Craig Blomberg Misrepresents Naturalistic Morality

Blomburg, Craig. Can We Still Believe in God? Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2020.

 

"Ethicists rightly point out that if a person rejects the existence of an all-powerful, all-loving being, they still have no satisfactory explanation for evil in the universe." (2)

 

No citation for this is given. Which ethicists point this out? I can't think of any. I'm sure Christian philosophers claim this. The use of the term 'ethicists' is suspicious, because it makes it sound like this is a common belief among even secular philosophers who specialize in ethics. But without a citation, I have no reason to believe this, and I suspect that all, or nearly all, secular philosophers who specialize in ethics would disagree with this on multiple levels.

 

Even worse, even if it were the case that ethicists claim this, they wouldn't be rightly pointing anything out. They would be confused and mistaken.

 

Even worse still, I can think of at least one secular philosopher that specializes in ethics, Russ Shafer-Landau, who would argue that it's divine command theory, the common metaethical view of Christians, that fails to give a satisfactory explanation of evil in the universe. (See The Fundamentals of Ethics, Fifth Edition, Chapter 5.)

 

Even worse still, I can think of at least one Christian philosopher who specializes in ethics, Anne Jeffrey, who says that you don't need God for objective morality. See: https://soundcloud.com/capturingchristianity/cc021-if-god-does-not-exist-why-be-a-moral-person

 

At 8:15 she says:

 

"My view turns out might have more in common with an atheistic Kantianism than with a certain form of Orthodox Judaism." 

 

At 12 minutes, she says "It could be wrong to rape and torture even if God didn't exist."

 

(At around 15 minutes she speaks about how divine command theory is a view taken seriously by theistic ethicists, but Catholic theists will gravitate more toward natural law theory.) 

 

She even suggests that sophisticated naturalistic systems of objective morality could show God's concern for our actions. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVsCgf_GmEQ. Timestamp 1:04:45. 

 

She says:  

"I think that there's a lot to be said for how the reason that God has given us to come up with very good explanations for morality. . . . It's actually more evidence that God is good and gracious that God provides us with the sorts of cognitive faculties that can come up with naturalistic arguments for real, objective morality, because objective moral obligations are so important for us to believe in . . . that it's better, for all of us, if more people believe in it. And if belief in certain varieties in theism is waning, all the better that these arguments are available. . . . I think [naturalistic explanations for morality are] impressive stuff and important . . . it's nice to have a sort of backup theory, that your moral beliefs are not so precarious . . . even if God didn't exist, I think I still shouldn't kill innocent people and it doesn't depend on what I care about or what I'm committed to . . ." 

Additionally, Christian philosopher Dustin Crummett has criticized William Lane Craig's moral argument, and instead argues on behalf of theism from moral knowledge.   

 

Even worse still, it's unclear what a "satisfactory explanation for evil" means. Does this mean an explanation of where evil comes from? Or what makes something evil? Or how we can know that there is evil? And are we speaking about axiological evils, or moral evils, or both? It doesn't matter; naturalism has excellent explanations of all of this, even better explanations than Christianity, because the naturalist doesn't have to worry about challenges to divine command theory, to natural law theory, and to Christianity in general.

 

Here's where the author might help us, a few sentences later:  

"But where do the concept of evil and the idea that it is something to be alleviated come from in the first place? If neither revealed religion nor natural theology (ultimate truths that can be inferred from what exists) points to a transcendent God who concerns himself with the affairs of humanity, from where do the ideas of good and evil originate?" (2)

The answer is our experiences: Badness and goodness are phenomenal concepts, as I have explained elsewhere. See: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2026/02/response-to-lance-bush-on-certainty-of.html

Badness is worth eliminating for its own sake. Though some badness gives rise to greater goodness; that badness is a good deal. Discipline is painful, but that pain is worth the benefits of discipline.

It's not exactly an honest thing to say that God is concerned with the affairs of humanity. I don't see that at all. But even worse, I don't see how it's relevant that there be a transcendent God when it comes to the origins of the ideas of axiological and moral goodness and badness. Even if God existed, it would still be the case that axiological goodness and badness are phenomenal categories that we have direct access to, and that moral goodness and badness can be explained in light of axiological goodness and badness. Adding God doesn't do anything, except make the world far more mysterious given the problem of evil.

This is page two of the book. Given mistakes this egregious right out of the gate, is it worth reading more?

There is a conceptual connection between pain and avoidance intentionality

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9ZuXmpod0Q

 

I agree with Philip Goff that you can't say that there's a conceptual connection between pain and avoidance behavior and yet have exceptions where pain and avoidance behavior come apart. Like Goff says, that's like saying there are no married bachelors except sometimes there are. The reason why there are no married bachelors is because there can't be any, because by definition to be a bachelor is to not be married. So there are no exceptions. Likewise, if there is a similar conceptual connection between pain and avoidance behavior, then there won't be any exceptions where pain and affective behavior are found together.

 

In my model, pain is a combination of A + B where A refers to non-bad first-person properties that distinguish one pain from another and B refers to the first-person property of intrinsic badness that unites all pains as pains.

 

B properties can also distinguish one pain from another by intensity. A more intensely bad pain is distinguishable from a less intensely bad pain. And by quality: the dull, warbling pain of wasp venom is distinct from the hot, constant pain of a burn.

 

If it's true that there is intrinsic badness, then it's true that there is something worth avoiding because of its essence; pain is worth avoiding because of what it is. I don't avoid pain for some further reason; I avoid pain because pain is worth avoiding for its own sake. 

 

So if something is intrinsically bad, it is intrinsically worth avoiding. But if someone experiences an instance of intrinsic badness, then that just is to experience an instance of that which is intrinsically worth avoiding. Such an experience will produce avoidance intentionality in the mind of the person who experiences the pain. It is, therefore, impossible to experience pain and to not, at the same time, experience avoidance intentionality.

 

But there are cases where it seems like humans throw themselves head-first into pain. We see this with the pains involved in self-improvement such as dieting and exercise, or undergoing difficult education or training. We often risk experiences that we know could be very painful, such as adventuring outdoors or trying exotic foods. We willingly watch scary movies, push ourselves to extremes to break records, eat foods we know will be too spicy, and undergo medical procedures we know will be painful. Perhaps in these cases we are hoping for our adventures to be pain-free, but affective behavior and pain do go together.

 

And yet it's always the case that we are running away from pains. Running towards the pain of a medical procedure? That's just because the procedure is necessary to avoid greater pains, or because the procedure is necessary for survival and to enjoy pleasures that will, we bet, outweigh the pains of the procedure. Dieting and exercise is painful, but being unhealthy and overweight is painful too. And so on. I predict that in every one of these cases where you have pain plus affective behavior, there is a greater pain (per the judgment of the individual) being avoided. No one runs into pain for pain. Even someone who is a masochist is not after pain, but after the pleasure that comes with it (credit to Sharon Rawlette for this point).

 

Brian Cutter claimed in an interview that when we have painful dreams, our bodies remain motionless, and so this shows that pain does not necessitate avoidance behavior. But that's irrelevant. Pains in my dreams do necessitate avoidance intentionality; I intend to wake myself up from the nightmare, or to run away from the threat, or to destroy the threat. My dream behavior is one of avoidance.

 

It is exactly because of avoidance intentionality that we find affective behavior being paired with pain. The affective behavior + pain always implies avoidance intentionality + other, greater pain.

 

What complicates things is that you need to endure pains to get to pleasures. This is why pain does not necessitate avoidance behavior despite necessitating avoidance intentionality. Pleasures, as the opposite of pains, are intrinsically motivating.

 

So if something is intrinsically good, it is intrinsically worth pursuing. But if someone experiences an instance of intrinsic goodness, then that just is to experience an instance of that which is intrinsically worth pursuing. Such an experience will produce affective intentionality in the mind of the person who experiences the pleasure. It is, therefore, impossible to experience pleasure and to not, at the same time, experience affective intentionality.

 

So affective intentionality and avoidance intentionality clashes. We make a judgment as to which one wins out. When the pain of being overweight outweighs the pain of being hungry, the individual loses weight. When a person goes hungry for the sake of losing weight, it would be silly to think that the pain of the hunger is not intrinsically bad just because the individual chooses not to avoid the pain. Of course the pain of going hungry is intrinsically bad, hence the struggle, the calculating, the tolerating, and the display of strength and discipline.

 

So psychophysical disharmony where someone experiences pain and yet does not experience avoidance intentionality is as impossible as someone being a bachelor and yet married.