This transcript features Joe Schmid (The Majesty of Reason) responding to a video by Gavin Ortland regarding the moral argument for God’s existence While Schmid expresses deep respect for Ortland’s character and “irenic demeanor,” he provides a systematic critique of the deductive moral argument.
The discussion centers on whether objective morality requires a divine foundation or if it can be grounded in non-theistic, “brute” facts or essences.
I. Schmid’s Four Primary Criticisms
Schmid outlines why he finds deductive moral arguments (those claiming atheism entails that morality isn’t objective) unpersuasive:
- Intrinsic Nature of Suffering: Schmid argues that excruciating suffering is bad because of its intrinsic character(the way it feels), not because of its relationship to a transcendent being.
- The Parity of Explanations: Whatever explanatory move a theist makes to ground God’s goodness, an atheist can mirror. For example, if God is “good by nature,” an atheist can say “pleasure is good by nature.”
- Refined Euthyphro Dilemma: Schmid suggests that modern versions of this dilemma still pose significant challenges for theistic meta-ethics.
- The Burden of Proof: There is a “panoply” of non-theistic moral theories (utilitarianism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, etc.). Schmid argues the moral arguer must debunk all of them to succeed, a task he claims no one has completed.
II. Analyzing the Euthyphro Dilemma
Ortland’s video proposes a common theistic “third way” to solve the Euthyphro dilemma: God does not look to an external standard, nor is morality arbitrary; rather, God is the standard of goodness itself.
Schmid critiques this solution on several levels:
- Rearising Arbitrariness: If God is identical to goodness, we can still ask why God is identical to love and kindness rather than malice and hate. If there is no reason for this, goodness remains arbitrary.
- Explanatory Priority: If there is a reason why God is identical to love (because love is better than hate), then that “goodness” is logically prior to God.
- Ontological Issues: In many metaphysical systems, properties are parts of their possessors. Since humans possess “goodness” but do not possess “God,” Schmid argues that goodness and God cannot be strictly identical.
III. Explanatory “Bruteness” and Essences
A major point of contention is the concept of Brute Facts—facts that have no further explanation. Ortland criticizes non-theistic accounts for being “brute,” but Schmid argues theism faces the same issue.
Comparison of Grounding Morality
| Position | Explanatory Stopping Point | Schmid’s Critique |
|---|---|---|
| Theism | God’s Nature / Character | It is a “brute” fact that God’s nature is good. |
| Essentialism (BCS) | The Essence of the Property | It is a “brute” fact that the essence of suffering is badness. |
Schmid defends the BCS (Buen, Cuneo, and Shafer-Landau) account, which grounds morality in non-normative essence facts. He argues that once you understand what “suffering” is, its “badness” is no longer a mystery, making it a legitimate “unexplained explainer.”
IV. Evolution and Epistemology
Ortland argues that under atheism, morality is an “accidental byproduct” of evolution, which undermines our confidence in moral truths. Schmid responds with two points:
- Existing Literature: He cites philosophers like David Enoch and Erik Wielenberg who have developed robust “Third Factor” explanations to account for moral knowledge without a deity.
- Theistic Skepticism: Schmid points out that theists face their own skeptical challenges. If a “perfectly good” God is responsible for the “total destruction” of people groups or the drowning of infants (as depicted in some biblical narratives), theist moral intuitions are arguably more undermined than those of the naturalist.
V. Parsimony and Consensus
Ortland suggests God is a “simpler” explanation because He is a singular entity. Schmid counters that:
- Theists are committed to every moral fact the atheist is, plus a “radically complex” being (God).
- The vast majority of professional meta-ethicists agree that God is not required for objective morality.
“Justification is person-dependent… I can only go off what seems most plausible to me… This all goes to the fact that we need a lot of intellectual humility.” — Joe Schmid