Karl Britton, Philosophy and the Meaning of Life, Cambridge UP, 1969, p. 192:
Religion tries to provide two great assurances: that there is an absolute good and bad in the world at large, and that the absolute good has power.
I agree that religion does attempt to provide these two great assurances.
The first assurance might be thought to be not specifically religious, or at least not theistically-religious. There might be -- it is epistemically possible that there are -- objective and absolute moral distinctions without God. I hope we can agree that the wanton slaughter of human beings for one's sexual gratification is absolutely wrong: wrong always and everywhere and in every possible circumstance in which there are human beings. Take that as an example of an objectively true moral proposition. Think of propositions in a Platonic or quasi-Platonic sort of way, as subsisting independently of minds, including God's mind if a divine mind there be, and thus as belonging to a realm unto themselves apart from the realm of space, time and matter. It might then be thought that the indicative proposition just stated suffices to ground the imperative, "Thou shalt not wantonly slaughter, etc."
Is there a Platonic realm of agential oughts and ought-nots that subsist independently of mind and matter and that suffice to make it morally impermissible to, say, rape and murder for pleasure and morally obligatory to, say, feed and care for one's children? And all of this without a foundation in a divine intellect and will?
Perhaps; I can't prove the opposite. My metaphysical hunch, however, is that such Platonic moral propositions, and not just moral propositions, cannot 'hang in the air': they need support in a mind. That's my hunch, and I can articulate it rigorously in argumentative form. No argument in metaphysics in support of a substantive proposition, however, no matter how rigorously deployed, is rationally compelling. So none of my arguments will be rationally compelling. I can render my hunch reasonable, but I cannot force you to accept it on pain of your being taxed with irrationality should you not accept it.
Nevertheless, I say we need God to ground the existence of moral absolutes. Britton says as much when he says that the absolute good has power. For if the absolute good has power, then the absolute good is God.
Suppose you disagree. Free-floating Platonica suffice, you say. It is enough that there subsist in Plato's topos ouranos an entire system of such propositions as Wanton slaughter of innocents for sexual gratification is wrong and Caring for one's offspring is morally obligatory. The latter prescribes an ought-to-do, a moral must. Who enforces it? If no one does, then it is an entirely impotent ought. If we mortals sometimes enforce it, then the ought is not wholly impotent: we provide the power to enforce the moral imperatives that follow from moral declaratives.
Could a moral ought be wholly powerless? Could it be true that one ought to X and oufht to refrain from Y even if there are no consequences in the realm of fact when the prescriptions and proscriptions are violated? Could the Ideal and the Real, the Normative and the Factual subsist in such separation? Could Being be so bifurcated?
Would the moral law be the moral law were it never enforced? Enforcement is the bringing to bear of the Ideal upon the Real.
Consider the case of a philosophically sophisticated rapist. It is his pleasure to hunt women and have his way with them. He finds one in an isolated place where she cannot summon help. She pleads and protests: Rape is wrong! He admits that it is wrong. He gives a little speech:
Yes, it is true, absolutely true, that rape is objectively morally wrong. It is wrong in Plato's heaven, but here we are on earth where there is nothing to prevent me from raping you. I am strong and you are weak. I can and will satisfy my raging desire. I have no reason not to. For my raping you will entail no negative consequences for me. I will make sure of that by strangling you while I rape you. The dead tell no tales. I will not offer the pseudo-justification that might makes right, that what I am about to do to you is morally permissible because I have the power to do it. A right that might makes is no right at all. Might cannot make right. 'Might makes right' is eliminativism about right, not an identification of its essence. No such Thrasymachean sophistry for me. What I am about to do to you is not right, but wrong. But the wrongness of the deeds I am about to do has no relevance to what actually happens in this material world of fact where we find ourselves. It is a wrongness that subsists in Plato's heaven, but not here in the sublunary. The wrongness is neither here nor there.
Why should I care that rape and murder are wrong? I am not saying that they are not wrong; I am admitting that they are. I am saying that it doesn't matter in the real world. Why should I act morally in circumstances in which there are no negative consequences for me if I act immorally? Will you tell me that I must act morally because it is the morally right thing to do? That I ought to do right because it is right? Why? There is no God and no post-mortem regard or punishment. There is no enforcer of the right and there will be no one upon whom to enforce it. I grant you your Platonic moral absolutes, but they hang in the air, and in a tw0-fold sense: no God supports them in their existence, and no God enforces them in the phenomenal order. My final happiness does not depend on doing the morally right thing in those circumstances in which I can get away with doing the wrong thereby satisfying my lust for power, pleasure, and domination. Now take off your clothes!
My view is that something like God is necessary both to explain the existence of the Platonic moral absolutes and their relevance to our animal life here below. We need God both as support and as enforcer. Being is One. It is not so bifurcated that the Ideal and the Real are poles apart without communication. God bridges the gap and mediates the opposites. He brings about the mutual adjustment of virtue and happiness, to borrow a Kantian formulation. But why do we need God to do this job? Because we cannot do it all by ourselves. A truly just adjustment of virtue and happiness cannot occur for most in this life.
If the absolute good does not have (absolute) power, then the absolute good is 'neither here nor there' in both senses of this phrase.
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