Brian Bosse is not convinced by my Substack article, Is Sin a Fact? A Passage from Chesterton Examined. Brian writes,
Your Argument Against Chesterton
(1) If the existence of sin is a fact one can see in the street, then the existence of God is a fact one can see in the street.
(2) It is not the case that the existence of God is a fact one can see in the street.
From (1) and (2), it follows that
(3) It is not the case that the existence of sin is a fact one can see in the street.
Bill’s Prior Commitments
(4) The existence of moral evil is a fact one can see in the street.
(5) There are objective moral values/laws.
It seems to me that from (4) and (5) one must conclude that…
(6) The existence of objective moral values/laws is a fact one can see in the street.
Bill, do you accept (6)? If so, do you think it is possible for there to be objective moral laws in a non-theistic worldview?
I endorse the first argument. It is obviously valid in point of logical form, instantiating as it does modus tollens. And I claim that both premises are true. You will agree with me that the first is true if you agree that sin is an offense against God, which implies that if there is no God, then there is no sin. The first premise is uncontroversially true because true ex vi terminorum, which is a fancy way of saying that it is true by definition. You will agree with me that the second premise is true if you agree that the existence of sinful acts and sinful omissions is not perceivable via the senses. (More on this in a moment.)
As for the second argument, I did not give it and I do not endorse it. I do not consider (4) to be true. And I reject (6). Brian is omitting some important distinctions I make. I affirm the existence of moral evil (evil that comes about through the actions and omissions of free agents), but I say nothing in that Substack article about how the fact of moral evil is known. Is there moral evil? is one question. How do we know that there is moral evil? is a different question.
Do we literally see moral evil? Is there any empirical access to it? Can we build a 'ponerometer,' an evil detector? Do we humans possess a non-empirical sensus moralitatis whereby we discern the existence of moral evil? These are just some of the questions that naturally arise. I deny that we literally see instances of moral evil. I will give a graphic example in a moment.
It is also important not to leave out the distinction I make between two senses or uses of fact.' On one use of 'fact,' a fact is a true proposition. On a second use, a fact is a true proposition known to be true. If the existence of moral evil is a fact in the second sense, that leaves open the question as to how we know that moral evil is a fact in this second sense. I deny that we can see it (with our eyes) "in the street." The fact of moral evil is not "as plain as potatoes," to use Chesterton's expression. I know that the vegetable on my counter is a potato by seeing it (with my eyes). I do not see moral evil with my eyes. I maintain that there are actions that are morally evil, but I deny that their being morally evil is a fact that one can literally see. Now for the example.
There is a video online that depicts a black thug nonchalantly loading his semi-automatic pistol and shooting in the back of the head a homeless man sitting on a curb. What do you see? You see a man shooting another man in the head. You do not see the evil of the act. (You do not see the illegality of the act either. You see a killing; you do not see a murder.) That is not to say that the act is not evil; it is to say that the evilness of the act is not visible or in any other way empirically detectable by our outer senses even when instrumentally extended. Suppose you saw the shooting from different angles in great detail, with the blood surging out of the wound, etc. You would still not thereby know by empirical means that the the act of shooting is an evil act. Suppose you had a videotape of the entire execution and then analyzed it frame-by-frame. Would you then see (with your eyes) the evilness of the act? Of course not.
In sum, I affirm the existence of moral evil. But I deny both that the existence of moral evil is a fact one can see in the street, and that the existence of sin is a fact that one can see in the street. The crucial point however, as Brian appreciates, is that moral evil is not the same as sin. It is perfectly plain that sin presupposes the existence of God. It is not perfectly plain that objective moral evil presupposes the existence of God.
Brian asks, "Do you think it is possible for there to be objective moral laws in a non-theistic worldview? [i.e., in a world in which God does not exist?]" Well, there cannot be objectively binding moral commandments without a very special commander, or objectively binding moral imperatives without an Imperator. But why couldn't there be objectively true moral declaratives -- e.g., it is wrong always and everywhere to torture innocent human beings for one's sexual gratification -- in the atheist's world?
But these questions go well beyond the topic of my article which was merely to show that Chesterton was blustering when he claimed that it is empirically obvious -- "plain as potatoes," a fact in the second sense -- that there are sinful deeds and omissions. That could be true only if it is empirically obvious that God exists. But the latter is not empirically obvious.
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