Joel Marks is Professor Emeritus (Philosophy) from the University of New Haven. His interest in bioethics stems from his work in philosophical ethics, mainly at the theoretical level.In this blog, I've provided a lot of evidence that metaphysical naturalism and atheism don't provide any ontological foundation for objective moral values and, very plausibly, imply the non-existence of morality in any ontologically objective sense (only in a subjective sense, we could talk of morality given atheism).
In order to prove this point, I've provided as evidence the scientific and philosophical arguments of leading atheists themselves, including atheistic moral philosophers (i.e. people who specializes professionally, not superficially, in the topic of morality).
There are so much evidence and arguments (scientific, philosophical, anecdotal, logical, etc.) supporting this view that I've been tempted to created an entire blog entitled "The moral poverty of metaphysical naturalism, atheistic materialism and secular humanism", dealing exclusively with this topic. But I think this conclusion is accepted by most people (including most of the few intellectually honest atheists out there), so creating an entire blog to prove this point seems to be a waste of time. So, I've decided to continue to deal with this matter in a section of my blog.
In order to provide more evidence for this point, I'd suggest you to read carefully the arguments of moral philosopher and atheist Joel Marks. In an article entitled "The Amoral Manifesto I", Dr.Marks shows his intellectual honesty conceding that, if atheism is true, then morality doesn't exist in any ontologically objective sense (as opposed to pragmatical, instrumentalist, subjectivistic, etc. senses).
Dr.Marks concedes: "The long and the short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality. I call the premise of this argument ‘hard atheism’ because it is analogous to a thesis in philosophy known as ‘hard determinism.’ The latter holds that if metaphysical determinism is true, then there is no such thing as free will. Thus, a ‘soft determinist’ believes that, even if your reading of this column right now has followed by causal necessity from the Big Bang fourteen billion years ago, you can still meaningfully be said to have freely chosen to read it. Analogously, a ‘soft atheist’ would hold that one could be an atheist and still believe in morality. And indeed, the whole crop of ‘New Atheists’ (see Issue 78) are softies of this kind. So was I, until I experienced my shocking epiphany that the religious fundamentalists are correct: without God, there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality." (emphiasis in blue added).
Read carefully Marks' piece and please, leave aside your prejudices. Try to examine his arguments, and try to see exactly which ones of his premises is false or implausible. Don't commit the intellectual mistake of simply disagreeing and positing another opinion. Try to reflect hard on why a believer in morality like Dr.Marks changed his opinion about the God-morality connection and now, in order to be a consistent atheist, he has to reject the existence of morality.
Again (and I'm being intentionally redundant) don't commit the mistake of positing your own opinions about morality as an alternative to Dr.Marks. Rather, think carefully about his arguments in the context of atheism and metaphysical naturalism (i.e. reflect on whether Dr.Marks' conclusions are plausible and fit better than the alternatives given the basic premises of metaphysical naturalism).
It is crucial that you don't interpret Dr.Marks' views outside of the context of atheism and metaphysical naturalism.
Don't leave that your sympathies with certain moral points of views colours your sober and rational assesment of Dr.Mark's argumentation.
Wholly independent of Dr.Mark's article, I'd like to suggest this cumulative case for the conclusion that atheism implies the non-existence of morality (think hard about each step):
1-Metaphysical naturalism says that everything which exists or is causally active in our world is physical (physicalism), and hence non-physical entities (like God) don't exist (or don't have any causal influence in our universe).
2-Science is the best method to research everything which exists, or at least, the physical world.
3-We should believe only what science has discoveried (and deny or be skeptical of what science has not discoveried yet or has not scientific basis), because science is the best method to find the truth.
4-Science has discoveried that the physical world has only physical properties (including chemical and biological ones).
5-Physical properties don't include objective moral properties (nor any other normative property, for that matter).
6-Therefore, people's beliefs in objective moral properties or entities is unscientific (without any scientific basis) and plausible false (because not moral properties can be deduced of any known physical properties derived of our best scientific laws).
The above is not a deductive argument, but a series of step leading to a conclusion (6). I submit that most atheists and naturalists would agree with steps 1-5, and hence would be rationally forced to concede point 6 as the most plausible conclusion.
Think hard about it.
In future posts, I'll develop Dr.Marks' arguments in more detail and give supporting evidence.
My purpose is to show that, it is metaphysically necessary or at least metaphysically very plausible, that naturalistic atheism implies the non-existence of objective morality. Therefore, whatever reason you have to accept that objective moral values exist is a reason to think that atheism is false.
In order to prove this point, I've provided as evidence the scientific and philosophical arguments of leading atheists themselves, including atheistic moral philosophers (i.e. people who specializes professionally, not superficially, in the topic of morality).
There are so much evidence and arguments (scientific, philosophical, anecdotal, logical, etc.) supporting this view that I've been tempted to created an entire blog entitled "The moral poverty of metaphysical naturalism, atheistic materialism and secular humanism", dealing exclusively with this topic. But I think this conclusion is accepted by most people (including most of the few intellectually honest atheists out there), so creating an entire blog to prove this point seems to be a waste of time. So, I've decided to continue to deal with this matter in a section of my blog.
In order to provide more evidence for this point, I'd suggest you to read carefully the arguments of moral philosopher and atheist Joel Marks. In an article entitled "The Amoral Manifesto I", Dr.Marks shows his intellectual honesty conceding that, if atheism is true, then morality doesn't exist in any ontologically objective sense (as opposed to pragmatical, instrumentalist, subjectivistic, etc. senses).
Dr.Marks concedes: "The long and the short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality. I call the premise of this argument ‘hard atheism’ because it is analogous to a thesis in philosophy known as ‘hard determinism.’ The latter holds that if metaphysical determinism is true, then there is no such thing as free will. Thus, a ‘soft determinist’ believes that, even if your reading of this column right now has followed by causal necessity from the Big Bang fourteen billion years ago, you can still meaningfully be said to have freely chosen to read it. Analogously, a ‘soft atheist’ would hold that one could be an atheist and still believe in morality. And indeed, the whole crop of ‘New Atheists’ (see Issue 78) are softies of this kind. So was I, until I experienced my shocking epiphany that the religious fundamentalists are correct: without God, there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality." (emphiasis in blue added).
Read carefully Marks' piece and please, leave aside your prejudices. Try to examine his arguments, and try to see exactly which ones of his premises is false or implausible. Don't commit the intellectual mistake of simply disagreeing and positing another opinion. Try to reflect hard on why a believer in morality like Dr.Marks changed his opinion about the God-morality connection and now, in order to be a consistent atheist, he has to reject the existence of morality.
Again (and I'm being intentionally redundant) don't commit the mistake of positing your own opinions about morality as an alternative to Dr.Marks. Rather, think carefully about his arguments in the context of atheism and metaphysical naturalism (i.e. reflect on whether Dr.Marks' conclusions are plausible and fit better than the alternatives given the basic premises of metaphysical naturalism).
It is crucial that you don't interpret Dr.Marks' views outside of the context of atheism and metaphysical naturalism.
Don't leave that your sympathies with certain moral points of views colours your sober and rational assesment of Dr.Mark's argumentation.
Wholly independent of Dr.Mark's article, I'd like to suggest this cumulative case for the conclusion that atheism implies the non-existence of morality (think hard about each step):
1-Metaphysical naturalism says that everything which exists or is causally active in our world is physical (physicalism), and hence non-physical entities (like God) don't exist (or don't have any causal influence in our universe).
2-Science is the best method to research everything which exists, or at least, the physical world.
3-We should believe only what science has discoveried (and deny or be skeptical of what science has not discoveried yet or has not scientific basis), because science is the best method to find the truth.
4-Science has discoveried that the physical world has only physical properties (including chemical and biological ones).
5-Physical properties don't include objective moral properties (nor any other normative property, for that matter).
6-Therefore, people's beliefs in objective moral properties or entities is unscientific (without any scientific basis) and plausible false (because not moral properties can be deduced of any known physical properties derived of our best scientific laws).
The above is not a deductive argument, but a series of step leading to a conclusion (6). I submit that most atheists and naturalists would agree with steps 1-5, and hence would be rationally forced to concede point 6 as the most plausible conclusion.
Think hard about it.
In future posts, I'll develop Dr.Marks' arguments in more detail and give supporting evidence.
My purpose is to show that, it is metaphysically necessary or at least metaphysically very plausible, that naturalistic atheism implies the non-existence of objective morality. Therefore, whatever reason you have to accept that objective moral values exist is a reason to think that atheism is false.
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