Beginnings and beginnings

One of the most common and most persuasive arguments for the existence of God is the Kalam cosmological argument. William Lane Craig is perhaps its foremost proponent.

The argument has been formulated at a high level by Craig as follows (according to Wikipedia):

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

He then goes on to argue why this cause must be God, an argument I find unconvincing but won't get into here.

This argument is usually attacked by tackling the first premise with quantum mechanics, where events do not necessarily have causes per se, however Craig counters this by insisting that the laws of quantum mechanics themselves serve as the cause.

Premise number two is often attacked also by raising the possibility that the universe, or at least time, has always existed. Craig responds with all the evidence for the big bang (which is not actually in dispute) and with some unconvincing arguments attempting to prove that an infinite series of past events is impossible.

I propose to attack the argument from another angle. Again, I attack premise two, but not by denying the big bang or the beginning of time, but by arguing that there are beginnings, and then there are beginnings.

Something from nothing

I read an interesting blog post by a fellow named Richard Carrier the other day. In it he discusses the common idea that the universe was created from nothing, and what that might mean.

After all, a common question is why should the universe exist at all? Why is there something rather than nothing? One explanation is that God must have created the universe. Another is that for some reason nothingness is somehow unstable and will always lead to something.

And, quite apart from this question, creation from nothing is a common religious theme. It is also commonly assumed by the non-religious that all matter, time and space were created in the big bang, essentially from nothing. As such, perhaps it's worth thinking about what might happen if we can imagine such a state of nothingness.

And another thing!

Before leaving the subject of The Moral Landscape completely, I want to write a post specifically to defend Harris's idea against one particularly bad criticism.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was quite annoyed by a howler of an error made by William Lane Craig in a debate he had with Sam Harris on the topic of whether there could be an objective basis for morality without God.

What was even more annoying was that Dr. Craig was convinced that he had unambiguously proved his argument with this ridiculous misunderstanding. Unbelievably, Harris never bothered to challenge this, resolutely ignoring Dr. Craig and evidently concentrating on all the points he had scripted for himself well in advance of the debate.

After the jump, Dr. Craig's bogus argument and why it's so wrong.

The Moral Landscape: conclusions

For all the reasons I've outlined, I don't think it's correct to say that Sam Harris has justified his claim that science can in principle give us objective moral values.

However, that doesn't mean that moral values are completely subjective either. Moral systems can be inconsistent, and moral values can be effective or ineffective at achieving more profound moral goals. For those who agree that well-being is of primary concern, various moral decisions can be evaluated objectively with regard to how well they promote it.

Should we value a parent's right to corporally punish a child, or value the child's right to be spared deliberate physical pain? Well, if we wish to promote good character, then an objective decision should be possible given enough data. Unfortunately most of us make these decisions subjectively based on our own upbringing and capacity for empathy.

I suspect that Harris's true position is not that different from my own, and that perhaps our disagreement is more a matter of semantics than incompatible world views.

The conscious beneficiaries of morality

To whom do we have a moral duty? Sam Harris identifies "conscious beings" as the beneficiaries of our morality.

This is a very broad category, and perhaps Harris is correct. The momentum of history appears to be with him, in that our moral circle is ever-expanding. We first felt this duty only to our kin, then later to our nation, our race, our species.

In the present day, many are concerned with the well-being of members of other species. The future may bring yet more expansion of this moral circle, perhaps even bringing artificially intelligent constructs into the fold. 

Harris seems to include certain animals in his circle of morality, which will please animal rights advocates. On the other hand, pro-life campaigners will be disappointed that Harris seems to exclude human embryos. That some people may reasonably disagree with him calls the objectivity of his axiom into question, however this is the topic of an earlier post.

Let's assume Harris has correctly identified the correct description for moral beneficiaries. In this post, I discuss the problem of deciding objectively who fits it.

The subjectivity of well-being

In keeping with the theme of attacking the objectivity of Harris's moral axiom, this post will address whether the concept of well-being itself has objective meaning.

I don't have a lot to say about it other than to claim that it doesn't.

The possibility of other moral systems

In my last post, I discussed some potential problems with the axiom chosen by Sam Harris as the basis of his system of morality. I showed why I believed this axiom was not sufficient to explain our intuitive sense of morality, and I explained why I believe Harris would need to show that such a simple axiom is possible in order for his argument for the objective reality of morality to hold together.

In this post, I suggest that even if we did manage to patch the problems with Harris's axiom, it would be hard to accept it as an objective basis for morality because it may contradict moral views held by various significant subsets of the human population. If Harris derives his axiom from human moral intuition, as I believe he does, then it seems problematic to claim it as objective when such differences of opinion exist.