The Problem of Evil vs The Problem of Good

In response to Pre-Creation (How Good Can God Be), a reader drew my attention to the work of Brian Davies, specifically “The Reality of God and The Problem of Evil”.  A survey of the reviews of this work gives me the impression that Davies’ argument is that the Problem of Evil misses the point and that we should instead be pondering about just how much good there is in the world.  If so, then the reader appears to have rather missed the point of what I wrote in Pre-Creation.

It’s entirely possible that Davies has a different argument to the one that I’ve surmised.  If so, the publisher Bloomsbury has got it wrong too:

Finally, though many theologians argue that evil is a mystery, Davies argues that this too is wrong and a cop out. We should rather be concerned with the problem (or mystery) of good. The real issue is `Why is there not more good than there is`. From the discussion Aquinas emerges as a hero (as filtered through analytical philosophy) but many modern thinkers do not emerge so well. Davies effectively picks holes in the arguments of Peter Geach, Paul Helm, Richard Swinburne and even Mary Baker Eddy

Admittedly, my first interpretation was that Davies was arguing that good itself is a mystery as in “why is there any good at all?”  This is sometimes argued as the obverse of the anti-apologetic argument “why is there evil in a universe supposedly created by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibeneficient god?”  At the very least it seems to be a basic assumption for many theists – if there were no god, then there would be no good.  It’s terrifying how often you hear theists argue that, without god, they would be rapists and murderers.  Our old friend WLC provides us with an example:

Today I want to argue that if God exists, then the objectivity of moral values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured, but that in the absence of God, that is, if God does not exist, then morality is just a human convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Thus, we cannot truly be good without God.

This is the same person who argues that without his god, and “objective” morality, the torture of babies for fun would not be wrong.  Personally, I like to comfort myself with the notion that the theists making these sorts of comments are doing so for rhetorical purposes and that, if they were convinced that their god does not actually exist, they would not immediately commence a campaign of rape, torture and murder.

There’s a major difference between the anti-apologetic argument from evil for the non-existence of a god and the apologetic argument from good for the existence of one’s god.  The argument from evil is a type of reductio ad absurdum in which one starts from the assumption of the existence of a specific type of god and end up with an impossibility – the god of that type would not permit the sorts of evils that we find in the universe, therefore it does not exist.

The argument from good, on the other hand, does not truly start from the assumption of the non-existence of any god whatsoever.  Instead, there is an inherent assumption that the universe could only have good in it if there were a god, as per WLC’s argument above.

There’s a reluctance on the part of the theist to honestly consider whether the “good” observed in the universe could arise without their god.  Note that by “good” here, I refer to the actual act, intent or situation that is considered to be good, not the attribution “good” that is assigned to that act, intent or situation.  Perhaps I should explain …

An act can be good in itself – say it reduces or prevents harm, involves some real self-sacrifice (even if minor) or adds to the well-being of others.  Alternatively, an act can be labelled as “good” – going to church, abstaining from pre-marital sex or obeying some rule (don’t mix linen and wool in one garment).  Labels can be assigned pretty much arbitrarily, but once you have a method of deciding what is and isn’t good (increased harm bad, improved well-being good), then you have an objective measure by which you can judge whether an act is good.  But even aside from that, we do have measures for judging whether acts are good or not, we can basically list which acts are thought of as good and we can consider those acts.

Could the acts that we consider to be good arise in a universe without a god?

The theist, at least the christian theist, tends to think not but the reason for this is tied up in theology, in the theist’s assumptions about the basic (and base) nature of humanity.  Man is born of and in sin, humanity is depraved, atheists (according to many a theist) are atheists because they don’t want to believe there is a god so they can continue to sin.  If you take this view of the universe and only do one thing, remove god, then of course, it’s going to be dark.

To be more fair, the theist needs to place his argument in a universe which has no god and never had a god, in which the nature of humanity is not presumed to be sinful and depraved.

So, the Problem of Good … could the godless universe produce the acts that we call “good”?  I certainly think this is possible.  There’s no Problem of Evil for an atheist, but equally there’s no real Problem of Good either.  In the Morality as Playing Games series, I explain how the (western, judeo-christian) morality that we currently espouse can arise from pretty solid self-interest.  To the best of my knowledge here’s no “good” act which cannot be explained in terms of the ethical structure that I arrive at.

Some might complain that this is a “just so” story, but that’s not the point.  Perhaps our morality, our sense of what is good and what is wrong did not arise the way that I have laid it out, but even so, I do demonstrate that it could arise without a god.

This is all that is required to refute the argument that, for there to be any good, there must be a god.  There’s a way without god, therefore god is not necessary in moral terms.

Moral Ontology and Moral Epistemology

Earlier in the year, I was entertaining myself at the Reasonable Faith forums.  A thread which attracted some minor interest for a short while was one on William Lane Craig’s moral argument.

In summary, I linked When Morality Arguments Are Bad and asked if anyone was convinced by Craig on this point.  What followed was a lot of jiggery-pokery concerning various definitions of “objective morality”.  Most of my interaction was with a chap called LNC.  (I assume masculinity due to aggressive stupidity and total lack of conciliation on his part.)

We had some minor skirmishes over various axes of morality, but an issue that LNC returned to a few times was the distinction between “moral ontology” and “moral epistemology”, in both a strand with myself and with another visitor to the forums, Jabberwock.

(sub-strand 1) I think the problem with your article in relation to this argument is: First, it confuses the grounding of morality (ontology) with applied morality (epistemology) ...

(sub-strand 1) Well, I’m glad that Christians seem to be thinking about these issues, but it is not a theistic concept. Moral ontology simply deals with the metaphysics of morality. You can find plenty of discussion on the topic at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. However, it is a philosophical term, not necessarily a theistic term. And no, I didn’t mean “some special Christian interpretation of moral epistemology.” I just meant, moral epistemology.
(sub-strand 2) Here, I believe, you are confusing two arguments. The first is the metaphysical basis of morality or what is known as moral ontology; the second is how we know what is or isn't moral, that is moral epistemology.

<snip>
Also, Christians don't believe that memory is a basis for morality. Sure, memory is used in our reasoning about morality, but that is not a basis for morality. Again, this confuses ontology and epistemology.

<snip>

I believe you are confusing the issues of ontology and epistemology again.

(sub-strand 2) You are confusing moral ontology and moral epistemology again. Please keep the arguments straight. Applied ethics is different from the grounding of ethics. Just because some people get morality wrong does not mean that moral facts don’t exist. The same is true for science. Just because scientists in the past had wrong ideas about how the world works, doesn’t mean that there are not facts about how the world works.

Investigation time!

I did point out to LNC that he was not using standard definitions of ontology and epistemology in his first mention of them:

ontology - the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations
epistemology - the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge - if you look up "moral epistemology" you get directed to "meta-ethics" this is not about "applied morality".
… when I look up "moral ontology", I see a lot of Christian sites - it seems to be a particularly theistic usage, one which seems to assume moral realism, since the "existence" of morality is intertwined with its "reality". I think, therefore, that you meant "moral ontology" and some special Christian interpretation of "moral epistemology".

As indicated above, LNC responded by saying that “(m)oral ontology simply deals with the metaphysics of morality”.

According to Wikipedia, metaphysics is:

Metaphysics is a traditional branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. <snip> The metaphysician attempts to clarify the fundamental notions by which people understand the world, e.g., existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into the basic categories of being and how they relate to each other. Another central branch of metaphysics is cosmology, the study of the totality of all phenomena within the universe.

Given that I am not totally convinced by this, I looked further, given that LNC suggested taking a look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  While both have entries on “moral epistemology”, neither has an entry on “moral ontology”, although the IEP’s entry on “moral epistemology” includes one of two uses of term “moral ontology” (the other being in the title of a referred document).  The SEP only mentions “moral ontology” three times, once in a quotation, once in the title of a referred document and once in an article on deontology.  There is, however, an inferred reference to moral ontology in SEP’s “moral epistemology” article (noted below).

SEP: Deontological theories are normative theories. They do not presuppose any particular position on moral ontology or on moral epistemology.

IEP: moral ontology, the study of what sort(s) of reality underwrites the truth or reasonableness of moral claims or attitudes.

SEP: Moral epistemology – How is moral knowledge possible? This question is central in moral epistemology and marks a cluster of problems … :

·         Sociological …

·         Psychological …

·         Ontological: Moral knowledge is about moral reality. How is that reality constituted? Three general possibilities present themselves. (a) Moral reality might be theological in nature, pertaining to (say) the will of God. (b) It might be a non-natural realm that is neither theological nor natural, but sui generis. (c) It might be comprehensible as a part of the natural world studied by science. Each of these possibilities, however, is beset with difficulties, and no viable fourth alternative has been conceived.

·         Evolutionary …

·         Methodological …

·         Moral …

IEP: Moral epistemology – Can we ever know that it’s wrong to torture innocent children? More generally, can we ever know, or at least have some justification for believing, whether anything is morally right or wrong, just or unjust, virtuous or vicious, noble or base, good or bad? Most of us make moral judgments every day; so most of us would like to think so. But how is such knowledge, or justification, possible? We do not seem to simply perceive moral truth, as we perceive the truth that there is a computer screen before us. We do not seem to simply understand it, as we understand that all roosters are male. And we do not seem to simply feel it, as we feel a bit hungry right now. Moral epistemology explores this problem about knowledge and justification.

So, in summary, having synthesised the definitions above:

moral ontology does relate to moral realism, as I suspected, and

moral epistemology is about how we might have and justify moral knowledge.

This doesn’t seem to link particularly well to LNC’s claims, at least with relation to the latter:

grounding of morality (LNC’s definition of moral ontology)

applied morality (LNC’s definition of moral epistemology)

So we move on, or rather backwards.

The whole discussion centred on an argument raised by Craig.  Craig did not, in his debates with Sam Harris or Stephen Law, get into discussions on moral ontology and moral epistemology.  He did say, however, in his debate with Harris:

Here Dr. Harris didn’t have anything by way of disagreement to say, but I do want to clear up a possible confusion. He represented this by saying that if religion were not true, then words like “right” and “wrong” and “good” and “evil” would have no meaning. I’m not maintaining that. That is to confuse moral ontology with moral semantics. Moral ontology asks, “What is the foundation of objective moral values and duties?” Moral semantics asks, “What is the meaning of moral terms?” And I am not making any kind of semantical claim tonight that “good” means something like “commanded by God”. Rather, my concern is moral ontology: What is the ground, or foundation, of moral values and duties?

This seems to match quite well with LNC’s words, and with IEP’s definition of moral ontology: “what sort of reality underwrites the truth or reasonableness of moral claims or attitudes?”  That is, so long as a question is involved, rather than an answer.

Craig does get into the distinction between moral ontology and moral epistemology at reasonablefaith.org.  This is an interesting little article in a couple of ways.  Firstly, the person posing the question talks of “wiggling out of this one” – this is odd terminology for someone who is presenting an apologetic argument (although I can imagine it being used by someone describing an apologetic argument).

Secondly, Craig himself writes:

I’m convinced that keeping the distinction between moral epistemology and moral ontology clear is the most important task in formulating and defending a moral argument for God’s existence of the type I defend.

This indicates a weakness in the argument, one that Craig appears to recognise, and leads one to suspect that the argument is little more than fancy word play.

Thirdly, Craig uses an image from Moral Skepticism and Justification, supposedly for the purposes of showing that Moral Ontology and Moral Epistemology are distinct.

So far so good, but when we look at the surrounding text, what do Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons have to say?

In order to better understand the field of moral epistemology, it is useful to locate it within the larger territory of moral theory. Any division of moral theory is bound to be controversial, but some framework can help in comparing various views. For this purpose, moral theory is often divided, first, into substantive ethics and meta-ethics.

<snip>

Metaethics also includes moral ontology, which asks about the metaphysical status of moral properties and facts, if any.

<snip>

Moral epistemology is yet another area of meta-ethics. Moral epistemologists study justification and knowledge of substantive moral claims and beliefs.  Of course, one cannot determine whether a claim is justified or known to be true if one has no idea what that claim means, so moral epistemology depends in some ways on moral semantics.  It also depends on moral ontology and on the definition of morality. Nonetheless, moral epistemology differs from other areas of meta-ethics in that it focuses directly on justification and knowledge of morality and brings in other theories only insofar as they are relevant to these central concerns.

<snip>

Moral epistemology is simply epistemology applied to substantive moral claims and beliefs. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justification in general.  It asks whether, when, and how claims or beliefs can be justified or known or shown to be true. Moral epistemology then asks whether, when, and how substantive moral beliefs and claims can be justified or known or shown to be true.

So, in Craig’s source, moral ontology involves questions on the metaphysical status of moral claims without any presumption of moral realism (since the caveat “if any” is used) and moral epistemology asks about how moral beliefs and claims may be known and justified, which aligns with what SEP and IEP tell us.

But what did Craig himself have to say?

The claim that moral values and duties are rooted in God is a Meta-Ethical claim about Moral Ontology, not about Moral Linguistics or Epistemology. It is fundamentally a claim about the objective status of moral properties, not a claim about the meaning of moral sentences or about the justification or knowledge of moral principles.

<snip>

The salient point is that God’s commands constitute our moral duties. That is a claim of moral ontology. How we come to know our moral duties is a matter of moral epistemology and is irrelevant to the argument. There’s nothing to wriggle out of.

Well, ok.  I’ll quibble about the words, since I think that Craig is the person making an ontological claim about morality.  Alternatively, Craig is the person making a claim which may be considered under the broader topic of moral ontology.  However, either way, Craig is simply wrong if he thinks he can make an ontological claim and then ignore epistemology.  He has to justify his claim.

Craig would, of course, argue that I’ve missed the point.

He would do so by saying that in the second sentence in the quote above, he is talking about specific moral duties, for example “Thou shalt not rape” (an example that Craig raises in his debate with Harris).  How we come to know that rape is “really wrong” is a question of moral epistemology.

That’s correct.  But it’s not what I am saying, so in this Craig would have missed the point – or perhaps more accurately, he would have been doing some Olympics-grade wriggling.

The epistemology that Craig is trying desperately to avoid is associated with his ontological claim that “God’s commands constitute our moral duties”.  How does Craig know that?  How does Craig justify that particular claim?

The point is that so long as that claim is not justified, Craig cannot use the associated claim that “moral values and duties are rooted in God” (or, per his debates, “if God did not exist, (then) objective moral values and duties would not exist”) to prove the existence of his god.

So, for once, I have to agree with Craig.  It is very important for his argument that moral epistemology is avoided – because when moral epistemology is not avoided his argument fails.

When he does avoid moral epistemology, on the other hand, his argument is merely trivial.

Multiple axes of morality

I have, in the not too distant past, engaged in a long rambling discussion with a theist on the topic of William Lane Craig’s argument from morality.  Much of this argument has centred (in fuzzy sort of way) on the nature of morality – specifically on the question of moral objectivity.

For the atheists engaged in this discussion, the core problem we encountered is an inability or unwillingness on the part of the theist (LNC) to comprehensively define what “objective” means and then stick to that definition.  As a consequence of wrestling with this issue, it occurred to me that there is more than one “axis of morality”.  I’ll try to explain.

LNC insisted on discussing “objective morality” as if it lay on one axis, as illustrated below:

I'm being a little inaccurate here.  Let me try again.  LNC's axis of morality looks a bit more like this:

Occasionally LNC would resort to some bizarre grammatical version of moral nomenclature, claiming that if you make a moral statement concerning the subject of a clause, then you are being a subjectivist but from the vast bulk of his communication it is quite clear that he’s comparing moral objectivism with moral relativism.  In The Problem with Sam, I touched on why some are loathe to be labelled as moral relativists, and it appears that LNC is similarly loathe to be labelled as a moral absolutist, despite the fact that his discussions certainly indicate that he is in fact a moral absolutist.

The thing is, the opposite of “objective” is not “relative” but rather “subjective”.  And the opposite of “relative” is “absolute”.  This gives us two axes:

I’m going to allow for the possibility that there is a sliding scale on the axes, rather than just the two extremes.  I’m not claiming that moral values with respect to an issue can actually be a little bit absolute, although I’m not rejecting the notion out of hand.  What is more possible is that a moral system could comprise of some elements that are absolute and some elements that are relative and that an individual’s mix would thus be graduated.

Once we accept the idea of multiple moral axes, the question is then “how many and what might they be?”

Here is my suggestion:

I’ll briefly sketch out what I mean by each axis.

Objective-Subjective

An objective position is such that no matter who makes the determination, the result will be the same.  An example is the measurement of a weight using a standard set of scales.  Fifty kilograms on the scales will be measured as 50kg no matter who is doing the measuring.  A subjective position is based on personal circumstances or opinions.  A strong person when bench pressing 50kg may consider that a light weight, while light weights such as myself will think it is far too heavy to deal with for more than a few minutes (if we can manage that).

An objective moral judgment could be made on the basis of how much harm is caused by alternative options (smacking a child does more harm than good, based on the levels of pain experienced by the child, therefore smacking a child is morally wrong).

A subjective moral judgment could be based on no more than opinion (illegal immigrants are parasites on civilised society, therefore shooting them when they try to cross the border is morally right).

Absolute-Relative

An absolute determination is invariant whereas a relative determination varies with context.  Say we were wondering around with a lux meter measuring the light levels on an airplane.  We find that the lighting from a globe in the galley and from an indicator light in the cockpit is 60 lux.  This is an absolute measurement (I know, it’s only absolute-ish, but I’m trying to give an analogy here).  However, in the galley the globe is too dim (since the rest of the plane would be at about 250-400 lux) and the indicator in the cockpit is too bright (since it cannot be blinding at night when something like 2-5 lux would be appropriate).

Absolute moral judgments are based on obedience to some moral law or “moral fact” which does not vary (the Bible says not to lie, therefore lying is always morally wrong).

Relative moral judgments are made in a context and can vary (exposing one’s midriff in Australia was morally unacceptable in the 1940s but is fine today, but it is still morally unacceptable in Saudi Arabia).

Real-Imaginary

By the real-imaginary axis, I mean as in the difference between Balto (the Siberian husky that was the lead dog on the team that brought diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska in 1925) and Boris the talking Snow Goose in the film Balto (in which the eponymous character is transformed into a talking hybrid Siberian husky/white wolf).  One of the two is made up.

Real in terms of morality relates to the idea of Platonically real moral values, being moral values that are somehow integral to the universe.  Such moral values would not necessarily be absolute, even though I suspect that if they existed they would.  It is possible that our interaction with “Platonically real moral values” would be contextual and thus relative.

Imaginary, on the other hand, refers to the idea that some people think that “Platonically real moral values” exist, and others of us don’t.  We think that the idea of “Platonically real moral values” is made up – although we might not think that moral values themselves are made up …

Natural-Artificial

The natural-artificial axis could also be considered as a real-artificial axis, since the word “real” confusingly has more than one meaning.  I am referring here to the idea that morality could have evolved naturally, or it could have been imposed artificially.  For example, a man in a tent could have sat down and wrote a long list of moral rules off the top of his head.  These would be “artificial”.  On the other hand, you could have the natural moral rules that emerge out of an imperative to survive.

Rational-Irrational

This is getting a bit more esoteric and could be covered by other axes, but with this axis I am trying to point out that the man in the tent mentioned above could have just written down “ a bunch of crazy shit” or he could have thought it all through carefully.  Take a look at Deuteronomy some time to see which approach Moses took.

Consistent-Inconsistent

This one is especially for LNC.  He seems convinced that consistency is essential in morality.  I think we all agree about that.  What we don’t agree about is who is being consistent and who is being inconsistent.

Consistency in morality would mean that, for example, if being raped in the city is wrong then being raped in the country would be equally wrong.  Inconsistency would mean treating the two cases differently and stoning to death different people depending on where the rape occurred (good old Deuteronomy).

Simplex-Complex

With this axis I am making reference to the idea that there are people who see things in terms of black and white (see the second image above) and there are others who perceive a vivid spectrum – or at least distinguish shades of grey.  If when asked “is lying wrong?” you respond with “Yes!” then you are a simplex sort of person.  The rest of us will likely say something beginning with “Well, it depends …”

Implacable-Flexible

This is another one included for the benefit of people like LNC and it’s very much about the practical application of morality.  There are two extremes when it comes to moralists, those who are implacable in the application of their morality (think of Inspector Javert in Les Misérables ) and those who are more flexible (think of the Bishop of Digne who absolves Jean Valjean and “buys” his soul for god).  If you can put aside your petty morality in order to strive towards a “higher goal” of some sort, you are a flexible type.  If you think that you can’t (perhaps because you mistake your petty morality for some higher morality), then you are an implacable type.

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I’m completely open to the idea of adding more axes or combining some.  Any thoughts?