Moral Transcendental Arguments For & Against God

In this bonus episode of the Parker's Pensées Podcast, I share my paper presentation from the 2023 Evangelical Philosophical Society in San Antonio, Texas. I originally wrote this paper for Paul Copan's Advanced Philosophy of Religion course in the Palm Beach Atlantic University Master's program.
If you want to follow along with the outline I gave the audience at EPS, you can find that at my substack here: parknotes.subs...
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[@antonioorozco4896]

Very nice presentation. God bless you, my brother.

[@andrej1659]

thank you good sir

🤝

[@rhysbarker50]

Future professor

[@pinecone421]

A comments on style. I appreciate the acronyms to save time, but it's difficult for me--who's not familiar with this area of philosophy--to keep track of what they all mean without writing them down. I also have language processes of delays, which may be contributing, but either way I think minimizing your acronyms would be more effective when giving your speech. If it's for word count reasons, i'm the other hand, then definitely keep them.

[@JohnnyHofmann]

Nice work, Parker!

[@CoranceLChandler]

😎👍🏽 now this is some high octane philosophical content!

[@joshl7598]

Hey Parker! I'm new to your content and have been really enjoying it! I did have a question about your direct approach of premise 3. For context, I'm a reformed Baptist who also like the TAG argument, so I'm really excited to hear more about this paper you're working on and to see its fruition. My question is this: In PVI's theodicy would not God, having known what man would do with their free will and giving it to them regardless, cause their acts of evil and suffering to be intentional and not random?

[@zacdredge3859]

I've only heard the intro but I'm already confused how Pihlström is arguing that awareness of suffering and its purpose disqualifies commiseration. In what way is that possibly the case? If someone has recently decided to get in shape, has done a 5 hour run and I bump into them afterwards asking 'How are you?' they might answer that they feel like crap. If they then tell me the reason they feel so bad is that they did a difficult run and aren't that fit my commiseration doesn't suddenly evaporate. It seems that awareness of a reason for the suffering changes the nature of my commiseration but in no way removes it. I sympathise with someone because they're suffering in the first place, not because their suffering is arbitrary or meaningless. If anything, suffering being meaningless on a universal level seems to remove any real basis for me commiserating at all; why bother if another's suffering or pleasure is inaccessible to me on a fundamental level. Two biological entities might interact in such ways as the result of their conditioning but there's nothing meaningful about commiserating either if all suffering is without meaning in the first place. It's simply an advantage to appear empathic in polite society; being a psychopath who feigns commiseration isn't notably different to someone sincerely doing so if the other person is not aware of it and the only good thing about commiseration is that it creates some kind of social unity. Feeling anything at all towards them is itself meaningless.

[@Caio.NSouza]

👏🏼

[@balaams__donkey]

Love the indirect approach although I would admittedly take a stronger approach by arguing God is the necessary presupposition or Moral Realism instead of theism being the better explanation of Moral Realism

Yeah I hear you. Much harder to demonstrate in a rigorous way so I took the easier route. Hopefully someday I'll be able to put it together

[@npc-lowlife6940]

Your dog is amazing

[@Elisha_the_bald_headed_prophet]

I disagree that "broken communion" means "horrors" are distributed randomly. Moral evildoing is correlated with selfishness and selfishness is correlated with personal success at the expense of others, so it seems probable there's a bias towards evildoers being better off and their morelly better victims suffering a bit more horrors... unless you're willing to take the stance that evildoing provides absolutely no material benefit on average.

[@jackcrow1204]

Did you film your ets paper? I wanted to go but i was unable to make it

Yeah this is it

[@jackcrow1204]

@ParkersPensees oh lol 😂 Great, thanks!

[@christopherv9427]

The mental gymnastics is incredible, peoples judgment are highly questionable at times, take some personal responsibility, we are not robots preprogrammed that idea makes life dead and meaningless, not perfect but with people involved never will be want to focus on only the negativity thats on you.

[@pinecone421]

I wonder if your definition of presupposition / precondition is too inclusive. You define it thusly: B is presupposed by A if both of the following conditions are met: If A then B, and if ~A then B. So, here's a quick counter example. Suppose my barn burned down last week because it got hit by lightning. However, even if it didn't get hit by lightning, there was a little candle about to fall into a haystack and burn it down anyway. Therefore, If lightning struck my barn, my barn would burn, and if lighting did not strike my barn, it would burn. Therefore, Lightning striking my barn presupposes that it will burn down. Hopefully I understood you correctly. I wonder if saying, A presupposes B if both conditional are met: Necessarily, if A then B and necessarily, if ~A then B.

[@coreygossman6243]

I think his idea of presupposition is the reverse. A. The barn burned down. B. There was a barn. If A, then B. If not A ("The barn did not burn down."), then B. Therefore, A is said to presuppose B. The barn burning down presupposes the Barns existence.

[@afdulmitdemklappstuhl9607]

Nice Presentation. If i had to challenge your argument i would doubt that free will is sufficient to explain suffering. I think free will can explains why it is possible for human to make decisions that lead to suffering but i think it is not enough to explain why this possibility has to be actualized that often that it is actualizes in the actual world. I think it is conceivable that god created a world were humans have free will but are less prone to make desicions that lead to suffering than we are in the actual world. Or in other worlds i think god could have created humans that chose not to sin more often than actual humans without robbing this alternative humans of there ability to chose there actions freely. For example: Politcal leaders often choose war, because they are motivated by "evil" motives like greed, power or glory and they think war is a efficient way to get more power or more glory or more ressources. But often this is not the case and wars last signifcantly longer than anticipated by leaders. If they knew this before they started the war, they may would not have started it. The thing is often they could have known it, but for some reason failed to consider the possibility. So: If they were a bit more critical or had a bit more foresight they might not started the war or waited for a better opportunity. If this were the case, there would be less deaths and less suffering because the war would be over quicker. They still would have freely chosen to act out of evil motives but there would be less suffering because they made better (more prudent)decisions. My point is that humans bring about suffering not only because they choose evil but because they are disposed choose unwisely\ unprudently. So if you want to explain why there is suffering you have not only to explain why we have free will but also why we have to ve disposed to make stupid decisions. Decisions that we would we not make volountary if we had better decision making abillities. If think my core claim is that there are possibal worlds where free will exists but there is less suffering than in the actual world. Iam not very knowledgable in theology or philosophy of religion so i cant evaluate if this is good critism. Maybe there is a standard reply to this line of argument that i just dont know about. Anyway, iam really glad that there i discovered this channel because there is alot of good content for people who are into analytic philosophy! Also i wish you good luck with the publishing of your paper. Iam not really into philosophy of religion but i had no problems following your explanations and found your argument really interessting

Thanks for the kind words here! So, I just use PVI's free will defense to show that Pihlström's argument doesn't capture all theodicies. I don't use a free will defense in my own explanations

[@172-0]

"I think it is conceivable that god created a world were humans have free will but are less prone to make desicions that lead to suffering than we are in the actual world" personally, I think we're living in it right now. we don't want to suffer so we make decisions to avoid it. this can lead to other people suffering. we don't generally want other people to suffer, so we try to avoid making choices that would cause such a thing. our choices always affect other people, whether we know it or not, whether it's in any sort of meaningful way or not (a man stealing a piece of bread for his family will negatively affect the seller, perhaps leading to suffering. the man lost his job because of someone else's decision to fire him, leading him to suffering). political leaders make choices based mainly on what's mostly best for the country, at least in the USA (checks and balances) and honestly can't only be fueled by the things you mentioned because of the systems we have which, in effect, do protect the nation from greed and evil (though not entirely, of course. hence the whole point of what I'm saying.) free will is very much the reason suffering is present today, along with happiness and other things. I think free will is sufficient to explain suffering, if not only because there are so many causes and effects within the world of free will. what do you think?

[@afdulmitdemklappstuhl9607]

@@172-0 Thanks for the reply. Your argument didn't convince me but you pointed out some interessting things that i didn't consider before. But it seems to me that you misunderstood my previous comment. "our choices always affect other people, whether we know it or not, whether it's in any sort of meaningful way or not (a man stealing a piece of bread for his family will negatively affect the seller, perhaps leading to suffering. the man lost his job because of someone else's decision to fire him, leading him to suffering" -> If i reading your correctly your first claim is that people often make decision that are motivated by the desire to avoid suffering, but because the world is complicated and these choices also cause suffering, often by having unfortunate consequences that we coudn't have predictet. I agree that decision that are motivated by the desire to avoid suffering often lead to more suffering. But i don't think that this shows that there is no possible world where humans are less prone to make that lead to suffering. Sure, maybe you coud count the fact that suffering is often caused by the decisions that are motivated by the desire to avoid suffering as evidence that there is no possible world where humans are more prone to make decisions that are motivated by the desire to avoid suffering, but this doesn't mean that there is no possible world where is humans are at least equaly prone to make decisions that are motivated by the desire to avoid suffering and are more successful. My mane claim was not about the motivation about the decisions that cause suffering, but about the fact that people often make there decision based on false believes that hinder them in realising there orignal goal. "political leaders make choices based mainly on what's mostly best for the country, at least in the USA (checks and balances) and honestly can't only be fueled by the things you mentioned because of the systems we have which, in effect, do protect the nation from greed and evil (though not entirely, of course. hence the whole point of what I'm saying.)" What i said about political leaders wasn't idended to sound that strong. "Sometimes" would probably have been a better choice of words than "often". But this is besides the point. If think my argument still works even if polticans really do want to decide in a way that is best for their nations. Take for example the first world war. Someone who is in generally pessimistic about human nature would probably say the political leaders that began the war where evil people who where motivated by bloodthirst and power. An optimist about human nature coud make an similar argument like you did above and say that political leaders that started the war where motivated by desire to avoid suffering. If you don't think this is plausible, remember that most people at that time greatly underestimated the war. They thought the soldiers would be home til christmas and that this would be the war to end all wars and so on. The point is: Even an altruistically motivated person who generally wants to minimize suffering could come to the conclusion that starting the first world war is a good idea if he really believes that this is the war to end all wars and it won't be long til its over etc. And i think the reason for this is, that in certain situations it is really hard for humans to think critically so they overlook certain information and make bad decisions based on false believes even tho they coud know better. If the altruistic political leader would be more self critical with his believes and no easy blinded by the public concensus he maybe would have started to question is believe that the war would be over on christmas and then he maybe would discover that recent technological developments could lead to a more brutal war than imagined by his peers and so to make sure that this won't happen he decides to not start the war and there is less suffering. But WWI is maybe a bad example. But take climate change for example. Most people know that climate change is bad and that it causes a lot of suffering and will cause even more suffering in the future. But nonetheless most people don't do much for climate change. This is in part because our brains are not made to prioritise things that happen in the distant future over things that happen in the near future. I think it's plausible to expect that, if people could see the consequences of climate change directly they would probably form an itense desire to avoid this immense suffering. But even tho most people know this theoretically they fail to act on this knowledge. If it were just a little easier to prioritise long term benefits before short term gains, we woudn't decide this way and there would be less suffering. My point is that a considerable amount of suffering is caused by decisions that a) are unprudently and/or based on false believes and that b) are preventable in the sense that the person making decisions coud have known that she had false believes or that the decisions is unprudent because it would lead to unwanted consequence or had the ability to make an more prudent decisions if she fully realised the consequence of her decisions. If also think that, because these mistakes are so commen, there would be less suffering, if we were just tiny bit less disposed to make these sort of mistakes. So even if the existence of free will is sufficient for the occurence of such decisions (one might say it makes no sense to say someone could freely choose to act in certain way, when it never occurs that he or someone similar to him choose to act in this way), the exact frequency in which these Decisions occur in the actual world is not necessary for the existence of free will. So it its possible that there is a world that is just like ours but our biological make up it a little bit different so there the total amount of bad decisions (bad in the way i described above) is about 1% reduced. Because of this there would be less suffering in this world than in the acutal world. " I think free will is sufficient to explain suffering, if not only because there are so many causes and effects within the world of free will." In some sense your are right, even in the world i described above free will would be in some sense the explanation suffering or at least human caused suffering. But i think this is not enough. Free will can not explain the exact amount of suffering in the actual world. The existence of free will is not sufficient (in my opinion) to explain why there is soandso much suffering in than rather than slightly less suffering.

[@172-0]

@@afdulmitdemklappstuhl9607 a sound argument, I would reply more but I happened to write all of that at 3 am and wasn't in my right mind 😅 I don't typically start online debates but it's been a pleasure and I appreciate hearing your point of view and the effort you've made to show it!

[@TheVeganVicar]

MORALITY IS INDEPENDENT OF GOD: Having understood that the basis of morality/ethics is the concept of non-harm (“ahiṃsā”, in Sanskrit), it is obvious that there is no need to invoke any religious or supernatural belief system in order to establish moral law in society. There are examples of fully secular societies that have survived relatively peacefully over many centuries, without the imposition of a monotheistic system of law/morality/ethics. If an act is unduly harmful to any human being, non-human animal, plant or fungus (or even to inorganic matter, in the case of environmental degradation), then it is definitionally immoral, and it violates the one and only moral law of the universe (“Do no undue/unjustifiable harm”). In other words, it is against YOUR law, since you are, fundamentally, All There Is (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit). See earlier chapters of “F.I.S.H” to learn the true nature of Ultimate Reality, and how you are, in essence, That (“tat tvam asi”, in Sanskrit). Even if there was a Supreme Creator God who dispensed moral injunctions to humanity, it would make hardly any difference in practice, that is, in the realm of normativity. For example, if the Godhead decreed that it is immoral for a human to forge a document (such as a passport, a birth certificate, or a driving permit) it would still be necessary for some kind of authority to JUDGE whether the forgery was truly immoral in any particular instance. As a matter of fact, there may be a number of scenarios where forging governmental documentation can be a highly-moral, holy and righteous act. The fact that non-monarchical governments are violent, criminal organizations, should suffice to give credence to this assertion (See Chapter 22, which proves beyond any doubt whatsoever that non-monarchical governments are unlawful institutions). See also the Glossary entry “Euthyphro dilemma”, which demonstrates that even if there was a God, His commands would be inconsequential in the normative realm, since a perfectly-moral Deity would obviously adhere to the most accurate understanding of morality (i.e. non-harm). Supposed commands dictated by God may be included in the category of the is-ought problem, mentioned in the previous subsection. In fact, the is-ought problem is actually just a linguistic misunderstanding, because, when a person asserts, for instance, that one ought not embezzle funds from one’s employer, one is using naive language in order to express a moral truth, due to inadequate training in ethics, philosophy, and grammar. The most accurate terminology to use would be, “It is objectively IMMORAL to misappropriate money or goods from one’s boss, and therefore, according to the law, one should not commit such a crime, knowing that the word ‘immoral’ refers to an act of undue harm, and obviously, is destructive to all concerned”. On the other hand, a true is-ought fallacy would be something akin to: “God exists, therefore we should obey His commands”, or “We have always eaten animals, so we should continue slaughtering them and consuming their decomposed flesh”, because such assertions do not provide any reason or evidence for why things should be a certain way, just because they are that way.

[@nkoppa5332]

Nonsense. Nothing you said proves your thesis. Cultures acting in x y z ways doesn’t prove morality itself is independent from God.

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

​@@nkoppa5332, so atheists behaving MORALLY does not prove that God is unnecessary for morality? Got it. 🥴

[@nkoppa5332]

@@ReverendDr.Thomasputting the cart before the horse. You have no objective criteria for what behaving morally looks like, yet you claim you observe people acting morally.

[@ReverendDr.Thomas]

@@nkoppa5332, that is rather PRESUMPTUOUS of you, wouldn’t you agree, Slave? Presumption is evil, because when one is PRESUMPTUOUS, one makes a judgement about a matter, despite having insufficient facts to support one’s position.

[@nkoppa5332]

@@ReverendDr.Thomas why are you giving me irrelevant statements. You do not have an objective criteria by which you can call any kinds of behavior good or bad.