On April 24, 2024, Dr. James P. Sterba, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame, debated Dr. Adam Lloyd Johnson, president of Convincing Proof Ministries. They debated the question “Without God, Can There Be an Objective Ethics?” Dr. Sterba took the affirmative position that there can be an objective ethics without God, and Dr. Johnson took the negative position, that there cannot be an objective ethics without God. The debate took place at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and was sponsored by the Ratio Christi chapter at UNL.
Debate Transcript
Opening Speech: Jim Sterba
Without the existence of the all-good, all-powerful God of traditional theism can there be an objective ethics? My answer to this question has two steps. First, I will argue that the existence of the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the evil in our world. This establishes that the God of traditional theism does not in fact exist in our world.1 Second, I will argue that there is an objective ethics accessible to us in our world even with the proven absence of the God of traditional theism.
First Step
So, what is my argument that the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world?2 My argument begins by noting that all the goods that God could provide to us are either goods to which we have a right or goods to which we do not have a right. Each of these types can be further divided into goods that are logically dependent on God’s permission of horrendous evil consequences and goods that are not logically dependent on God permission of horrendous evil consequences. This gives us a fourfold classification of all the goods with which God could provide us.
I then set out three necessary moral requirements that apply to all the goods that God could provide to us. These requirements are exceptionless minimal components of the Pauline Principle never to do evil that good may come of it that would be acceptable to consequentialists and nonconsequentialists alike. These requirements would be acceptable to consequentialists and nonconsequentialists because as these minimal components of the Pauline Principle have been formulated, there are no good consequentialist or nonconsequentialist reasons for violating them. Theists and atheists should also accept these requirements for the same reasons that consequentialists and nonconsequentialists accept them.
Here is the first requirement:
Moral Evil Prevention Requirement A: Prevent horrendous evil consequences when one can easily do so without violating anyone’s rights and no other goods are at stake.
What is there not to like about the requirement? Surely, it is an exceptionless, necessary moral requirement.
The next requirement is:
Moral Evil Prevention Requirement B: Don’t secure a good using morally objectionable means when you can easily secure the same good by using morally unobjectionable means.
Again, what is there not to like about this requirement? Is it not an exceptionless, necessary moral requirement, just like MEPR A?
The last requirement is:
Moral Evil Prevention Requirement C: Do not permit rather than prevent the infliction of especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions on their would-be victims in order to provide would-be beneficiaries with goods they would morally prefer not to have.
Now without the infliction of horrendous evil consequences on their victims, the would-be beneficiaries of such consequences could still enjoy the opportunity to be friends with God, the resources for a decent life, an equal liberty for soul-making, and all the other goods that God could provide that are not logically dependent on his permission of horrendous evil consequences. Moreover, the would-be beneficiaries don’t need and can easily do without those goods that are logically dependent on God’s permission of those horrendous evil consequences, and lastly the infliction of such horrendous evil consequences is also irreparable because there are no goods that God could otherwise provide that could adequately make up for God’s not preventing those horrendous consequences in the first place.
It follows that God should have acted to respect the moral preferences of the would-beneficiaries not to receive such goods. Even the perpetrators of such wrongful deeds, who later utilize the opportunity to repent and seek forgiveness would always morally prefer that God had prevented the horrendous evil consequences of their immoral actions, especially given the irreparable harm such consequences inflict on their victims. So, in virtue of MEPR C, God should have acted to respect the moral preferences of all the would-be beneficiaries of the horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions and prevented the infliction of those horrendous consequences on their victims.
Is MEPR C then not on a par with MEPR A and B, and as such an exceptionless necessary moral requirement? In the case of MEPR C, preventing the horrendous evil consequences does not provide the only good that is at stake for the would-be beneficiaries, as is the case for MEPR A. Nor is it the case for MEPR C that its would-be beneficiaries could get whatever good is at issue without permitting horrendous evil consequences as holds for MEPR B. Rather, for MEPR C, the goods that would-be beneficiaries could receive if God were to prevent the horrendous evil consequences at issue are just incomparably greater than the goods that they could receive if God permitted those horrendous evil consequences, and this holds especially for those on whom the horrendous evil consequences would have been irreparably inflicted if God permitted them. Hence, there is no way the moral argument for MEPR C could he any stronger.
In sum, all goods that could be provided to us are either goods to which we have a right or goods to which we do not have a right. Each of these types further divides into first-order goods that do not logically depend on moral wrongdoing and second-order goods that do logically depend on moral wrongdoing. With respect then to first-order goods to which we have a right and first-order goods to which we do not have a right, Moral Evil Prevention Requirement A and B respectively morally constrain the pursuit of greater good justifications for both God and ourselves. And with respect to second-order goods to which we have a right and second-order goods to which we do not have a right, according to Moral Evil Prevention Requirement C, the preferences of the would-be beneficiaries of such goods conclusively morally require that God prevent the first-order evil consequences on which the very existence of those second-order goods depend.
Still, it might be objected that if God were ever to start acting as preventer of last resort of horrendous evil consequences, good people would no longer have the motivation to prevent such evil consequences themselves. Now I have argued elsewhere that when we choose to intervene to prevent especially horrendously evil consequences of immoral actions, either we will be completely successful in preventing those consequences or our intervention will fall short. When the latter is going to happen, I claim, God should do something to make the prevention completely successful. Likewise, when we choose not to intervene to prevent such consequences, I claim, God should again intervene but not in a way that is fully successful. Here there is a residue of evil consequences that the victim still does suffer. This residue is not a horrendous evil, but it is a significant one, and it is something for which we are primarily responsible. We could have prevented those consequences, but we chose not to do so and that makes us responsible for them. Of course, God too could prevent those harmful consequences from happening even if we don’t. It is just that in such cases, God should choose not to intervene so as to completely prevent both the significant as well as the horrendous evil consequences of wrongful actions in order to leave us with an ample opportunity for soul-making. I argued that if God were to prevent just the horrendous evil consequences of such actions in this way, it would clearly make the world much, much better than the world we currently inhabit, and it definitely would not turn the world into a moral kindergarten since we would be able to prevent both the significant and the horrendous consequences of immoral actions, sometimes with God’s help, when we choose to do so, and when we choose not to do so, we would be responsible for the significant evil consequences of those actions which we are imagining God would choose not to prevent in such cases in order to give us an ample opportunity for soul-making. Instead of being a moral kindergarten, it would be a world that morally good people would prefer to inhabit. It would just not be our world in which the horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions abound, consequences that an all-good, all-powerful God of traditional theism, if he existed, would not have permitted.
We can also restate my argument to approximate the form that John Mackie should have used to succeed in his famous exchange with Alvin Plantinga as follows:
- There is an all-good, all-powerful God. (This is assumed for the sake of argument by both Mackie and Plantinga.)
- If there is an all-good, all-powerful God then necessarily he would be adhering to Moral Evil Prevention Requirements A-C.
- If God were adhering to Moral Evil Prevention Requirements A-C, then necessarily especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions would not be obtaining through what would have to be his permission.
- Horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions do obtain all around us, which, if God exists, would have to be through his permission. (This is assumed by both Mackie and Plantinga.)
- Therefore, it is not the case that there is an all-good, all-powerful God, which contradicts (1).
Second Step
How then do I propose to show that there is an objective ethics accessible to us in our world given the proven absence of the God of traditional theism in our world? Let us begin with our natural abilities. Frequently enough, we find ourselves having to decide whether to act one way rather than another, and frequently enough, we find ourselves weighing our own interests against the interests of others when deciding what to do. So why not understand moral requirements to be based on an appropriate weighing of our own interests and the interests of others? Surely, atheists as well as theists could come to know what is in their own self-interest as well as what is in the interest of others. Of course, these determinations would have to be made simply on the basis of what we can know about ourselves and others independently of any theological beliefs that we may or may not happen to have.3 Such an appropriate weighing of competing interests of ourselves and others should then enable us to understand that murder and stealing are morally wrong, and, more generally, that the pursuit of our own self-interest must sometimes be constrained for the sake of the interests of others, especially when doing so avoids inflicting serious harm on others. We also need to go further and take the most basic norm of morality to be to treat all relevant interests appropriately, that is, fairly, and then understand all other moral norms to be derivable from this one most basic norm. Morality then would be the standard by which everyone’s relevant interests are treated fairly. Moral requirements would then hold of any being who is capable of fairly assessing the relevant interests of others and acting upon that assessment. So understood, moral requirements would clearly be accessible to theists and atheists alike.
From Rationality to Morality
Now I have claimed that the most basic moral requirement for theists and atheists is to treat all relevant interests fairly. Yet can’t the supremacy of this norm be challenged both from a self-interested and from an altruistic perspective? Thus, imagine an egoist claiming that what we ought to do is always do what best serves our own self-interest and a pure altruist claiming that what we ought to do is always do what best serves the interests of others. Obviously, the most basic requirement of morality that I propose attempts to go in between these two perspectives. But is there any good argument for doing so?
Now good arguments are by definition nonquestion-begging, that is, they do not assume what they are trying to prove. So, the question at issue here is which perspective should each of us take as supreme, and obviously this question would be begged if we just assumed from the start that we should take either the egoistic or the altruistic perspective as supreme.
Suppose then we were to ideally rank our true egoistic interests from the highest ranking to the lowest ranking while at the same time ranking our true altruistic interests for the highest ranking to the lowest ranking. We would then face two kinds of cases: cases in which there is a conflict between our relevant egoistic and altruistic interests and cases in which there is no such conflict.
It seems obvious that where there is no conflict and both interests are conclusive interests of their kind, both interests should be acted upon. In such contexts, we should do what is favored both by our egoistic and altruistic interests.
Now when we rationally assess the relevant interests in conflict cases, three solutions are possible:
- Egoistic interests always have priority over conflicting altruistic interests.
- Altruistic interests always have priority over conflicting egoistic interests.
- Some kind of compromise is rationally required. In this compromise, sometimes egoistic interests have priority over altruistic interests, and sometimes altruistic interests would have priority over egoistic interests.
Once the conflict is described in this manner, the third solution can be seen to be the one that is rationally required. This is because the first and second solutions give exclusive priority to one class of interests over the other, and only a question-begging justification can be given for such an exclusive priority. Only by employing the third solution—sometimes giving priority to egoistic interests and sometimes giving priority to altruistic interests—can we avoid a question-begging resolution.
Morality as Compromise
Notice too that this standard of rationality will not support just any compromise between the relevant egoistic and altruistic interests. The compromise must be a nonarbitrary one, for otherwise it would beg the question with respect to the opposing egoistic or altruistic perspectives. Such a compromise would have to respect the rankings of both egoistic and altruistic interests imposed by the egoistic and altruistic perspectives, respectively. Accordingly, any nonarbitrary compromise among such interests in seeking not to beg the question against either egoism or altruism will have to give priority to those interests that rank highest in each category. Failure to give priority to the highest-ranking egoistic or altruistic interests would, other things being equal, be contrary to reason.
Now to view morality as a nonquestion-begging compromise between our egoistic and altruistic interests is also to view morality as fairly taking into account those same interests. This is because the standard of nonquestion-beggingness that is required of good arguments is the same standard of fairness that morality applies to all relevant interests. In this way, the fairness that morality requires of us when we are dealing with conflicts between ourselves and others reflects and is justified by the fairness that is required of us in argumentation. This means that the most basic norm of morality – treat all relevant interests fairly is further justified by the nonquestion-begging requirement of good argumentation.4 In this way, the basic norm of morality is shown to be rationally preferable to both its egoistic and altruistic alternatives.
Now a fair assessment of the relevant interests can be done in a number of ways. For example, one could employ a Rawlsian veil of ignorance with parties in an original position representing all relevant interests. That would result in each person having a right to the resources and opportunities for a decent life.5 Of course, there will be some variation with respect to what is to count as a fair evaluation of all relevant interests, but it should not be that different if every effort is made to carry out that evaluation in a nonquestion-begging way.
In sum, we have seen, theists have wanted to argue that ethics is ultimately grounded in God’s commands and in his nature. Yet, I have shown that the existence of the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world. Hence the commands and nature of a nonexistent God cannot be the grounds for the moral requirements we recognize. Rather, I have shown that ethics can be justified by appealing to the basic norm of morality which is to treat all relevant interests fairly that in turn can be justified by appeal to the nonquestion-begging requirement of good argumentation.
[1] Although it is unnecessary for my purposes, it can be further argued that if the existence of the God of traditional theism does not exist in our world then he does not exists in any possible world.
[2] See also my Is a Good God Possible? (Palgrave, 2019) and Religions, Special Issue, Do we now have a logical argument from evil? (2023).
[3] What is at stake here are fundamentally prima facie prudential normative claims, such as pleasure, food, sleep are goods for us and prima facie altruistic normative claims that turn prudential claims for others into altruistic claims for ourselves. Now while these normative claims are context dependent, they too, like the norms of morality, are not derivable simply from nonnormative facts. They have the form that X is prima facie good because it has natural properties 1-n and no other natural properties X has are relevant to X’s prima facie goodness. The inclusion of this last property of X being itself a normative property serves in turn to make the claim that X is a prima facie good itself into either a prudential or an altruistic normative claim. But that does not make it into a moral claim justified by a moral norm. Moral claims are a different kind of normative claim that involve weighing egoistic or prudential goods against altruistic goods.
[4] The basic principle of morality takes into account both human and nonhuman interests, which include the interests of sentient and nonsentient living beings, and this in turn leads to a biocentric account of morality. See From Rationality to Equality, pp.140-161.
[5] For another way to do this assessment, see “From Liberty to Equality,” Chapter 6 in From Rationality to Equality.
Opening Speech: Adam Johnson
Imagine hiking up a mountain with a friend. You discover what looks like a sculpture of a horse. After inspecting it you suggest it’s an ancient sculpture which intelligent minds, humans, designed out of the rock. Your friend disagrees; she thinks it’s a boulder that just happens to look like a horse. You debate, both giving reasons to think your theory is the better explanation.
There’s a similar debate between atheists and theists. Here in this reality we find ourselves in we’ve discovered some interesting things. For example, we exist in this intricate universe that began sometime in the finite past. Since this universe has many features which seem designed and fine-tuned, theists argue the best explanation is that it came from some sort of intelligent mind they call God. Many say this fine-tuning argument is the strongest argument for God. Atheists argue God isn’t the best explanation for the universe and propose other theories.
Another interesting thing we’ve discovered is moral truth. Here are four aspects to moral truth we’ve discovered:
- First, some actions are morally good, like building an orphanage. Some actions are bad, like murder. But what makes some actions good and others bad?
- Second, humans have moral obligations; certain things we ought to do and other things we shouldn’t. But where do these authoritative “oughts” come from?
- Third, humans have moral worth. Every person is special and should be treated respectfully. But why are humans more special than other forms of life such as thorn bushes?
- Fourth, humans have moral rights such as the right to life and various freedoms. But how do we have such rights and other forms of life, like cows, don’t?
Some claim these moral statements aren’t objectively real but are just your subjective beliefs, similar to your favorite ice-cream. Your favorite ice-cream is subjective because it depends only on your thinking. If you change your mind about your favorite flavor then your favorite changes because it’s based only on how you think. There’s no objectively right or wrong flavor; it’s subjective and thus relative. My favorite is chocolate but yours might be vanilla. Moral subjectivists claim our moral beliefs are like this.
Moral Realists like myself argue there’s more to morality than just our own ideas, that there are objectively real, fixed moral truths that are true independent of what we think. They’re like mathematical truths in that they’re fixed independent from us, can’t be changed even if our beliefs about them change, and we discover them, we don’t create them.
Here’s a good thought experiment to figure out if something is subjective or objectively real—imagine a mad scientist gave us all pills so that pistachio ice-cream was our favorite. Would that make pistachio our favorite? Yes, because our favorite ice-cream is determined only by how we think; it’s subjective. But if a mad scientist gave us pills so we all thought 2+2=5, would that make 2+2=5? No, because that’s objectively real and fixed independent of what we think. Here’s the key question: Is morality determined subjectively by how we think, like our favorite ice-cream, or is it objectively real like 2+2=4? If a mad scientist gave us pills so we all believed rape was morally good, would that make rape morally good? No, rape would still be evil even if none of us believed it was, because that moral truth is objectively fixed independent of what we think.
Most agree morality is objectively real but that’s not enough. In order to justify this position, we need to provide a good explanation for how it can be objectively real. That’s what this debate is about—who has the best explanation for how morality can be objectively real?
Nearly all theists agree God is the best explanation for objective morality but disagree about how this works. My explanation is called Divine Love Theory. I’ll argue my theory is a better explanation for objective morality than Jim’s theory.
First, my theory of what makes an action morally good was influenced by philosopher Robert Adams, a professor at Yale and Oxford. He argues God is the ultimate fixed standard of moral goodness. And therefore a human action is morally good when it resembles God. My theory is similar but I propose ultimate moral goodness is the loving relationships between the members of the Trinity. God is one being but three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. The love between these divine persons is the perfect standard of moral goodness, a fixed unchanging measuring stick by which our actions can be measured to see if they’re good or not. It’s morally good to build an orphanage because that resembles the ultimate fixed standard of goodness, the love within the Trinity. But if I tell hurtful lies about someone, that’s morally bad because that doesn’t resemble the love within the Trinity.
Second, my explanation for moral obligations, why we ought to do good things, begins by noting God created us to extend the loving fellowship of the Trinity. Our obligations originate from this purpose God created us for—to enjoy loving relationships with Him and others. Our obligations are generated when God makes us aware of what’s good and bad and that we should do what’s good. God makes us aware indirectly through our conscience and directly through commands. It’s important to note God’s commands are merely instructions on how to best achieve the purpose we’re created for—to love God and love others. We should follow God’s instructions because of our loving relationship with Him; obeying God is one of the ways we express our love for Him. In that sense the basis of our obligations is our relationship with God, similar to a parent/child relationship.
Third, my theory explains why every man, woman, and child has moral worth—because we’re created in God’s image, to resemble God in enjoying loving relationships.
Fourth, my theory explains moral rights; our country’s founding fathers were correct that we’re all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. And these rights flow from being created in God’s image to enjoy loving relationships.
Many atheists argue only God could provide a foundation for objective morality. Since they believe there’s no God, they conclude morality isn’t objectively real. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche ridiculed those who thought “morality could survive when the God who sanctions it is missing!”1 Other atheists, like Jim, have tried to develop explanations for how morality could be objective even if there’s no God.
One of the reasons why Sterba believes God isn’t the best explanation for objective morality is he’s convinced, because of the problem of evil, that there’s no God. However, evil doesn’t prove there’s no God, only that we might not know why God allows evil. Many reasons have been proposed for why God allows evil. Here’s one possibility I call Divine Love Theodicy:
Sometimes we think God could’ve created any possible universe we can imagine. If God is all powerful, surely He could’ve created a universe almost like this one but with a little less suffering, right? Maybe not. It might be the case God imposed constraints on Himself which limited the types of universes He could choose to create. For example, He may have decided to create humans with free will and constrain Himself from forcing them to do what He wants because that would violate their free will. Why would God impose this sort of constraint on Himself? Free will is required to experience the greatest good, that is, loving relationships with God and with others. Love requires free will; if God forced us to love that wouldn’t be real love, we’d just be puppets doing what God forced us to. Nobody wants to be in a relationship with someone who’s forced to love them but with someone who chooses to. If this was the case, then God faced these options:
- Create nothing.
- Create a universe with human puppets that look like they’re enjoying loving relationships. But really God is just pulling their strings and forcing them to do these things and thus there wouldn’t be real love.
- Create a universe with humans who have free will so that there’d be true loving relationships, knowing that some, possibly all, would sometimes use their freedom to do evil which causes suffering.
It’s reasonable God would choose the third option. Even though He knew it’d involve some evil, He also knew there’d be real loving relationships, the value of which outweighs the suffering.
Now within the third option there’d be many different ways God could have the circumstances play out. Though the number of possible ways God could orchestrate the circumstances would be limited because He constrains Himself from violating people’s free will. But couldn’t He orchestrate circumstances to minimize the suffering people cause by their evil choices? Maybe that’s exactly what He did. Maybe out of all the possible ways of how things could play out within option three, He chose this set of circumstances we’re experiencing because this had the least suffering. It might be that if He prevented any specific suffering in this universe, that’d somehow lead to worse suffering later. Or it might be that if God removed the horrendous consequences of our evil choices, then overall we’d choose to do even more evil.
Or, maybe minimizing suffering wasn’t God’s only goal. Maybe God had another goal to maximize the greatest good—loving relationships with God and with others. If that’s true then, after evaluating every possible path for how the universe could play out, God chose the one that maximizes the quality and quantity of loving relationships for a given amount of suffering from our evil choices. That might be the universe we’re living in; we could be experiencing the best possible universe, the one that maximizes loving relationships for a given amount of suffering.
We might think God could lower the amount of suffering while keeping the quantity and quality of loving relationships the same. But that’s impossible for us to know given our finite knowledge; we just can’t fathom all the ripple effects, either in this life or the next, that’d come from adjusting various circumstances. It might not be the case that the quality and quantity of loving relationships are directly dependent upon evil and suffering. But it’s reasonable to think that changing the circumstances to adjust the amount of suffering could have ripple effects that eventually affect the overall quantity or quality of loving relationships.
We might also think that the benefit of increasing loving relationships isn’t worth the cost of the extra suffering that might be entailed. But again, as finite beings it’s extremely difficult for us to do that sort of tradeoff calculation. We tend to overestimate the cost of suffering, especially when we’re in the midst of it. But if God is all knowing, then He’d know exactly how to calculate the best tradeoff and how to maximize the quantity and quality of loving relationships for a given amount of suffering.
I’m not claiming this is exactly what happened; I’m just proposing it’s a possibility. Like many, I’ve experienced terrible suffering myself. I’ve wondered why God would allow such pain and why He wouldn’t rescue me from it. There’ve been times I’ve felt God didn’t care or might not even exist. But when my emotions settle down and I consider the situation more calmly, I conclude there are two reasons the problem of evil shouldn’t lead us to think there’s no God. First, there’s so many good reasons to believe there is a God like the Fine-Tuning Argument and the First Cause Argument. Second, even if we don’t know exactly why God allows evil, there are several possible, reasonable explanations for why He does.
As for Jim’s moral theory, he said ethics can be justified by appealing to the most basic moral norm of fairness, treating everyone’s interests fairly. And all other moral norms can be derived from this one most basic moral norm. Fairness in turn can be justified by appealing to rational principles. That’s why he titled his book From Rationality to Equality. Since fairness and rationality can be calculated objectively, Jim thinks he’s shown morality can be objective even if there’s no God. But is this theory the best explanation of objective morality? I’ll argue Sterba’s theory is not a plausible explanation because it doesn’t adequately explain the four aspects of morality we’ve discovered.
First, he hasn’t given us a convincing explanation of what makes something morally good. What makes building an orphanage a good thing to do? G. E. Moore’s open question dilemma helps explain why Jim’s theory of moral goodness is unsuccessful. Moore, one of the founders of analytic philosophy, said that people commit a naturalistic fallacy when they try to define moral goodness by identifying it with a property such as the avoidance of harm or some rational principle. Whatever property someone claims is identical with moral goodness, it will always be an open question whether that property itself is morally good. If someone claims moral goodness is not harming others, the open question becomes: Why is not harming others morally good? Jim claims fairness is morally good because it accords with rational principles. But why is accordance with rationality morally good? He hasn’t given us good reasons to accept that major assumption at the foundation of his theory.
Moore argued the only way to avoid this open question dilemma is to conclude, as he did, that moral goodness is a separate non-reductive property. Aquinas argued similarly that “each good thing that is not its goodness is … good by participation. But that which is [good] … by participation has something prior to it from which it receives … goodness. This cannot proceed to infinity…. We must therefore reach some first good, that is not by participation good … but is good through its own essence.”2
The conversation would go like this: Why is building an orphanage morally good? Jim would say that’s morally good because that’s fair. But why is being fair morally good? Jim would say being fair is morally good because it’s rational. But why is being rational morally good? To avoid this going on forever, there must be something ultimate that just is The Good itself. When the question is asked, well, why is that good, the answer is similar to the end of the First Cause argument for God—because it just is. There’s nothing before it that caused it and there’s nothing behind it that makes it good, it just is the good. To avoid an infinite series, every moral theory eventually proposes an ultimate Good that just is goodness itself. Jim proposed rationality is the ultimate good whereas I’m proposing God is the ultimate good. Here’s the key question: Which proposed ultimate good, rationality or God, is the better, more plausible explanation for objective morality?
Second, Sterba hasn’t given us a convincing explanation of where our moral obligations come from. Why should we do good things? He said moral requirements would apply to any being who’s capable of fairly assessing the interests of others and acting on them. But why are we obligated to be fair or rational? How could rational principles generate authoritative obligations and duties? If there’s no God, then atheist scientist Jacques Monod was correct that “man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty.”3
Third, Jim hasn’t explained why humans have moral worth. If there’s no God then there’s nothing special about human beings. Of course we think we’re special, but that’s subjective. If there’s no God, then atheist Bertrand Russell was correct that “man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving … his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms.”4
Fourth, Jim hasn’t explained where moral rights come from. If there’s no God, then atheist Friedrich Nietzsche was correct that moral rights were invented by weak people to try to make strong people feel guilty for oppressing them.
[1] Nietzsche, Will to Power, 147.
[2] Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles Book One, I-38.
[3] Monod, Chance and Necessity, 180.
[4] Russell, “Free Man’s Worship,” 416.
First Response: Jim Sterba
Adam began his first talk with a brief consideration of design and fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God. He doesn’t seem to realize that even if these arguments were successful, which I don’t think they are, all they would show, in light of my argument from evil, is that although the universe has a designer/fine tuner, that designer/fine tuner cannot be the all-good, all-powerful God of traditional theism. This is because my argument shows that such a God is logically incompatible especially with all the horrendous evil consequences we find all around us in the world. Hence, my argument from evil deprives Adam of just the explainer he wanted for the existence of objective morality in our world.
Accordingly, you might think that Adam would seek to critique the various working parts of my argument from evil that I devoted more than half of my first talk to setting out. But Adam doesn’t do this. All that he says directly against my argument is that “evil doesn’t prove there’s no God, only that we might not know why God allows evil.”
That hardly serves to undermine my argument that purports to show that certain kinds of evil in the world are logically incompatible with the all-good, all-powerful God of traditional theism. So, Adam needs to say something about the specifics of my argument. If my argument stands, Adam is deprived of the explainer for objective morality that he wants to employ.
Now Adam does provide what I have called in my book Is a Good God Logically Possible? an argument from an ethics before creation. This argument does have some merit. I agree that before creation God would have considerable options as to what to create. However, what Adam fails to realize is that my argument from evil does not appeal to an ethics before creation, but rather to an ethics after creation. It is an argument about what God should and should not do after he has created us when he no longer faces the same options that he faced before he created us. The difference here is analogous to the morally acceptable options a heterosexual couple would have before they engage in intercourse compared to the morally acceptable options they would face after they brought children into the world. After bringing children into the world, they would have particular obligations to nurture and protect their children that they did not have before. Something analogous would hold true, I contend, for the God of traditional theism.
Adam spends time speculating on how God might permit horrendous evil consequences in order to achieve greater goods. Here it would have been helpful for Adam to address my argument from evil which begins with a fourfold classification of all the goods that God could provide to us. I then show that for each of these classes of goods there are constraints on the permission or prevention of horrendous evil consequences that the all-good, all-powerful God of traditional theism, if he exists, would be violating. That, I contend, shows that such a God is logically incompatible with all the evil in our world. If that is the case, then Adam would not have the God of traditional theism on which to ground objective morality.
Turning to my account of how to ground morality in what I have shown to be a traditionally godless world, let me begin by explaining how we humans came to endorse morality, which I take to be a way of fairly taking into account all the relevant interests that are at stake. On my account, we found ourselves, frequently enough, having to decide whether to act one way rather than another, and, frequently enough, we found ourselves weighing our own interests against the interests of others in deciding what to do. Consequently, an appropriate weighing of our own interests and the interests of others became an attractive way of making decisions and acting on them. Frequently, we could get others to come together and act collectively in this way. Accordingly, this strategy for deciding and acting, or something very close to it, came to called morality. Morality, so understood, was also taken to be objective because it was not based on just the interests of any one individual or on just the interests of any one group of individuals, but on a fair resolution of all the relevant interests that are at stake.
Now Adam claims that my understanding of morality as taking all the relevant interests fairly into account fails G. E. Moore’s open question argument. But Adam misunderstands Moore’s argument. Moore’s argument was a way of showing that attempts to define moral or normative terms exclusively in nonmoral or non-normative terms fail. But that is not what I am doing here. My definition has normativity on both sides of the definition. So, it is not a target for Moore’s open question argument Moore was only challenging defining normative terms just nonnormatively. That is not what I am doing.
Of course, my account of morality as fairly taking all the relevant interests into account can still be challenged. Historically, the most important challenge going back at least to Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic has been the why-be-moral challenge, typically understood as coming from a self-interested or egoistic perspective. Despite its long history, most contemporary moral and political philosophers are still not convinced that morality can meet this challenge. Many think it is rationally justifiable to be moral or to be an egoist, and hence, either side can justifiably use force against the other. Aware of this problem, societies have frequently used force to contain egoistic behavior of their members with some success.
In my work in moral and political philosophy, I have attempted to go further and show that only morality, and not egoism, can be given a nonquestion-begging justification. Since the principle of nonquestion-beggingness that I employ is a principle of rationality, not morality, I claim to have provided an argument from rationality to morality, and happily most egoists are not willing to give up their commitment to the rationality of the principle of nonquestion-beggingness.
But suppose someone were to reject that principle of nonquestion-beggingness, the standard of good argumentation, what happens then? If someone were to reject this principle, the possibility of employing good arguments to reach agreement with such a person ceases. All that is left for us to do is to employ morally acceptable procedures for containing such rebels to ensure that they do not significantly harm the rest of us. That is as far as we can go with using morality and rationality to justify our decisions and actions toward each other.
Let me now answer the questions that Adam raises both at the beginning and end of his talk.
First, what makes some actions good and others bad? Answer: Morally good actions are good because they fairly take into account all the relevant interests. Morally bad actions are bad because they fail to do this.
Second, where do moral obligations and the rights that correlate with them come from? Answer: They result from what would be a fair deliberative procedure where all the relevant interests are represented, something analogous to how obligations and their correlative rights are thought to emerge from John Rawls’s original position.
Third, how is the worth of humans and the worth of other nonhuman sentient and nonsentient living beings to be determined? Answer: Here it must be recognized that while all living beings do have a good of their own, what is good for ourselves can conflict with what it is good for other nonhuman living beings, sometimes putting us in a life and death struggle with them. When this happens, we should carry out that struggle justly and fairly, for example, we don’t need to engage in the cruelties of factory farming in order to provide a heathy diet for ourselves. In my book, From Rationality to Equality (pp.140-158), I have worked out, in some detail, the moral constraints that apply to us, who are presumably the only moral agents here, in our dealings with the nonhuman sentient and nonsentient living beings with whom we inhabit the world.
Let me end now by drawing your attention to two of the three moral requirements on which my argument from evil that I presented in the first part of my earlier paper rest.
Requirement A: Prevent horrendous evil consequences when one can easily do so without violating anyone’s rights and no other goods are at stake.
What is there not to like about this requirement? Surely, it is an exceptionless, necessary moral requirement that applies to all of us, God included. Now consider
Requirement B: Don’t secure a good using morally objectionable means when you can easily secure the same good by using morally unobjectionable means.
Again, what is there not to like about this requirement? Is it not an exceptionless, necessary moral requirement, just like Requirement A?
Now, that is just two of the three moral requirements on which my argument from evil rests. If these two requirements are self-evident, as I think you should see that they are, and the third moral requirement is as well, then my argument from evil goes through against the existence of the God of traditional theism. Surely then Adam must pay close attention and address the parts of my argument from evil given that, left unchallenged, that argument undermines the basis for his own view.
First Response: Adam Johnson
I want to make sure everyone understands Jim is making a tremendously strong claim. He’s not saying, “because there’s horrendous evil it’s difficult to believe God exists.”’” I could sympathize with that. He’s saying, “because there’s horrendous evil it’s logically impossible for God to exist.” This extreme logical problem of evil was popular in the mid-1900s. However, even atheist philosophers came to recognize it’s incredibly difficult to defend such a strong claim.
Alvin Plantinga, who also was a philosophy professor at Notre Dame, pointed out all one has to do to defeat this logical problem of evil is to provide a possible explanation where both God and evil exist. It doesn’t even have to be the actual correct explanation. Since the claim is so strong—it’s impossible for both God and evil to exist—all that’s required to refute the claim is a possible scenario where God and evil both exist. That’s why most consider this logical problem of evil to be a dead argument. Atheist philosophy professor William Rowe wrote, “Some philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of … God. No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim.”1
Has Jim successfully resurrected this logical problem of evil? Hardly. Even atheist philosopher Erik Wielenberg wrote “[Plantinga’s] basic strategy can be used to defeat Sterba’s newer logical argument from evil….”2 Wielenberg himself even proposed a possible model where God exists and permits horrendous evils. He explained “[i]f this model is logically possible, then the first premise of Sterba’s argument is false…. Thus, Sterba’s new logical argument from evil succumbs to a modified version of Plantinga’s old free will defense.”3
In my first speech I also proposed a possible explanation for why God allows horrendous evil. Jim said my explanation fails to deal with ethics after creation. He agrees before creation God may have had justifiable reasons to create a universe that includes horrendous evil. But after creation God should step in and stop horrendous evils. However, I explained possible reasons why God might not step in after creation and stop horrendous evils.
It’s possible that if God stopped any specific horrendous evil in this universe, that’d somehow lead to even worse evil later on. Or it might be if God prevented the horrendous consequences of a particular evil choice, then that’d cause us to make even more horrendous evil choices down the road. Or it might be if God stepped in to prevent a specific horrendous evil, somehow that’d affect either the quantity or quality of loving relationships. Remember, I proposed God’s primary goal is to maximize the greatest good—loving relationships with God and with others. It’s possible that changing circumstances to adjust suffering caused by horrendous evils could have ripple effects that affect the overall quantity or quality of loving relationships.
We might think God could stop a particular horrendous evil while keeping the quantity and quality of loving relationships the same. But that’s impossible for us to know given our finite knowledge; we just can’t fathom all the ripple effects, either in this life or the next, that’d come from adjusting such circumstances. Again, I’m not saying this is the actual situation, merely a possibility. If my explanation is even logically possible, then Jim’s argument fails because it shows it’s not impossible for horrendous evil and God to both exist.
As for Jim’s explanation of morality, he’s not really engaging in metaethics. He’s jumping straight to a generic moral principle: fairness. But that has to do with the field of ethics, not metaethics. Ethics is about trying to develop guidelines to make good moral decisions. I agree fairness is a useful principle to help us figure out how to make good moral decisions. But metaethics goes deeper than ethics and tries to explain ontologically where moral principles like fairness come from and why we’re obligated to follow them. That’s what this debate is about, what’s the best explanation for authoritative mind-independent moral truths like fairness?
Metaethics also wrestles with whether morality is just our subjective opinion or is real objective truth that we discover, similar to mathematical truths. And if morality is objective, what’s the best explanation for how and why it’s objective? Jim says morality is objective in that it’s not based on just the interests of one individual or group but on all relevant interests. But that’s not the sense of objective people are discussing in metaethics. In metaethics people are trying to explain how moral truths, like fairness, can be authoritative and objectively real in the sense they’re true independent of what we think.
For example, atheist philosopher Russ Shafer-Landau explained he defends “the theory that moral judgements enjoy a special sort of objectivity: such judgements, when true, are so independently of what any human being, anywhere, in any circumstance whatever, thinks of them.”4 Philosopher David Enoch described objective morality as the position that “there are … independent … truths, … objective ones, that … we discover rather than create or construct.”5 Philosopher Alvin Plantinga wrote that “moral truths are objective, in the sense that they are … independent of human beliefs and desires. It’s wrong to torture people … and would remain wrong even if most or all of the world’s population came to believe that this behavior is perfectly acceptable….”6 These atheist and Christian philosophers then propose various theories as to how morality can be objective in this sense.
In my metaethical theory of objective morality, I propose the loving relationships between the members of the Trinity is the determining factor in what makes something good or bad. If a human action resembles the love between the members of the Trinity, then it’s good. And if an action doesn’t resemble the love between the members of the Trinity, then it’s bad.
But Jim merely proposed something is good if it fairly takes into account all the relevant interests and bad if it doesn’t. And that’s why I brought up Moore’s open question argument and Aquinas’ first good argument. I’m not claiming to use Moore’s argument the way Moore did; I’m using Moore’s and Aquinas’ arguments to make the point that there must be some ultimate good. You can’t just stop at some generic principle like fairness because the open question will be “Well, why is fairness good?”
Now maybe Jim is proposing that fairness is the ultimate moral good. But he hasn’t given us any good reasons to think that. Is fairness a plausible candidate for being the ultimate moral good? How could fairness generate authoritative moral ‘oughts’ that we’re obligated to follow? Where does our moral right to be treated fairly come from? Jim needs to go beyond suggesting generic ethical guidelines and provide a metaethical explanation of where these moral truths come from and how they can be objectively true independent of our subjective opinions.
If there’s no God, as Jim maintains, then fairness is merely a subjective idea humans developed because it was often helpful pragmatically. That’s basically what Jim said—over time humans came to find fairness attractive because it worked in getting people to act collectively. If there’s no God, all our moral beliefs, including fairness, are just human thoughts nature selected because they increased our prospects for survival and reproduction. As the TV show Survivor illustrates, a group that works together well—which involves aspects such as fairness, reciprocity, and cooperation—is better able to outwit, outplay, and outlast a group that doesn’t. Similarly, as the story is often told, there was an evolutionary advantage to groups that adopted such principles; working together well, they could better compete against other groups in the battle for scarce resources.7
If there’s no God, all our moral beliefs came about through this random, accidental process of evolution. If our evolutionary path would’ve played out differently, then our moral beliefs would be radically different. That’s why, if there’s no God morality is subjective and arbitrary. Darwin recognized this when he wrote “If . . . [humans] were reared under … the same conditions as … bees … our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.”8 If there’s no God, what we call love is merely a chemical reaction nature selected in our random evolutionary path because it led to greater chances of reproduction. If there’s no God, our moral beliefs are random, subjective, and arbitrary—they’d be radically different if our evolution took a different path. Michael Ruse, atheist philosophy of science professor at Florida State University, wrote that “[m]orality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth…. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they’re referring above and beyond themselves…. Nevertheless … such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction … and any deeper meaning is illusory.”9 He also wrote “Darwinian theory shows that … morality is a function of (subjective) feelings, but it shows also that we have … the illusion of objectivity…. [M]orality is a collective illusion foisted upon us by our genes.”10 If there’s no God, Ruse is right—our moral beliefs are accidental, arbitrary, subjective human ideas nature selected because in our evolutionary path they happened to increase our chances of survival and reproduction.
[1] William L. Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 335.
[2] Erik J. Wielenberg, “Sterba’s Logical Argument from Evil and the God Who Walks Away from Omelas,” Religions 13.782 (2022): 5.
[3] Wielenberg, “Sterba’s Logical Argument from Evil and the God Who Walks Away from Omelas,” 5–6.
[4] Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 2.
[5] David Enoch, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 21. See also David Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 17.
[6] Alvin Plantinga, “Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience,” Faith and Philosophy Vol. 27 No. 3 (2010): 249.
[7] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012), 189–220. See also Wilson, Consilience, 282.
[8] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1909), 100–101.
[9] Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Paradigm: Essays on Its History, Philosophy and Religious Implications (New York: Routledge, 1989), 261–69.
[10] Michael Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy (New York: Blackwell, 1986), 253.
Second Response: Jim Sterba
Adam starts off his last presentation making sure everyone understands that I have presented an argument that purports to show that the all-good all-powerful God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the horrendous evil consequences in the world. Here Adam seems to be saying that my argument for this conclusion is not one to be ignored. Yet ignore it is just what he has done in his first two presentations.
Given that Adam has yet to directly challenge the working parts of my argument from evil, he now tries instead to defeat my argument by appealing to authorities, specifically Alvin Plantinga, my long-time colleague at Notre Dame, Erik Wielenberg, whom I know fairly well, and lastly William Rowe, who died in 2015 before I had published anything on the problem of evil.
Now, Plantinga had argued that the God of traditional theism is logically compatible with some moral evil whereas what I have argued is that the God of traditional theism is not logically compatible with all the horrendous evil consequences in the world. Hence, the conclusions of both our arguments could be true which means that the success of Plantinga’s argument has no implications at all for the success of my argument.
By contrast, Wielenberg, in the special issue of Religions that Adam cites, does directly challenge my argument that the God of traditional theism is not logically compatible with all horrendous evil consequences in the world. However, the problem with Wielenberg’s challenge, as I point out in the same special issue that Adam cites, is that Wielenberg does not have my argument in his sights. Hence, Wielenberg may not actually be disagreeing with me once he is clear about what my argument is. Fortunately, I visited Wielenberg’s university earlier this month to give a talk, so I have had the chance to see how things stand when Wielenberg actually has my God argument in his sights.
Lastly, William Rowe died just about the time I began working on the problem of evil and well before I came up with my God argument. Even so, I have studied Rowe’s work carefully and I have come to believe that if Rowe had worked more in moral and political philosophy before turning his attention to the problem of evil, he too might well have come up with something like my logical argument from evil. This is because the problem of evil is primarily a moral problem, and consequently, working in moral and political philosophy really does help, I believe, in coming to terms with it.
Turning to Adam’s discussion of my account of ethics without God, Adam contends that with its focus on fairness, my account remains within ethics and therefore does go beyond ethics to provide a meta-ethical account. But I showed in my last presentation that my account does provide metaethical (beyond the ethical) grounds for its ethical standard of fairness in the rational standard of nonquestion-begging argumentation. That I have been able to ground my ethical standard of fairness in a metaethical standard of nonquestion-begging argumentation also provides an answer to the challenge of egoism, an age-old metaethical challenge to ethics for which Adam has no solution.
Now Adam notes that I say my account is objective in that it is not based on just the interests of one individual or group but on a fair consideration of all relevant interests. But then Adam claims that is not the sense of objective that people are discussing in metaethics. Here Adam brings in three authorities, Shafer-Landau, Enoch, and Plantinga to establish the conclusion that an objective morality is discovered rather than made and is independent of what any actual individuals or groups, presumably even God, actually takes it to be. But that is my view as well. For me, the ultimate truth or norm of morality which is to fairly take into account all relevant interests is a truth or norm that is discovered rather than made and is also independent of what any actual individuals or groups actually take it to be. Hence, there appears to be a good deal of common ground here, except that Adam allows that Shafer-Landau, an atheist, holds to this objective account of morality, but then claims that because I am an atheist, my standard of fairness can only be “a subjective idea.” Here I think Adam is just confused. Both Shafer-Landau and myself should be understood to be appealing to the same objective account of morality which I then further specify in terms of an ideal of fairness.
Now Adam persists in raising challenges that G. E. Moore would have thought could not be meaningfully raised such as asking me: Why is fairness good? To which the only still uninformative response I could give is that being fair is just a fundamental way of being good. However, this inability to provide informative answers arises for Adam’s view as well. Consider Adam’s preferred account according to which “loving relationships between the members of the Trinity is the determining factor that makes something good.” Here we could raise the analogous question: Why are loving relationships good? And here too we face the same inability to give an informative answer.
Yet, despite this similarity, there is still good reason to prefer my fair relations account of morality to Adam’s loving relations account, beyond God’s impossibility. Loving relations are usually understood to be normative mainly for family or intimate relationships whereas fairness is understood to provide an appropriate ideal for a much broader array of relationships, and hence, is a better general standard for a morality for us all.
Now in a relatively short period of time the earth’s environment will become totally inhospitable for rational and morally reflective creatures, like ourselves, assuming we continue to heat up the earth as we are presently doing. Then we will go extinct. Likewise, if things had not gone as they did in the past (for example if an asteroid hitting the earth had not driven dinosaurs to extinction making the rise of mammals possible) we would probably never have come into existence in the first place. So, our presence and continued existence on earth is clearly contingent.
But I am interested in another what-if question. What if Adam comes to recognize the validity and soundness of my argument from evil whose working parts he has yet to challenge, would he then give up on morality? Would he think that torturing innocent children for the fun of it could be just fine? That is the what-if question to which would like an answer.
Second Response: Adam Johnson
I sympathize with people when they say it’s difficult to believe in God sometimes when we see so much evil in the world. I’ve felt that way myself. But that’s not what Jim’s saying. Jim’s claiming it’s logically impossible for God to exist. I haven’t walked through all the detailed working parts of his problem of evil argument because it’s not actually necessary. As Plantinga pointed out so well, when a person claims something’s logically impossible, all that’s required to defeat their claim is to provide a possible explanation.
When I quote philosophers like Plantinga, I’m not appealing to authorities. I’m referring to experts who specialize in this subject that’ve made good points which support my argument. This is common practice in all fields including science, history, and philosophy.
If my explanations of how God and horrendous evil can both exist are even just possible, and Jim hasn’t shown they’re not, then, by definition, it’s not impossible for God and horrendous evil to both exist. As for those who struggle to believe in God when you see all the evil in the world, I hear you. I encourage you to consider the explanations I’ve suggested for why God might allow this evil. And these explanations I’ve offered satisfy all of Jim’s conditions.
I’m glad Jim clarified he believes morality is objective in that it’s true independently of what anyone thinks. That’s the common ground we agree on among those of us who are moral realists. There are theists who are moral realists like Plantinga and myself. And there are atheists who are moral realists like Russ Shafer-Landau and Erik Wielenberg. Now that Jim clarified he believes morality is objective, we can put him in that category too. But even though all these moral realists agree morality is objective, theists and atheists propose different theories to explain how morality can be objectively real. The question is: Who has the better explanation?
For example, I’ve argued Wielenberg’s atheistic theory of objective morality isn’t very plausible. I don’t think Shafer-Landau’s theory is very plausible either. And now that I’ve evaluated Jim’s atheistic theory, I’m arguing it’s not a plausible explanation of objective morality either. One of the reasons it’s not plausible is that, as I’ve argued, it actually winds up making morality subjective, not objective. I’m not claiming that since Jim’s theory is atheistic it therefore must be subjective. I’m arguing that Jim’s theory fails to accomplish what he’s trying to do; he’s trying to explain how morality can be objective but his theory fails because it ends up making morality subjective, not objective.
It sounds like Jim’s starting to understand my point that every moral theory must have an ultimate Good. Otherwise we’d just keep asking, “Well, then why is that good?” Okay, “Well, then why is that good?” for infinity. The only way to stop this infinite regress is to have an ultimate Good that just is goodness itself. It’s not that every moral theory runs into an uninformative answer, as Jim says. It’s that every moral theory must have an ultimate standard of what good is.
It seems Jim’s saying that fairness is the ultimate Good. But he’s still unclear on this because he said “being fair is just a fundamental way of being good.” So he hasn’t really committed himself yet to the idea that fairness is the ultimate Good, it’s just a way of being good. He needs to define or describe exactly what he thinks The ultimate Good is. But let’s say that’s what he’s proposing, that fairness is The ultimate Good. He did say “the ultimate truth of morality is to fairly take into account all relevant interests.”
If that’s what he’s claiming then when we’d ask him “Well, why is fairness good?” he’d say because fairness just is The Good, there’s nothing behind fairness that makes it good, that’s just what The Good is. That’s reasonable. He’s got to have some ultimate Good in his theory, all moral theories do, otherwise there’s an infinite regress.
Similarly, I’m proposing that God is the ultimate Good. When someone asks me. “Well, why is God good?” I’d say the exact same thing: because God just is The Good, there’s nothing behind God that makes Him good, that’s just what The Good is. And since God is a Trinity of three divine persons in loving relationships with each other, that means loving relationships are included in The Good. So when Jim asks “Why are loving relationships good?” I don’t have an uninformative answer. My answer is exactly the same as Jim’s, because that just is The Good.
Every moral theory reaches the same point, that there’s some ultimate Good. Now that we, and hopefully Jim, understands that every moral theory has to have such an ultimate Good, we can consider which proposed ultimate Good is most plausible. Is fairness a more plausible candidate for The ultimate Good? Or is God, specifically a trinitarian God, a more plausible candidate for The ultimate Good? Don’t get me wrong, fairness is an important aspect of morality. It just doesn’t seem like a plausible candidate for The ultimate Good. If there’s no God, where could the idea of fairness come from except subjectively from ourselves? If there’s no God, how could fairness exist objectively on its own apart from us? Tonight I’ve given several reasons to conclude God is the most plausible candidate for the ultimate good, but I give many more reasons in my book Divine Love Theory.
As for Jim’s question, if I came to believe there’s no God, would I think torturing children is morally okay? My answer is no. It’s similar to my belief that the universe had a beginning. I believe the universe had a beginning because of solid scientific evidence. And I believe God’s the best explanation for what brought the universe into existence. But if for some reason I came to believe there’s no God, I wouldn’t reject the fact that the universe had a beginning. Similarly, I strongly believe torturing children is evil. And I believe God’s the best explanation for why this is evil. But if for some reason I came to believe there’s no God, I wouldn’t reject the fact that torturing children is evil. Now if there’s no God, I think it’s very difficult to explain why anything is good or evil. The theory that God created the universe is so much more convincing than any atheistic theories that try to explain the universe. Similarly, the theory that God’s the source of morality is so much more convincing than any atheistic theories that try to explain objective morality.
Concluding Speech: Jim Sterba
In all three of his contributions to this debate, Adam has failed to discuss the working parts of my argument that the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the horrendous evil consequences in our world, despite my repeated requests that he do so, and despite the fact that if my logical argument from evil succeeds, Adam’s attempt to ground morality on God would be totally undermined.
In his latest contribution, Adam attempts, citing Plantinga, to justify his omission by just providing “a possible explanation of where both God and evil exist.” But as Plantinga knew in his own time, he could not provide such an explanation unless he defeated Mackie’s argument that the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world. Hence, Plantinga attempted, and succeeded, in showing against Mackie that the God of traditional theism is logically compatible with some evil occurring in our world. Yet, while Plantinga was successful against Mackie, his argument does not work against my own logical argument from evil which maintains that the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the horrendous evil consequences in our world. That requires a different argument to refute. Hence, if Adam had followed Plantinga’s lead, as he seems always to want to do, he would have provided a critique of the working parts of my God argument, which, however, he has yet failed to do.
So, what is my argument that Adam has failed to critique? It begins by noting that all the goods that God could provide to us are either goods to which we have a right or goods to which we do not have a right. Each of these types can be further divided into goods that are logically dependent on God’s permission of horrendous evil consequences and goods that are not logically dependent on God permission of horrendous evil consequences. This gives us a fourfold classification of all the goods with which God could provide us. Would Adam deny that we can make this fourfold classification? I don’t think so.
I then set out three necessary moral requirements that taken together apply to all the goods that God could provide to us. These requirements are exceptionless minimal components of the Pauline Principle that would be acceptable to consequentialists and nonconsequentialists alike.
The first is Requirement A: Prevent horrendous evil consequences when one can easily do so without violating anyone’s rights and no other goods are at stake.
What is there not to like about this requirement? Surely, Adam would have to admit that this is an exceptionless, necessary moral requirement that applies to all of us, God included.
Now consider Requirement B: Don’t secure a good using morally objectionable means when you can easily secure the same good by using morally unobjectionable means.
Again, what is there not to like about this requirement? Wouldn’t Adam have to admit that it is an exceptionless, necessary moral requirement, just like Requirement A?
Now, that is just two of the three moral requirements on which my argument from evil rests. If these two requirements are self-evident, as I think you should see that they are, and the third moral requirement is as well, then my argument from evil goes through against the existence of the God of traditional theism.
Surely then Adam must, like Plantinga did for Mackie, directly address the parts of my argument from evil, given that, left unchallenged, that argument completely undermines his God-based justification of morality.
I go on in my presentations to provide a justification for an objective morality without God that is grounded in a standard of fairly taking into account all relevant interests and in the rational ideal of nonquestion-beggingness. By contrast, Adam presents a God-based justification for morality that he is actually not entitled to defend, while acknowledging that if he came to believe there was no God, possibly by carefully examining my argument. he would still endorse an objective ethics, maybe one, I might add, not that dissimilar from my own.
Concluding Speech: Adam Johnson
To clarify, I’m not saying Plantinga’s argument defeats Jim’s problem of evil. I’m saying Plantinga’s strategy defeats Jim’s problem of evil. As noted, atheist philosopher Erik Wielenberg agreed when he wrote “[Plantinga’s] basic strategy can be used to defeat Sterba’s newer logical argument from evil….”1 Plantinga pointed out when a person claims something’s impossible, all that’s required to refute the claim is a possible explanation. If something’s at least possible, then, by definition, it’s not impossible. That’s why tonight I’ve provided a possible, reasonable, explanation for why God allows horrendous evil. I’ve addressed the working parts of Jim’s argument in the sense that my explanation satisfies his moral requirements.
As we conclude this debate, let me summarize my position. As humans we’ve discovered some interesting things here in this reality we find ourselves in. We’ve discovered we exist in this intricate fine-tuned universe that began sometime in the finite past. We’ve also discovered objective moral truth—some actions are good while others are bad. We’ve discovered authoritative moral ‘oughts,’ things we ought to do. We experience these oughts pulling on us somehow in that we know we have an obligation, a duty, to do the right thing. The question is, what’s the best explanation for this moral truth?
If there’s no God, it’s hard to see how morality and love could be anything more than illusions. Just subjective feelings nature selected for because they led to greater chances of survival and reproduction. Romantic love developed from an accidental chemical reaction nature selected because it motivated us to reproduce and pass on our genes.
Tonight I’ve argued Christianity provides the best explanation for this objective moral truth we’ve discovered. Another thing we’ve discovered through experience is that we’re all moral failures. We have a vision of what the moral ideal, moral perfection, is supposed to look like. But in our lives, both collectively and individually, we constantly fail to live up to that ideal. We’re selfish, we’re hateful, we treat others unfairly. The good news is Christianity also explains the solution to our moral failings.
If Christianity’s true, and there’s strong evidence to believe it is, then you were created by God for the purpose of enjoying loving relationships with God and others. That’s the meaning of life. Love isn’t an illusion or accident; it’s actually the foundation of ultimate reality, intrinsic to the relationships between the Persons of the Trinity.
The problem is your moral failures have broken your relationship with God, and for many of us, broken our relationships with other people.
Thankfully though, God still loves you. That’s why He orchestrated a way for your moral failures to be forgiven and for you to be reconciled back to a right relationship with the God who made you and loves you.
One of the members of the Trinity, God the Son, took on human nature and lived as one of us, giving us a perfect moral example of how humans should live. Jesus taught we should love our enemies, care for the poor, treat others fairly, forgive those who’ve hurt us. Though He was innocent, He died on a cross to pay the penalty we deserve for our moral failures. “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
Jesus warned us not to trust in our own efforts to fix your relationship with God. It’s impossible to earn your way back into a right relationship with God because our moral failures are just too great. He promised that, instead of trusting what you yourself could do, if you’d trust in Him and what He did for you on the cross, you’d be forgiven for your moral failures, reconciled back to God, and welcomed into heaven to love God and love others for all eternity. I made that decision to trust in Christ, to become a Christian, thirty years ago. I encourage you to do so tonight.
[1] Erik J. Wielenberg, “Sterba’s Logical Argument from Evil and the God Who Walks Away from Omelas,” Religions 13.782 (2022): 5.
© Adam Lloyd Johnson and Convincing Proof.