In the Beginning...

This discussion began on FaceBook in response to a post about whether abortion is justified when a woman is impregnated as a result of rape. But it quickly moved into much deeper waters, tackling fundamental questions about the nature of morality. As the discussion seems to have outgrown a FaceBook post comments section, we have decided to continue it here. Below is the exchange that appeared on FaceBook:

 

Original Post shared by a Third Party:

Lucas Dollar If you tell a girl that she has to keep her baby after getting raped cuz God wanted her pregnant, I’m gonna rob you and you can’t complain cuz God wanted me to be rich

Discussion:

Samuel Gerkin If you tell an unborn baby that they have to die because of their father's crime, then the children of criminals on death row could also be sentenced to death.

Either an unborn baby is a person, or not. And either we know what an unborn baby is, or not. There are only four possibilities:

1. An unborn baby is a person, and we do not know it. This would make abortion manslaughter, like shooting at a shape in the forest that looks like it might be a person but might also be a deer, and it turns out to be a person.

2. An unborn baby is not a person, and we do not know it. This would make abortion criminal negligence, like shooting at that shape in the forest that looks like it might be a person but might also be a deer, but it turns out to be a deer. Morally the same as #1.

3. An unborn baby is a person, and we know it. This would make abortion murder.

4. An unborn baby is not a person, and we know it. This is the only option that would make abortion right. But no one has ever proven definitively that an unborn baby is not a person. The burden of proof falls to the abortionists. Until this is proven, the other three options are the only possibilities, and abortion is always absolutely, infallibly wrong.

Credit to Peter Kreeft for the argument.

 

Kyle Gerkin Children of criminals on death row aren't the direct product of their father's crime. That seems a relevant distinction here.

 

Samuel Gerkin The analogy breaks down, of course. But if the child of a rapist lost their right to life inherently because they were a direct product of their father's crime, then someone could kill the child of a rapist once the child has grown up to be an adult, because they still are that direct product. But that is clearly wrong.

 

Kyle Gerkin But it's not that they are "inherently" losing a right to life. It's that the burden of a pregnancy is being inflicted on a woman against her consent. Once that condition is removed, the justification for ending the life goes with it.

Every person I have ever encountered agrees that abortion is an undesirable outcome, and hopes that it is rare. The reason abortion is a thorny issue is that it involves conflicting values. We justify ending lives all the time. Among non-human lives, we mostly do it without a second thought. But even among humans we find all kinds of reasons to justify ending lives--self-defense, war, capital punishment, euthanasia, etc. In each case, it's not that we don't value protecting life, it's that there is a conflicting value (say, protecting our country's interests) that overrides it. And even this can shift on a case-by-case basis. For example, it's possible to imagine someone justifying ending lives to promote American interests in WW2, but not in Vietnam.

Abortion is no different. Most people value protecting the unborn. But most people also value autonomy when it comes to our bodies, and the burdens inflicted upon them. I don't think it's obvious that one value should trump the other in all cases, regardless of circumstance. Statements like "always absolutely, infallibly wrong" ring false to me. The world is more gray than that, even if it would easier if it were otherwise.

 

Samuel Gerkin I'm very glad to hear you value protecting the unborn. And you are right about the tendency today to improperly see some things as black and white because it is easier.

However, some things in this world are absolute. You seem to be saying that morality is circumstantial, is that right? Morality is circumstantial, but that's not the whole picture. Morality depends on three things, the circumstances, the intention, and the action itself. If you take away any of these three you can justify immoral actions.

Take away the intention, and anytime someone does something good for a bad reason, it is still good. If someone marries (which is good) but only so that they can inherit money when their spouse dies (A bad intention), then their act is bad.

Take away the circumstances, and you are applying the same rules to different people in different situations, which will often turn out wrong. Someone in a wheelchair would have the same obligation to enter a burning building to save someone as a firefighter, which will only turn out badly. The firefighters will likely only have another person to rescue.

Take away the action itself, and the circumstances and intentions can justify atrocities. A government can kill people who they predict are more likely to become criminals to create a healthier society for the majority.

Murder, which is the intentional killing of an innocent person, is an action that is always wrong, no matter what the intention or circumstances. (Notice the intention to kill and the circumstances that the person is innocent are the intention and circumstances that define the action itself. These are separate from the intention and circumstances that do not define the action itself.)

Samuel Gerkin We can apply these principles to all of the examples you gave:

Self-defense is not murder. It is the "right to render an unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm" (CCC). An unjust aggressor is not an innocent person.

War, also, is justifiable only under similar circumstances, when a country is an unjust aggressor.

Capital punishment is not murder when the person sentenced to death would continue to cause harm (would likely escape, or would likely collaborate with criminals on the outside from inside prison).

Euthanasia, on the other hand, is indeed the intentional killing of an innocent person. Euthanasia is therefore also always wrong, no matter the circumstances or intention.

Abortion, also, is always the intentional killing of an innocent person. So abortion is also always wrong, no matter the intention or circumstances.

 

Kyle Gerkin Setting aside the definition of personhood, I disagree with your premise that the intentional killing of any innocent person is always wrong regardless of circumstances. Certainly, it's a good rule of thumb, and is generally applicable in most circumstances. But, as a contrary example, I would argue that euthanasia to end a life that has no prospect of any anything other than terrible suffering is a significant moral good. In any case, on what basis should we accept your principle as universal and inviolate?

 

Samuel Gerkin I propose this basis:
If we do not believe that the intentional killing of an innocent person is always wrong, then what makes the following wrong?

A government kills people who they predict are more likely to become criminals to create a healthier society for the majority.

An elderly grandmother is mentally ill and taking care of her is a great suffering for her children and grandchildren. So they kill her.

The leader of a country sees that a group of refugees approaching the country's border are likely to include some mass-murdering terrorists. So the leader sends military forces to massacre the refugees to make sure no terrorists get near the country.

A small group of Native Americans have owned a large amount of land for centuries. A powerful country decides it wants their land for its own people, who will use the land far more than the Native Americans since there are so many more of them. So the country seizes the land from the Native Americans, and when the Native Americans fight back, they are killed.

The situation from "Crime and Punishment" - a cruel and wealthy elderly lady is doing nothing with her money, so Raskolnikov murders her to make society happier (since she is unkind) and because he needs the money more.

All these are wrong. But (unless I have made a mistake in setting up some of the examples, which is quite possible) they all include good intentions and the good results outweigh the bad results in the circumstances. If the intentional killing of an innocent person is not always wrong, intrinsically evil, what prevents these from being moral?

Euthanasia is wrong because every human life is so valuable that it outweighs any amount of suffering. But this is hard to see, so let's continue to discuss the premise (that intentionally killing an innocent person is always wrong) before looking at reasons why:

It seems to me that one has to admit either that Euthanasia and Abortion are wrong, or that the above examples are right. The above examples are unacceptable, so Abortion and Euthanasia must be wrong.
Do you agree, or do you see a third option?

 

Kyle Gerkin I don't agree. I think the error is seeking some kind of universally applicable moral rule. There are moral rules that are broadly applicable in most instances (i.e. don't kill innocent people), but there always going to be edge cases where things break down, and if you try to force a "one size fits all" rule onto those edge cases, you end up with some perverse outcomes.

For example, let's circle back to euthanasia. Suppose a 90 year old man has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given three months to live. Every day he is in excruciating pain and is begging for a merciful death. Refusing to euthanize him is tantamount to torturing him for three months for no reason, as far as I can see. I think that would be an act of supreme cruelty. What value is there in a life of unending suffering?

At the end of the day, I think the correct approach is carefully evaluating each edge case on the merits, weighing the conflicting values, and coming to a hard won conclusion. This is much tougher than applying a universal rule, and of course, reasonable people can and will disagree, but I think it's the best we can do.

Without addressing all your examples one by one, I will stipulate that I don't think that any of them are morally acceptable (at least in the context of present day American society). But to go through the exercise of evaluating a case, I will take your first example:

"A government kills people who they predict are more likely to become criminals to create a healthier society for the majority."

Firstly, I think we have to question the government's ability to competently predict who is likely to become a criminal. And to not abuse this power corruptly. Certainly at present we would have very low confidence in this. Secondly, a "healthier society" is a fuzzy standard, and would be almost impossible to agree on. If we had perfectly benevolent government that could predict criminality with unerring accuracy, and the killing of such pre-criminals resulted in a society that everyone (besides the pre-criminals presumably) unanimously agreed was better than the alternative, this would be a more challenging conundrum. But since we are nowhere close to that, the values of individual autonomy, freedom of choice, protecting life, etc win out easily.

 

Samuel Gerkin I think my question still applies. You believe the error is in seeking a universally applicable moral rule, but if you don't have a universally applicable moral law here, how do you know that all the examples I listed are wrong? They are wrong, and you agree, but they seem right according to the circumstances and the intentions, notwithstanding errors on my part in creating the examples, so what makes them wrong in your moral system?

I believe the error with the moral system you are defining is that it relies not on moral laws, but on moral values. But what are values, at heart? How would you define them?

The only way I can see to define them is as feelings, desires or preferences. How can these be used to decide moral situations? We can weigh our values when we decide whether to buy a TV set or a bookcase. But we can't weigh our values when we decide whether or not to end someone's life. We have to reason our way to the truth of what is objectively good.
Morality is not doing what we please. It is doing what we ought.

I'm guessing you agree with me about objective truth. You might say that it is objectively true that there are general moral rules about what is good that hold most of the time, but not all of the time.

But if these rules are not universal, how can anyone tell when they are on an edge case? What will stop everyone from changing their definition of an edge case to be whatever moral law they happen to be breaking at the moment?
More specifically, what will those in the examples I've outlined use to determine that they are not on an edge case? I'm sure that Nazi Germany also agreed that most of the time, killing innocent people was wrong. But they convinced themselves that Jews were an exception.

If there are exceptions anywhere in a moral law, there are exceptions everywhere and it becomes not a moral law, but a moral value. A preference. If moral laws are reduced to preferences, if adultery doesn't feel right at the time, it's wrong, but if one feels in love with someone else, then it is right. Give an inch, and we will take a mile. Look at Euthanasia. Allow a few cases of extreme pain, and soon we have people who signed a document saying they wanted Euthanasia but who have now changed their minds being forcibly euthanized.

Samuel Gerkin Trent Horn has a great question about Euthanasia: If patients are allowed to commit suicide because of suffering, then what will stop someone with something like 30 years left to live who is suffering from depression or who is quadriplegic, or who has diabetes and amputations, or who lost a loved one and does not want to live anymore?
We rightly try to save a healthy person if they try to commit suicide. Why should this change when someone is close to death? Why should we judge that the life of someone close to death is worth less than the life of someone who is perhaps far from death?

And many people decide on Euthanasia because they don't want to be a burden to others. Hardly anyone who is given the option of Euthansia is examined to see if they are suffering from depression or another mental illness, and if this decision is only because of a mental illness which could be treated.

A clarification: Euthanasia can be direct, like injecting someone with a lethal dose, or indirect, like refusing to supply food and water. Both are wrong. But a natural death can come about if someone decides not to use extraordinary means to stay alive (something of little benefit to the patient that will be very burdensome, like keeping a patient alive for 6 more seconds and causing extreme pain). But in this case, death is not the intention of the action.
Active Euthanasia is like shooting yourself.
Passive Euthanasia is like refusing to drink water until you die of thirst.
A Natural Death would be like deciding not to live an extraordinarily healthy lifestyle, always watching what food you eat, though it might extend your life by 3 months. No one would consider that suicide, because death is not intended.

 

Kyle Gerkin Let me start by saying it is a great pleasure to engage in an amicable discussion of these issues with someone who is thoughtful and has well-reasoned positions. This is rather atypical for discussions on FaceBook--or at least the ones I usually get sucked into. :-)

I do agree there is such a thing as objective truth, but I do not think morality is one of the things that is objectively true. At bottom, morality is a fiction. This is not to disparage morality. Most of the useful and important things in life are fictions: money, nations, borders, human rights, etc, all fictions. There are no physical or mathematical laws that define these things. We invented them. But why did we invent them? Because we are social animals, and these are the building blocks of society.

I see morality as a constant dialogue among members of society. It's a dialogue that shifts and transforms over time. Many things that were once seen as morally just are viewed as abhorrent from our perch in 2020. I have no doubt that some things we view as completely acceptable today will be seen as terrible sins by our descendants.

Are moral values mere preferences then? Feelings of whimsy? I don't think so. For me they start with the question of "What kind of society do I want to live in?" For example, I see enormous benefits to living in a high trust society. And so while it may be tempting to lie to get ahead, I can reason out that if I do that, others will too, and soon social trust will collapse. So best not to lie and to punish those who do. Thus, the value of honesty.

You asked how we can recognize an edge case. I think it's a matter of intuition--you know it when you feel it. For example, using the value of honesty above, there is a simple rule to follow: Don't lie. And you can go through life 99% of the time pretty much following this rule reflexively without worrying about it. But then, suppose the Nazis come to your door and ask if you are hiding Jews in your attic. Suddenly, telling the truth doesn't feel right. There is a value conflict. And so you have to weigh which value is more important in this edge case.

I believe the euthanasia example at the end of your comment suffers from the slippery slope fallacy. I don't think you would argue that just because someone lies to Nazis to protect Jews they are likely to start lying about everything. We may disagree about where to draw the line (that's the dialogue), but it doesn't mean there is no line and that we are doomed to slip into moral anarchy.

 

Samuel Gerkin Right back at you, this is a very fruitful discussion! You've been very reasonable and your arguments are well-articulated. I'm very happy this discussion came about!

You are right, there are no physical or mathematical laws that define morals. But why do you assume that only science and mathematics can discover objective truth? That cannot be proven with either science or mathematics. Philosophy can discover objective truth just as well as Science and Math. In this discussion, we certainly aren't using Math or Science to pursue the truth.

You say moral values are not mere preferences, but when you ask "What kind of society do I want to live in?", aren't you asking what kind of society you prefer? Hitler wanted a society without Jews, but that didn't make anything he did right.

Think of the logical consequences if morality is not objective:

It would mean that rape is not wrong, only something most people happen to not value at this point in history.

It would mean the Nazis were not wrong, they were only unlucky that many other nations happened to not value genocide like they did.

It would mean that if an axe-wielding murderer massacred a small town, the murderer wouldn't be wrong, he only happened to have different values than most other people.

No one can ever possibly live by the rules of moral relativism. If someone cuts in line, other people in line will know that person is not being fair. No one would ever say, "he did nothing wrong by cutting in line. He does not value equal treatment like the rest of us do; what right do we have to impose our values on him?" If a woman's husband is murdered, she would never believe for a second that the murderer only had different values. She would know the murderer was clearly, irrevocably wrong. If a professor failed all students with red hair, everyone, even in a class on moral relativism, would agree that the professor was being unfair.

We did not invent morality. We discovered it. Just as 1+1=2, no matter what anyone says, feels like, or believes, rape is wrong always, no matter what. Different societies can have different opinions about morality, just as different people can have opinions about science. Flat-earthers do not prove that there is no objective truth in physics. Why would cannibalistic societies prove that there is no objective truth in morality?

You're right, we may disagree about where to draw the line, but this means that you agree that there is a line. If there is a line, there must be an objective moral law. If there is no objective moral law, if morality is a fiction, there is no line. All is permissible. We have no right to punish anyone for murder, rape, or genocide. Who are we to impose our values on them? You might say that their values are false because they clearly hurt others. But if there is no objective moral law, no values are true, and no values are false. Hurting others could be someone's value just as much as honesty is yours. If there is no objective moral law, there is no morality, only preferences and confusion.

Samuel Gerkin If you can only identify edge cases by intuition, what about the people that don't "feel it"? What if the Nazis come to a person's door, and the person feels like they want to turn the Jews in? Is that person right? Is intuition, under your definition, reducible to feelings? Or is it an inner sense in our rational nature that recognizes moral truth (if it is working correctly)? I believe we all can see the truth of morality through a similar intuition.

I believe my Euthanasia example was not a fallacy - because it is happening today. That example was from a news report I read (unfortunately, I do not remember from where). Euthanasia is expanding and expanding. But I believe my other arguments against Euthanasia were the strongest. Specifically, why do we value the life of someone perhaps far from death more than the life of someone with only a little time left?

 

Kyle Gerkin Let's dig in to the idea that if morality is a fiction then anything is permissible and we have no right to punish anyone or impose our values on them. Because I disagree entirely with that statement and I sense a crucial tension between us here.

Consider the game of chess. There are rules in chess. But I doubt you would say it's objectively true that the rook ought to move in this way, and the bishop ought to move in that way. Clearly, it's an invented (fictional) set of rules that players collectively agree to abide by. They agree to these rules because the game isn't very enjoyable if anyone can just move their pieces however they want. And if someone violates these rules, they typically get punished--maybe others refuse to play with them, or yell at them, or they are awarded a loss if in a tournament, etc. Thus, there is a right way and a wrong way to play chess.

But suppose someone invented a chess variant in which the pieces could move in different ways. Undoubtedly, most chess players would say this is the wrong way to play. But if people really enjoyed the variant and it began spread, eventually being adopted by most players over several generations, the variant would be considered the right way to play. This, indeed, is what has actually happened over the history of chess.

I propose that this is a microcosm how morality works.

So does this mean that murder (for instance) is not really wrong? I say it is wrong. Just as allowing a king to jump all over the chess board is wrong. We agree to the latter because it makes for a better game, we agree to the former because it makes for a better society. In principle, someone could make an argument that encouraging wanton murder would make for a better society, but I don't think it would be very convincing.

Note that I am not saying morality is determined by the majority. A minority of people may be correct that an unpopular moral position would actually be better for society that the conventionally accepted position. For example, abolitionists were once in the minority. And if you hold a minority position like that, you should certainly do your best to convince others that you are correct. If you and others are successful, eventually the right position becomes the majority one, and society is improved accordingly.

 

Samuel Gerkin I'm very glad you disagree with "if morality is a fiction then anything is permissible and we have no right to punish anyone or impose our values on them." So we agree that not everything is permissible and that we have a right to hold others (and ourselves) to some sort of standard.

But if you believe morality is a fiction, how can we have a "right"? What is a right, if not an objective moral entitlement of some sort?

It seems to me that the morality you are explaining is, in fact, objective. You said that all morality is based on what makes a "better society". And you said a minority could be right while the majority is wrong, which implies objectivity. For if morality is a fiction, there is no right or wrong, no truth to moral laws.
In chess (the chess analogy was very well done, by the way, it clearly explained how you're thinking about this issue), many different groups could play with different rule sets, but none of them would ever be wrong, provided at least two people agreed to play that way. Maybe they find their way more fun; who are we to judge them? But all the Allied forces had every right to judge Nazi Germany for the "rule set" they came up with for morality, as I'm sure you agree.

Nazi Germany also shows where the chess example breaks down because it involves hurting those who never agreed to play by this "rule set" -
In chess, if someone comes up with unfair (notice how objective morality slips into everything, even chess) rules that clearly favor one side, no one will probably agree to play with that person. But in life, if a criminal decides to steal someone's purse, he's not going to ask for permission first.

The example of cheating, which you also used, is a different case - you said murder is wrong just like allowing a king to jump all over a chess board is wrong. Sure, that would break the fictional rules of chess. But we wouldn't refuse to play with someone solely because they broke those fictional rules. We would usually only refuse to play with someone if by breaking those fictional rules they also broke the objective moral law to not cheat. If they broke the fictional rules for another reason (as a joke, for example) we probably wouldn't care that they were breaking the rules of the game, because those rules are fictional.
I find this argument convincing - if morality was fictional, wouldn't it share this attribute that chess does?

I'm also wondering how you define a "better society", if not by objective moral law? Many people have different ideas of what a better society would look like. Some think society would be better with peace on Earth. The Nazis thought a better society would be one without Jews. So how, for you, do we find what fictional moral system will lead to an objectively better society?

Here's my guess: Your moral system seems to be based on "don't hurt anyone, because if you do, you might make society more hurtful and then get hurt back." You would probably define a "better society" as one which is peaceful and cooperative and thus better for every individual's survival and pleasure. You might argue that survival, pursuit of pleasure, and retreat from pain are our main goals scientifically, so we should pursue them. You might say that morality itself is only a fiction we, who are just animals, evolved to make up so that we could pursue these goals better.

(I would say even this morality is objective, since in this case there would only be one best moral system to pursue an objectively better society)

But then why continue to pursue this goal? It's nature's goal, but that's only science, or how humankind works. The way something works cannot have a moral quality in and of itself. It's neutral. Gravity isn't morally good or bad. It just is. It's a law that we can't break. But for some reason, we can choose to break this law of nature that defines that if humanity strives for a less hurtful society we will as a whole have a better chance at survival and pleasure. If we could break the laws of gravity and float, that wouldn't be morally bad. Just because striving for a better society is a law or tendency of nature doesn't mean there's any reason to follow it. And it being the goal of nature doesn't mean it's inherently "better", either. How would you objectively define good itself if everything was physical systems?

And if there's no reason to strive for this better society, other than pleasure, pain, and survival, then any morally evil action is permissable if for oneself the good consequences outweigh the bad.
If a dictator gets survival, pleasure, and no pain from oppressing their people, there would only be a fictional moral system in the way. Objectively, it is worse for the human race as a whole, but what reason does the dictator have to care about his people? The dictator knows morality is a fiction, so why not treat it like a fiction?
We need a moral system that there is always a reason to follow. Fictional morality doesn't suffice. I believe that only objective morality does.

 

Kyle Gerkin Good stuff. A lot here, so let me try to parse the key points as I see them.

I don't think "having a right to judge" carries the objective connotations you do. I might say, "The movie we just watched sucked." And you might say, "I thought it was good." And I might say, "That assessment is stupid and wrong." None of this implies there is some objective quality of goodness inherent in the movie. But if I were trying to convince you that I was correct, I would point to something I value (i.e. well written dialogue) and explain why I thought the movie failed in that regard. If you liked the movie, who am I to judge you? I am a human being with a brain coming to my own conclusions. That's all I need to be.

You said that the possibility that a minority could be right implies an objective morality. I disagree. It implies a mutually desired outcome against which we can judge success or failure. For example, suppose everyone mutually agreed that we want to reduce crime. And the majority favors policy X, but the minority favors policy Y. Then half the states implement policy X and half implement policy Y. If crime really does go down more in Y states than X states, then (ignoring confounding factors for simplicity in this example) we would say the minority was right.

I also don't agree that the chess analogy breaks down under the examples of Nazi Germany or a purse snatcher. In both cases, the offender is violating a known ruleset that has been agreed to by others, and are thus being punished for it--with war or imprisonment respectively. It doesn't matter if the offender doesn't agree with the ruleset--just like a chess player who thinks rooks *ought* to be able to move diagonally--they can still be punished if others think punishment is warranted.

You say that we wouldn't care if someone broke the rules of chess as joke. But that's not *really* breaking the rules, is it? I would say the same extends to traditional morality. If someone tells a lie that is clearly a joke, we don't typically care about that either.

You ask how I can define a "better society" without resorting to moral laws. Like the crime policy example above, it has to be relative to shared goals. Fortunately, because humans have a shared evolutionary history, we do often value the same kinds of outcomes (for example, wanting our families to be safe). If we didn't, I think morality would be impossible. But the key is that the values are *shared*, not that they are objective. So you start with a shared goal, and you try to persuade someone that a certain ruleset will better achieve the desired outcome than the alternatives.

Of course, you may encounter someone whose ultimate goals can't be reconciled with yours. Say, a Nazi whose only acceptable outcome is a world without Jews. In that case, you have to persuade others to punish that person, or otherwise stop them from pursuing their goals. Note that none of this is any different from a practical standpoint than if you and the Nazi hold objective morality to be true. Certainly many Nazis believed in an objective morality and thought it was objectively right to remove Jews from society. It doesn't matter if two people both believe in objective morality if they both think the other person is objectively wrong.

And this brings us to your final point, that a dictator could just oppress his people at will if morality is a fiction, and thus we need objective morality. Except that many oppressive dictators (and other terrible people) throughout history thought there was an objective morality, so that doesn't seem to rescue us.

Now, it's possible that if most people *believe* in an objective morality, it results in a better society than if most people think it's fictional. But even if that's so, morality could still be fictional--the belief itself is the important part.

 

Samuel Gerkin So am I right in saying you would define a better society as one which best accomplishes the goals that are shared by the most people?

You are right that when a majority and minority disagree as to the *means* but agree on a *shared goal*, the minority can be right under your system. But you also used the example of abolitionists, where the majority and the minority disagreed on the *goal*. Doesn't this cause a contradiction? You said, "the key is that the values are *shared*, not that they are objective." But if we should work towards the goals that are shared by the most people, then the abolitionists, who were a minority, were wrong.

And, if morality is fiction, how do you know that it is *good* to work towards the goals shared by the most people? If morality is fiction, isn't the idea of *good* fiction, too?

This comes into the "right to judge" too. I'm not sure I understand how your example addresses it - for a movie, people can have different subjective values, so we don't have a right to judge someone for liking a movie or not. But you would agree we do have a right to judge for morality. How so, if it is fictional, just like liking a movie is subjective?

With chess, you're right that a joke wasn't the best example because it may not be really breaking the rules. But if someone did break the rules of chess without making it unfair, without cheating, would they be punished? If the players were playing a version of chess where each player had to set a timer for their turn, and one player broke the rules by setting their own timer for less time than their opponent, the opponent wouldn't punish them.

(You're also right that it doesn't matter necessarily whether objective or fictional morality is effective - it matters which is true.)

 

Kyle Gerkin I would define a better society as one which accomplishes *my* goals. Hopefully those goals are shared by most people. If not, I should question whether my goals are actually desirable. If I decide that they are, then I should try to convince others to share them. As a practical matter, I would question whether you are in any different position as a believer in objective morality. You would presumably define a better society as one which adheres to objective moral principles. But since you are aware that not everyone believes in the same moral principles (even when they agree morality is objective), what you really mean is that a better society is one which adheres to the objective moral principles *you* believe to be correct. Hopefully others also believe these principles to be correct, but you know that sometimes they do not. Since presumably you are humble enough to recognize the possibility you are wrong, you should question whether your objective moral principles are indeed the correct ones. And if after further reflection you decide that they are, you should try to convince others of their correctness. So are we not in the same boat, regardless of whether morality is fictional or not?

With regards to the movie example, haven't you ever heard someone rattle off a list of movies they liked, and then thought to yourself, "Wow, they have terrible taste in movies"? Were you not judging them? Did you feel like you didn't have a right to do that?

With regards to the chess example you gave, you suggested if one player purposely handicapped himself the other player wouldn't punish the handicapper. I say it depends on if they agreed on the handicap or not. If a player handicapped himself against me without my agreement, I would be insulted (you think I can't beat you straight up?) and perhaps have some choice words for him or even refuse to play under those conditions.

You suggested I thought "it doesn't matter necessarily whether objective or fictional morality is effective - it matters which is true." But I would say I actually think something close to the opposite. Which is true is intellectually interesting (hence this discussion), but for practical purposes, I don't think it changes that much, as I noted in the opening paragraph of this post.

 

Samuel Gerkin I would say the reason we began this discussion is a very important and very practical reason to know for sure whether morality is objective or fictional. If morality is fictional, abortion and euthanasia may be edge cases we know by intuition where we have to weigh our values, and if morality is objective, intentionally killing an innocent person could always be murder (which may have to be proved separately) and our society may be committing *millions* of murders.

I thought effectiveness wouldn't matter, but the conclusions you have drawn have led me to change my mind. I believe objective morality is more effective.
I'm not saying objective morality will prevent people from believing false moralities or making evil choices against the true morality. I'm saying that under a fictional morality it is far easier for most people and especially for a society to fall into evil.
An example: A group of people who believe a false morality (like Nazis) come to power in a country. The average citizen in the country now has to make a terrible choice - do they obey their leaders and commit evils, or do they refuse and die? Who is more likely to compromise and explain away their participation in the Holocaust or a similar evil, and who is more likely to stand up for what is right no matter what? Someone who believes morality is a useful story we tell ourselves so we can cooperate better as a species? Or someone who believes that morality is as true and immutable as mathematics (and even more valuable)?

One might think someone has terrible taste in movies, but one has no right to try to reason with them and convince them not to like those movies or to forcibly prevent them from watching those movies, as with morality. And there is an objective element to movies that is entirely separate from our subjective likes and dislikes. Some movies are unquestionably artfully good, no matter one's personal feelings on the matter (I don't like The Godfather much at all, but I recognize it is a work of art). We may think "How dare you like such a bad movie." But we should know at heart that their feelings about a film are mostly not even a choice for them. We only have a right to judge actions.

With chess, I concede that it can definitely matter to break a fictional rule. I didn't think of the example of governmental laws like speed limits, which can definitely matter if you break them.
However, fictional laws are only just when they do not go against objective moral laws. A government could make a law that requires murder, for example. This shows that just because there is a fictional rule doesn't mean we should follow it. Thus, fictional rules or values cannot be used to determine morality, because, without morality, there is no way to judge whether fictional rules that we made up are actually good or not. Coming up with a fictional moral system is like drawing a blueprint for a house freehand. You need a ruler to make sure you get it right. If there is no right, no ruler, no real morality, then what do you measure with to check that a law or value is actually good?

You're right that we each have no choice but to come from our own perspectives, and that we have to seek out the truth as best we can, with humility.
But here's my main question, the question I was attempting to ask before: Without objective morality, how do you know whether a value is good or bad? How do you know whether you should add it to what you think would be an ideal better society? You said "whether my goals are . . . desirable", so is the criteria you use desire? Is it what you desire, or what you think most people will desire, or what you think most people should desire?

 

Kyle Gerkin Certainly it's important to figure out if we are inadvertently committing millions of murders. But the fictional nature of morality is irrelevant to that task. To wit:

Let's stipulate that morality is objective. Now, we have two objective moral rules: #1) You should not kill innocents. #2) You should have autonomy over your own body. These are rules most people would agree with. However, in the case of abortion, they come into conflict. So which objective rule takes precedence? Presumably you would say rule #1 always takes precedence over rule #2. But lots of other people disagree. So you have to convince them they should *value* rule #1 more than rule #2. Now, go back and replace every instance of the word "objective" with the word "fictional" in the previous paragraph. What changes?

As I suggested earlier, I am open to the possibility that a society in which most people believe morality is fictional would be worse than one in which they believe morality is objective. I don't think we have enough evidence to draw any strong conclusions at present, since objective morality is the default view and has been held by most people throughout history, including those who committed horrible atrocities like the Nazis. Indeed, their mathematical certitude about the rightness of their actions may have allowed them to push past those nagging intuitions that they were doing something wrong. In my observation, the defining feature of most highly moral people is that they *think deeply* about morality. Since fictional morality is a contrarian view, those who come to it are likely to have thought deeply about morality, and thus are an unfair comparison group. It's certainly plausible that if fictional morality were the default view, held by many who don't give any real thought to the subject, it would just be used to justify their whims and society would be worse off not having these people corralled by the guardrails of objective morality. But that's speculative, and of course, has nothing to with whether objective morality is true or not. Just whether it's useful.

The whole point of the movie example is just that we can and do judge subjective things all the time and don't question our "right" to do so. Yes, you typically would not restrain someone from seeing a bad movie, but that's just because the stakes are low, and their watching a bad movie has no real impact on you. But if you thought their watching of the movie would turn them into a serial killer, you very well might try to restrain them. Indeed, our dad restrained me (and presumably you) from seeing several movies I wanted to see when I was kid because he thought they would be "bad" for me, and that was obviously a subjective judgment.

You are trying to drill down to the basis of fictional morality when you say "what do you measure with to check that a law or value is actually good?" This is a great question, and it gets to the crux of the issue. You said in an earlier post that morality is what we *ought* to do. But "ought" implies the question, "to what end?" To use a non-loaded example, you ought to turn left if you want to go to the gas station; you ought to turn right if you want to go to the movie theater. You measure the correctness of the action relative to the goal. Morality is the same way. If your goal is to live in a high trust society, you should value honesty. Ah, but you say, how do you know whether it's good or bad to live in a high trust society? And you can keep working backwards like this until you get to something like, "That's just the kind of society I desire to live in". I assume you find that answer unsatisfying.

Now consider objective morality. "Ought" still implies the question, "to what end?" Why should we value honesty? Because being truthful is objectively good. Okay, how do we know being truthful is objectively good? So far, you have been making consequentialist arguments, pointing out the kinds of slippery slopes we will slide down if things are not objectively good. But why should we care about sliding down those slopes? It sounds like you are describing the kind of society a person wouldn't desire to live in, so we've ended up in the same place. If we set consequentialism aside, what is the answer to how we know being truthful is objectively good? Because it just is? That tautology is hardly satisfying to me. Some might say it's good because God decreed it to be so. But that just creates another set of questions. Why should we follow God's decrees? Because he will send you to heaven if you do and hell if you won't? Now we are back to consequentialism, and what kind of (eternal) society we desire to live in. Because God himself is objectively good? How do we know? Because he just is?

As far as I can see, all roads lead to either unprovable tautologies or consequentialist desires. Putting "fictional" or "objective" in front of the word "morality" doesn't change that. I'm curious to see how your view differs.

 

Samuel Gerkin The conflict between these two statements is only apparent. The first is an absolute moral law: you should not intentionally kill an innocent person. The second is not absolute at all: "you should have autonomy over your own body".
Its true, we do have the right to do whatever we want with our own bodies - as long as we don't do anything morally wrong. Clearly, one person's right to swing their fist ends at another person's face. But this qualification means the right to body autonomy is not absolute at all. Perhaps this even renders the right to body autonomy a meaningless description. So what is always wrong (intentionally killing an innocent person) clearly takes precedence over what is only right when it's not wrong.

And even if the right to body autonomy were conceded, it is clear that one person's right to body autonomy ends where another person's body begins. So a mother's right to body autonomy ends where her unborn child begins.

Our dad only restrained us from watching some movies because he believed they would be *morally* bad according to how he thought objective moral law applied to this specific case. He would not care much if we watched movies that were *artfully* bad unless he had to watch them with us. We can only judge moral evil actions, not anything subjective like feelings. We can judge desires if they are consented to and are desires for evil, but again, morality is brought in. Without objective morality, we have no right to judge any action as good or bad.

You're right, I find desire unsatisfying as the sole answer for determining morality, because many people desire evil.

You're also right that "should" usually implies an end. The end of morality, of being good, is to make us good. And what is goodness? You may be surprised to hear, as I was, that goodness is what is desirable. Not everything that everyone desires is good. But everything that is good is desirable. When people commit evil actions, they never desire the evil for itself. They desire some good, but they seek it in a way that cause a privation in that good or other goods. (For evil is only the privation of the good). For example, a thief desires money, which is a good thing, but they obtain it by thievery. Or someone desires pleasure, which is good, but they obtain it horribly by violence.
But the fact that goodness is what is desirable does not mean we can use desire to determine what is good. This is because people can desire the good aspects in many evil things and be completely mistaken.

Where you were headed towards with an ideal future society is this: all our strivings for passing goods are futile if we don't have an ultimate end which is the ultimate good. The Philosophers of Greece thought the ultimate good was a virtuous life itself. But in order for the ultimate good to truly be ultimate, it must be that which satisfies all desire. But we will never attain this in this world. There is no possible utopian society that would satisfy all desire, because people are imperfect and evildoers.
The only ultimate good that can satisfy all desire is God, who is Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Love itself.

You're right, I have been mainly making consequentialist arguments so far. I've been using reductio ad absurdum to prove fictional morality wrong. But how we know something is objectively good deserves a very different approach. We could approach this the same way Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle did - what is objectively good (up to a certain extent) can be found by reason. Some moral truths seem clear, and others can be reasoned to from other clear truths. But this is not infallible (it can be influenced by the culture one is living in, so that some things seem clearly good that really are not). So how do we know what is objectively good for certain? We can only know for certain by turning to God.

But what about Euthyphro's dilemma, which you hinted at in your questions? In short, if moral laws are good because God decreed them, then aren't these moral laws arbitrary or fictional? And if God decreed moral laws because they were good, there would be some standard for goodness higher than God Himself.
But this is a false dilemma. God is infinite being, infinite power, infinite knowledge, and infinite goodness. God's nature itself is the standard for goodness. So the answer is both- moral laws are good because God decreed them (because He is by nature goodness), and God decreed them because they were good (according to His nature).

You also asked how we know God is objectively good. We know because God is, by definition and by nature, the standard for objective good. When we say "God" we mean the all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing being. So perhaps your question may instead lead to "How do we know God exists?" If so, we can investigate that next.

 

Kyle Gerkin Before we go any further, I want to see if we can reach a point of consensus on something, because I think we have gotten somewhat sidetracked by the terms "fictional" and "objective". When I say morality is "fictional", all I mean is that it's not derived from the laws of physics, mathematics or pure logic. In other words, it is a set of rules that was invented/created/authored/generated/decreed. (Pick whichever term suits you best and we can go with that). Based on your last post, it seems that you agree with this, but you would say that God authored the moral rules, whereas I would say they were authored by humans. Do you agree that is a fair distinction between our positions? God authored morality vs. human authored morality?

 

Samuel Gerkin This is a good distinction to think about.

Some rules are inherent in God's nature and immutable, eternally unchanging. Some rules are created by God and temporal, in time.

The second class of rules, created and temporal, includes physics. God could create a universe where the rules of physics were different, though in our universe those rules are unchanging. We can easily imagine a universe where gravity works differently. Some temporary rules that God decreed as governmental laws for Israel in the times of the Old Testament are also in this class, like the restrictions on what types of food Israelites could eat. They are morally binding in their time, but not eternal. But the fact that they are morally binding is because of objective moral laws over and above them.

The first class of rules includes mathematics and pure logic. God would never create a universe where 1+1=3, or where if A = B and B = C then A does not equal C. We can't imagine a universe that could work like that. Objective moral laws are also of this class. God would never create a universe where it is right to murder. Objective moral laws are as inherent in God's nature as mathematics and pure logic.

 

Kyle Gerkin Let's assume all of that is true for the moment. It seems that you are saying God still created moral rules (in the sense that he created everything). But maybe you are saying he didn't create them any more than he created himself, since they are an extension of his nature. Either way, we can ask: how do we know God is good? Your answer seems to be: because that is his nature. But that's just another way of saying God is good because God is good. Do you find this argument compelling? Why can't I say, "My desires are good because my desires are good."? It would seem to have the same logical force.

 

Samuel Gerkin First, a linguistic distinction, which I know will not prove anything, but will hopefully clarify our conversation:
When I say "God" I mean an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing Being. The question of whether God is good or not is only the question of whether or not God exists, because if an eternal being was all-powerful, all-knowing, but not all-good, that being would not be God.
What you're really asking is, how do we know God exists, and not a flawed god like in Greek myth instead?

To be clear, I wasn't attempting to prove God's goodness just yet in my previous post, just explaining what I believe. Now, onward to talking about God's goodness:

Your question presupposes that there is such a thing as objective good and bad, so I hope you won't mind if my answer does too.

If there were an all-powerful, all-knowing being who we could truthfully say was not all-good, then we would be judging this being with a moral standard that existed over and above that being. This standard cannot come from nowhere. So, to decree this standard, there must be another being over and above the first, who IS all-good. This being would be God.

(To clarify God's relationship to moral law- I mean to say that God decreed moral rules from the truth of His uncreated eternal nature, and did not invent them out of nothing like the universe and physics.)

 

Kyle Gerkin I'm having trouble following your line of argument here. It seems like you are suggesting that in order to say a being is "not all-good" we would have to appeal to a standard external to that being. But yet, you are saying God is "all-good" without appealing to an external standard. Is that not inconsistent?

 

Samuel Gerkin If we can truthfully judge that a being is not all-good, then there must be some standard for goodness that that being is not living up to, or else what would we mean by good?

If we truthfully judge that God is in fact all-good, God can also be that standard, for He does live up to the standard inherent in His nature.

 

Kyle Gerkin How is this not circular logic? As far as I can see, you are assuming the conclusion in your premise. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read your argument as:

1) The nature of God is to be all-good.
2) Therefore, God is all-good.

If there is more to it, perhaps you can write it out syllogistically so I can see it.

As it stands, I can prove anything that way. For example:

1) The nature of capitalism is to be all-good.
2) Therefore, capitalism is all-good.

or

1) The nature of socialism is to be all-good.
2) Therefore, socialism is all-good.

And so on. An argument that can prove anything proves nothing.

 

Samuel Gerkin 
1. The question asks how we can know God is all-good.
2. The question assumes there exists some objective standard for goodness that God may or may not live up to. Otherwise, what would it mean to ask if God is good?
3. (The question also assumes that God, or at least a not all-good god, lower-case g, exists.)

4. Suppose God was not all-good.
5. Then God does not live up to the objective standard for goodness.
6. Then the objective standard for goodness must exist outside of God.

7. a. Suppose the objective standard came from nowhere.
b. Then it would be only imaginary.
c. An imaginary standard is not objective.
d. But we supposed the standard was objective.
c. Therefore, the standard for goodness came from somewhere.

8. If it was a law of the universe like gravity, it would be unbreakable.
9. But we break it all the time.
10. Therefore it is not a law of the universe.

11. If it was created by any being, it would be imaginary.
12. But we outlined the problem with it being imaginary already.
13. Therefore it was not created by a being.

14. Therefore the standard for goodness must exist itself.
15. What else can this be but pure, perfect Goodness itself?
16. Then Pure Goodness must exist.

17. Being is better than non-being.
18. Pure goodness must eternally exist.

19. Intelligence is better than non intelligence. A human is better than a rock.
20. Pure goodness must be intelligent.

21. Knowledge is better than ignorance.
22. Pure Goodness must be all-knowing.

And so on.
23. All these attributes together mean Pure Goodness is what (Who) we would call God.

24. So we find that the hypothetical not all-good being that we first called God was NOT the real God.
25. So, even though we supposed that God was not all-good, we only found that if a not all-good god exists, the real God must exist over and above the first imperfect one.

26. So whether we assume that God is not all-good, or that God is all-good, either way, the real all-good God turns out to exist.
27. Therefore, God must necessarily be all-good.

 

Kyle Gerkin Let's examine premise #2. You said, "The question assumes there exists some objective standard for goodness that God *may or may not* live up to. Otherwise, what would it mean to ask if God is good?" [Emphasis mine]. I agree with this, but the part I emphasized is key. There has to be a *possibility* of God not living up to the standard in order for it to be meaningful. But that can't happen if the standard is not independent of God's nature. After all, God can hardly fail to live up to his own nature. Thus, the standard is meaningless by your own reckoning.

Try substituting anything else for God. For example, your nature is to be Sam Gerkin. If I were to ask if you live up to the standard of pure Sam Gerkin-ness, the answer would, of course, be yes. How could it be otherwise? But while the statement "Sam Gerkin has a nature of pure Sam Gerkin-ness" may be logically true, it is not very meaningful.

 

Samuel Gerkin That's a very good question. But we must be careful not to judge God by human standards, i.e., as if He were just a powerful human.
This is like judging a human as if a human was only a bigger, more intelligent squirrel.

Imagine that there was an unbreakable perfect square in existence that we found on the moon. It is the square that all other squares are only imitations of - down to the smallest molecule, its lines are perfectly straight and at perfect right angles. Is that square meaningless because, by its nature as the best, most perfect square, it cannot be any other than a perfect square? Or isn't its perfection inherently valuable in and of itself?

So it is with God. God cannot choose to be evil without contradicting his own nature, thus God choosing evil is not logically possible. But God also has free will and the ability to choose between different goods. That doesn't make those good choices meaningless. Here's an analogy: a conscripted soldier is offered the choice between working with computers for the military at their home base, or working with computers in the field and risking his life. The military needs his help equally either way. He doesn't have the choice to not help at all, since he's conscripted. But he chooses to go into the field and risk his life because he loves his country. Does that choice have no value?

God is also perfect and omniscient, so he always chooses what is perfectly good. But there are many perfect goods to choose from. For example, God didn't have to create the universe, for He is entirely self-sufficient in and of himself. But God did choose to create the universe, which is also an infinitely perfect choice, though it may be hard for us characters in the trenches of God's grand story to see it as a beautiful, perfect whole.

The universe is like a beautiful painting displayed on a computer screen. We are each one pixel, and from the few pixels we can see around us, things may seem chaotic. But if we could see the whole picture, we would understand how all the parts make up the beautiful whole.

Finally, God Himself is the source of all meaning. For how can anything be meaningful without objective goodness? People can subjectively call things meaningful, but they can mean nothing other than that those things feel meaningful for them personally if there is no objective goodness which is the source of all meaning.

Samuel Gerkin N.B. By *may or may not* I meant insofar as we knew at that point in the argument.

 

Kyle Gerkin Logical rules must equally apply to squirrels, humans, and God. I assume you agree with this, since you said God cannot violate logic.

So then, the question remains: Is it a logical rule that a thing can only be meaningfully measured by appealing to a standard outside of the thing itself? You seem to have argued for that position earlier in this thread, and if it's a logical rule, there can be no exceptions. So would you say "yes" or "no" to that question?

We can consider your perfect moon-square in that light. We would only consider it a perfect square relative to our existing conception of a square. We are *measuring* it against a standard outside of itself.

By contrast, imagine we found a heretofore never conceived of shape on the moon and we said to ourselves, "Wow! Let's call this an inconceivahedron. It is now the standard by which any future inconceivahedrons will be judged." And then, some years later, we found another inconceivahedron, but it was slightly different, we would say, "This is an imperfect inconceivahedron." But obviously the second inconceivahedron is not *objectively* less perfect than the first. We just arbitrarily defined the first one as the standard because it happened to be the first one we found.

 

Samuel Gerkin Absolutely, logical rules apply to God. Logic is from God's nature as well, you know. But a thousand sinking bricks does not make one floating apple illogical. The apple is a totally different kind of thing than bricks, so it makes sense that things work differently for it.

I disagree that something can only be meaningfully measured by appealing to something outside of itself. Sure, that's a good general rule for all created beings and things. But it's perfectly logical that this general rule does not apply to God insofar as He is the one Uncreated Being.

Isn't it logical that the One God Who is fundamentally different than anything in the universe need not look outside Himself for meaning? Just as for bricks and an apple?

The square analogy is rather silly, but what I meant by saying it was the standard is that it hypothetically IS that conception of a square that we have. It's not just a physical object that happens to align closely with our conception of a perfect square - it IS that which we concieve of when we think of a perfect square. It's not just physical, it's on a higher plane of reality. (Plato believed "forms" like this were real, and for this hypothetical example I'm using a mindset like his.)

This is what God is like.

Finally, how do you define meaning? I believe that without God, there is no meaning. If God is the source of all meaning, then your question about a thing only being meaningfully measured by something outside itself does not make sense to apply to God.

All other things yes, because they are given meaning by God. But God is sufficient in and of Himself.

 

Kyle Gerkin So we have rules that we can apply to everything in the universe, but God is the one exception? That seems...convenient.

There are huge, unproven assumptions woven through your response: "God is uncreated." How do you prove that? "God is the one and only uncreated being." Why can't there be others? How can you prove there are not? "God is fundamentally different than anything else in the universe." Really? How have you verified that?

I feel we are at an impasse, because you have constructed an unfalsifiable position, where no matter how universal an argument I make you can always say, "Yeah, but that doesn't apply to God." And if that's what you believe, that's fine, but I would classify that as a *belief* and not some discovered objective truth.

 

Samuel Gerkin I think we reached this seeming impasse since we started our talk about God with a question that assumed God's existence - so I naturally assumed God's attributes. One of God's attributes is that He is unlike anything else in the universe - or else He wouldn't be God. It's like we were talking about bears, and you didn't believe bears existed. You might ask, "why are bears dangerous?" and I might say, "Well, they have teeth and claws." But then you respond, "why are you making the unproven assumption that they have teeth and claws?" I was assuming that because that's what bears are, but you reasonably were not since you don't believe they exist yet, much less believe any attributes about them.

Likewise, I was assuming these things about God because that's Who God is. But if God's existence is unproven, of course it seems unreasonable to assume attributes about him.

So let's talk about God's existence.

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being.
4. If this cause were something impersonal, like another universe or something physical, that cause would have needed a cause for ITS coming into being too.
5. If this cause were a person in a universe, that person would also have needed a cause for THEIR coming into being.
6. Eventually, we must reach something which does not come into being, but is eternal, which is the "first cause" of everything.
7. If this first cause was not personal, it would not have choice and would be unchanging.
8. But if it was unchanging, it never would have changed to cause anything to come into being.
9. Therefore, this first cause is personal.

This proof does not tell us all the attributes about God yet, but it is a start. Let's begin here.

 

Kyle Gerkin I don't think your bear analogy is accurate. To my mind, it's more like this:

Suppose neither of us had ever seen a bear in our lives.

Sam: Bears have dangerous teeth and claws!

Kyle: Why are you making these assumptions about bears?

Sam: That's what I heard.

Kyle: Okay, well let's go into the woods and try to track down a bear so we can verify that.

Sam: Okay, but by the way, whatever physical traits it ends up having I am going to call those "teeth and claws".

Kyle: Wait, shouldn't we have an agreed upon definition of "teeth and claws" beforehand, so we can measure the bear's physical traits against it?

Sam: No, I heard they have teeth and claws, so whatever physical traits we find, are, by definition, teeth and claws.

Kyle: So there is no way to actually disprove your assumptions?

Here's the question I think you have to ask yourself: What test or experiment could I run, in principle, to disprove my hypothesis? If the answer is "I can't run one, even in principle, because there is no way to disprove it", then we have entered the realm of beliefs, not objective truths.

In any case, let's take a look at your version of the "first cause" argument. I think there are some suspect premises, but these two are the crucial ones:

#2 -- What do you mean by "The universe began to exist"? If you mean, "the big bang happened" then sure, but what about the singularity that "banged" in the first place? Physicists have demonstrated that the laws of physics, and even things like the concept of time itself break down as you approach a singularity. As a result, Stephen Hawking and other luminaries of the physics world have argued that universe had no beginning. There is some controversy on this point, of course, but it's far from "proven" that the universe did, in fact, have a beginning.

#7 -- Why can there be uncaused personal choice but not uncaused impersonal change? Once you've crossed the boundary into eternity, leaving behind our intuitive conceptions of space, time, and causality, it seems a little presumptuous to say what could and could not happen. In other words, I might ask, "What caused the personal first cause to make a choice?" And you might say, "Causality is irrelevant for a personal first cause. The choice arose from its nature." But then I could just as easily say "Causality is irrelevant for an impersonal first cause. The change arose from its nature."

In short, either it’s possible for something to be uncaused or it isn’t. And if it is possible, there is no particular reason it couldn’t be the universe/singularity/impersonal force X rather than something else.

 

Samuel Gerkin I'm not sure what traits of God I've given the impression I would be willing to redefine to match what we discover of God. I can assure you that that's not the case. Every trait I know of has an unchangable definition. For which trait did I give this impression?

This is how I would respond to your dialogue:

Kyle: Why are you making these assumptions about bears?

Sam: Everything I've seen in my life points to the conclusion that they have these attributes. It's the only answer that logically explains all the facts. One small example is a bear footprint I saw the other day which appeared to have claws.

Kyle: Okay, but I don't see how all the facts lead you to that conclusion. Let's go try to find a bear so I can verify this.

Sam: Okay.

Kyle: Wait, shouldn't we agree upon the definitions of "teeth and claws" beforehand, so we can measure the bear's physical traits against it?

Sam: I didn't think of that. Which trait do you think we should discuss first?

I believe logic leads directly to God - this is a test or experiment for objective truth.

For the first cause argument:

#2 -- Whether or not time breaks down as you approach the Big Bang doesn't affect the argument much. If my understanding of time relativity is correct, we can basically think of time as just another dimension in the fabric of the universe, like the 3 dimensions we move about in. But this whole time-space continuum exists. I said "Began to exist", but this was a simplification. Causality does not require time. Trent Horn explains this well:

"To understand this, consider a hammer smashing a window. In this case, it is clear that the hammer is swung before the window smashes; the window doesn’t smash before the hammer hits it. However, if the cause (or the hammer moving through the air) disappeared even a microsecond before it touched the window, then the effect would never happen. Instead, there has to be a moment where the cause and effect “overlap” and both happen at the same time."
If cause and effect can overlap in one moment, then causality does not require time.

So, even if Hawking was right, the question still remains: what causes the time-space continuum to exist?

You might say nothing.

But every part of the universe is dependent for its existence on something else. Every part of the universe requires a cause. When you add a bunch of dependent things together to get the space-time continuum, how could you suddenly get something wholly independent, something which depends only on itself for its existence?

So the universe must be dependent.

#7 -- It is definitely possible for something to be uncaused. But it is impossible for anything dependent (on something else for its existence) to be uncaused. I already discussed why a universe cannot be uncaused, and the same applies to a singularity, which is just a smaller universe without time. "But why can't an impersonal force be uncaused?" you might ask. Crossing the boundary into eternity does indeed leave behind our concepts of space and time, but not causality, as was shown above. Though it is presumptuous to pretend how eternity works is not a mystery, it is not presumptuous to assume that it, like everything else, conforms to the rules of logic. You asked "What caused the personal first cause to make a choice?" I answer, "*He* did. He himself is the first cause, so of course, He was the cause of His choice." But you could not say "An impersonal first cause could also be the cause of its own change." A chair cannot get up and walk around, but a human can. An impersonal force cannot cause itself to change, but God can make a choice.

 

Kyle Gerkin "I believe logic leads directly to God" is not a description of a test. A test would be something like "If God did X, it would be evidence that he is not all-good." But, based on the conversation to this point, I'm guessing you would say something like "If God did X, X would necessarily be all-good, even though we might not understand the reasons, because all God's actions proceed from his nature, and his nature is all-good." Or maybe you would say something like, "We can't judge X without reference to an objective standard, and since God himself is that standard, and X proceeds from God, X is, by definition, and act of goodness." However you slice it, there is no way for God (even in principle) to ever fail the test. This is what I mean when I say you've constructed an unfalsifiable position (i.e. whatever the bear turns out to look like, we will declare it to have "teeth and claws"). But perhaps you can come up with a falsifiable test for God's goodness.

You say, "Even if Hawking was right, the question still remains: what causes the time-space continuum to exist?" But that question doesn't remain. If Hawking (and many other physicists) are right, neither space nor time existed prior to the big bang.

You then say, "Every part of the universe is dependent for its existence on something else. Every part of the universe requires a cause." But this is exactly what is being disputed. You are just assuming the conclusion. If Hawking (and many other physicists) right, this is not true. Admittedly, "every part of the universe has a cause" sounds intuitive based on a broad array of human experiences, but when you move into the realm of extreme physics (singularities, quantum mechanics, etc) things get real weird and non-intuitive.

And if we are just following our human intuitions, why should we think minds or choices made by those minds can exist outside of the universe? Every observed example we have of that kind of thing (like a human getting up and walking around) evolved the complexity of a choice-making mind over a long span of time from much simpler materials within the universe. So if God can be the one exception to this, then why can't Impersonal Entity X be the one exception to the "every part of the universe requires a cause" observation?

Choice is not required to change states. A hunk of plutonium can't get up and walk across the room, but it's elements (its very nature) are constantly changing (decaying). That said, I'm not even sure the concept of "change" is intelligible when we are talking about something outside of time. Change implies something being in one state for a certain amount of time, followed by it being in a different state for a certain amount of time. We don't really have language for things outside of time, but it might be more accurate to say "Impersonal Entity X just happened".

 

Samuel Gerkin I believe we know certain truths about morality. If God did indeed break these truths, then that would prove God is not good. I argue that goodness is necessarily part of God's nature, so God would never break these moral truths. But I think that allows us a falsifiable test.

Of course, for the test to work you need to believe in an objective morality. I would still argue that this is impossible apart from God, but if you grant objective morality before believing in God, then this test works. If morality was fictional, this falsifiable test would not work, but then again, neither would any falsifiable test for anyone's morality, even Hitler's. This separate argument must be where you have gotten the impression I would redefine morality to align with what we discover of God, but I hope I've cleared that up now.

Certainly, if Hawkings was right, neither time nor space existed prior to the Big Bang. I would definitely agree with that part of his theory. But causality does not require time, so I don't see how we don't still need a cause for the universe's existence. The only way everything in all of space-time could exist is if something caused it to exist.

I don't think this is a question of intuition, but rather of logic. You don't think logic itself breaks down when we approach extreme physics?

So you're saying that not every part of the universe requires a cause? Interesting. So you agree there must be a first cause, an uncaused cause, but you think it is the singularity itself, or something similar?

You asked why we should think minds and choices can exist outside of the universe, but I ask, why should we assume they can't? Certainly, such a mind must be inherently different from every observed example we have seen. But black geese used to be different from every observed example of geese for Europeans. That never meant that black geese could not exist.

We CAN talk about change outside of time, but only in relation to us who are within time. But I will abandon this point (that *change* shows that a first cause is personal) for now; it may be wrong, though I doubt it since it came from a much smarter person than me (Peter Kreeft), but I no longer understand it well enough to defend it.

You are right that, strictly speaking, what is outside of time is unchangable. Immutability is one of the traits of God, you know 🙂

So is it right you are willing to accept the existence of a first cause either in the universe or outside it, as long as that first cause is impersonal? If so, the next step is showing that that first cause is personal (and outside of the universe).

 

Kyle Gerkin So, for example, if God personally murdered a bunch of innocent children, he would not be all-good?

I think we may need to nail down some terms. When I say "universe" what I really mean is "the set of all things which exist". But I feel like you are trying to define it more narrowly, as something like "everything after the big bang" or "the set of all things which exist, except God". In any case, I think we need a term for "the set of all things which exist, including God, parallel universes, and anything else that might potentially exist pre-bang". Since "universe" may be confusing due to other connotations, I propose "omniverse".

So does logic apply throughout the entire omniverse? If it doesn't, there is no point in arguing about it, so we might as well assume it does. But I think we have to be careful to consider whether we are using deduction (which is certain) or induction (which is probabilistic). When determining whether every part of the omniverse requires a cause, we are using induction, observing that everything in our human experience seems to require a cause, and so we assign a high probability to that being a universal (omniversal?) rule. But we have no real experience with anything like pre-bang conditions, so we can't say with any certainty that the rule extends to such an alien realm.

As far as I can see it, if we keep moving back in time along the causal chain, we must eventually get to a point where *something* either came from nothing or is eternal. And given how our language fails us when we abandon the concept of time, I'm not even sure those two things are different. But regardless, "first cause" is as good a name as anything for that something.

I never said a choice-making mind *can't* exist in a pre-bang omniverse. As I mentioned above, given how little we can know about or experience those conditions, I think absolute confidence that any particular thing can or can't happen is foolhardy. That said, using the same inductive reasoning that leads us to "everything must have a cause" (i.e. based on our experience, the probability seems high that this is universally true), we can say that, based on our experience, choice-making minds only arise via a long process of material evolution, so the probability seems high that this is universally true. The difference is that while there does ultimately seem to be a necessity that *something* is uncaused, I see no necessity requiring that something be a choice-making mind.

 

Samuel Gerkin Sorry this post has been a long time coming!

About your definition proposal: Certainly. Can we also define "universe" and, equivalently, "timespace" as all that exists within the time and space that we know? So all galaxies, solar systems, etc, throughout all of time and space. The sum of all places we could go if we had a time machine that could travel as fast as we wanted. Everything included in the naturalist worldview.

The omniverse would include any parallel universes if there were any, as well as anything outside of our naturalist universe. I will argue that God is here.

Let's investigate whether everything needing a cause comes from logic (deduction, what can be known for certain) or probability (induction, what can be guessed with a rate of probability). If you've only seen white geese, you know it is only a matter of probability that there are no black geese, because you can easily imagine a black geese occurring logically. But even though it may at first seem analogous that we've only *experienced* that every time we add one apple and another apple together they become two apples, we know this is a matter of logic, not probability, because we can't even imagine how one apple and another apple put together could be three apples. We can imagine a third apple appearing magically, but we can't imagine one apple and another apple being three apples. This shows math is a matter of logic, not probability. And matters of logic must necessarily rule the entire omniverse.

So which one is causality? I argue that causality is just like math. We can imagine an apple appearing suddenly out of nothing, but we can't sensically imagine an apple appearing out of nothing for no reason whatsoever.

{I think we should make clear the difference between being caused by nothingness itself and being caused by nothing (not needing a cause for existence, being eternal, being one's own cause). It is illogical for nothing to cause something, but it is not illogical for something to not have a cause (if it is eternal). But I argue that anything that is by nature dependent requires a cause even if, from a perspective from outside of time, it is eternal.}

Now, let's abandon the concept of time, which has been the result of much confusion in this part of the discussion. The present moment is the closest thing to what it is like outside time (an "eternal now") - so imagine time was frozen and two objective observers were viewing this one moment, looking at an apple.
Observer 1: Why does this apple exist?
Observer 2: It just does.
That would not be a satisfactory answer. It wouldn't make sense. There's nothing inherent in an apple that holds itself in existence. But does an apple really need a cause to exist?

We usually would jump to an explanation in time, but now that we've abandoned time, we cannot. So why does it need a cause to exist in one frozen, present moment?

The apple only exists because its cells exist. What we mean when we say, "That apple exists" is that the sum total of all of its smaller parts together exist. The apple does not exist in and of itself, because if the apple's cells no longer existed, neither would the apple. So the apple's existence is *dependent* on the existence of its cells.

But likewise, these cells only exist because of their smaller parts that together add up to allow the cell to exist. But these smaller parts only exist because of smaller parts, and so on. If the chain is infinite, then the apple is only made up of smaller and smaller particles, all of which depend for their existence on even smaller particles. But if every part of the apple depends for its existence on another part, no parts of the apple would actually exist, and there would be no existence to pass on down the chain to allow the apple to exist. As Peter Kreeft explains:

"Suppose I tell you there is a book that explains everything you want explained. You want that book very much. You ask me whether I have it. I say no, I have to get it from my wife. Does she have it? No, she has to get it from a neighbor. Does he have it? No, he has to get it from his teacher, who has to get it. . . et cetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. No one actually has the book. In that case, you will never get it. However long or short the chain of book borrowers may be, you will get the book only if someone actually has it and does not have to borrow it. Well, existence is like that book. Existence is handed down the chain of causes, from cause to effect."

Even an infinite chain of smaller and smaller particles will not exist without particles or things which cannot be subdivided anymore, but which exist themselves and give existence to the whole chain all the way back to the apple.

But why do these smallest particles (I call them particles for lack of a better word) exist? Do they, by their very nature, hold themselves in existence, or is their existence caused by something else, something supporting them from outside of timespace?

Samuel Gerkin {So far we have proved that we must have at least one first cause, either in timespace or outside of it, somewhere else in the omniverse, which now could be the building blocks of the universe.}

We can guess that these particles must be the building blocks of everything, perhaps made out of pure matter and energy. They exist on the map of timespace, and they will always exist in that place (if an objective external observer went back to the same location at the same time they would always find the same particles there).

So do these particles exist by their very nature? Do they necessarily, by definition, logically have to exist at this specific position in the map of timespace?

Remember the test for whether something was logically necessary or not. We can imagine a possible version of our same universe with the same timespace where those particles are in a different place or not there at all (we can imagine an apple that is now on the table being now in the pantry instead, or not existing at all).

Remember, this is without any relation to time or any time-based causality. Logically, something outside of timespace could cause a supernatural (since it is from outside of timespace, our universe, or what is natural, we would call it supernatural) event which could cause the apple to dissappear from existence for a fraction of a second, while leaving the rest of the universe and its causality the same (the apple was still there because it was put on a table, and someone will still eat it afterwards because it appears again) (for simplicity, let's assume no one saw the apple disappear). And the omniverse with an apple that disappeared for a fraction of a second would still be entirely logical (since the disappearance of the apple, or, without relation to time, the non-existence of the apple at that position of timespace, is caused).

The point is that if the fundamental building blocks of the universe were first causes, they would have to exist in and of themselves by their very nature, such that to imagine their nonexistence would be illogical. But we see that this is not true. So they do not have what it takes to allow everything in the universe to depend on them for existence.

So these building blocks and consequently everything in the universe (since everything in the universe is made of them), and consequently the entire universe itself must be dependent on something else for existence.

This process can be repeated outside of timespace in the omniverse for as long as anything dependent is used, until at last the chain of causality inevitably reaches the First Cause or causes .

So, what can we know about this First Cause(s)? We know the First Cause(s) must be such that the omniverse could not be logically imagined without it. Therefore, we know the First Cause(s) is inherently logically necessary.

Now imagine there was only one First Cause. We know this First Cause, as a First Cause, is inherently necessary. It matches all our criteria. This is logically satisfactory as at least a possibility.

Now imagine there was another first cause. This second first cause cannot be necessary, since only one first cause was already logically satisfactory. But if the second first cause is not necessary, it cannot be a first cause.

So there must be only one First Cause.

What do we logically know about the First Cause so far?
We know the First Cause must be a singular, transcendent, necessary, eternal, uncaused, immutable, self-existing, independent Existence.

We have not proved the existence of God yet. You might object that you can easily imagine the omniverse without God. But right now we're investigating the question: would that imagining be logical? We have proved that there must exist one Existence that is transcendent, necessary, eternal, uncaused, immutable, self-existing, and independent. This Existence is certainly starting to sound like God.

{In answer to your first question - Though your example seems simple, with respect to God it is pretty complicated. God actually cannot commit the crime of murder as it is defined for humans (intentionally killing an innocent human being). When we intentionally kill an innocent, we are taking away a gift that we have no right to take - life. But God is the one continuously giving life as a free, unmerited gift to each of us; it is not wrong for Him to cease giving that gift. Since He is the one who gave each of us life to begin with, it is rightly His choice when we are to die. He is also omniscient of everything, including what is best in the long term for everyone, and He knows that death is not the end. In fact, our entire lives in this world are less than a millisecond compared to the eternity that awaits us. He is the One to decide what the best way is to make us better, even if it takes us through suffering (as an addict may have to be forced into withdrawal to get better) or even through death. Morality is absolute and objective. But not every moral law that applies to humans necessarily applies to God (a simple example being that God (one person of the Trinity, the Father, is sufficient for this example) is not obligated to honor His father and mother, since He has no father and mother), insofar as the circumstances are different, since God is God and we are humans.

By no means am I saying that anything and everything might be defined as good if God were to do it. Tempting someone to do evil, for example, is something that God would never do; and if it were done it would prove God was not good. But God could potentially choose to cease giving even innocent children the gift of life on earth, for the sake of their eternal happiness, for example. To create life and decide when it ends is in God's job description.}

 

Kyle Gerkin I appreciate you writing out a lot of detailed arguments, but rather than nitpick where there might be some disagreements about causality or nothingness, I'm going to skip to the conclusion, because I think we largely agree in the end. Your conclusion is that, "We know the First Cause must be a singular, transcendent, necessary, eternal, uncaused, immutable, self-existing, independent Existence." Let's take these one by one, just to make sure we are on the same page:

Singular: Not quite sure about this. Most "singular things" (like an apple) are really a set of attributes. You might argue God is a set of attributes. But if you just mean there is a related set of attributes that we can conveniently call a singular thing, then okay.

Transcendent: A possibly slippery term, but if you mean is outside of spacetime, then yes.

Necessary: Seems to be.

Eternal: If you mean outside of time, then yes.

Uncaused: Yes.

Immutable: The concept of change seems to be meaningless outside of time, so yes.

Self-existing: The same thing as uncaused, so yes.

Independent: The same thing as uncaused, so yes.

Existence: Yes, or we are referring to nothing.

I never really disagreed with this, and apologies if I was unclear on that point. But I will be interested to see how you bridge the gap from here to a personal, choice-making mind.

You say if God tempted a human to do evil, then he would not be all-good. How about directly commanding? Suppose God commanded a human to murder an innocent child. Would that qualify as proof that he is not all-good?

 

Samuel Gerkin Glad you agree on so many of the attributes of the First Cause! By transcendent, I did mean outside of spacetime, as you guessed. But I'd like to make sure we hammer down the definition of singular.

What do you mean by a set of attributes defining oneness? By singular I mean something that really is one (not two, not three, etc.). Oneness is definitely more confusing in a physical world, but there is still a definite difference between one apple, (which really is one singular thing, though made of many parts), and one lump of play-dough (which is simply a group of a substance that we find convenient to call one, but which is not really singular).

I argue that we know that the First Cause is singular - that we know there is only one first cause, no more, because of the reasoning in my above post. This means the first cause cannot be simply a collection of atoms that we find convenient to call one, like play-dough or a galaxy, but must be really one singular thing, like an apple or a person. Not just a bunch of stuff grouped together, but one thing that holds itself together (if it needs to; i.e. if it has parts). The oneness of the First Cause does not depend on us to define it as oneness.

I propose that the oneness that the first cause logically must have narrows down the possibilities of what the first cause could be. Logic suggests that the first cause must be one such that it would not make sense, even conceptually, to split it in half.

For if it could split in half, then we would have two halves of the First Cause. Suppose either half works as a First Cause by itself. But then it is logically sufficient for the universe to be caused by only that half. But then the other half of the First Cause cannot be logically necessary, so the other half cannot be a First cause itself. Then the other half should never have been included in the definition of the First Cause to begin with. On the other hand, suppose that neither half works as a First Cause by itself (but if they are put together than they become the First Cause). But then, if they were split, there would simply be no First Cause, which would not make sense, since the first cause is logically necessary. Therefore, the First Cause is such that it cannot logically be split, even conceptually.

We can have half of a cheese sandwich. We can have half of a chair (though it would be broken). We can have half a tree (though it might die) and we can have half of a planet (though it would collapse). Conceptually, all these things could be split in half. But there is one thing which cannot be split in half, even conceptually.

A mind. A consciousness. A personal being who can choose.

We can split a brain in half, certainly, even (conceptually) while keeping one of the halves alive. But we will not get two minds or half of a mind - only one disabled mind. We could split a body in half, but we can never split a mind in half. There is either a mind within a body, or there is not. There is no in-between.

(I'm trying to figure out how Oneness works exactly as I explain it, so I don't expect the above argument to necessarily hold (my main argument for the First Cause being personal is coming later) but I think it's important that we nail down how Oneness works beforehand, so there are my thoughts so we can puzzle out Oneness).

If God directly commanded evil, then yes, God would not be all-good. But under certain rare circumstances, God may choose to do His job of deciding when life ends through a human being. But what this human being does is not then evil.

I said before that it is a moral absolute that it is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent person. This definition is the most commonly used one for this moral law, but it is not exact; it was my mistake in not stating the more exact definition of this moral law. The reason murder is wrong is because we are taking upon ourselves that which rightfully belongs only to God- the choice of when a human life should end. A better definition is that it is wrong to take it upon ourselves to choose when a human life will end. So if God did choose to stop giving His gift of life to someone through a command to another human being, that human would not be doing evil.

It's funny that the one example you asked about was the most theologically complex. Almost any other evil thing that you could have used as an example would be a simple "yes". Lying and adultery, for example.

 

Kyle Gerkin Oneness is another of these slippery concepts, that I don't think it's so easy to nail down. Let's a take a chair, for example. Sure, there can be a single, physical chair, like the one I am sitting in right now. But is there really oneness to it? Suppose I sawed off half of each leg. Would it cease to a chair? Or what if I removed the back? It would be a different *kind* of chair, but it would still be recognizable as a chair. This gets at the *idea* of a chair, which is complicated. After all, chairs come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colors, styles, with different numbers of legs (or no legs at all), different materials, etc. And yet, most humans can instantly recognize a chair when they see one. Indeed, when presented with a four-legged wooden stool and a four-legged wooden end table, most humans would have no difficulty distinguishing one from the other, despite their very similar attributes. Why is this? There is clearly a particular pattern of attributes we consider a "chair", but it's not easy to define concretely. So is the idea of a chair a singular thing or not? Is there a oneness to it? I don't think there is a clear yes or no answer--it depends on how you are approaching the question.

A mind can also be viewed at in this light. There are brains, and there are chemical reactions and electrical impulses that give rise to thoughts. But what is a mind but a label that gives coherence to a series of thoughts? And we can imagine all sorts of different minds comprised of different thoughts. Take the mind of Kyle Gerkin at age 20 and Kyle Gerkin at age 40. Most people would consider both to be a singular thing, i.e. Kyle's mind. Yet those two things are quite different, in terms of thoughts, desires, memories, etc. And we can conceive Kyle-at-20 simply not having some of the thoughts he had. So is there really an indivisible oneness there?

You also say, "There is either a mind within a body, or there is not. There is no in-between." But what about someone in a vegetative state? There is still some electrical activity in the brain, and obviously the brain is doing unconscious things like telling the body the breathe. But are they really having conscious thoughts in any meaningful sense? This is one of those weird edge cases where the label doesn't entirely fit the pattern, but it doesn't entirely *not* fit it either.

Long story short, language is imprecise, and oneness is a convenient label, but I don't think there is a special oneness in the case of a mind that can't be applied to other things.

Pivoting back to morality: So, killing an innocent human being is objectively wrong, always and everywhere...except if God does it...or if God commands it. Seems like God's all-goodness is getting a lot of outs here, and creeping back towards non-falsifiability. And if the whole reason these things are objectively wrong in the first place is because they arise from God's nature, then why isn't God bound by his own nature? But let's suppose ending a life is a special case. So what if God simply caused someone to suffer intensely (but didn't actually kill the person)? Would that prove he wasn't all-good?

 

Samuel Gerkin I disagree that someone in a vegetative state would be an edge case, anymore than someone asleep would be an edge case. There is a mind there in both cases, it is only dormant. If someone is brain dead, on the other hand, there is no mind.

We can recognize a chair in all sorts of different places; and we can also recognize half of a chair if a chair is cut in half. But we can only recognize a mind in one place, in humans, and we cannot recognize half a mind anywhere.

I think we should distinguish oneness from difference - something can be one and yet change - oneness does not imply immutability. So your mind at 20 and your mind at 40 are simply one mind after it has changed over time. I don't think that challenges its oneness.

What seems like a convenient out is reasonable when we consider the fact that there are none like God. The First Cause is by nature fundamentally different from anything else in the universe - if it makes sense that the absolute rules apply differently to this one most different being, then what seems overly convenient becomes what is most reasonable.

God *is* bound to His own nature - the absolute moral law is that only God can choose when human life will end (since He is our creator).

Suffering is not morally evil in and of itself (neither is death). It's not always evil for humans to cause one another suffering, is it? When a father tells his young son that he cannot eat ice cream for dinner (or grounds him after he does anyway), his son might consider this a great injustice and suffer. But the father is acting in his son's best interest, and it is a parental job to restrict a child's freedom for their best interest, and to teach them.

So it is for God.

Of course, if God caused someone to suffer for no reason at all, or because he found a cruel joy in that person's suffering, that would prove God is not good. But if God causes someone to suffer for their own good (as drug addicts must endure suffering to be set free of their addiction), then such *supports* God's goodness.

 

Kyle Gerkin Conceptually, I can imagine a mind and subtract half the thoughts in it. You might say "that's not a half a mind, that's just a different mind". But that's because a mind is an abstract concept. You can't divide a friendship in half either...either the friendship exists or it doesn't. You can imagine the friendship having different attributes, and being stronger or weaker (just like a mind), but that just makes it a different friendship. We could say the same for other abstract concepts too. If that's what you mean by oneness, and agree it can be applied to other abstract concepts besides minds, then we are on the same page.

Yes, a father refusing a child ice cream to teach him a lesson would not be immoral, but a father chaining his child to the radiator and feeding him nothing but dog food for three years to teach him a lesson would be highly immoral. And this is true even if the father took no pleasure in his actions and truly believed it was for his child's own good.

Of course, being chained to the radiator and fed dog food for three years is nothing compared to an eternity of torment in hell.

 

Samuel Gerkin You're right, a friendship is like a mind in its indivisibility. And I don't think either of us would deny that friendships do truly exist; so it is for minds. But is there anything like a mind in its indivisibility which would make sense to apply to the first cause? It makes sense to say the First Cause is a mind, but it does not make sense to say that the First Cause is a friendship (for many reasons).

Of course, the father in your example would be doing something highly immoral. We know that father would be wrong that this is for his child's good.

The eternal torment in hell isn't actually physical tortures that God or those serving God impose upon the damned, as is colloquially (and metaphorically) portrayed. The eternal torment in hell is the *absence* of God - who is all goodness, truth, and beauty. The reason hell exists is because God saw that it would be better to create people that had free will - and thus the ability to love - rather than robots that did everything perfectly but meaninglessly. If people have free will, then inevitably they have the ability to choose God or to refuse God. The joy of heaven is the joy of being with God - a joy those who do not choose God cannot experience by nature of their choice. These are some illuminating quotes from C.S. Lewis:

"The doors of hell are locked on the inside"

"In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven [they refuse his forgiveness]. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does."

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'"