| Dota2Gamer said:
Premise 1: If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. |
No reason to embrace either premise.
Premise 1 - If there is such a thing as an objective moral standard, the moral standard is independent of any thing as a matter of necessity. Whether you argue that we need god to tell us what this is to understand it would be irrelevant, but we certainly wouldn't need a god simply because there is some objective moral standard. This would be akin to saying that we need a god to be able to understand a fact about the Universe which again is just patently absurd.
I can make all sorts of factual statements about the Universe. The sun exists. Apples grow on trees. The Universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old.
Premise 2 is incoherent to non-Platonists. To say that something abstract, such as "objective moral values" exists is to confine your entire argument to Platonism. Since I'm not a Platonist, I can simply reject this prima facie. I do not think any of these statements make sense - "number exist", "circles exist","inches exist","colors exist" - you may think they do make sense but that only makes you a Platonist. Unless you can convince me Platonism is true I do not even need to entertain your premise.
I think this is one of the worst arguments for the existence of god because it takes something completely independent of the idea of god and tries to jettison god in there. It's also easily dismissed by non-Platonists as well as non-Cognitivists, which I sometimes I embrace as well. Metaethics is a tough nut to crack. =)
