Summary Of God: The Ontological Basis Of Morality
God: The Ontological Basis of Morality
Faith Gobeli
Dr. DeWeese
Philosophy of Religion
May 1, 2009
Moral arguments have been some of the most popular as well as some of the most disputed arguments for God’s existence. Such arguments are meant to appeal to basic intuitions that people share with regard to the nature of morality. A number of philosophers have provided unique formulations of the moral argument, but George Mavrodes’ version in his article “Religion and the Queerness of Morality” is, perhaps, the most compelling. Mavrodes argues that the existence of moral obligations would be an absurd feature of the world if all that existed were natural …show more content…
Graham Oppy expounds on one such difficulty, the Euthyphro dilemma.19 If all moral properties and moral facts are grounded in God, then how is God related to moral properties and moral facts? It would seem that either God approves of the Good because it is good or that God approves of the Good because he determines what is good.20 If the former is true, it would seem that moral facts and properties are metaphysically independent of God and so cannot be grounded in God. If moral facts and properties do not depend on God for their existence, there is not much sense to be made in saying that they are grounded in …show more content…
The pressing concern is that moral facts and properties not be deprived of the factual content provided to them by natural facts and values. However, to claim that nature informs morality is not tantamount to claiming that morality supervenes on nature. The supervenience relation between natural facts and properties and moral facts and properties entails that moral facts and properties are reducible to natural facts and properties, a position that, in its commitment to physicalism, seems to repackage the absurdity of moral obligation in a Russellian world. It is more plausible that natural facts and properties are related to moral facts and properties in that they constitute their material content. On this view, the status of moral facts and properties is inherent because it is determined by the natural facts and properties of which they are
Faith Gobeli
Dr. DeWeese
Philosophy of Religion
May 1, 2009
Moral arguments have been some of the most popular as well as some of the most disputed arguments for God’s existence. Such arguments are meant to appeal to basic intuitions that people share with regard to the nature of morality. A number of philosophers have provided unique formulations of the moral argument, but George Mavrodes’ version in his article “Religion and the Queerness of Morality” is, perhaps, the most compelling. Mavrodes argues that the existence of moral obligations would be an absurd feature of the world if all that existed were natural …show more content…
Graham Oppy expounds on one such difficulty, the Euthyphro dilemma.19 If all moral properties and moral facts are grounded in God, then how is God related to moral properties and moral facts? It would seem that either God approves of the Good because it is good or that God approves of the Good because he determines what is good.20 If the former is true, it would seem that moral facts and properties are metaphysically independent of God and so cannot be grounded in God. If moral facts and properties do not depend on God for their existence, there is not much sense to be made in saying that they are grounded in …show more content…
The pressing concern is that moral facts and properties not be deprived of the factual content provided to them by natural facts and values. However, to claim that nature informs morality is not tantamount to claiming that morality supervenes on nature. The supervenience relation between natural facts and properties and moral facts and properties entails that moral facts and properties are reducible to natural facts and properties, a position that, in its commitment to physicalism, seems to repackage the absurdity of moral obligation in a Russellian world. It is more plausible that natural facts and properties are related to moral facts and properties in that they constitute their material content. On this view, the status of moral facts and properties is inherent because it is determined by the natural facts and properties of which they are