On Biblical Morals

On Biblical Morals 14/06/10

Fedora offers a critique of biblical morality.

Authored by: .



Introduction

Those who have read my previous article, Objective Morality and the Bible, will know that the argument it presented was, while not inherently flawed, left criminally under explained and under defended. And as I promised to do so in my followup article, “A Response to Payton,” I will be returning to the argument I presented and address issues within it that were presented to me by Payton in his response article, and numerous others in discussions I had with them in the comment section of my aforementioned article and elsewhere. I am not about to abandon what I maintain is still a perfectly legitimate argument at the first signs of adversity.


The Argument

I preface the following section with a few brief warnings. This argument was constructed in response to the theistic argument which points to the existence of an objective set of ethical facts, and cites God as the only possible source of such facts, in an attempt to show the existence of a deity to be a necessary conclusion. By this I mean I will work with the same premises but I do not hold them to be true. I am working with the same premises as the aforementioned argument so as to show its internal inconsistencies. This seemed to trip up a few people in my last article, so I write this to clear the air of any confusion.
In addition I will be using the Judeo-Christian God (as described in the Bible) as my template for God and his actions. This is not a flaw in the argument, but it simply provides a limitation within which it has any meaning. I stress again, this is not a weakness of the argument. It is only a limitation, albeit to one of the largest and most influential religions of the world. I will address further possible misunderstandings later in the article as it becomes necessary, but for now I move on to the actual argument.


The argument I presented in my previous piece, while only edited for purposes of removing grammatical and structural errors, reads as follows :
  1. The Judeo-Christian God has revealed to human beings a perfect, objective moral set of ethical facts, contained in the Bible. (Ten commandments, Jesus, et. al)
  2. An objective set of ethical facts must be followed by all beings.
  3. Human beings and any God must hold to be true the same objective, perfect, set of ethical facts.
  4. God must follow any objective or perfect set of ethical facts.
  5. As God is perfect, he cannot follow an imperfect set of ethical facts.
  6. The Judeo-Christian God, as described in the Bible, does not adhere to ethical facts humans find to be true.
  7. Given [2-6], either God or human beings follow an imperfect set of ethical facts.
  8. Given [3-7] God must follow a perfect set of ethical facts.
  9. Human beings must believe to be true an imperfect, non-objective set of ethical facts.
  10. From [1-9], the Judeo-Christian God cannot have revealed to Human beings a true, objective, perfect, set of ethical facts
In this argument I define objective to mean : not subject to personal beliefs or whims, nor dependent upon the ideas or beliefs of any mind(s) or entity(entities). Objective ethical fact : Moral statements, i.e killing is wrong, which are true independent of any individual entity or group of entities. Given these definitions, I will defend the argument which I have presented.
On Objections

The only premises which met any opposition in response to my previous article were four and six. Premise four, “God must follow any objective or perfect set of ethical facts,” was countered with the objection, voiced by Zach Blaesi amongst others, that God need not follow the ethical facts that we do. To put it one way, as he is God he need not pay any ethical facts any heed, as he is perfect.
Admittedly when one begins to discuss topic like “perfect,” be it in reference to moral perfection or other types of perfection, the topic can become very difficult to follow. And in that sense, this argument may become very hard to understand and follow, due to the complexity of the term perfect, a certain definition of which this argument hinges upon.  So before I continue I will put forth MY definition of moral perfection :


A being is morally perfect if it follows any and all ethical facts it is aware of which pertain to it. Do note, though, this takes into account the concept the lesser of two evils, along with other situations which would force the being into making a morally bad decision.
Back to defending premise three. Again, the only argument which I have heard put forth against Gods accountability to an objective set or moral facts is that, as he is perfect, he need not cater to them However, this seems like a very odd proposition. God, as being morally perfect, would surely not shrug off ethical facts and laws, would he? It seems to me a much more logical explanation that a morally perfect being would embrace these facts, not shrug them off as insignificant.
The notion that God is not accountable to these ethical facts as he is morally perfect also raises the question as to how we deem him morally perfect in the first place. If he has no need to abide by these ethical facts because he is morally perfect, by what criteria do we judge him to be morally perfect? We could use this same logic to show that anyone is morally perfect. We can simply say person (x) does not need to abide by any ethical facts because he or she is morally perfect, and we can show they are morally perfect because they abide by all ethical laws which pertain to them.
I may be flawed in my thinking, here, but this objection seems to fall into the category of begging the question. Again, this objection to an objection may very well fall to the very problem I mentioned earlier of definitions. Ones definition of moral perfection may differ from my own in some degree that would make my logic flawed and no longer correct.
The second objection which I feel needs to be addressed is that the moral law revealed in the Bible only pertains to the people who inhabited the world at the time of its writing. However, not only would this render the moral law subjective, but it would also invalidate the argument which this argument is a response to, in which case, this counter would show both to be fallacious, rendering this argument superfluous. There are several other objections which have a similar effect, which I will simply list here, but not address at length.
  • There is no objective moral law
  • God is not necessary for an objective moral law.
  • The moral law which pertained to the time of Jesus and the moral law which would pertain to modern times are different.
  • Humans do not follow this objective moral law
  • Humans follow erroneous ethical facts
  • Humans have misinterpreted this objective moral law
My reasoning for the off hand dismissal of these objections is simply because the objections they raise are also fair objections to the original argument which this one is meant to counter, or at least, to show internal inconsistencies of. I can summarize that point with this : this argument assumes fallacious premises, and ignores the problems with them, simply for the point of argument. If one raises any of these points against this argument, they have simply shown the incoherence of the argument this is attempting to refute. I am drawing the premises used in the moral argument to their full conclusion, and showing the problems within these conclusions.
As far as premise six goes, this point seemed largely uncontested, accept for in the case of Payton Alexander’s response article. The main story which seemed to emphasize this point was the book of Job, in which Job was put through terrible ordeals to prove to the devil that Job had very strong faith in God. Now, many people would say this is because of human imperfection and sin, however, the Bible itself tells of forgiveness in passages such as Matthew 18:21-22:


“21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”
Not only that, but God himself describes Job as “blameless and upright, a man who shuns evil and fears God.” Job seems to fail to meet any of the criteria for someone worthy of receiving such injustices.
Now, that was not the only example I presented of God not following commonly accepted, modern societal norms, but it was the most powerful. The basic point of these examples is that God does things which, in the apparently objective set of ethical facts which modern Humans hold to be correct, are considered bad. And the problem this presents, which may have escaped some people, was that the ethical facts humans and God would have to follow are different. Not one or the other being wrong, they are just different.


Afterword

And with that, I bring this article to an end. As I voiced in the article itself, I predict that any problems which are shown to be contained within my argument will be ones of definition. I strongly believe that anyone who accepts the definitions outlined in this article will have to come to the same conclusion I have outlined. However, if one defines the outlined terms differently then I have above, or ascribes perfection with different qualified than I have above, the entire argument falls apart at the seams. However, if I can find a set in stone definition of perfection, along with the other terms which this article bandied about so often, and my argument coincides with these definitions, I will most likely write a third and final installment in my development of this argument with those definitions taken into account.
The one other area in which I see this argument failing is in the possible exemption of God from moral laws. While this seems like a rather strange concept to me, and I do have many problems with it, if those problems are shown to be non issues, and are reconciled, then this idea will offer a legitimate out to this argument.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Free WordPress Theme