Logic is Hard
PZ Myers has linked to the Proof that God exists.
Of course, him being a “godless liberal,” you know what to expect. And sure enough, this is just another false dilemma: you are offered the choice between accepting the existence of a “universal morality” (whatever they mean by that, considering how the site is littered with Bible quotes), or, on the other hand, asserting that “child rape is fun” (at which point the website gives you up as hopeless).
PZ correctly concludes that this website is just another waste of time. But since I’m a procrastinating student, I took the long road just to see how the website would end up convincing me: so I accepted the proposition that yes, there’s a universal moral law.
And yes, they are immaterial (quote, “are they made of matter, or are they ‘abstract’ entities? — are they physical or non-physical things?”), and yes, they are universal (didn’t I already say so?), and yes, they are unchanging (isn’t that implied in “universal” anyway, you pre-Einsteinians?). … By that time, I had actually expected that the site would concede defeat, given how much the laws of the Bible have been changed to accomodate our modern society.
But not so. I was actually led to the “preproof” page. Interesting. Apparently, the difference between a proof and a preproof is that the latter is a non sequitur: the website now claims that I’ve just accepted the following proposition:
Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws are necessary for rational thinking to be possible. Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws cannot be accounted for if the universe was random or only material in nature.
Well, I certainly didn’t. There’s absolutely no logical connection. It gets worse; the website now threatens by quoting Romans 1:18–21 …
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. …
And now finally the big moment has come, and I’m just one mouse click away from the awe-inspiring proof that god exists:
The Proof that God exists is that without Him you couldn’t prove anything.
Damn. Got me there. Wait, let me change this slightly …
The Proof that Dopey exists is that without Him you couldn’t prove anything.
For those eager to learn: this is also a non sequitur. Anyway, the authors didn’t do their homework. This kind of logical flaw has been around for ages, no need to create an own website for it.
Anyway, there’s one nugget of wisdom on the website, a quote from Proverbs 12:1:
… he who hates correction is stupid.
Guys, let that be your motto.
I was also stopped when hitting the “Moral law is not unchanging” button. But it really isn’t! I once read a translation of an ancient greek text in which the author described, how disgusting celtic people were, because of their homosexual habbits. Not because the celtic men HAD sex with other men, but because HOW they had it. With men of the same age. This was unthinkable for a greek, where homosexual relationships were only allowed between grown men and youngsters who had not yet started growing a beard. That leaves me asking Mr.Myers, which moral law is unchanging…the greek or the celtic?
The website makes much of the idea that if society determines morality, it is meaningless to say that anything is “right” or “wrong”; morality is reduced to whatever society deems to be currently acceptable. Therefore, the website argues, we have no real right to condemn the likes of Hitler, since Nazi society believed the Holocaust was simply the right thing to do.
But the author of the website doesn’t seem to realize that the same argument could be applied to God, (and in fact was, 2300 years ago by Plato, c.f. the Euthyphro dilemma). Suppose God was malevolent and commanded everyone to rape and torture children. In a theistic universe, “right” and “wrong” would simply be reduced to whatever God says. Strangely, the website doesn’t seem to notice this problem.
The point is, it’s impossible to escape the relative, subjective, nature of morality, without reducing the meaning of morality to essentially “whatever some powerful entity thinks is right.”