By Amy Hall, a Christian blogger, claims that Christopher Hitchens’s challenge — naming one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever — has been answered:
The highest moral good a person can do is to worship the living, true, sovereign God—to love Him with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength. Not only will no atheist ever do this, no atheist can do this.
But she realizes atheists will disagree:
But of course, since they do not recognize worship as a real, valid moral good, no atheist would accept this response to Hitchens’s challenge. They necessarily reject it precisely because it correctly answers the challenge; because it succeeds, it fails. Any correct answer that exists will necessarily fail. Only an invalid question could lead to a paradox like this.
I applaud her attempt. She is right that atheists will not recognize it as an answer to Hitchens’s challenge, but she is wrong in her reason.
Atheists would not reject it because it “correctly answers the challenge” — they would reject it because the answer is built on unproven presuppositions — for instance, that there is a god, that this god is good and just and sovereign, that this god wants to be worshiped, and that to worship him is a moral action.
If she can prove the answer’s presuppositions, then I would agree Hitchens’s challenge has been answered. But until then, it remains.
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45 Comments
Hi, Daniel! Thanks for your comment on the STR Blog.
Actually, I solved the challenge not by giving an answer, but by pointing out that it is logically impossible to answer the question to the satisfaction of the atheist, therefore the question is invalid. Any correct answer that may exist out there would be rejected by definition, so the question is useless. He shouldn’t ask the question. That’s the answer to the challenge!
Only a truly correct response would be rejected by atheists. Can you see why?
They wouldn’t say they’re rejecting it because it’s correct, but ONLY a correct answer would never be accepted as a truly moral answer, therefore it would be rejected. Otherwise, there would be no reason an atheist couldn’t engage in that moral behavior.
I don’t get it. What makes it different from any other claim with “God” replaced by anything else? The only answers I’ve heard to this question all boiled down to “just because”, a rather unsatisfactory answer, so I’m hoping for a good one here.
Amy’s right–bogus question. Watch:
“Name one intelligent proposition held by an unbeliever that could not be held by a believer.”
This challenge can no more be answered to the satisfaction of a believer than Hitchens’s can be answered to the satisfaction of an atheist.
I haven’t read Hitchens, but I would think there is an obvious condition to the challenge: that the act must be something that most people, whether believer or not, would accept as a moral act. Otherwise, we just get word games like Amy’s. Amusing as a logic puzzle, but not really informative.
The point of Hitchen’s challenge is to show that Christianity can easily be shown to be the source of much evil, but cannot be conclusively shown to be the source of morality. He is clearly talking about “positive” morality.
Amy’s answer fails because even if her presupposition were correct, praising the omnipotent creator would be a morally neutral thing to do (because the praise is owed to him). That is to say, in other words, it would be immoral to not praise him, perhaps (given her presuppositions), but to do so is, then, only morally neutral – (i.e. only good because it isn’t bad).
To illustrate the difference, note that it is clearly immoral to kill one innocent person. One can objectively conclude that it is doubly immoral to kill two innocent people. Now imagine how moral I must be for not having killed any of the six billion people alive today, nor the billions more that will be born while I’m alive. That would be nonsense. Killing innocents is a moral negative. Not killing them is a moral neutral, just as praising someone who is irresistibly praiseworthy is not a moral positive.
It was clear that Hitchens’ challenge meant a moral positive because along with the challenge to give a moral act that only a believer could do, he challenged to find an immoral act that only a believer could do (which is markedly easier – hence his point).
>>that the act must be something that most people, whether believer or not, would accept as a moral act.
But that’s the very problem with it. The only word game here is Hitchens’s question. What other kind of thing could he be asking for other than something that only theists would consider moral? Of course atheists can do something they consider moral, so anything you offer that they would accept as moral, they can do. It’s only the things they can’t accept as moral that they can’t do. You see? He’s asking for exactly what he will not accept. Therefore, even if there are true answers out there, he wouldn’t accept them. The question is a logical mess.
I’ve not read the Hitches challenge in context (only from what has been given here), but it seems less that the question is logically a mess (by which I mean incoherent, has internal logical inconsistencies), and more that the meaning of the question is underdetermined, or, if you prefer, ambiguous. My main question is, what is meant by “moral”?
Do you mean it in the Greek sense of “contributes to a life worth living”? In a sense more akin to natural law (“conducive to human good as dictated by our common nature”, or something thereabouts)? A consequentialist or deontological sense (producing good consequences, in-line with our duty)? Do you mean “morally praiseworthy” or simply “not immoral”?The list could go on (and on and on and on . . .).
If this conversation is to make any sense and not simply be people talking past each other, I propose settling on a sense of “moral” that we can all agree upon (otherwise we’ll be here all night).
So, anyone want to propose how we should understand the question, before we try to decide what an acceptable answer might be, or if an answer is even possible?
@Derek: Your question would be a great one if a believer claimed they could hold more intelligent propositions than unbelievers. Hitchens’s question points out that believers and unbelievers have the same moral base — both are moral creatures and neither have a monopoly on morality.
It’s a word game only in the sense of trying to convey a point in a different way than usual, and I think it’s pretty effective.
@Amy: Thanks for responding! I don’t think the question is meant to be answered. The point is that an atheist can do anything as moral as a believer. But I don’t think you agree with that, because to you worshiping god is one of the highest acts of morality, and the atheist does not (or would not) do that. Right?
Doesn’t it depend on who gets to define what “a moral act” is?
As someone pointed out on Amy’s blog (STR), A Christian might say that worshiping the one true God is a moral act that atheists can’t do.
But as Amy asks, will an atheist accept that as a moral act?
The question is just a rhetorical trick. Nothing to see here, move along.
Amy: the point was only to argue that atheists aren’t any less moral than christians. We don’t want to say we’re better than you (though I realise I may have to qualify that statement)… we just don’t want you to say we’re worse than you.
What Warren said!
Hitchen’s premise falls along the lines of the following Steven Weinberg quote:
“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
- Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999
US physicist (1933 – )
The question is not a logical mess, nor is it a word game. It simply points out that religions and their holy books are not the source of our morality, and asks for those who believe that claim, to prove their position. If every “good” moral thing a religious person claims comes from a divine source, then only those who believe in that source can be truly “moral” – but it becomes evident when you look around the world in which you live that non-theists are just as capable of making those same “good” moral decisions without the faux-guidance of a religious book.
I do it every day :)
I should also point out that I would regard worship of any being capable of feeding a starving child who lets them die instead – and especially if they did that thousands of times every day – as not morally neutral, but actually evil.
IMHO… Amy does not realize that Hitchens made the challenge knowing fully well that nobody can provide direct proof that a god is/was responsible for some type of GOOD moral behavior, as warren said. If the theist cannot provide some proof, any answer to the challenge is invalid. the question itself fine (valid), assuming that the theist believes that some type of proof can be provided. so, provide the proof along with the answer and any atheist should be fully satisfied. -.02
SteveWH is right. The problem with Hitchen’s challenge is that the meaning of “morality” is ambiguous. If the morality we’re talking about is “God’s morality”, then perhaps it could be argued that worshiping God is moral and thus an atheist would not be capable of this particular moral act. Yet, if we use Hitchens’ secular definition of morality, then it becomes exceedingly difficult (perhaps impossible) to find a moral action that could be performed by a believer and could not be performed by a nonbeliever.
When Hitchens poses the challenge, I’m assuming that he has his secular definition of morality in mind, and not God’s.
However, I think the main purpose of Hitchens’ challenge is to oppose those who think atheism leads to only vile acts, like murder, rape, genocide, and the like. The challenge works well in combating these types of claims.
Amy:
A question can be valid whether or not it has a valid answer. Godel proved that in any formal system there is an uncountable infinity of statements with no truth values (which can be transformed into questions without answers). This is arguably one of the most important theorems of the 20th century.
Your “test response” of worshipping God doesn’t actually address the question. Surely, a devout Hindu qualifies as a believer, but he can no more worship the “one true God” than can the non-believer. The test response does not actually separate believers from non-believers unless you redefine those terms relative to Jahweh or whatever you want to call your particular bearded sky-fairy. And there’s certainly no a priori reason to do so.
This is besides the fact that you aren’t able to demonstrate that worshipping Jahweh is a moral good to anyone who doesn’t already believe it. That conclusion is based on several premises which you don’t seem to have stated, let alone give reasons to believe those premises. You would also have to show (as mentioned above) that such worship is actually morally good and not morally neutral.
Note also that I can play your game; I can claim (and argue effectively) that it is a moral good to challenge one’s own beliefs or to avoid being deceived, in which case it is the non-believers who can perform a moral good of which believers are incapable.
The question is answerable; it just has no correct answers. This is because religions are post-hoc justifications for moral behavior, whereas moral behavior itself is a natural thing to find in human civilization regardless of who your sky daddy happens to be (or whether he exists at all). If it wasn’t the norm, there wouldn’t be any such thing as human civilization.
To Dan L:
“The question is answerable; it just has no correct answers.”
That was her point to begin with; congratulations you agree!
“This is because religions are post-hoc justifications for moral behavior,…”
Ah, 2 can play at this game. Dismissal based on psychological assertions. Okay, atheists reject Christianity because they have daddy issues, or is that “sky daddy” issues.
“…whereas moral behavior itself is a natural thing to find in human civilization regardless of who your sky daddy happens to be (or whether he exists at all).”
This is most definitely true. I don’t understand why Christians and atheists spend so much time quarreling over a universal moral reality for all people. The bible affirms this reality in the first few chapters of Romans. Morality, as a phenomena is not necessarily dependant upon the existence of a deity, and Christianity has no special claim to morality in a general sense.
However, if there is a necessity for moral realism, something Hitchen’s shockingly believes in, then morality (in an objective sense) can never truly exist in a natural world. For you see, in methodological naturalism morality is nothing but the most powerful of a society impossing their will upon others, and nothing more. Social convention, folk morality; most things naturalists abhor. If there is such a thing as moral realism, then it needs to find it’s ground somewhere, that’s all.
“If it wasn’t the norm, there wouldn’t be any such thing as human civilization.”
True. Thank God!
>>A question can be valid whether or not it has a valid answer
In a debate, a question can be valid if a valid answer doesn’t exist. It is not valid if the questioner can’t logically be given an answer, even if answers *do* exist. Try to look at this for a moment by taking yourself away from the specific topic at hand and all your reactions to that topic and looking at this purely as a logical issue. The question is set up so that no correct answer–even if it exists–can be offered. It’s a rhetorical device, not something that can be used to prove his position.
>>This is besides the fact that you aren’t able to demonstrate that worshipping Jahweh is a moral good to anyone who doesn’t already believe it.
If I convinced you that God exists, you would no longer be an atheist, correct? Therefore, this logical problem with the question would no longer exist and you could ask away. I don’t know why you would need to, but you could.
>>That conclusion is based on several premises which you don’t seem to have stated
Daniel, I wasn’t trying to prove that worship is the answer. I was trying to prove that even if answers exist–hypothetically, if God exists–no atheist would accept the answer by definition. His very question is based on assumptions that include an assumption about the very topic of debate he’s trying to disprove–the existence of God. It’s circular. His unstated assumptions prevent him from accepting an answer, even if a true answer is offered. Therefore, he shouldn’t ask that particular question. Instead, he can debate the existence of God, what is moral, whatever. But the question, as stated, is nothing but a stunt (see my last paragraph below on this).
>>I can claim (and argue effectively) that it is a moral good to challenge one’s own beliefs or to avoid being deceived
And I would 100% agree with you that those are both extremely moral goods. I value both of those things. But please notice that I didn’t ask you to come up with one moral good that only an atheist could do because that would cause the same logical problem as Hitchens’s question and be just as invalid. You would have to come up with something I would accept as moral that I didn’t think was moral. That’s logically contradictory. What would you say–it’s a moral good to convince people to not be theists? Would I accept that as a moral good? The question accomplishes nothing. Would I not just say you failed to answer the question? What if I then said to you, “The question is answerable; it just has no correct answers”? Would you then see that it’s unanswerable, regardless of how many answers exist?
>>You would also have to show (as mentioned above) that such worship is actually morally good and not morally neutral.
Well, if worshiping God is not a moral good (assuming, hypothetically, that God exists) simply because we ought to do it, then neither is it a moral good to help other people, to treat them well, to give charity, etc., since we ought to do those things as well. How are there any moral goods if you take that position? For something to be morally neutral, it has to have no moral component–like choosing between a blue or green shirt to wear. Worshipping God doesn’t fall into that category.
But again, it’s not my point to convince you that worship is the correct answer. I’m trying to show you that this is the question Hitchens is really asking: “Name me one thing atheists think is moral that only believers think is moral.” Does that show the logical problems more clearly?
Whoops! My comment should have been written to Dan L., not Daniel. Sorry about that.
Amy = Sophistry FAIL.
The question is valid, Amy just gets the answer wrong in a more complicated way.
Then tell me, Metro, is there a logically possible answer (even if there is no actual answer, is there even a logically possible one) to “tell me one thing atheists think is moral that only believers think is moral”?
I really didn’t think this would even be controversial.
>>“tell me one thing atheists think is moral that only believers think is moral”
You’re re-phrasing the question wrong.
It should be: “tell me one thing atheists think is moral that only believers are CAPABLE of”.
It IS logically possible to answer this question.
Dude, go over to my blog and read the full post and watch the clips. I explain why that is not a correct re-phrasing. The only reason why an atheist would not be capable of a moral good would be if he didn’t believe it is moral. Can you give any other possible reason why he might not be *capable* of doing something good?
Hitchens’s whole point whenever I’ve seen him ask this question is to try to refute the idea that you can only know right and wrong if you know God (this is based on a misunderstanding of the theist objection that without God there *is* no right or wrong). Therefore, he is asking his debate partners to name something moral that atheists couldn’t know was moral without God. The only possible answer, by definition (since atheists are without God), would be something atheists don’t think is moral.
>>The only reason why an atheist would not be capable of a moral good would be if he didn’t believe it is moral. Can you give any other possible reason why he might not be *capable* of doing something good?
There aren’t any good answers to this question, yet many Christians think there are. And THIS is the reason Hitchens’ offers the challenge. Many Christians think that being an atheist somehow makes you less capable of acts of compassion and kindness. They think that one is only capable of these kinds of “good deeds” if one has a relationship with God. This is the misnomer that Hitchens is trying to dispel with his challenge. And I think he succeeds at it, as you can’t think of a good answer as to why an atheist wouldn’t be *capable* of any sort of moral at that he recognized as moral.
The fact that the challenge doesn’t work when you change the definition of one of it’s words does not make the question illogical. Because, that is exactly what you’re doing. You’re changing the definition of morality from how Hitchens’ defines it to how YOU (a Christian) would define it. When you change the definition of morality, it does indeed make the challenge illogical…..yet when you use term in the way Hitchens indended, it’s perfectly sound.
Wow…lots of typos up there.
PS, I have read your blog post, Amy.
Dude: So whoever poses the challenge gets to define its terms? Fair enough. Then give me just ONE scientific proof that God doesn’t exist.
Oh… but please bear in mind that I don’t admit anything as “scientific” that precludes the existence of God. Ready… go!
>>You’re changing the definition of morality from how Hitchens’ defines it to how YOU (a Christian) would define it.
This is precisely the problem with the question. I maintain that it’s only even possible to find an answer within the opposing person’s morality if one is to identify what one can’t do within one own’s morality (which is why the same problem would exist if I asked an atheist the same question).
I’ll let you have the last word–I don’t think I can explain it any more clearly than I already have. Thanks for the conversation, guys!
>>This is precisely the problem with the question. I maintain that it’s only even possible to find an answer within the opposing person’s morality if one is to identify what one can’t do within one own’s morality (which is why the same problem would exist if I asked an atheist the same question).
Yes, this is the point I was trying to make….but it’s not a “problem” with the question.
You see, Hitchens is probably often faced with Christians claiming that atheists are fundamentally devoid of virtue, empathy, and compassion…and that atheists are essentially bound to commit vile acts without the guidance of God in their lives.
I’m sure that Hitchens’ challenge was meant to be aimed at these types of accusations…and thus his definition of morality was a general one, regarding things like compassion and empathy. With that understanding in mind, the challenge makes perfect sense and does a fine job at exposing the Christian claim that atheists are immoral for what it is…a sham!
However, when you bring Christian morality into it, with the notion that a disbelief in God is immoral, then I think you’re really getting away from the purpose of the challenge.
Morality is a highly ambiguous term, and one must take into account the context in which it is being used in this particular instance before making judgments. In this case, I believe Hitchens meant to define morality in a generally secular sense, excluding any weird things that Christian or Hindus or Muslims might determine to be moral.
How does Amy worshiping god alleviate or reduce the suffering of others?
I am assuming that you define worshiping god as raising your arms and singing along with the lyrics on the jumbotron. You don’t get to say that “I worship god by feeding the poor/healing the sick.” A nonbeliever could feed the poor and/or heal the sick as well.
Otherwise, you are defining morality to suit the situation, which religious people do a lot more than they like to admit. Remember, we’re not people who have never read the bible or set foot in a church.
Also, as Daniel pointed out, your answer has a lot of presumptions.
As you said in your post:
As it happens, there is an answer to Hitchens’s question–one that seemed obvious to me immediately–and it illustrates perfectly the problem with the challenge.
I hope the bold shows up. If it does not, let me demonstrate the sound of the presumption phone ringing off the hook:
one that seemed obvious to me immediately
@Ben: Give just ONE scientific proof that leprechauns don’t exist. Or that Zeus or Mithra or Baal or Allah or Shiva don’t exist. But that’s not possible, of course. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
That is, to someone who believes in leprechauns, you would insist they show evidence. It’s not up to you to prove they are wrong. It’s up for them to prove they are right. If you claim there is some infinitely complex, eternal, good, just, lovely-duvy god in the sky, it’s up to you to prove it.
Now, that being said, if you stick around and look over this site, I think a cumulative case is being made that belief in a deity is absurd and unnecessary. You’re free to disagree, of course, but don’t forget it’s up to you to provide positive evidence for your belief — not for us to prove a negative. That’s impossible.
Daniel: I think you’re missing the point of my comment. I have absolutely no interest in proving the existence of God to you, so just relax for a second.
The problem with Hitchens’s challenge–as has been noted countless times above–is that believers and unbelievers are operating under two very different definitions of morality. One presupposes a divine lawgiver, the other presupposes his non-existence. So far, uncontroversial, yes?
What appears to be far more controversial (and I have no idea why) is Amy’s claim that it’s illegitimate to pose a challenge where the one posing defines all the terms, and then declares victory when the other side can’t provide a satisfactory answer.
The point of my comment above was not to actually ask for scientific evidence of God’s non-existence (you’re right–that’s dumb), but to demonstrate the impossibility of providing a sufficient answer given that I get to define the terms. Examples abound, but since we seem to get into trouble when we get too far afield, let me simply offer you the inverse of Hitchens’s challege.
Name one immoral action performed by a believer that couldn’t have been performed by an unbeliever.
Before you answer, please understand that I’m not even assuming you think that believers are capable of certain immoral acts that unbelievers aren’t (though some of the other commenters above clearly DO think that). My only point is that if I, the poser of the challenge, get to use my own definition of morality, then there’s no answer you could provide that would satisfy me. Are we agreed on this point? Because it’s useless to continue if we’re not.
@Ben: After I wrote that I realized that wasn’t your point — sorry about that.
I actually think there might be an answer to your inverted challenge: a believer could kill people because they think God told them to. There are believers who think God told them to kill someone, and they obey. Maybe they’re just mentally unbalanced — or maybe they really are hearing God, like perhaps you think Moses or Joshua or David did when God told them to go out and kill armies.
But an unbeliever couldn’t kill someone because God told them to, because they don’t believe in God. If they heard voices they’d get medical treatment, not attribute it to a deity.
I’m not sure if I agree with your final point or not. I think we have to use agreed terms of morality, and that’s what we’re doing. You know what Hitchens means by morality, and I think you’d agree with it in general — nobody goes to jail (anymore) for not worshiping God. We’re talking secular morality.
Sorry Amy, your question at 22 doesn’t seem to make any sense. Stripped to its essentials we get:
“Tell me something atheists consider moral that theists consider moral.”
And I’m reasonably sure you didn’t mean to ask that–there are far too many answers.
The original question is: “Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever.”
Your answer, in essence “Worship the One, True, God” is a non-sequitur because in order for your answer to be logically valid, both parties have to assume that a god exists, which atheists categorically deny. Thus your answer is invalid.
From an atheist standpoint, worshipping a non-existent entity is either utterly amoral, that is, it has no weight nor bearing in terms of whether it’s moral or not, or otherwise, it’s a waste of time, which could be held to be immoral.
(In its influence, worship can certainly be immoral, as the people of Jonestown and Bagdhad would probably agree. And that’s without even getting into whether worshipping the wrong god is simply useless or actively immoral)
There is, of course, a logical answer: “none.”
The point of the question is to argue that ideas of moral and immoral have nothing to do with any gods, but that some ideas of what constitutes moral action can in fact be agreed upon by people on opposite sides of the god idea.
But I submit that this is not necessarily correct.
Consider the proposition that immoral action is sin, and that “Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily.” A concept I’ve stolen from Heinlein.
I’m reasonably sure that adults could agree on such a definition.
Alas, the problem arises when we start looking at the specifics.
How do we define “harm”? Is there such a thing as “moral hazard”? Is it harmful to educate people’s children to the truth their parents cannot abide?
How to circumscribe “unnecessary” harm such that freedom of action is not unreasonably foreshortened? Would the Iraq war constitute an immoral act? How about the Second World War? What about the death penalty?
Etc, etc.
In any case, “worship” is not the answer.
No problem on the misunderstanding, Ben–I probably could have used a better example.
And I’m sure if you think about it for a minute, you’ll see also why your response to my inverted Hitchens challenge falls flat. The answer, “A believer could kill people because they think God told them to” speaks to the motivation of the believer–not any actual immoral act that only a believer could do. If we admit your answer, then of course we would need to admit, in response to Hitchens’s challenge, any religiously-motivated moral actions. Get it?
In other words, if your response is valid (let’s assume it is), then a response to Hitchens along the lines of, “A believer could build a hospital because he thinks God told him to” would also be valid. An unbeliever can’t build a hospital because God told him to. What’s good for the goose here is good for the gander, yes?
Just so everyone knows, sometimes I call Daniel “Ben.” It’s my little pet name for him.
Kidding… sorry about the slip-up.
Oh, and Daniel: I’m not ignoring the last paragraph of your comment. I have something to say in response, but I don’t want my first point to have been lost in the mix.
@Ben: Okay, I agree with you there. Showing the inverse of that was helpful.
Drew:
“The question is answerable; it just has no correct answers.”
That was her point to begin with; congratulations you agree!
That wasn’t her point. Here is her point:
“I solved the challenge not by giving an answer, but by pointing out that it is logically impossible to answer the question to the satisfaction of the atheist, therefore the question is invalid.”
A question isn’t invalidated by having no answer. “What color was the first unicorn?” is a perfectly valid question with no answer. How about “Is ‘This sentence is false’ true or false?” It’s a valid (and very important) question with no answer. That is my point. And that is the opposite of Amy’s point. Thanks for playing.
“Ah, 2 can play at this game. Dismissal based on psychological assertions. Okay, atheists reject Christianity because they have daddy issues, or is that “sky daddy” issues.”
It’s a psychological assertion that I back up with the rest of my post — and you seemed to agree with the rest of my post. Moral behavior is typical of human beings in a society because otherwise there wouldn’t be a society. Therefor religion is not the source of moral behavior. I guess you could interpret it as something other than a “post hoc rationalization” as I characterized it, but ultimately all I’m saying is it’s epiphenomenal, not causative.
First and foremost:
Drew: Sorry about the “thanks for playing” comment. Unproductive and snide, I apologize unreservedly.
Amy:
I studied mathematics and have a tendency to boil everything down to a purely logical matter; you needn’t have suggested it. The fact that I’ve studied mathematical logic (which encompasses Aristotelian logic) is what leads me to conclude that questions without answers can indeed be valid. If it can’t be answered, one is still left with your approach, i.e. trying to explain why it can’t be answered.
Your assumption that my response was based on partiality concerning the content of the argument was unwarranted. I actually kinda know what I’m talking about.
Daniel: Seriously, thanks for being so gracious in this discussion. From what I’ve seen so far of this blog, you’re a class act all the way.
That said, it’s a bit distressing to see everyone here (you obviously excepted) bending over backwards to defend what is obviously a question-begging exercise from Hitchens. I mean, why is everyone so eager to die on this hill? Admitting that it’s a meaningless challenge doesn’t have ANY implications for the existence of God. At all.
I’m withholding my comments on the last paragraph of your second-to-last post because it seems we’re in agreement now. But if I’m mistaken, please let me know. Thanks again for the discussion!
@Ben: Thanks for your kind words. We’re agreed that there is no answer. And we agree it’s not a hill to die on.
However, I also thought Dan L. (#39) made an excellent point that just because a question does not or cannot be answered does not mean it’s not a valid question. Asking what color a unicorn is has no answer to the person using it to show the absurdity of believing in unicorns, and it’s just as unanswerable, even though some might try (“from research we’ve done asking various witnesses, it seems most are grey to a slight blue color…”).
Back to the question. It doesn’t have any implications on the existence of God. Completely agreed. But I think it’s a good question to show that unbelievers can be just as “good” as believers.
Then again, maybe you’re right and it’s all bunk. Still I would argue Hitchens’s point behind the question is right. I do think that the meaning behind it is important.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Ben. I hope you’ll stick around.
Indeed. We unbelievers get a bit of a bum rap, particularly in the US, as having no morality and being less trustworthy, which simply isn’t true. And that’s what this question was meant to point out.
>>just because a question does not or cannot be answered does not mean it’s not a valid question. Asking what color a unicorn is has no answer to the person using it to show the absurdity of believing in unicorns and it’s just as unanswerable
Daniel, I appreciate your tone and reasonableness, as well. Thanks! I just want to make a quick note about this comment, though, because it looks like a few other people had this objection, and I think this is an important point.
The question about the unicorn has no true answer because there are no unicorns, but it is not *invalid* because an answer is *logically possible* even if unicorns don’t exist. The answer could be white, or pink, or whatever. But if a question logically defeats itself, it is not valid because an answer is *logically* impossible. For example, what if I asked you to draw me a square circle?
The unicorn question is unanswerable, but not in the same way as the circle question. The first can’t be answered truly because there is no answer, but there *are* logically possible answers. The second can’t be answered because of logical impossibilities, rendering it invalid. Because of this, the unicorn question is not “as unanswerable” as the other question. Asking what the unicorn’s color smells like would be “as unanswerable,” so to use that in a debate to prove unicorns don’t exist would be just as invalid.
Can you see the difference?
@Amy: I can see the difference and I agree with you. Where we disagree is whether Hitchens’s answer is logically possible or not.
Let’s change the subject to see if it becomes clearer. Someone claims that their race is more intelligent than another. Suppose I asked, “name me one feat of intelligence that your race can do that mine cannot.” Is not that question valid? If they’re race truly was smarter, there would be a correct answer like “we can calculate sums 10x quicker than any of you from age 5.” But if they are wrong, there would be no answer.
Some believers claim they are more than unbelievers. So we ask the question, what can you do that is moral than we can’t do? Now I agree there is no answer. That’s the point. If the claim was believers were more intelligent, the same question would be asked to prove that claim.
hmm
speaking as someone currently in a course on ethics, I have to say that most ethicists would agree that worshiping God is not a moral good per se. I mean, technically it can be included in a deontologic definition of morality, but pure deontologic ethics isn’t that popular for the simple reason that it doesn’t work in a lot of real-world situations. Neither does pure utilitarianism, either, of course…
Gah. It’s just past midnight and I’m trying to answer one of the Great Questions of philosophy in less than 200 words. Not going to happen. But it’s true that I can’t see any basis, other than the Divine Command theory (which has to be dismissed on the basis that there is no way to know whether a particular command really is from God), for claiming that worshiping God is morally right. So I don’t think that’s the answer to Hitchens’ question.
Oh, and as to the square circle… by making use of a curved space, I can create a shape which would be a circle in uncurved space but appears to be a square. There are probably other answers, but that’s the most mathematically viable one I can think of this close to bedtime.
All that the challenge proves is that belief in the existance of God is not necessary for ethics.
Actually, it proves that absolutely no particular system of belief is necessary for ethics, as you may as well put that challenge to any odd system of belief. None can answer it.
The challenge is largely anti religious not because religion specifically cannot answer it (thus failing to prove its logical necessity for ethics), but because that claim has mostly been made on behalf of religions. Most secular ethics work fine without.
Any religious person who understands and accepts that atheists can be just as ethical as religious people need not worry about the challenge.
They just need to worry about the second part…
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