My Reply to the "There is No Such Thing as Evil if God Doesn't Exist" Objection

I inserted this into my most recent update to my essay, "The Holocaust is Strong Evidence Against Theism," but I'm reposting it as a standalone blog post to draw attention to it. 

2. The (alleged) amorality of atheism or naturalism. Many theists like to respond to arguments from 'evil' by appealing to a certain kind of moral objectivity, which I will call "objective-1." A moral property is objective-1 if and only if what makes an action, state of affairs, or person have that moral property is independent of the subjective states of human beings, such as their beliefs or desires. This concept of moral objectivity is used to give the following theistic response to arguments from evil against theism. Moral values require a standard of valuation. If theism is true, then some fact about God, such as His commands or His nature (=His essential attributes), is the standard of moral value. If theism is true, moral goodness is resemblance to some fact about God, such as obedience to God's commands or resemblance to God's nature, whereas moral badness or evil is disobedience to God's commands or contrariety to God's nature.[23] Similarly, if theism is true, then something like God's will or commands determines our moral duties, but if God does not exist, then nothing would be objective-1 morally required or forbidden. For this reason, there is no such thing as objective-1 evil if theism is false. 

This response to evidential arguments from evil employs the following thesis about moral ontology:

M: Moral properties, including both value (moral goodness and evil) and deontic (required, forbidden, permitted) properties, are objective-1.

Although I am inclined to agree that M is true, M has no obvious relevance to my claim in (5') that the Holocaust is strong evidence against theism. Again, let E represent the conjunction of E1 through E4. Premise (5') compares the likelihood of E on theism to the likelihood of E on naturalism; it does not compare the likelihood of E&M on theism to the likelihood of E&M on naturalism. Notice also that M is compatible with naturalism as defined in this essay, viz., source physicalism. Remember that although some philosophers define naturalism in a stronger sense ("nature is all there is"), in this essay I'm defining naturalism in a weaker sense (source physicalism). Naturalism in this weaker sense says nothing about the existence of abstract objects. For this reason, it is compatible with moral anti-reductionism (a/k/a "non-naturalism) defended by philosophers such as Moore and Wielenberg. Furthermore, theism is compatible with a more robust version of moral objectivity, a version which I will call "objective-2." A moral property is objective-2 if and only if what makes an action, state of affairs, or person have that moral property is mind-independent. The following thesis about moral ontology employs this version of moral objectivity:

M': Moral properties, including both value (moral goodness and evil) and deontic (required, forbidden, permitted) properties, are objective-2.

Notice that M' is inconsistent with moral properties being metaphysically dependent on God or any fact about God. If M' is true, then the proposition, "There is no such thing as objective-2 evil if theism is false," is itself false. So, again: what relevance could M possibly have to my claim that the Holocaust is strong evidence against theism?

The only conceivable way that it could be relevant would be if it showed that premise (5) or its equivalent (5') were false. But how could it do this? Again, here is (5):

(5) Therefore, Pr(E | N) >! Pr(E | T).

Notice that (5) contains an inequality. If M somehow lowers the value on the left-hand side, raises the value on the right-hand side, or both, then M refutes (5). But does it? M does not affect the value on the left-hand side, Pr(E | N), because objective-1 morality plays no role in the reasons for naturalism's 'prediction' of the Holocaust. But what about the right-hand side, Pr(E | T)? M does not boost Pr(E | T) simply because T entails M. On the assumption that theism is true, the objective-1 moral evil of the Holocaust is what gives us strong reason to predict its non-occurrence. In short, M gives us no reason at all to think that (5) or its equivalent (5') is false.

Notes

[23] On the former, see T.J. Mawson, “God’s Creation of Morality.” Religious Studies 38 (2002): 1-25,  https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034412502009927. On the latter, see Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).