Essay:Another view on morality
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Often times people will argue against the moral argument by outright rejecting it, pointing out that it's flawed or that people tend to make shit up as they write what they're apparently hearing., but I offer a different perspective.
The argument, frequently peddled by apologists in this form, goes as such
Premise 1: Objective morals exist Premise 2: Objective morals come from God (or any other fanciful deity you wish to invent) Conclusion: God exists
One could typically argue against the first premise by pointing out moral relativism, or the fact Christianity no longer accepts slavery (thanks to a certain William Wilburforce, who, ironically, was a member of the evangelical wing of the Church of England), but, for reasons to explain, I accept the first premise. I'll explain why and, in the same fell swoop, discredit the second premise
Proof[edit]
Lemma 1[edit]
It is possible that through the laws of population dynamics and group interaction that some morals always arise as a necessity. As these morals tend to be somewhat universal, they can be called objective by definition.
Proof[edit]
Let there be two individuals in a group called "Pack A" and let those two individuals be called "Joe" and "Dave"
Suppose these two individuals encounter a member of another species stronger than them in some way (bigger, stronger, scarier) and that one of the two members of Pack A cannot take out the thing by himself but that the entirety of Pack A could take out the animal. Would it not be highly, highly inefficient if Joe got pissed and killed Dave? Therefore, the members of Pack A could come together and write on some stone tablet somewhere "Thou shalt not kill"
Furthermore, suppose a few more individuals, some female, some male, would come and join Pack A and help them kill even more game. Call the totality of this group Pack B and call the individual members "Joe", "Dave", "Bill", "Susan", "Ellen" and "Evelyn". Now suppose that some of the individuals, i.e the three latter members of Pack B aren't strong enough to hunt (no, we're not suggesting women are weaker than men. It just seemed more realistic that in paleolithic times men would go out and hunt). This would then suggest that, in order to procreate and thus survive, Joe, Dave and Bill would have to share their food with Susan, Ellen and Evelyn, therefore discrediting the idea, commonly held by people like Ken Ham, that one requires and extradimensional agent to induce feelings of generosity and altruism.
We could go on like this about other common moral laws, however, by induction, we can safely assume the lemma to be true
Lemma 2[edit]
In the phrase "Laws must have been given by a lawgiver" commonly repeated ad nauseam by fundamentalists, the lawgiver need not necessarily be an extradimensional agent
Proof[edit]
Put simply, Pack B could have come together and said to each other "Hey, let's not kill each other. And to make sure no one kills each other, let's invent some infinitely powerful arbiter to punish anyone who does. Let's hope they believe us though"
Conclusion[edit]
As Lemma 2 exposes, those objective moral standards need not be given by God, therefore bringing the whole argument down.