This isn't really a moral argument for God's existence, at least in terms of the classical moral arguments, but rather an argument for why the issue of God's existence, as it relates to the more general question of the possible meaning of existence, inevitably creates moral conflict between theists and non-theists of a certain sort. This conclusion runs contrary to Richard Gale's contention that arguments regarding God's existence must not violate "the principle of the universality of moral propositions" (2007). So it is a possible beginning to a new line of argument in the tradition of moral arguments, but with elements from the philosophy of mind and semiology thrown into the mix. So far, I have not found any moral arguments quite like it (so if you know any, please let me know).
Most people want to think that their lives have meaning. But the human heart can also long for more. Some don't wish for simply a temporary meaning, significant only for themselves. Rather, they long for a wider and enduring meaning that can make ultimate sense of the individual struggles of their lives. Bertrand Russell might be satisfied with the temporary significance of a "thinking reed" blowing in the wind-- here today-- dried up and blown away tomorrow, but some people prefer to see the puzzle piece of their life fitting into some grander enduring structure of meaning.
But for such a grander structure to "have meaning," in a practical sense, there must be an agent to comprehend that meaning. And for that meaning to be enduring, there must be an agent who (that?) is enduring so that meaning can exist in an enduring way. For meaning to be truly enduring it is not enough that the existence of finite agents might be an ongoing possibility of some infinite natural process. For those wishing for ultimate meaning it would not be good enough that that there is a mere possibility for more reeds to emerge, comprehend and find significance in their finite corner of reality. Rather, if the whole is to have enduring ultimate meaning then one must posit the possibility of an agent capable of comprehending the process in its entirety, and powerful enough that it would be impossible for it to disappear and leave the whole without an agent to comprehend its meaning. In other words, the possibility of the emergence of finite agency is always also the possibility that there might be no further agents and thus the possibility that the meaning of the whole, in practical terms, might cease to exist, possibly forever.
Typically those desiring such ultimate meaning long not just for the world to have meaning, but for that meaning to reflect goodness in some fashion. The entirety, should not just have significance, but that significance should be edifying and worthwhile. It should somehow explain the sufferings of finite agents within the process. All human beings faced with the inevitable destruction of one's hopes and dreams have had to contemplate such issues. Whether a Neanderthal or modern homo sapien sapien, we all will ponder such questions at some point in our lives. At that point, one is forced to choose between two fundamental options. Either there is a possibility for agency to disappear forever and any thread of meaning to be broken. Or some form of agency must exist that is capable of reflecting on the whole and understanding its significance forever.
Why is an agent necessary for meaning to exist? Because most of us would accept, based on our own experience, that meaning is something that only occurs for agents. Rocks, plants or air are incapable of comprehension and understanding. They are incapable of ascertaining significance. Only agents, like ourselves can do that. So for meaning to exist, in a practical sense, there must be some form of agent for whom some pattern or story can be meaningful. And for a meaning of the whole to exist eternally there must be some kind of eternal agent (whether single or multiple) who can comprehend it. Polytheists and Monotheists share in this basic conclusion.
Monotheism, as many have argued, is probably just an elaboration of this basic metaphysical conclusion that draws on a sense that morality requires some ultimate authority who can decide between a conflicting views about the good. The axial age discussed by Karl Jaspers, might well represent a period in human history when human societies began to turn against pluralism and began to assert that good must take some ultimately unified form. This conclusion led to the demise of the multiple gods who could bicker and disagree about the nature of good. In their place, new ideas developed of a single God, but a basic role remained-- to bear witness to the meaningful order, which its absolute power could ensure would continue in its significance in an eternal way.
The alternative is to believe in the possibility that reality as a whole can in practical terms cease to have meaning. In nature's coming and goings, it might indeed end up being a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing because in the end there might be no agency for who any significance could register. Clearly nihilists and some atheists believe in this possibility. Many of them feel the evidence points to such a possibility being more likely. They also think it is more noble to simply face up to this possibility and accept that at best only finite meanings for the whole can exist. They might be right.
But human beings must make such a metaphysical judgement without full knowledge of the whole. The arguments for atheism and theism are ongoing. The more practical matter is how do we live in the interim. What attitude should we adopt towards the meaning of reality given the uncertainty of the issue of the possibility for an enduring meaning of the whole?
Regarding this question various defenders of theism have made practical arguments moral arguments for the belief in God. They have argued that adopting a theistic perspective was necessary to help make each of us a better person. Some theists argue that embracing the postulate of enduring ultimate meaning provides a firmer foundation/motivation for moral responsibility. They worry that the possibility of ultimate meaninglessness might well allow individuals under extreme conditions and temptations to make choices for purely fleeting and selfish goals. Atheists of course, contend that such temptation makes the struggle for moral responsibility more monumental for finite beings and hence more noble when achieved. Ultimately, it remains an open question about how ethical responsibility can be best founded and effectively lived out.
I believe that it is possible for individuals to intellectually grasp the main demands of morality without having fully decided the issue of the foundations of ultimate meaning. As for the issue of how motivation for leading a moral life is influenced by such possibilities, this remains obscured in the mists of sociological research into the influence of religion on individuals and societies, as well as the mists of meta-ethical debate. But certainly each person has a personal responsibility to consider the question of whether they can judge whether they are likely to be a better person given a choice about which metaphysical view they should posit. But such a judgement is an ethical judgement, not a purely metaphysical judgement. Since this kind of judgement about oneself, and one's possibilities for goodness emerges from a personal assessment of one's character based on intimate knowledge of one's inner life, it is not a judgment that can be completely open to public scrutiny and assessment. But such issues of personality and motivation ultimately still boil down to purely moral arguments for God's existence, based in something like the following postulate: If and only if God exists, am I really obliged to uphold some objective moral principle. In other words, theism is a superior grounds for moral realism.
As Gale notes about this general way of arguing for belief in God, it "violates the principle of the universality of moral propositions" (On the Philosophy of Religion 2007, 136). If acceptance of the metaphysical postulate of the existence of God is psychologically necessary for a full appreciation of the nature of moral obligation, then perhaps this provides some individuals with a practical psychological and ethical justification of their belief in God. But as Gale points out then we can have different moral obligations for different people based on arbitrary elements of their psychology. If they need the boost of belief to do right, then those individuals are justified in believing on moral grounds. But other people who don't need such a boost, are not justified in believing. But for Gale the ethics regarding the acceptance of metaphysical beliefs should not be different for different kinds of people, such as those inclined to postulate atheism and those inclined to postulate theism.
However, we must consider the suggestion in Charles Taylor's book Sources of the Self that morality also has to do with our sense of personal identity and how we view and assess ourselves ontologically: What ought we "to be" for our lives to have meaning, not just what ought we "to do" to avoid doing wrong and compromising my contribution to goodness. It is the former ontological aspect of ethics that we must consider more deeply.
This aspect is very different from the "apodictic" aspect of figuring out what conduct is obligatory. It must address the individuality of human persons and the value that can be found in that individuality. Such judgments will not necessarily resolve to simple recommendations for action. Could it be possible for a person, in principle, to carry out all objective moral obligations, but none-the-less to see their own life as lacking significance? If this is so, then we must consider the possibility that a certain kind of moral argument for the existence of God, based on the issue of the significance and meaning of the universe as a whole, can possibly be detached from the more traditional moral arguments for God's existence.
What can it mean for one's life to have significance or meaning and can this just be reduced to questions about carrying out objective moral duties? There is reason to consider the possibility that the issue of significance does not just reduce to a question of moral duty. If it is possible to carry out all of one's objective moral duties, but still conclude that one's life does not have significance or meaning, then the issue of significance is separate from the issue of the foundations of morality.
For meaning to exist, in a practical sense, means some kind of agent must exist. And therefore for meaning to exist in some enduring way, some kind of agent that is persistent must exist. This is not an issue of morality, but of pure metaphysical necessity. The moving parts of the issue draw on the still controversial matters of the nature of agency regarding consciousness and will of the simple sort that we are all subjectively privy too as individuals. I can't prove my consciousness to you, and you can't prove yours to me. What even is consciousness? Even as someone with the experience of agency, it is a difficult question. But at least we are on known territory. The question of whether there can be a super agency certainly adds new practical metaphysical issues regarding the nature of that specific kind of agency. However, we can see that there is a distinct issue in the field of metaphysics about which we can debate, can reality in its totality have enduring significance?
Douglas Adams puts this issue poignantly in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Can the answer to "life the universe and everything" be comprehended by finite beings? What if some finite agent, like Douglas' "Deep Thought" were to actually comprehend the ultimate meaning of the universe understood in its traditional sense of all of reality (i.e. putting the issue of multiple universes aside). Let's just say that the answer was something simple like "42" and that Deep Thought also eventually calculates the question to which that is the answer. Now, that meaning would exist for Deep Thought, but cease to as soon as that agent ceased to exist. That meaning, as significance, can be lost if all the agents capable of understanding it are lost.
So what would it mean to say that the universe "has meaning" beyond such itinerant meanings? We should just speak of the universe as having certain meanings at certain points. And if it should come to be that no agents exist and never will exist again, then we should acknowledge that at such a point, the universe in practical terms would cease to have any meaning. Its significance would be for all practical purposes lost. Even if reality were to persist physically, we would have to acknowledge that there can be reality without meaning, for how could one speak of reality as a whole having a meaning while it continued to change in ways that could not ever be comprehended and understood? If reality as a whole is to have meaning, then there must be an agency capable of comprehending its meaning as a whole.
But consider Plato's dialogue the Meno and his theory of knowledge as recollection (anamnesis). This theory suggests that knowledge can in some sense persist without an agent's conscious awareness, which can always in principle be brought back by a process of reflection. The mathematical understanding of the slave boy, which Socrates elicits through conversation, is not conscious awareness, but mere implicit knowledge until Socrates helps elicit it.. The theorem the boy comes to understand, is not meaningful to him initially. In a similar fashion, we can speculate that even in a universe without agents and no possibility for agents to ever develop again, the knowledge of "42" as the meaning of the whole might be able to persist, even into eternity, at least in the form of such implicit knowledge. But could such knowledge really be called "meaningful"? For something to be meaningful, there must be something for which that meaning can be register as meaning. Can the universe as whole really be meaningful without agents?
Which leads us to the well-know paradox of naturalistic atheism. Naturalistic atheists can assert that all the parts of reality represent potentially comprehensible systems, the meaning of which can be deciphered understood in coherent scientific terms, except for the existence of the natural system of reality as whole, which is without purpose, significance or meaning. It is simply a brute fact. This fact can be taken by naturalistic atheists as one of the reasons that we must reject the postulate of God. No enduring meaning perceiving entity exists, because the universe simply is not a place capable of having a meaning as a whole.
So atheists and theists can set the issue of the moral implications of belief aside and simply ask the question, does the universe as a whole, in practical fact, possibly have enduring meaning? In practical terms, unless there is an agent, then the answer is no. Even if that issue has no impact on one's moral conduct and the objective moral principles that hold true, one must consider what the one's answer to the possible meaningfulness of reality will be.
As Adams notes, people like to think that the universe can some ultimate meaning. However, if one rejects theism, such a position is not just a rejection of a controversial metaphysical entity. It also can involve the rejection of the possibility of there being an enduring meaning for the whole. The entire quest to find such meaning would be rendered pointless by such a metaphysical postulate. Any sense that one's finite meanings might connect up with some meaning of the whole would be deluded and any quest to find an enduring meaning of the whole would be forlorn. Which brings us back to the issue of morality. Such a conclusion about the futility of seeking an enduring ultimate meaning would put one at odds with others who think such a quest can be worthwhile. What is the correct moral position on disagreements about the practical issue of the utility of the pursuit of an answer to that question? Is it worth speculating about the ultimate meaning of things? Can inquiry about such matters have any value?
So there are two views on ultimate meaning that atheists might be defending. They could claim that a meaning of the whole could exist, and be comprehendible by finite beings within reality, but that meaning might cease to exist, in practical terms, if all finite beings were to cease to exist once and for all. Or, they could be claiming that there can be no meaning for the whole, both in practical terms of there being a being who could eternally comprehend such meaning, or the ability of reality itself to manifest such meaning. In other words, in regard to the issue of the meaning of reality there are 3 possibilities:
1. The whole can have a meaning but only in a finite way
2. The whole can have a meaning in an eternal way
3. The whole can have neither a meaning in a finite way nor in an eternal way
Some important things to note:
a. Some atheists could hold 1.
b. If reality were to happen to have purely natural qualities, absent a God, that there always will be finite conscious beings within it who can understand its meaning, this would work out effectively to option 2 absent a God.
d. And finally, if one asserts 3, one will be inevitably and unavoidable in moral conflict with people holding to the prior 2 options.
Conclusion d suggests certain limits to Gale's criticism of moral arguments regarding the existence of God. If one comes to the metaphysical conclusion that the universe as a whole cannot have an eternal meaning, then one inescapably will run into conflict with others on issues of whether the pursuit of such meanings can be worthwhile and not ultimately wasteful. If all can agree that it is objectively a moral principle that it is wrong to waste, then this can be combined with the purely metaphysical judgement that seeking after an eternal meaning for the whole is unattainable, and derive the moral conclusion that one should not waste time on the pursuit of such meaning. The disagreement about such a matter between people of type 3 and those of types 1 and 2, is not really a disagreement about fundamental ethical principles or the nature of primary ethical obligation. It is a difference of opinion about metaphysics. However, this differences in metaphysical belief does lead to a derivative ethical conclusion, that the pursuit of ultimate meaning is wrong, to the degree that it promotes any morally unacceptable waste. But the major moral principle used to derive this conclusion can be agreed on by all parties. The cause of the conflicting moral conclusion, is a result of a difference in metaphysical belief, not basic moral principle.
However, the moral judgement derived from basic moral principle raise interesting moral issues of its own. Atheists of such a point of view must provide some explanation for how objective morality could lead to the conclusion that non-theistic dreamers and people of faith are guilty of immorality simply in virtue of pursuing a possible answer to the meaning of existence. It seems a little strange that objective morality should lead to such a conclusion. If moral propositions regarding our acceptance of beliefs must be universal, then this conclusion must hold for all. So dreamers and people of faith must conclude that it is intrinsically wasteful and wrong, to some degree, to act on their belief in the possibility of the existence of ultimate meaning. Or is this possibly a reductio ad absurdum? If it is, what is the false premise? It must either be Gale's assumption about universalizability or the metaphysical assertion that reality cannot have an ultimate meaning.
