Refutation to Haywood's Refutation of Peter Kreeft's Argument from Conscience

Refutation to Haywood's (@jablomih) Refutation of Peter Kreeft's Argument from Conscience.

Here is Peter Kreeft's argument concisely --
Premise 1: Conscience has an absolute authority over me. 
Premise 2: The only possible source of absolute authority is an absolutely perfect will, a divine being. 
Conclusion: Such a being exists.

The version of Kreeft's argument Haywood chose to refute --
P1. Conscience has absolute, exceptionless, binding moral authority over us, demanding unqualified obedience. 
P2. Only a perfectly good, righteous divine will has this authority and a right to absolute, exceptionless obedience. 
C. Therefore conscience is the voice of the will of God.

Haywood then adds: (Note: the inescapable conclusion if P1 & P2 were true is that the conscience IS God. That should tell you right there how sound this argument is.)

False. To say that the conscience is the "voice of the will of God" implies a communication of knowledge between two beings. To say that my friend is the text message telling me what he wants is false. But if he were to mean, instead, that God is present to us in conscience, St. Thomas Aquinas writes in the Summa Q. 8, Art. 1:

I answer that, God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Phys. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing, as was shown above (Question 7, Article 1). Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.

Haywood continues:

P1 is false. Kreeft defines conscience to be that way, but admits that others do not. "The modern meaning tends to indicate a feeling that I did something wrong." That is the what we actually observe to exist. The rest is simply assertion. But included in his definition is that all humans have knowledge of an absolute obligation to holiness. I do not have knowledge of this obligation, therefore P1 is false. 

Haywood hasn't proven the argument to be false, but has proven Kreeft's accusation of the modern man's definition to be true: that the modern meaning tends to indicate a feeling that I did something wrong. Haywood leaves out Kreeft's most accurate explanation of his point out: "[conscience] is first of all the knowledge that I must always do right and never wrong." This is what Kreeft meant by "obligation to holiness". Earlier in our debate, Haywood mentioned that it's unpleasant to consider that theists can't do right unless they believe in eternal punishment. It's a comment made often by atheists. But to do right, I must believe doing right is better than doing wrong. Or else, I must not consider doing wrong better than doing right. So I must believe that I should (obligation) do right and not (obligation) do wrong. They must also admit common moral facts, a knowledge of which things are right and which things are wrong. Only in particular circumstance do we have "feelings". The premise of the argument concerns the authority of conscience, not of the knowledge moral facts (which arouse what Haywood calls "feelings").

Haywood continues:

P2 is simply assertion. He "supports" it by adding the superfluous words "absolute" and "binding". Conscience isn't absolute. Different people have different moral intuitions; it's rare that two people agree. Conscience isn't binding. People are free to go against it, and billions do every day. Then they feel bad, because conscience is their feeling of what they should have done. No magic involved.

What Haywood calls "different moral intuitions" and when he says, "it's rare that two people agree", he's referring to moral facts rather than the "knowledge that I must always do right and never wrong". Kreeft explicitly stated the premise was not referring to moral facts, or "moral intuitions".

Conscience isn't binding.

"Must" is a pretty binding word.

People are free to go against it, and billions do every day.

Those that go against "the knowledge that [they] must always do right and never wrong" are those that do wrong because it's wrong. Masochists seek pleasure (a good) in pain. Psychopaths (antisocial personality disorder) seek good only for themselves, at the cost of all else. Many do evil to obtain a good end, but I want proof that "billions" do evil for its own sake "every day". 

Then they feel bad, because conscience is their feeling of what they should have done.

If someone knows they are acting for evil's own sake, they don't feel bad after the fact, but before. It's called conscience (and this in the sense of moral facts). But if that person acted in good conscience (doing good for its own sake) but, reflecting on the consequences of their actions, saw that they were bad and feel guilty, still acted according to "the knowledge that [they] must always do right and never wrong".

There's no disproof here -- just a misunderstanding of what the premise is stating.

Haywood continues:

The conclusion is of course unproven, since it's based on false premises, but it's also absurd. Psychopathic killers clearly refute this argument, since they do not feel remorse. Their conscience, if they have one, is not binding on them. 

Most people don't feel remorse for acting in good conscience. What's malformed in psychopaths is the moral facts of what's right and wrong, not the obligation to do what's right and avoid what's wrong.

Haywood continues:

Redefining "conscience" so that psychopaths follow a "conscience" that tells them they should murder leaves you with not only tautology, but absurdity:

At the top of this post, I put in bold "version" because Peter Kreeft, in stating the argument in that particular way, did so at the end of his article. It assumes that the conscience has been properly formed by the truth/moral facts:

"To sum up the argument most simply and essentially, conscience has absolute, exceptionless, binding moral authority over us, demanding unqualified obedience. But only a perfectly good, righteous divine will has this authority and a right to absolute, exceptionless obedience. Therefore conscience is the voice of the will of God. 

Of course, we do not always hear that voice aright. Our consciences can err. That is why the first obligation we have, in conscience, is to form our conscience by seeking the truth, especially the truth about whether this God has revealed to us clear moral maps (Scripture and Church). If so, whenever our conscience seems to tell us to disobey those maps, it is not working properly, and we can know that by conscience itself if only we remember that conscience is more than just immediate feeling. If our immediate feelings were the voice of God, we would have to be polytheists or else God would have to be schizophrenic."

Therefore, if your conscience (in the sense of feelings I presume, since no moral fact says this to be good) tells you to murder, your conscience (knowledge of moral facts) is malformed.

The conclusion of Haywood's syllogism also presumes the authority of conscience, that somehow a psychopath would realize that murder is wrong (knowledge of moral facts) and shouldn't do it because his obligation is to what's right, not wrong. But if no such obligation to what's right exists (as Haywood claims), there's nothing to move the psychopath from not murdering. There's actually no reason to call someone a psychopath who simply does as they please. We all do, right?

If you say that genetics or abuse or evil spirits can alter what your conscience tells you what to do, then conscience is clearly not the voice of the will of an omnipotent God.

Regarding genetics, we don't say this can alter our conscience (obligation to do what's right).

Regarding abuse, it may alter our pursuit of truth by replacing the ability to reason with passion for revenge (which would be seen as a good, and imply our obligation to it), but that's still moral facts.

Regarding evil spirits, they can lie to us and often do. That's why we pursue the truth.

A note about "authority":
Authority isn't taken in the sense of the ability to forcefully control another, as if no free will existed. Rather, authority is taken in the sense that a physicist or chemist has authority in their field of study. Their authority comes from their knowledge of facts in regards to the physical world. However, they don't forcefully carry out any of the natural laws they articulate. So, why is it they are authorities? Because they are a reference to laws and facts.

My conclusion to Haywood's refute is that he misunderstood what Kreeft meant by conscience, therefore didn't refute the argument.

Quantum Cosmology and the Existence of God

Two videos of Alexander Vilenkin explaining the origin of the Universe.

A quantum cosmologist's explanation of the origin of the Universe entirely congruent with the theist's First Cause Argument for the existence of God.


6 minute video (you may start at 4:36).

3m 16s video.

Evil Disproves Atheism

I've been contemplating some of the conclusions being a determinist and empiricist would have to condone.

Empiricism: only things that can be experienced with our 5 senses can be known.

Determinism: we have no free will; all of our actions are decided upon by our neuron's reactions to our environment and are influenced by our biology.

If, indeed, nature works this way, each death at the hands of an ISIS militant is a naturally caused death. There exists no moral difference between a 60 year old dying in their bed from cancer than a 12 year old being burned alive in a cage by a radical jihadist, especially since "morality" is a set of neurological responses to environment that are culturally accepted (so says the atheist).

Religious beliefs are the reaction of neurons caused by my environment and I have no free will to decide otherwise. So, whatever "religious" motive might be used to commit atrocities are, in fact, natural, and saying "religion is the cause of evil" is a contradiction on several counts:

1) "Religion" is a natural, neurological response to a natural environment in the same way a "better world" would be a neurological response expressed by someone's political beliefs (i.e., jihadism vs nationalism),

2) if evil isn't empirical, then it doesn't exist,

3) "justice" is nothing other than the local cultural norm

4) the idea of a "better world" that doesn't yet exist nor ever has is only an idea that may or may not be possible according to the psychological/physical laws that govern our behavior. If we let the laws of nature work themselves out, we get the world we live in today. If the evil in the world is perfectly natural, what's wrong with it?

Isn't a "better world" the empiricist's equivalent of heaven, most especially since it involves faith that it can be achieved and the hope which moves one to act toward achieving it?

Another question: How can you determine the intention of an object that can't decide to move itself?
(The atheist then finds the problem in explaining their awareness of human design in the universe but admitting no Intelligent Design).

When sensing that an act of another human being is unjust or evil or that deaths by natural disasters are unjust or evil, the atheist has 2 stances to choose from:

1) the injustice/evil perceived is a subjective perception of reality that distorts the truth that everything that happens has a rational and natural cause, obeying the laws of the natural world and, thus, is perfectly ok, or

2) I'm wrong about my atheism.

Limits to the Authority of Science

In a recent post on Twitter regarding the beginning of human life and abortion, Richard Dawkins wrote:

RichardDawkins Many people are challenging me to draw a line. Exactly when does "personhood" begin? Please Google "The Tyranny of the Discontinuous Mind". 12/14/15, 8:47 AM

So, I did.

Persevering through the boring English rhetoric using statistics to draw irrelevant conclusions, I managed to pick out a few quotes that are unique to Dawkins' style of argumentation. Dawkins is in black and I am in red.

Perhaps such wastage of information is inevitable: a necessary evil. I don’t want to make too much of it. What is more serious is that there are some educators – dare I say especially in non-scientific subjects – who fool themselves into believing that there is a kind of Platonic ideal called the ‘First Class Mind’ or ‘Alpha Mind’: a qualitatively distinct category, as distinct as female is from male, or sheep from goat. This is an extreme form of what I am calling the discontinuous mind. It can probably be traced to the ‘essentialism’ of Plato – one of the most pernicious ideas in all history.

If this were St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas, after stating their opponent's argument, they would prove it wrong. Dawkins just says, "It's pernicious" and leaves it there. Let us proceed.

It is amusing to tease such absolutists by confronting them with a pair of identical twins (they split after fertilisation, of course) and asking which twin got the soul, which twin is the non-person: the zombie. A puerile taunt? Maybe. But it hits home because the belief that it destroys is puerile, and ignorant.

A new embryo, a new form. What's so hard about 1+1=2? Matter doesn't exist without its [metaphysical] form. Thus, at the moment an object, separating itself from another object, is identifiable as "something else", it has a new form (in this case, a rational soul/personhood).

An embryo is either human or it isn’t. Everything is this or that, yes or no, black or white. But reality isn’t like that.

Anybody catch the irony? Everything isn't black or white. It simply isn't. Unless he defines "reality" as something separate than what it constitutes (such as "everything"), then he contradicted himself. According to Dawkins, that "reality isn't black and white" is pretty black and white. Being essential to his argument, he'll go on to give no supporting evidence for this absolute claim about all of reality.

But personhood doesn’t spring into existence at any one moment: it matures gradually, and it goes on maturing through childhood and beyond.

Astonishingly, Dawkins is refusing to acknowledge the Law of Non-Contradiction. Apparently, one's personhood exists and doesn't exist in the same moment in the same place. Only things that exist can mature, unless he can prove the changes of an object that doesn't yet exist.

In this sentence, he might even be insinuating that only adults are persons, in which case he contradicts all of his remarks regarding violence done to children. They're not persons.

“It would never be made human if it were not human already.” Really? Are you serious? Nothing can become something if it is not that something already? Is an acorn an oak tree?

           

This analogy would work if we were discussing an unfertilized egg. However, an acorn is potentially an oak tree and once fertilized, is in the process of becoming only an oak tree (and never an orange tree or a squirrel).

A fertilized egg is in the process of becoming a human. Naturally, it will only become a human. The essential characteristics that differentiate a human from any other species are the intellect and will, which are both non-empirical traits. Since science can't determine when these characteristics are formed in the embryo/fetus, science is unqualified to determine personhood.

This is without speaking of the intellect and will as part of the metaphysical form/essence, which is necessary for an object to mature into what it is.

If a time machine could serve up to you your 200 million greats grandfather, you would eat him with sauce tartare and a slice of lemon. He was a fish. Yet you are connected to him by an unbroken line of intermediate ancestors, every one of whom belonged to the same species as its parents and its children.

Dawkins' major premise for the argument that humans developed from another species is the similarities between the molecules of different species. This is what the evidence states - nothing more. Dawkins applies his reason and concludes that one must have come from the other (post hoc ergo propter hoc). He mandates that everyone accept his conclusion. I accept the evidence - that there are similarities in the molecules between different species -, but what evidence is there for the conclusion? Evolution is a working hypothesis, not yet a provable fact.

I'm curious as to why there have been no alternative proposals of possibilities for the existence of similarities in DNA molecules between different species of life on earth. All life on earth is carbon-based. All molecules that would eventually develop into some life-form would need to have similarities among themselves to live under similar conditions.

Why not several different molecules that develop into different organisms that look the same? Why one original organism for all life when there are other possible conclusions for the existence of similarities?

If life can form in a far away galaxy with a different ancestor than us, why not the same thing on the same planet?

Just because someone wrote the same answer on the test as I did doesn't mean the answer originated with one of us and was passed on to the other.

The only way to maintain our human-privileging laws and morals would be to set up courts to decide whether particular individuals could ‘pass for human’, like the ludicrous courts with which apartheid South Africa decided who could ‘pass for white’.

I admire that he called them "privileges" and not "rights". Any atheist that believes in rights without design and absolute truth contradicts oneself.

The only way to determine who could "pass for human" would either be through similar aspects of DNA molecules (thus requiring such study and conclusion at the birth of every infant) or by the abstracting of universals as inductive reasoning has always done. Dawkins believes in science; good-bye reason.

Humans are clearly separable from chimpanzees and pigs and fish and lemons only because the intermediates that would otherwise link them in interbreeding chains happen to be extinct.

He admitted that the "missing links" are all extinct. How convenient: the "intermediates of the gaps". They are only known to exist because "they must have". Sound familiar?

This is remarkable: It is clear that humans aren't fish only because the intermediates don't exist.

At some point, whatever the intermediate looked like, the differences would lead me to conclude that this thing is no longer a fish because it has legs.

If your theology tells you that humans should receive special respect and moral privilege as the only species that possesses a soul, you have to face up to the awkward question of when, in human evolution, the first ensouled baby was born.

No you don't.

All living things have souls. There are vegetative souls, animal souls and rational souls. All living things have souls. Morality applies only to that species with a rational soul - humans.

I've also never demanded worship from a monkey. Other than that, I can't figure out what "special respect" might mean.

It is only the discontinuous mind that insists on drawing a hard and fast line between a species and the ancestral species that birthed it. Evolutionary change is gradual: there never was a line, never a line between any species and its evolutionary precursor.

Personhood exists because of the rational soul in a human body. A dead person doesn't have "rights" (otherwise known as "tradition"); nor do pigs (they're smarter than humans to avoid asking for rights to avoid politics altogether). The rational soul isn't empirical, therefore not definable by natural science. Personhood isn't something physically gradual and subject to change as all material things are.

There never was a ‘first’ Homo sapiens.

Then how could there have been a second? Two is two ones. Three is three ones. Without the first, nothing follows.

As soon as you define the characteristics of a Homo sapiens, the first would be the first to fit the categorical definition.

Scientists are called upon by governments, by courts of law, and by the public at large, to give a definite, absolute, yes-or-no answer to important questions, for example questions of risk. Whether it’s a new medicine, a new weedkiller, a new power station or a new airliner, the scientific ‘expert’ is peremptorily asked: Is it safe? Answer the question! Yes or no? Vainly the scientist tries to explain that safety and risk are not absolutes. Some things are safer than others, and nothing is perfectly safe. There is a sliding scale of intermediates and probabilities, not hard-and-fast discontinuities between safe and unsafe. That is another story and I have run out of space.

I wonder why they're not considered "experts" of reason and ethics.

Empiricism: a Denial of Common Sense

Modern atheism won't accept any conclusion without empirical evidence. What empirical evidence suggests that "we can only have certainty from empirical evidence"? The irony that reason is used to discredit reason.

"The search for knowledge is an effort to amplify and to deepen the knowledge of which the man on the street enjoys, in moderation, with respect to all the daily things that surround him. The act of denying the same nucleus of common sense, the act of requiring evidence for that which the physicist and the man on the street accept as obvious, isn't a praiseworthy perfectionism; it's in fact a pompous confusion." (My emphasis added.)

W.V. QUINE, "The Scope and Language of Science" in The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, Harvard University Press, 1976, 229-230.

If Theists Have An Imaginary Friend, Atheists Play House.

Unequipped with any refute to the arguments for the existence of God, some atheists disguise their ignorance behind snark. Either by meme or by tweet, atheists will call God a theists "imaginary friend", oblivious of the circular reasoning in their statement. In a different post, I'll discuss philosophy of ethics and how, at the very least, Christian morality is living according to reality ("Morality is living according to design" -Peter Kreeft). In this post, I wanted to expose precisely that if there is no God, we all are living according to our imagination.

A consequential conclusion derived from the illusion of no 'designer' of the universe is that nothing in this life has meaning - nothing has purpose. We make objects and actions mean things by the way we subjectively interpret them. Concepts such as 'good' and 'evil' are ideas that we humans decide to apply to certain actions done by man (good and evil aren't empirical objects that can be proven by testing, so technically they don't exist). Likewise for the purpose and use of things. A phone can have the purpose and meaning of communicating with a person 800 miles away or it can have the purpose of smashing a spider on the wall. Either way, I decide what the phone means and what purpose is attributed to its definition as "phone".

Recall to mind our time in preschool where in the corner was a life-size plastic kitchen set. It came with plastic food, a plastic stove, a plastic microwave, a plastic kitchen phone, plastic silverware, etc. None of these things are real as alluded to by the adjective "plastic" in front of each of these things. Continuing with the recollection, there was also a box with random clothing to dress up and play "house". A girl was the wife and mother; a boy was the husband and father. They chose clothes that would give the impression they had such roles during their play/skit. Each of these objects, from the plastic kitchen to the clothes, were given meaning by the kids so they may be something other than what they were - plastic in the shape of something real and kids in the roles as adults. The kids employed their imagination to give new meaning to objects that previously had none.

Sadly, atheists take this same method and apply it to real things. Any meaning they give to anything in life is a product of their own imagination since it has no existence in reality apart from their mind. It's taking the real world and living it through ones own imagination - subjective meaning.

If theists have an imaginary friend, atheists play house.

Argumentum A Malo- A Contradiction in Modern Atheism

There is a particular argument for atheism, the existence of evil, that I find not to coincide with a conclusion from atheism - that there is absolutely no meaning for anything in the universe; man applies all meaning to reality.

To an atheist, life means no more than death. Any beauty experienced in this life is a subjective idea or emotion applied to an object or event. Likewise, any moral evil experienced in this life is a subjective idea or intention applied either by oneself or by society to a given act.

The argument from evil states: If God is omnibenevolent and omnipotent, and if evil exists, God must either not be omnibenevolent, omnipotent or not exist at all.

In regards to "omnibenevolent", the argument from evil presupposes that the subjective application of meaning is not subjective but objective. It presupposes that evil isn't an idea applied by man to an act, giving the act a meaning it doesn't innately have but instead something everyone knows and should consciously choose to reject.

Regarding "omnipotent", the argument from evil presupposes that life is objectively better than death (as well as good is objective and ought to be preferred to evil and my life ought to be without suffering). "If God is omnipotent, He should prevent people from suffering". Again, the atheist assumes that the meaning they believe to have been subjectively applied to reality is, in fact, objective.

In order to not contradict oneself, the atheist cannot be convinced of these two principles simultaneously. To argue from evil, the atheist must either suspend their relative moral law (their subjective meaning applied to human actions) to presume an absolute moral law or avoid the argument entirely.

Let's assume for the moment the atheist has decided to suspend the conclusion that meaning is subjective in order to use the argument from evil. Often, they immediately apply their unformed conscience as the absolute moral law as the theist's argument. Most atheists argue for the non-existence of the God in their own minds rather than the one presented at the moment of debate (this also includes their own personal and literal interpretation of Holy Writ).

Ultimately, the atheist isn't satisfied with God's response to the freedom man has to either be human or inhumane. To be without free will is to be incapable of love. To be incapable of love would make us no longer human (un-human).