Adam Deen......morality without God.....

Full article here: http://www.adamdeen.com/updates/whats-new/270-are-morals-real-without-god


In summary, a non-theistic moral realism is false by virtue of the fact that moral facts cannot be successfully established and that irrealist view cannot maintain a genuine notion of morality. What logically follows is therefore moral nihilism. Given that nihilism is true, it implies that morality does not exist and that our use of the vocabulary and structures of cognitive enquiry are a mere mask. This reality hides the fact that moral judgments are nothing other than the expression of personal preference or socially imposed rules without God as the locus and paradigm of morality.






In summary, a non-theistic moral realism is false by virtue of the fact that moral facts cannot be successfully established and that irrealist view cannot maintain a genuine notion of morality. ->

Firstly, the non-theistic moral realism view that moral facts can be established is increasingly supported by evolutionary psychology and animal behavioralist studies of our highly social cousins in the animal kingdom. Therefore, he cannot argue that it is false unless he debunks the accumulative research and findings in the above field.

Secondly in a more serious mistake in critical thought, by equating non-theistic moral realism with the irrealist view is to commit an error in equivocation with regard to concepts thereby rendering his entire argument unsound because of its untrue premises.



What logically follows is therefore moral nihilism. ->

Logically follows? Moral nihilism is the opposite of moral realism! Has there been overwhelming evidence that non-theistic morally realist societies will degenerate into morally nihilistic societies with high probability? This bridging process is unproven by any tests of logic or evidence in reality. So this bridging process should contain an ‘If’. But it does not and instead tries to pass off as a modus ponens which it cannot be without any test of validity.



Given that nihilism is true, it implies that morality does not exist and that our use of the vocabulary and structures of cognitive enquiry are a mere mask. ->

Without establishing the validity of his previous statement, he goes on to state another two “truths”.



This reality hides the fact that moral judgments are nothing other than the expression of personal preference or socially imposed rules without God as the locus and paradigm of morality. ->

This predicate is only ‘true’ if the premise of the subject started out true and that is highly debatable. The validity of the alternative that he puts forth is not explained here but in the statement below.



Traditionally morality was grounded in God. God was the transcendental grounding for objective morality. God provided the transcendental vantage point in order to escape the subjective, partial personal preference based views concerning morality. ->

Firstly, he commits an error of ad verecundiam. Tradition does not automatically pass for rational authority until it has been examined. Tradition can give us clues to tested modes of operation but we still have to critically examine its basis. Just because “God was the transcendental grounding for objective morality.” does not mean that it still “must be”.

Secondly if he pushes for an argument that since God was (a factual statement), therefore God should “still be”, then he is committing an “is-ought” fallacy and is deriving a positive value (prescriptive statement) for God still being from a fact.