesus, as I recall, said that harming a child is one of the more egregious evils. 3) Children do not have an eternal soul.  When they die, they die and they simply cease to exist. This is possible, but the problem with this is that I might still prefer my child to simply cease to exist then take the chance that they will end up in hell for all eternity and thus it doesn't solve the problem.  4) Children are reincarnated.  I've always thought that reincarnation is kind of silly, and I've never read anything in the Bible that indicates that this is remotely possible, but it's an option. 5) There is some interim stage between Earth and Heaven/Hell where children go, grow up, and make a free will decision to accept salvation or not. 6) Normally, all innocents (children/infants/people who don't understand these concepts) go to heaven, except when they are murdered for the purpose of guaranteeing their entrance to heaven, then they either a) go to hell or b) cease to exist.  (2), (4) and (6) are really the only ones that would (necessarily) thwart my goal of protecting my child from hell (reincarnation would, but there's a bunch of metaphysical baggage that makes it seem really unlikely).  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I would ever do this, or that it wouldn't be technically murder (in a sense, it seems to me that I would both be laying my life and soul for another, which according the gospel, is the greatest good a person can do).  I think my frustration with this is primarily that as someone who just believes that we die, and that's it, this is pretty simple.  Killing my child, who I cherish more than my own life, is bad because their consciousness will cease to exist.

"I do think that my experiences had a role in shaping the moral values that I inherited.   Of course, that says nothing about whether or not the values that I inherited are objective and binding.  If naturalism is true, then our moral standards cannot really be objective at all.  They are just a matter of social conditioning and preference.   And yet, we all know deep down that some actions are truly wrong (the Holocaust) and some are truly good (sacrificing one’s life for another).  If that is the case, that morality is objective in some sense, then naturalism is probably false."

This is another one that I struggle with, because I certainly can't deny that there is objective good and objective evil.  I was asked by a Christian how I could believe (without belief that God exists) that torturing, raping and then killing a small is objectively evil and it donned on me that people tend to assume that because something is objectively true, that necessarily means that it isn't relative in any sense.  The example I used was that of motion.  If you and I are standing on a track and start walking at a brisk 3mph, it's true that we are objectively moving at 3mph, however, in relative terms the Earth is also both spinning and orbiting the sun, our galaxy is moving and the universe is expanding.  Suffice it to say, that while we can be said to "objectively" be moving at 3mph, we're also moving much faster than that (something like 70 k/m per second I believe). So the question is, how does this analogy apply to morality?  Well, I came up with a thought experiment around it (which has two stages):



Stage 1) You are in a room which has a two way mirror (you can see in, but the occupant can't see you) and your room has no doors.  The glass is invulnerable and soundproof.  In the other room is a 3 year old girl.  The room is small and there is a closed door.  Here's my question - Let's say a man walks into the room, he rapes, tortures and finally kills the little girl.  Would he be committing an objectively evil act?



Stage 2) Let's go back five minutes in time, you are in your room, the little girl is in the room in front of you but the door hasn't opened yet.  Before this event happens, another two way mirror appears in your room, and you can now see (and hear) in the room that the door leads to.  The man in Stage 1 is in this room, and with him is a mad scientist.  Both you and he know the mad scientist, and he's truly crazy, but he has nearly unlimited resources, you also know he can and will do anything he threatens.  He has his finger on a button.  He says that the button, if pushed, will set off five nuclear weapons in the five most populous cities in the world and in one of those cities, near the bomb, both your and his entire families happen to be visiting.  He says that if the man doesn't go into the other room and rape, torture and kill the little girl he will push the button.  Stage 1 happens and he goes and rapes, tortures and kills the little girl.  Would he be committing an objectively evil act?


I would say during Stage 1, based on my relative viewpoint, absolutely.  But I can't say that it's objectively evil after Stage 2.  At Stage 2 I can say that the mad scientist is objectively evil, right?  Well, not really, what if there is a Stage 3 in which you find out that the mad scientist has been threatened in a similar way by someone else, equally as valid, but they threaten to destroy the entire planet and kill everyone in the world?  The reason we don't normally see the relativity as a factor is that we're all people and generally have a common, objective framework, so we all have a somewhat (but not completely) similar perspective.  Sometimes, such as with the Holocaust, there are entire groups of people who's viewpoint as observers is different enough that they do something we see as objectively evil, and we'd be right in saying it is.  It seems to me that we can then hold them responsible for their actions unless they can demonstrate that they had a valid reason for committing the act they did.  Likewise, I would argue that it would be truly good to sacrifice one's own life for another, but would it be good for a person to do so if (by merit of doing so) would allow millions of other people to die (and they knew that would happen?).  Take for instance a man who knows how to disarm a nuclear weapon.  He's the only one who knows how to disarm it and it's going to go off shortly, killing not just him, but a million other people (let say the only person who would survive this event would be the one person who he sacrificed his life for).  From that relative position, it would be (essentially) a crime against humanity for him to sacrifice himself for the one person rather than let that person die.  Ultimately the standard by which we judge are the extreme situations.  Sacrificing your life so that everyone alive would be saved is the ultimate good, the ultimate bad would be killing everyone alive.  Well, that's not necessarily true, because there are things worse than death, but the problem is that if God is the ultimate standard all it takes is a misunderstanding of what God wants and people believe that they are doing the greatest objective good when they aren't (and this is assuming that God exists).


"the Argument from Reason states that if our cognitive faculties are simply the end product of blind materialistic processes (which most naturalists are committed to) then we really have no good reasons to trust the conclusions that we draw from using such cognitive faculties.."


This is the point of my syllogism.  If I take most of this response and replace the relevant parts with "cats", "atoms" and "invisible" this is what we get and I think the problem with the reasoning behind this argument is apparent:


"the Argument from Reason states that if our CATS are simply the end product of INVISIBLE ATOMS (which most naturalists are committed to) then we really have no good reasons to trust that our CATS will be VISIBLE..."


You then continue:


"...So I think that you would need to show that we have good reasons to trust THE VISIBILITY OF CATS if they are merely the end result of INVISIBLE ATOMS..."


And then conclude:


"... why should you or I trust the VISIBILITY OF CATS if it is just the result of INVISIBLE ATOMS?   If INVISIBLE ATOMS is all that there is, then it seems that the conclusions that we draw are simply the result of INVISIBLE ATOMS of some sort or another.  And if that is the case then we have no reasons to trust that CATS WILL BE VISIBLE which are the result of such INVISIBLE ATOMS.  There would really be no genuine WAY TO WALK at all as the FLOORS WOULD BE COVERED WITH INVISIBLE CATS EVERYWHERE." (Just kidding with the last sentence)


Hopefully you can see why I'm skeptical of this argument, it makes the claim that things are only the sum of their parts, which can be true or false.  It doesn't necessarily mean that logic and rationality are purely naturalistic, but it's not necessarily true either.

The other question I had about morality is, what role (from the Christian point of view) does motivation play?  I've always made the assumption that a moral act is objectively good or bad relative to the observer (this is not to say whether it's good or bad is dependent on the observers preference, just how much they actually know about the situation).  But does the person's motivation play a role?  I have to ask which God would prefer, would God prefer a society in which all people obey his moral commandments (such as, do not steal) but do so for purely selfish reasons (such as, "I don't want to go to jail") or would he prefer a society in which people obey that moral commandment 50% of the time (they steal from half the people they meet) but as Kant suggested was the right thing to do, obey it because they feel it is the right thing to do?  Also, speaking of Kant, if morality is truly objective and is not relative in any way, would it not be immoral to lie to the Nazis when they ask you where there are Jews hiding?  You could say that not saying anything is an option, but let's say that if you remain quiet you hear the leader of the squad guess correctly where they are hiding, but if you lie they will not be able to find them.

In any case, again, thank you for responding, I truly appreciate it,

Michael