Answering Atheism - How to Make the Case for God with Logic and Charity by Horn Trent

Author:Horn, Trent [Horn, Trent]
Language: ara
Format: mobi
Publisher: Catholic Answers Press
Published: 2013-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Hmmm, the blood is arching upward in a parabola and exhibits a dark red hue.

Oh dear, guess I was wrong about it being evil to plunge axes into innocent people’s heads.

This is horrible! Why would someone do this? This is murder!

I suspect the belief that a murder, an act of objective evil, was occurring in front of you would be so powerful and overwhelming that it would be even stronger than your belief that the event was really happening. In fact, the sheer evil of the event might cause you to doubt that your sense perception was functioning properly. You might say to yourself, “This is isn’t real. This can’t be happening.” When we see such an act take place, we will be more inclined to doubt our sense of reality than our sense of morality.276

Moral intuition

Some truths are so basic that we believe they are true simply because they make sense to us, not because we believe something else that makes those beliefs true. For example, imagine a mother trying to explain to her son why it is wrong to pull a dog’s tail and cause it to yelp. She might say, “It isn’t nice to cause the doggie pain.” The child might respond, “Why is it wrong to cause the doggie pain?” The mother in turn says, “Because it’s wrong to cause any living thing pain for no good reason.” The boy inquisitively continues, “But why is it wrong to cause any living thing pain for no good reason?” At this point the mother is exasperated and blurts out, “Because it just is, that’s why!” We sometimes call these beliefs moral intuitions.277 The secular moral philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong writes:

We could never get started on everyday moral reasoning about any moral problem without relying on moral intuitions. Even philosophers and others who officially disdain moral intuitions often appeal to moral intuitions when refuting opponents or supporting their own views. The most sophisticated and complex arguments regularly come down to: “But surely that is immoral. Hence, . . .” Without some move like this, there would be no way to construct and justify any substantive moral theory.278

It is true that some people deny that objective moral truths exist. They say that right and wrong may appear to be real but those are simply our own opinions that we project onto reality. Of course, some people also deny that the external world exists and say it is an illusion that we project around us. Skeptics don’t win by default. To quote atheistic philosopher Louise Antony, “Any argument for moral skepticism will be based upon premises which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values themselves.”279 You wouldn’t just give up your belief in the external world because someone told you it might be the Matrix and therefore it doesn’t exist. You would demand a good reason to think your belief in the real world was false. Likewise, if the skeptic cannot give us a good reason to believe there

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