Instigator / Con
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1500
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Topic
#6594
Can Morality Exist Without God?
Status
Voting
The participant that receives the most points from the voters is declared a winner.
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Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
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- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 5
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 7,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Winner selection
- Voting system
- Open
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0
1500
rating
1
debates
50.0%
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Description
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Round 1
Con
#1
If you really do press the meta-ethical question, getting past the feeling and just looking at the ontology, the best answer we have for the meta-ethical question is, in fact, the theistic foundation of morality.
The question is "grounding." You have these objective moral obligations, and let’s say for the sake of argument that we aren’t moral nihilists, because nobody actually is, and you have these obligations with certain peculiar features. They are prescriptive, they are authoritative, and they seem to bind us independently of our subjective desires.
Now, think about the phenomenology of an "obligation." It is a fundamentally interpersonal notion.
You don’t owe a duty to a set of physical laws; gravity doesn’t command, it just is. You don’t owe a duty to an abstract object, either—the number seven doesn’t care if you count wrong. Obligation, by definition, occurs between persons. It implies a claim of one will upon another. Therefore, if moral duties are objective and universal—binding on all rational agents, the source of that binding force must be a Person of universal authority.
That’s where the secular alternatives begin to seem a little thin.
Consider Platonism. It proposes these "Forms of The Good" that just kind of float around in the abstract. But how does an abstract thing wield power? It doesn’t do anything. It can’t command, it can’t punish, it can’t love. It’s just math.
Then there’s evolutionary naturalism, which is even more problematic from a theoretical standpoint. It offers explanation, this behavior was good for survival, but it can never span the divide to prescription. It commits the is-ought fallacy from the very start. When you tell me that altruism is "adaptive," that doesn’t tell me why I should be altruistic if it doesn’t help me.
And then there’s Constructivism. It just devolves into relativism. If morality is just a human agreement, then if we all agreed to be monsters, monstrosity would become moral. That undermines the whole notion of objective right and wrong.
- Objective moral obligations exist.(Raping toddlers for fun is really wrong, necessarily wrong, wrong whether anyone believes it or not, and wrong in every possible world in which such an act occurs.)
- Every genuine obligation is an obligation to a person.(You cannot have a real obligation to a rock, a principle, a process, an abstract object, or “evolution.” Obligations are always and only to persons. Even Kant saw this: the categorical imperative is addressed to rational beings precisely because only persons can command and be owed.)
- Moral obligations are supreme and overriding.(They trump every merely prudential, aesthetic, or conventional consideration. Nothing can legitimately override the command “Do not torture the innocent.”)
- Therefore, the “person” to whom moral obligations are owed must himself be supremely authoritative—i.e., have legitimate, unqualified, overriding authority over all possible rational beings.
- Moral obligations are eternal and necessary (they do not come into or go out of existence, and they could not have been otherwise).(Torturing innocents for pleasure was wrong before any human beings existed, would still be wrong if every human disappeared, and could not have been right in any possible world.)
- Therefore, the person who grounds these obligations must himself be eternal, necessary, and essentially good—otherwise the obligations could not have the necessity and eternality they manifestly possess.
- There is only one being who meets all these descriptions: a necessarily existing, personal, eternal, supremely authoritative, essentially and perfectly good being—i.e., God as understood in classical theism.
- Every secular attempt to ground objective morality fails catastrophically:
- Platonism: abstract objects have no authority and cannot impose obligations.
- Evolutionary naturalism: delivers only descriptive facts about what is conducive to survival/reproduction, never prescriptive obligations; commits the naturalistic fallacy at every turn.
- Constructivism / contractualism: makes morality contingent on human agreement or hypothetical contracts, collapsing into relativism or species chauvinism.
- Non-theistic personal realism (e.g., Erik Wielenberg): posits brute, necessary moral truths that “just exist” and mysteriously “bind” persons—while stripping them of any source of authority, necessity, or reason to obey. This is literally magical: uncaused, impersonal, non-authoritative necessities that somehow obligate personal beings. It is less explanatory than theism and intellectually embarrassing.
- Platonism: abstract objects have no authority and cannot impose obligations.
Therefore: If god does not exist, moral obligations do not exist
But objective moral obligations obviously do exist (anyone who denies this thereby proves it, because denial is itself a moral stance).
Hence God exists, and specifically the God of classical theism.
Pro
#2
First of all I'd like to preface my whole argument by thanking you for inviting me to this debate! Its clear you have a very well thought out and structured argument and your vocabulary is immaculate. Quite frankly I'm not sure whether I am adequately trained to handle this conversation haha. However, this is an incredibly interesting topic and something that is within my area of what I like debating on. I definitely had to do my research for this one. With that being said lets get into it.
I actually quite appreciate your take on the idea of obligations. In fact I agree with you on your claim that obligations are inherently interpersonal. To cite the official definition. An obligation is "an act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound; a duty or commitment". Therefore, obligations are, by definition, systematically bound in morality. However, what I don't quite agree with is that the notion that "moral duties are objective and universal". Now, let me break down my reasoning for this.
Morality is itself, a man made concept. Animals and trees don't exist under the presumption that what they do is morally "wrong" or" right". Which is already quite a simplistic ethical framework. As most real life moral dilemmas require some level of ambiguity and nuance. You claim that it is morally wrong to, in your words, "rape toddlers for fun". I think that almost the entirety of the human populous would agree on that. However, it gets more tricky to categorize the wrongness of this act when referring to, for example, an animal. You could not explain to a wolf why, morally, the act of sexually assaulting toddlers is "wrong". If morality is universally objective then all conscious beings should have an internal, instinctual reaction to acts that we define as "wrong". Not simply just those capable of complex rational thought. To go a step further, why would God create all rational beings to abide by this specific set of rules and then leave them up to interpretation? Children are not naturally bound by these rules. A child does not wonder whether hurting an animal is right or wrong because they do not yet understand the consequences of such an action. The consequences and the external societal reaction to their actions is what shapes a child's understanding of morality beyond their natural instinctive drives.
It is quite clear you are looking at this argument through the lens of a moral objectivist. You could argue that your example is objectively wrong because it brings unwanted suffering to an individual that did not consent to that suffering. That in itself evokes more questions. Is everything that brings unwanted suffering to an individual morally wrong? If so, would I be wrong to bring up the anti-natalist argument here and assume that giving birth is inherently and objectively immoral?
You also claim that "Moral obligations are supreme and overriding". You have a very deontological framework here. However, I would like to take a second to approach the idea of "Do not torture the innocent" and ask. What constitutes innocence to begin with? And, can such an absolutist, black and white tone be taken when discussing these complex ethical dilemmas? Innocence is itself a man-made construct that is subject to many different interpretations. These overarching, universal moral commands become a little harder to pin down when subjective constructs such as innocence come into play.
Next up you indirectly bring up the divine command theory. Stating that, because obligations are by definition interpersonal. All moral obligations must be bound by some external, supreme being of authority. In this case, God. Nevertheless, I think that we can both agree on the fact that humans can have an internal moral compass that is separate from God. For this I could bring up the usual arguments against the divine command theory and ask. What justifies the authority of such an entity over the human race? And, what happens when that entities command might contradict our intrinsic, natural human values? I brought up the issue of slavery in a previous argument that you commented on. If it could be interpreted that God would actively encourage such an act. You still would most likely not be okay with it going on. Which brings to light that separation between those two ethical systems. The Euthyphro Dilemma is something I'm sure you've grappled with before. We often pick and choose fragments of the Bible to best suit our own pre-existing beliefs. Would you say that verses such as Deuteronomy 22:28-29 and Timothy 2:11-14 are to be taken as objective moral law? And, is that not example of the evolution of humanities moral systems separate from the word of God.
Now to address your seventh point. You claim that God is a "perfectly good" being. But, what defines "perfectly good"? If this being has supreme authority over all moral reasoning then we have no authority to claim that God is good or bad. Because, supposedly, under your argument only God has the moral authority to assert goodness. Are we therefore to come to the conclusion that we can only ascertain the goodness of God under his own criteria of what is good? That in itself creates a logical fallacy and leads us back to the Euthyphro Dilemma. If this supreme entity can do whatever it pleases without us having the authority to question its judgement is there a meaningful definition of "good" here.
Finally. To address your claim that "every secular attempt to ground objective morality fails catastrophically". I agree to some extent that, yes. Philosophical frameworks such as Constructivism, Platonism, and Non-theistic personal realism do to some extent fail to ground moral objectivism in a satisfying way. Whether Evolutionary naturalism does or does not commit the naturalistic fallacy has been subject to a lot of heated debate and there are ways of factually breaking down Evolutionary naturalism without committing the naturalistic fallacy. Such as simply sticking to the factual statements of how human cooperation has aided our survival and thus shaped our psychological needs through the process of natural selection. However this is strictly a scientific observation of human evolution and does not directly relate to morality itself.
I would like to take a second and point out that the scope of this question is whether "morality" can exist without God. Not specifically objective morality. Now, you make a rather bold statement when saying that objective moral obligations cannot be denied. Denial can exist whilst lacking moral input when used as a general expression of disbelief. Or, to completly reject the concept in itself. I can deny the existence of vampires without proving their existence. Or, taking a moral stance on their existence. Denial is purely epistemological in this case.
I think you have a very good framework for your argument, and I look forward to your response.
Round 2
Con
#3
I really value your writing skills. However, when I look deeper into your argument, I feel as though it is a little confusing. It appears as though you are trying to support two opposing concepts at the same time. You can’t say that morals are simply a product of human imagination and then go on to use objective moral laws to prove your point, it doesn’t make any sense.
Lets look at the concept of “kids have to learn it, so we made it up.” To be honest, this is a little bit of a classic debate argument, often cited in philosophy circles as a genetic fallacy. You are confusing the way that we learn something with whether or not it is a real thing in the world.
For example, consider math. We don’t know the hypotenuse of a right triangle from birth; we learn it in school, often from a less-than-enthusiastic teacher. But do we make up the concepts of geometry? Of course not. We didn’t invent math; we discovered it.
If we’ve really just constructed the rules, then they’re completely arbitrary, and we can just rewrite the entire playbook. If we’re just concerned with popularity contests in the context of ‘being good,’ then what happens when the popularity contests turn ugly? History’s full of examples of that.
If we’re really just talking about something that’s completely constructed, then if a really, really broken society somehow came to the conclusion that doing horrific things to children was a fun, positive, and popular activity, then that’s exactly what it would be. By the very construct of your argument, that’s the moral choice.
It makes my stomach turn to even write those words.
But you can’t ignore where this logic naturally takes you. If you’re not willing to ground right and wrong in something substantial – whether it’s God, whether it’s a higher law, whatever , then you’re forced to argue that the idea of absolute evil is just not really evil. It’s just wrong because it’s no longer fashionable. It’s a cultural faux pas.
And yet, as you’re reading this, your gut is probably screaming at you, and you’re thinking to yourself, “No, no, no – it would still be pure evil even if a fascist regime came to power and brainwashed the entire world.”
Well, guess what? You’re not really believing in the social construct theory. You’re believing in a hard reality that exists beyond the opinions of the masses. And, in a way, you’re kind of proving my point.
You said:If morality is universally objective then all conscious beings should have an internal, instinctual reaction to acts that we define as "wrong". Not simply just those capable of complex rational thought.
Let me tell you, The objectivity of a law is not determined by the universal ability of lower animals and beings to comprehend it. An objective reality simply requires the correct sense and way to detect it. In this case of morality, that sense is simply rational agency, not consciousness.
But, hey, I've never really understood the need to drag human ethics out into the woods. The very concept of right and wrong begins to disintegrate if there isn’t a genuine moral agent present, someone who can reflect and weigh their options and make a considered decision.
If a wolf kills an elk by gutting it, that’s a brutal and violent act, but it isn’t murder.
The wolf isn’t hanging out in the bushes, debating the ethics of its actions and feeling a twinge of guilt before pouncing on its prey. It’s starving, and that’s why we make a distinction between "moral patient" and "moral agent." We include animals in our moral universe, but they don’t have the equipment in their brains to genuinely experience guilt and culpability. You can’t commit a sin if you’re just responding to your biology.
Round 3
Con
#5
Additional Points
So at the end, you're trying to say that, really, the question at stake is whether or not morality, period, exists without God, totally bypassing the "objective" part.
Which, I mean, is... a huge cop-out, obviously. Yes, subjective morality exists without God. Cultural norms, yes. Individual tastes, yes. Fashion, yes, God or no God, whatever. It's socially acceptable to not wear socks with your sandals, and no one actually believes that God cares.
The trouble is, subjective morality isn't actually morality; it's actually etiquette.
Think about it, for a second. If the reason for not murdering somebody is literally just "Hey, most of us would really prefer you didn't stab anybody today," you've essentially destroyed the entire notion of ethics.
But the moment you start telling me that the second I start pointing a finger and saying, "Hey, you ought not to be doing that," you're suddenly throwing around some kind of authority. And if that authority is just you, or a majority vote of what fifty-one percent of the population happens to believe in this decade, then I can just blow you off. Why wouldn't I? In order for a moral law to really have some teeth, so that I'm bound by it even when I really want to break it, it's got to have some kind of transcendent source.
Otherwise, your whole system of morality is just glorified peer pressure.
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You think so?
Morality is a spatiotemporal geometry created by spacetime.
I am not in the right headspace for this right now. I formally forfeit this debate. I may reopen this debate at a later time and invite you. I apologise
I apologise for accusing you of using AI. I suppose I got a little suspicious of how incredibly well spoken you are and how well your argument was put together considering the website that we are using. I can understand how GPTZero would have picked up your argument as AI considering the way it was structured and the punctuation that you used (which is the reason I ran it through in the first place after I made my response). And, there are false positives. Especially for more formal language. I can never be fully sure that I'm not arguing against AI. However, if I trust that I am not, this is probably my one chance in a million to have a real, respectful debate on a topic I enjoy so. I will take my chances lol. If you are okay to continue this debate then I don't see a reason not to keep going.
To really understand how this stuff can trip you up, and I’m talking about the math behind it, not the confuse thingy or the proof, you have to understand Perplexity first. So, basically, perplexity is like a surprise meter. So, AI, when it’s working its magic/tokens, is essentially a fancy autocomplete mechanism, and it’s trying to guess the next word based on its statistical likelihood. So, essentially, it’s generating text that’s incredibly smooth. Almost too smooth. So smooth, in fact, that it’s problematic. So, humans, on the other hand, are full of contradictions. So, sometimes we’ll use slang, and sometimes we’ll use weird and wacky ways of talking. So, essentially, we’re full of contradictions, and this is essentially high perplexity. So, now, and this is where this stuff can trip people up, is where Burstiness comes in. So, essentially, this is like a rhythm. So, AI, when it’s working its magic, writes like a metronome. So, tick, tick, tick. So, essentially, its sentences are all pretty similar in length and style. So, it’s just this constant, almost boring, rhythm. So, humans, on the other hand, don’t write like this. So, sometimes we’ll write a sentence, and then we’ll write a fragment, and then we’ll write a sentence, and then we’ll write a long, meandering sentence with three clauses because we’re trying to get this messy idea out before we run out of breath.
So yeah......
See how easily?
I don't use AI for debates
Source: Trust me bro
If this comment is detected as AI then Im genuinely f*cked up
Honestly, I copy and pasted this argument but not what I wrote precedently:
How can I trust you won't use AI, we both rely on the same burden of proof
I could have written my argument by myself (which I did) and then could have still responded with AI (to lower suspect)
It does not make sense.
Here is the argument in its most rigorous and cautious form:
Objective moral obligations exist.
(Raping toddlers for fun is really wrong, necessarily wrong, wrong whether anyone believes it or not, and wrong in every possible world in which such an act occurs.)
and etc.
GPTZero relies on perplexity and burstiness, so you can't trust it fully either
Now I'm not gonna outright throw any shade. But, I ran your text through gptzero and it flagged up as 97% written by AI. Then ran my own text. Which came up as 98 percent human. Unless you can viably provide any proof that your text wasn't written by AI I will forfeit this debate. As I cannot reasonably trust that your response won't be written by AI too. I can't believe that I didn't bother to check this before racking my brain to respond.