Christian historian Dr. Wallace Marshall and I are debating whether or not enough evidence points to the existence of a god. For background and format, and Dr. Wallace’s opening statement, see entry one. For subsequent entries, see index.

We’re now discussing the “Moral Argument” for God. Now below is my latest response to Marshall’s recent defense of that argument.


That the Evidence Points to Atheism (XI)

by Richard Carrier, Ph.D.

Dr. Marshall has not actually addressed my response.

How We Discover What’s Good

Marshall observed I define a “good” person “as someone who aims at being the kind of person he (the idealized agent) would be okay with [themselves and] everyone else being.” But then overlooks my explication that this is what all rationally informed persons will conclude is good.

I demonstrated this ideal is the only understanding of “good” that any fully rational and informed person can actually maintain. If Marshall wants to argue that “the good” is instead not what rationally informed persons would conclude it to be, but only what irrational and ignorant or misinformed people would deem it to be, then he’s in trouble here.

We don’t need a God to exist to realize that persons so-defined are better for us to be around and to be than any other kind of person. Because that persons so-defined are better for us to be around and to be is a material fact. It requires no God to create or sustain that fact. Once the fact exists, by whatever mechanism it arrived (blind physics, random chance, biological and cultural evolution), it is the fact of the matter.

That is why this being the fact of the matter can never be evidence for God. It’s simply evidence of how cognitive social systems will always work in all possible universes. For all the reasons I set forth in my reply.

It’s All Consequentialism

Marshall attacks consequentialism. But it’s the only system of moral propositions there is any evidence is true (and thus the only one that can sustain his second premise); and all major moral systems reduce to it. [1]

Marshall argues that on consequentialism, “All moral claims become prudential advice: ‘If you want X—and believe me you really do—then you must not do Y’.” That of course is exactly his system as well. [2] Unless he is a Universalist and Theological Nihilist who thinks in his God’s universe there are no consequences to being moral or immoral and his religion preaches no such consequences nor expects anyone to decide any behavior in light of them; or even more bizarrely, if Marshall thinks that there being consequences to a good and bad life should be ignored in how we ascertain which moralities are true or false. If so, he’s propounding a profoundly irrational and self-destructive worldview, one all rational and informed persons will reject.

This is what I mean by Marshall’s first premise not being defensible. He wants God to have created some bizarre commandments no rationally informed person will have any reason to deem good or worth adhering to. Maybe God did. But there’s no evidence of it; and no reason to adopt them. God’s morality in that case would simply be false.

Unless Dr. Marshall wishes to argue that rationally informed persons will have sufficient reason to deem God’s commands good or worth adhering to. But then he’s a consequentialist. And those consequences are all we need to motivate identifying what’s good and pursuing it.

It’s amusing to see a believer in eternal damnation condemn “coercive” systems of morality; weirder to see him claim the fact that reality requires us to behave a certain way is “coercive.” He sounds like a radical nihilist who thinks we should be free to be happy wholly regardless of any behavior we engage in, and any system that prevents that is “damnable.”

The whole point of moral reasoning is to work out how we must act to best conform to the reality we find ourselves in, so as to best achieve a desirable life. Marshall can conform to reality and feel better about himself and his resulting life, or kick futilely against the goad of reality and be continually frustrated, ever complaining about being “coerced.” Rationally informed persons already know which of these choices is better for them.

The Psycho-Anthropology of Morality

Marshall quotes Richard Joyce declaring he’s “confident that no culture employs only hypothetical imperatives as its principal normative framework.” Note the word “only.” In fact all cultures do. Indeed, we biologically evolved to. As all cognitive social species did.

There’s an extensive scientific literature proving this. It all concludes the same: moral systems everywhere are pursued for their believed or actual consequences to the pursuing individual, and are always advocated as worth pursuing with the claim of positive outcomes to the pursuing individual. The brain does it (moral decisions are caused by stimulating neural reward centers). People do it (every culture has an extensive lore of how things will go better for you if you conform to moral ideals). [3]

Indeed, abundant science shows that moral motivation in mature adults is produced by the individual’s desire to be a certain kind of person—because it wholly dissatisfies them to imagine they aren’t. [4] Notably, exactly the reason Immanuel Kant gave for obeying categorical imperatives—thus reducing them all to hypothetical imperatives. [5]

Whereas it’s illogical for Joyce to list a bunch of consequences (“punish[ing] noncompliance” and “feel[ing] guilt” and “punitive anger towards noncompliers”) as evidence against consequentialism. Indeed, in all systems, punishment is used as a mechanism of consequences to “train” members of society to act according to the local morality. And conscience (what Marshall calls “guilt”) is an evolved mechanism for the same purpose.

How then do we tell the difference between good and bad moralities? God doesn’t help. He’s a no show on the subject. [6] So how can we know when these mechanisms are directed against human wellbeing and thus actually “bad” (like the Bible’s morally retributive guilt and anger toward gay men and apostates and gender equality and sexuality) and when they are directed toward human wellbeing and thus “good”? By observing which thing happens—actually, or predictively by modeling the social system as what it is: an interactive causal system, each iterated moral value emanating consequences upon everyone in the system. Hence even Marshall’s “Golden Rule” has been demonstrated consequentially ideal by systems modeling. [7] No God needed.

By contrast, we all know “folk retributivism” is a cognitive error, just like racism and other common malfunctions of human reasoning: it’s profoundly immoral to punish people to no purpose. Marshall cannot defend bad moral reasoning by citing the mere fact that it exists; that’s like saying oppressing women is moral “because everyone does it.” I also don’t fathom the point of Marshall’s analogy of Jacques the art thief. If he doesn’t know why Jacques’ lack of empathy and humility will undermine his own life satisfaction, he simply didn’t read anything I’ve written on this subject.

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Such is my latest response to Marshall’s Moral Argument for God. 

Continue on to Marshall’s next reply.

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[1] See Richard Carrier, “Open Letter to Academic Philosophy: All Your Moral Theories Are the Same” (11 November 2015); as well as Richard Carrier, “The Moral Bankruptcy of Divine Command Theory: Matthew Flannagan’s Failed Defense” (8 October 2015).

[2] See my formal peer reviewed analysis on pp. 335-38, “The Logic of Christian Morality,” in Richard Carrier, “Moral Facts Naturally Exist (and Science Could Find Them),” in The End of Christianity, ed. by John Loftus (Prometheus 2011).

[3] Neuroscience of the inner moral reward stimulus: K.J. Yoder and J. Decety, “The Neuroscience of Morality and Social Decision-Making” Psychology, Crime & Law: PC & L 24.3 (2018). Psychology of self-fulfillment as moral motivation: Roger Bergman, “Why Be Moral? A Conceptual Model from Developmental Psychology” in Human Development 45 (2002): 104-124; Maria Cohut, “Generosity Makes You Happier” Medical News Today (16 July 2017); Cheung et al., “Why Are People with High Self-Control Happier?” Frontiers in Psychology 5.722 (8 July 2014); Josh Elmore, “Why People Make Sacrifices for Others” Greater Good Magazine (29 April 2015); “Self-Interest without Selfishness: The Hedonic Benefit of Imposed Self-Interest” Psychological Science 23.10 (1 October 2012). See also Wikipedia on the neurobiology and psychology of altruism. For fuller surveys and summaries of the scientific evidence: James Maddux, ed., Subjective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction (Routledge 2018); Darcia Narvaez and Daniel Lapsley, eds., Personality, Identity, and Character (Cambridge University Press 2009); Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ed., Moral Psychology, 5 vols. (MIT Press 2007-). Anthropology and cultural psychology studies likewise: Keller et al., “Reasoning about Responsibilities and Obligations in Close Relationships: A Comparison across Two CulturesDevelopmental Psychology 34.4 (1998); Eisenberg et al., “The Development of Prosocial Behavior and Cognitions in German ChildrenJournal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 16.1 (March 1985); Oliver Scott Curry et al., “Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies” Current Anthropology 60.1 (2019).

[4] See, again, Roger Bergman, “Why Be Moral? A Conceptual Model from Developmental Psychology” in Human Development 45 (2002): 104-124.

[5] We should “hold ourselves bound by certain laws in order to find solely in our own person a worth which can compensate us for the loss of everything” and “There is no one, not even the most hardened scoundrel…who does not wish that he too [were] a man of like spirit,” and his reward for being so “is a greater inner worth of his own person,” Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. See my formal peer reviewed analysis of Kant’s declaration in pp. 340-43, “The Logic of Imperative Language,” in Richard Carrier, “Moral Facts Naturally Exist (and Science Could Find Them),” in The End of Christianity, ed. by John Loftus (Prometheus 2011). I also discuss this point in Richard Carrier, “Open Letter to Academic Philosophy: All Your Moral Theories Are the Same” (11 November 2015).

[6] See, again, Richard Carrier, “The Moral Bankruptcy of Divine Command Theory: Matthew Flannagan’s Failed Defense” (8 October 2015). Likewise in my Eighth Reply in this debate, “Moral History.”

[7] See Robert Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation (Princeton University Press 1997), which I had already cited before, and discuss in Richard Carrier, “The Real Basis of a Moral World” (12 November 2018).

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