Morality Can't Be Objective, Even If God Exists (Morality p.1)

good morning everybody my name is Alex and it's good to be back if you're wondering where I've been you can watch my latest livestream or the video called what happened to this channel in the meantime because of my absence I don't feel like YouTube's algorithm will be on my side for a little while so if you haven't already be sure to hit the little notification bell next to the subscribe button down below and follow me on Twitter where I probably express more of my thoughts than even here on YouTube so be sure to do that if you don't want to miss anything now I'm sure you all know by now how much I love moral philosophy and you probably know that I disagree with many of my atheist colleagues like Stephen rationality rules or Matt Dillahunty or people like Sam Harris who say that morality can be and is objective I don't think it's possible to prove in any objective sense that a person should or shouldn't act in a particular way I don't think this can be demonstrated and though I've discussed this before I haven't fully spelled out why I think this way one important factor has always been my atheism previously one of the premises of my argument that objective morality can't exist was the assumption of atheism I used to think that the religious were the only ones who could legitimately lay claim to a worldview that does have some room for an objective understanding of morality but as I've been thinking more about it I've come to realize that even they the religious ultimately as far as I can see can't provide an objective basis for morality either this might surprise you it seems a given that if there really is a God morality can easily be shown to be objective but I honestly don't now think this to be the case which marks a significant shift in my moral philosophy since this closed what I previously considered to be the final possible gap in which objective morality could be said to exist and with that gone and now over the view that all morality even religious morality is ultimately subjective and this makes objective morality and impossible as far as I'm concerned even just in principle and I can't overemphasize how important this is this has massive philosophical implications not least that it seems to lead logically to nihilism for many people an incredibly uncomfortable philosophy and one that I'll be discussing very soon but before I can have such discussions I need to solidify my moral for loss of and explained it as precisely as I can to you and so I've decided to make some videos doing exactly that that means that there are a few things I need to cover first I need to explain what I mean by morality not just what is good and what is bad but what is good and what is bad then I need to show why I think that morality is and has to be subjective and this means I need to first show you why religious morality is subjective even if God does exist and even if he really is the author of good and bad and then I need to show you why a theistic notions of objective morality like sam Harris's for instance are also flawed and ultimately subjective to the reason for covering both bases is to attempt to show that not only is morality subjective but it has to be subjective regardless of the existence or non-existence of God this first video will both outline how I define morality and explain why I think religious morality is subjective and a subsequent video will explain why I think atheistic morality is subjective too and then perhaps a further video will explore the implications that this all has like the claim that it leads to nihilism if that's something you'd want to see and this is a big topic and I'll be disagreeing with some big names and popular philosophies most of my friends and colleagues disagree with me here so the likelihood is that there will be something in this video that you object to if you do then good let me know why and if not let me know if that means I've changed your mind in any way so let's get going with this first I need to define what I actually mean by morality and this isn't as simple as it seems I saw a clip of Tracy Harris on the Atheist experience recently arguing with someone and she proposed what I think is a good way to understand what we mean when we say morality she asked the cooler to imagine that he was trying to determine whether or not a dog had moral tendencies what would we look for in that dog or in the dog's psychology to determine whether or not it's a moral agent this helps us pinpoint precisely what we mean by morality now Tracy argued that we would look for a recognition of certain concepts like fairness and empathy and if the dog recognizes fairness for instance and acts in a way to procure it we can call it a moral agent now I think Tracy is great but I can't agree with this let me give you an example to explain why imagine we were to design a robot and we programmed it to be selfless and bring about what we the programmers felt was fairness as the robot goes about its business fulfilling its programming and procuring fairness could you cool it a moral agent when it's just fulfilling the commands of its programming I don't think you could even though it technically has a recognition of the concept of fairness I think there's more to it than that I think morality is twofold first it entails a recognition that some things are good and others are bad and secondly and this isn't the same thing an intuition that we ought to do that which is good and ought not do that which is bad I'll dive more into that soon but the reason that I think we need this more than just a recognition of concepts like fairness to be encompassed into our definition is because the reason I wouldn't call our robot and moral agent is because it has no recognition of good or bad or any concept of moral ought it procures fairness because it's programmed to not because it feels that it should if it did if it did have an experience of ought we make well call it a moral agent so that's why I define morality in this way so I suppose I would define morality as the intuition that we ought to do that which is good and ought not to do that which is bad this definition is incredibly broad of course but with good reason the reason is that it can encompass all popular notions of morality and so we don't need to fool at the first hurdle for instance sam Harris's notion that we ought to do that which brings about well-being and thinking that well-being is good is a belief that we ought to do that which is good it fits our definition religious morality to fit into it since the religious feel we ought to do that which God has defined as good this is where I think this is the best definition of morality to start with because it's broad enough that we can all agree with it but it's important to keep in mind that the definition is composed of two parts the good and bad and the ought and ought not they're not the same thing and we'll see why this is so important shortly but now of course we run into the problem of defining what we mean by good or bad or ought since we're using these words in our definition you might say that these terms need themselves to be independently defined within our broader definition but the reason I haven't done so is because I believe it's impossible to do so you'll hopefully understand this by the end of the video but my whole point here is that the reason morality can't be objective is precisely because good bad and ought can't be defined I subscribe to GE mores notion that good is like the color yellow it has no synonyms it can't be described to someone who's never experienced it nonetheless you know what I mean by yellow and you know what I mean by good even if you disagree when I call a particular thing good the very fact that you can disagree demonstrates that you still know what I mean by good even whilst disagreeing that that particular thing is good for instance sam Harris might say and has said that throwing acid in the face of a girl is not good if someone were to claim that doing so actually is good they clearly have a wildly different moral philosophy and yet to even be able to disagree they must still know what Harris means by good the moment we attempt to define good as in to give it a synonym we necessarily have to presume a particular moral philosophy I might define good as what God commands or as what procures well being but to do so I would automatically be agreeing with a certain philosophy and this is why I haven't defined good bad or ought in my definition again this should be more clear by the end of the video so that's the definition of morality I'm working with morality is the conception that we ought to do that which is good and ought not do that which is bad we can have a wealth of disagreement over whether or not a particular thing is good or bad but we can still agree that if it is good whatever that means we ought to do it and if it is bad whatever that means we ought not you might think this definition is broad but that doesn't make it wrong so this is perhaps the most surprising of the claims I'm making that even if God exists morality is still subjective in fact a popular argument employed by the religious to discount atheism is precisely that atheism can't provide an objective basis for morality here's dr. William Lane Craig admitting that one reason he believes in God is simply because he can't bring himself to think that the Holocaust wasn't objectively bad I'm convinced that there really are objective moral duties and values that it that the Holocaust is not just something that is wrong relative to Western democratic standards but right for the Nazis so that if the Nazis had won world war two and everybody believed the Holocaust was good on that atheistic view then it really would have been good that that to me is morally unconscionable I think that's just false did you catch that he thinks that it's morally unconscionable that morality is purely subjective which makes him think that it's false he also thinks that religion provides objective morality where atheism doesn't and this is one of the reasons he's religious does this betray a value of comfort and convenience over a value of truth perhaps here's him doing it again because it leads to a worldview which is I think unlivable it's it's in its its incapable of being lived consistently and happily you you cannot live consistently and happily as though moral values and duties are just the results of feelings and subjective impressions you your your going to want to say for example that apartheid was really wrong that the killing fields of Cambodia were really wrong and you can't do that if it's just based in feelings of putting aside the fact that dr. Craig dismisses morality based solely on feelings because he feels it's uncomfortable this is a very common argument and an effective one too dr. Craig is right that most people long for a way to objectively protect and justify their moral intuitions and many find this in God but if I can show that even with God morality is still subjective this argument crumbles so why does dr. Craig feel that atheism can't provide a basis for objective morality well because of morality is just based in feelings and relationships with other people and the way we were raised you know by our parents and society then it's all relative someone who has different feelings are raised in a different society might have a vastly different set of values and moral duties and therefore it's not objective it's it's purely subjective okay so that's crucial note the usage of the word therefore doctor Craig says that atheistic morality can vary depending on a person's upbringing their geographical and social background their environment which therefore shows that it's subjective because it wouldn't be variable if it were objective so it seems by that logic that if I can show that religious morality can vary in the same way it too is therefore subjective and of course a moment's reflection allows us to realize that religious views too obviously vary in exactly the same way a person's religion is more often than not determined by their social and geographical background just as atheistic morality is but okay I can already hear the sound of religious objection of course religious views vary but that's not because my religion is only subjectively correct it still has an objectively true morality it's just that other people have gotten it wrong and follow a false morality because they feel that their religion is objectively true when it really isn't my morality is still objective even if other people have gotten it but there are two problems with this firstly the exact same could be said of atheistic claims to objective morality of course atheistic morality varies by social and geographical backgrounds but that doesn't mean it's not objective just that other people have gotten it wrong it's the same thing but secondly and more crucially the only reason that anybody could possibly choose one religious morality as more ethically viable than another is because they feel it provides a better framework for moral truth how else could a person possibly prove to themselves or to others that one religion has a superior ethical code to another how else can a Christian possibly believe that the ethical code of Christianity is superior to that of Islam if you want to compare the ethics of two religions you need some moral basis on which to judge them but that moral basis obviously can't be one of the religions and so the only way that you can decide which religion is morally superior is through a subjective analysis of which you feel is better it's ultimately a subjective decision based on your not your religions moral intuition but still and interestingly something tells me that dr. Craig wouldn't accuse say a Muslim of having subjective morality even though he thinks that their morality is objectively false since it contradicts Christianity the religious point the finger at atheism for having subjective morality but not at other religions why not what's the difference in a Christians eyes between atheistic morality and Islamic morality what makes one able to claim that their morality is objective but the other not clearly neither can actually be objectively true according to the Christian because they both contradict Christianity so the only difference is that the Muslim believes their morality to be objective even though it isn't according to the Christian whereas the Atheist doesn't and suddenly we're once again in the realm of subjectivity the only thing that seems to distinguish religious morality from atheistic morality even according to the religious here is that the religious believer feels like their morality is objective whereas the Atheist recognizes the subjectivity lying at the heart of ethical decision-making the reason that Craig wouldn't accuse a Muslim of subjective morality is therefore not because their morality is objective which he obviously doesn't believe but because they feel that it's objective and treated as though at such think one of Craig's objections to subjective morality is that he says that a person can't possibly live a happy life assuming that morality is subjective but this shows that his criteria for a claim to objectivity is not actual objectivity but simply the belief in objectivity and acting as though morality is objective even if it isn't therefore we can see that the religious claim to objective moral values is ultimately based on two things a subjective recognition of the superiority of a person's particular religion and the feeling rather than the fact that the morality of that religion is objective even if it actually isn't it's all subjective but look I've got more if you're not with me already try this as a final nail let's forget everything I've you said about religious morality well let's say that you agree with what I've said but you just don't think that your religious morality is based on a subjective recognition of the moral superiority of your religion but rather on the objective evidence that your God exists this I'm sure will be a common rebuttal you believe that your religious morality is true not because you've judged it to be ethically superior but because you think that the god of your religion has been proven to exist or your religion proven to be otherwise factually accurate so okay I'll grant you it let's say that somehow we were to objectively demonstrate that a particular God say the god of Christianity exists we know this for a fact you might say that if this is the case religious morality is objective because if God is the author of everything then it's he who determines what is good and what is bad objectively clearly if God exists and has objectively defined certain things as good and bad we can objectively determine how we ought to behave morality is objective right well there's actually still a hidden assumption within this and this is why earlier I was so stressing the importance of understanding more in the two parts that I defined firstly a recognition of good and bad but also the idea that we ought to do what's good and not what's bad so here's the single question that completely changed the way that I view religious morality why what we do that which is good I want you to really think about this because it's crucial why ought we do that which is good let's say that good really was defined by God we've said that we've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the god of Christianity really does exist and really did right for instance the Ten Commandments let's say we can therefore objectively say that murder adultery bearing false witness etc are bad objectively that's not enough you still need to demonstrate objectively that because something is good we ought to do it and because something is bad we ought not do it now of course it seems stupidly obvious and absolutely instinctive that we ought to do what's good of course we ought to do what's good but can you prove it just because it's instinctive it doesn't mean it's true let's not forget the basic premise of skepticism which is to take nothing for granted the idea that we ought to do that which is good is a subjective impulse that cannot be demonstrated to be objectively true even if good can be and so even if God really did exist and even if he really did define good and bad there's still no way to objectively determine how we ought to behave it's still reliant on subjectivity now the religious might respond that of course we can prove that we ought to do that which is good because God commands us to do that which is good God defines good and God commands us to do that which is good and so morality is objective but you've got two problems firstly you just push the issue back I can still ask why I ought to do what God commands and any answer you give me can just be questioned in the same way we ought to do what God commands because God is good so why would I do that which is good because God commands it you've got yourself a circle but secondly consider that a command contains no truth value if I say go and follow me on Twitter is that true or false it's neither because a command can't be true or false it just is so even if God commands us to do that which is good that commandment can't be objectively true whether it's a command we should follow or not is simply based on whether or not we recognize God's Authority now of course God commands that we recognize his authority or you might argue that we know that God's Authority is good but you can't prove that we should follow his command to recognize his authority and you can't prove that because his Authority is good we ought to recognize it it's still ultimately a subjective instinct that we ought to do that which is good and even if it weren't it would be based on circular logic and so invalid thus if it means anything religious morality is subjective now don't get me wrong Here I am like I say a moral subjectivist to myself and so of course I don't think there's anything wrong with constructing a moral framework based in subjectivity as I'm claiming the religious do as long as the framework is recognized as such all I'm saying is that whilst religious morality claims to be objective it is in fact ultimately subjective and so needs to stop presumptuously claiming the sole right to proper or grounded ethics so that's my coverage of religious morality however and of course it's not just the religious who I think claim their morality is objective when it really isn't there are many people who are atheists and still believe that morality can be objective with the most famous atheistic case for this probably being sam Harris's in the moral landscape or at least the most influential so in my next video I want to dismantle Harris's case for objective morality and show why I think it's still ultimately subjective but also explain why I don't think this has to be such a tragedy and how we can still make ethical decisions as though they're based in objectivity even when they're not it should be interesting but until then I hope you've enjoyed this so far and remember I fully recognized that I could have made some serious logical errors here in my case against objective morality so I'll eagerly await responses from those who think that I have again be sure to follow me on social media especially Twitter since my use at the most and hit the bell next to the subscribe button keep your eyes peeled for part two of this discussion where I'll be playing on my poem turf of atheism so thank you for watching as always and I'll see you then

Channel: Alex O'Connor

Views: 442,425

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism, morality, objective, religious, god, objective morality, subjective, Sam Harris, William Lane Craig, Matt Dillahunty, Rationality Rules, part one, moral landscape, subjective morality, moral philosophy, morals, good and bad, GE Moore, David Hume, is ought

Id: 6tcquI2ylNM

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 29 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Phil_Slendy]

All I have to say is CosmicSkeptic is great and if you don’t know him, you should watch more. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[u/FartsOutTheDick]

I've spent some time with philosophy in college, and I still struggle with this. Moral subjectivism just seems so unpalletable to me, but I admit I have a hard time trying to dismiss it logically.

[u/bluenote73]

I like this kid. I saw a video where he changed his mind to go along with Sam Harris as far as objective morals, and now I see he's back to a more realistic position.