I think that the argument that morality can only exist with god depends on a logical fallacy.
The first step is to say that morality is defined as whatever god says. You then say that morality cannot exist without god, because the definition of morality is what god says.
Of course this argument is transparently meaningless. I could equally well say that morality is defined as whatever a monkey typing at a typewriter comes up with and make the same argument.
The fallacy only works because the word morality already has meaning. It means that gut feeling I have that something is good or bad. Then somebody comes along and uses that exact same word, but defines it differently—as what god says. Since they both happen to be reasonably well correlated I don’t necessarily notice this switch. Then I’m convinced that morality is defined as what god says, and so there can’t be morality without god.
If we were strict we would say: don’t define what god does as moral. Make up a new word for it e.g. ‘godral’, and allow morality to keep it’s classic meaning. At that point it becomes clear that we need to prove that ‘godral’ = ‘moral’, which is far from obvious.
The Euthyphro dilemma is a good search term to find a lot more on this topic.
I think that the argument that morality can only exist with god depends on a logical fallacy.
The first step is to say that morality is defined as whatever god says. You then say that morality cannot exist without god, because the definition of morality is what god says.
Of course this argument is transparently meaningless. I could equally well say that morality is defined as whatever a monkey typing at a typewriter comes up with and make the same argument.
The fallacy only works because the word morality already has meaning. It means that gut feeling I have that something is good or bad. Then somebody comes along and uses that exact same word, but defines it differently—as what god says. Since they both happen to be reasonably well correlated I don’t necessarily notice this switch. Then I’m convinced that morality is defined as what god says, and so there can’t be morality without god.
If we were strict we would say: don’t define what god does as moral. Make up a new word for it e.g. ‘godral’, and allow morality to keep it’s classic meaning. At that point it becomes clear that we need to prove that ‘godral’ = ‘moral’, which is far from obvious.
The Euthyphro dilemma is a good search term to find a lot more on this topic.