Bad Objections to the Moral Argument
Responding to William Lane Craig in a video claiming to respond to Gavin Ortlund
Joe Schmid recently went on Suan Sonna’s YouTube channel Intellectual Catholicism responding to a video Gavin Ortlund made on his channel defending the moral argument for God’s existence. Schmid is a young and up and coming philosopher who has put out lots of intelligent content on various philosophical topics and is well respected by many theists including Gavin Ortlund. In the video Schmid makes a number of interesting and good points. What I want to do here is simply point out a few weaknesses in Joe’s presentation and in defense of Gavin’s original video. One overriding issue which I think is present is Schmid’s failure to understand Ortlund’s classical theism and instead responding to Ortlund as if he were similar to someone like William Lane Craig. Many of Schmid’s responses would be good rebuttals to Craig’s views but fail to challenge Ortlund.
Most Philosophers are Moral Realists
The first major chunk of the video contains a discussion in which Schmid discusses a “panoply” of non theistic moral realist accounts. Schmid’s error is that he thinks the moral arguer would need to “systematically” rule out each of these alternatives in order for the moral argument to succeed. This claim seems patently false. In order for Ortlund or anyone else to claim that morality is grounded in God, he need not refute every possible alternative explanation.
Suppose we granted Schmid’s claim that to put forward God as an explanation of moral value then all other alternatives would need to be refuted, then that standard would seemingly refute any alternative explanation too. Has any Utilitarian or Kantian or anyone else gone through systematically and refuted every single other proposed moral realist theory? Surely not. According to Schmid, their failure to do that somehow indicts their moral theory which is clearly absurd. To show that something is true, you needn’t find the error in every other alternative view.
Thus, the fact that most ethicists are non theistic moral realists amounts only to an argument from authority. Surely there is some weight when a majority of authorities on a given issue agree on something. However, the argument from authority is always the weakest form of argument and one which Schmid himself on this very issue does not follow. Most philosophers of religion are theists and yet Schmid himself is not. Thus, Schmid is comfortable in disagreeing with the vast majority of experts in a given field. If he can do that, so can Ortlund. This appeal to authority then is a very weak rebuttal to the moral argument.
Euthyphro Dilemma
Schmid also thinks that Ortlund’s brief comments on the Euthyphro dilemma are insufficient to solve the dilemma. What seems to be missed here that that Gavin Ortlund holds to divine simplicity. Thus, when Gavin affirms that God is goodness itself, Gavin is not responding in the same way William Lane Craig for instance does when he (inconsistently) says the same thing. I would grant to Schmid that Craig’s solution to the Euthyphro dilemma is somewhat arbitrary. Since God, on Craig’s view is literally one being among many who has a variety of really distinct properties, it is odd to say the least that this being is goodness himself. Why isn’t goodness some still larger category into which good fits? Craig might have trouble with such a question. Ortlund however is operating on a much more traditional understanding of being which in which all things participate in the being of God.
Schmid misses this when he argues that creatures have or instantiate goodness but don’t have or instantiate God and thus God and goodness are distinct. In truth, whatever goodness creature’s have is itself a participation in God’s very goodness. The existence they have is a participation in God’s sheer act of existence. Creatures are only finite expressions of God’s various perfections but they do participate in God’s being. This classic participation ontology, foreign to much of contemporary analytic philosophy, underlies Ortlund’s claims and not those of the likes of Craig. Thus, it is understandable why Schmid thinks that his objections, would work on Ortlund.
God’s Goodness
Related to the above point, Schmid claims that an attempt to ground goodness in God does not provide a better ground for the theist than any atheistic alternative since one can only ground good in God in one of three ways each of which has flaws.
God is good because God has certain properties such as love, justice, kindness etc.
God is good by nature, or there is some “essence fact” about God that states that God is good.
God’s goodness is inexplicable.
Once again here it seems that Schmid’s conception of 2) does not account for the classical theist conception of God where God is not a thing who has some essence with essence facts in the way water might have an essence fact like “water is H2O.” Rather, God is simply being itself. Goodness, since it is a transcendental like oneness, is convertible with being. Thus, to say that God is being, is to say that God is good. Goodness, classically understood is being under the aspect of desirability. Thus, if God is as classical theism describes, then asking why God is good is like asking what caused God? The question demonstrates only that the questioner doesn’t fully grasp the terms he is using. It isn’t a brute unexplained fact that God isn’t caused any more than it is brute that he is good at least on classical theism.
Now undoubtedly at this point Schmid would point out that he has objections to classical theism and thinks it doesn’t make sense. That’s fine but then those objections and not the above ones should have been in his presentation. He is responding to a classical theist so his responses should be directed at the right target.
Conclusion
Overall Schmid’s video was interesting and he made lots of good points. However, his point about the number of moral realist alternative theories to theism is really just an appeal to authority. In addition, I think that most of his objections to the moral argument are against moral arguments that are not undergirded by classical theism. As a classical theist, Ortlund is immune to most of Schmid’s objections. Schmid of course has objections to classical theism but those, I think, can be answered. Ortlund then seems well within his rights to defend the moral argument despite Schmid’s claims.