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Proper Function and Sexual Behavior

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

I am not persuaded by any of the purely philosophical arguments against the morality of homosexual behavior that I’ve seen. They tend to depend on highly unintuitive notions of union (e.g., Michael Pakaluk, “Why is Homosexual Activity Morally Wrong”), ambiguous and implausible understandings of “unnatural” (see Michael Ruse, “Is Homosexuality Bad Sexuality?”), or moral premises that are way too general (e.g., “harm” arguments). For an example of the lattermost:

(1) It is wrong to engage in self-destructive behavior for its own sake

(2) Homosexual behavior is self-destructive

(3) Therefore, it is wrong to engage in homosexual behavior for its own sake

Perhaps (2) is defensible, but (1) would also rule out many high-impact sports like football, professional wrestling, and martial arts. Moreover, it’s also not likely that all homosexual behavior is engaged in for its own sake, so has narrow application even if sound.

Now, I don’t think too much should be made out of the failure to produce sound or at least cogent philosophical arguments in this area because there are sources and ways for justifying beliefs other than philosophical argument (e.g., the previous post might get us somewhere). Nevertheless, here is an argument that might have promise:

(1) A system functions properly only when it functions as it was designed to function

(2) A system ought to function properly

(3) Human reproductive systems were designed to function within heterosexual relationships

(4) Therefore, human reproductive systems function properly only within heterosexual relationships

(5) Therefore, human reproductive systems ought to function only within heterosexual relationships

By “proper function,” I have in mind a broadly Plantingian account. I hasten to point out that talk of design is not thought to entail or imply a designer. Biologists utilize talk of design to describe how biological systems function with no theological strings attached. The above argument is consistent with utilizing design talk in that way. Accordingly, premise (3) does not necessarily mean that the human reproductive system was designed by God. It could have just as well been “designed” by the processes of naturalistic evolution. Note that a system can function, but not function properly. And this it is why I take (2) to be the main premise. Seems true to me. Perhaps other ways of putting it is like this: it is better that a system function properly than not function properly; improper function, or dysfunction, should be avoided; etc.

It is hard to state, however, what exactly the argument entails about the morality of homosexual behavior. Clearly it’s in the realm of normativity. But to say that it demonstrates, if sound, that homosexual behavior is immoral seems too strong.

Posted in Philosophy | 20 Comments »

An Analogical Argument Against Homosexuality

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Suppose the average life-span of an average car is 70 years (suppose this is the not-so-distant technological future). Now suppose you bought an average car, call it the model X, new. It has a life expectancy of 70 years off the lot. The model X enjoys a tremendous marketing campaign. Now suppose 9 million of them sold, and the average life expectancy of the model X wound up being only 40 years. Moreover, suppose more than 75% of all model Xs were constant lemons; model X’s were checked into repair shops at a rate approximately 450% higher than average cars. Problems associated with the model X, some of them unfixable, far exceeded the number of problems associated with other average cars in type, severity, and number. Sadly, many model Xs even resulted in fatal accidents. Only 8% of model X owners reported keeping the model X for more than 3 years.

Now, here’s the catch—nothing is prima facie wrong with the model X. Upon inspection, engineers cannot locate any specific problem or design flaw. In fact, it resembles other average cars in every respect other than severe statistical failure, but nobody can say just why.

Despite this, I think we are well within our intellectual rights in concluding the following: something is wrong with the model X. Actually, in the face of these statistics, it would be foolish to think there is nothing wrong with the model X even if we can’t say what. The appropriate thing to do would be to scrap production of the model X, cancel the marketing campaign, recall any existing models, and warn people against driving a model X. In fact, it would be morally wrong to sell the model X to an uninformed customer as if it is expected to perform like an average car (I’m looking at you, MTV).

Posted in Philosophy | 6 Comments »

Gratuitious Evils of the Worst Kind

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

A while back I expressed the idea that sexual evils are, to my mind, the worst kind of evils. Here I will attempt to articulate why I think this is true, and why sexual evils are better examples of apparently gratuitous evils than the typical examples.

As I reflect on horrendous and gratuitous evils, it seems to me that the qualitatively worst kind of such evil has been completely ignored—sexual evils. There seems to be something altogether different, more perverse and twisted and fully saturated with pure moral wickedness about sexual evils than the ones normally discussed (e.g., forest-fire fawns, stray-bullets, accidentally backing-up over one’s own child, etc.). Here I have in mind sexual evils such as rape and child molestation, to say nothing of the varying degrees of perversity these acts can have. Why do I think sexual evils are better examples of apparently gratuitous evils than the typical examples? Gratuitous evils are usually characterized by their apparent quality and quantity. It’s not the apparent quantity of sexual evils that seems different. It’s the quality of the sin that increases apparent gratuitousness. Let me suggest at least three reasons.

First, sexual evils are exclusively moral evils. Moral evils are qualitatively worse than natural evils in that they involve personal offense, which conveys a responsibility and avoidableness on behalf of the offending party that natural evils do not. That moral evils can be traced to a responsible moral agent who could have refrained from so acting heightens the intuition of gratuitousness, whereas natural evils cannot obviously be seen as avoidable or as tracing to a responsible moral agent, though such is possible (e.g., it is possible that God or demons are responsible for both moral and natural evils, but this is not obvious or apparent). But both sexual evils and, say, murderous evils are exclusively moral evils. So what makes sexual evils worse than other moral evils, such as murderous ones? Consider the following two points.

Second, acts of sexual evils are qualitatively worse that other moral evils. Murderous evils fail to treat moral agents as valuable ends, but sexual evils fail to treat moral agents as valuable ends and mistreats them only as valuable means. I suggest that this is qualitatively worse. One might object that a murderer also treats a moral agent as a means to satisfying his desires and so is on par with sexual evils. But I think this is confused—a murderer’s victim is not valuable to the murderer insofar as they are dead; the victim is not valuable to the murderer at all. The murderer does not treat his victims as valuable means, but treats the act of murdering as a valuable means. Where x is a moral agent, perhaps the difference is between not valuing x as an end and disvaluing x. Disvaluing x includes not valuing x as a means in addition to treating x improperly (i.e., mistreating x). What’s more is that the disvaluing of x in cases of sexual evils is perverse. In the most extreme cases (that’s what we’re after), there is the shattering of an innocent and pure life for the sake of satisfying an utterly selfish and perverse carnal desire. This is not mere disvaluing, but perverse defilement or degradation.

Third, the consequences of sexual evils are qualitatively worse than other moral evils. While the consequences of both murderous evils and sexual evils are ‘forever’ in a sense, murderous evils involve a release of suffering whereas sexual evils offer no such release. They insidiously linger and continue to torture the victim long after the evil is perpetrated. Intense feelings of shame, worthlessness, and guilt created in victims of sexual evil forever mar the face of innocence. In other words, sexual evil is prolonged, undeserved torture. This torture is often mental, and as such is arguably worse than physical torture. Moreover, sexual evils often have the unfortunate consequence of being repeated by victims of sexual evils, and so, in a way, self-perpetuate.

I conclude that sexual evils are such that their quality and intensity greatly heightens apparent gratuitousness more than typical examples of apparently gratuitous evils. So the question remains—is God justified in permitting these kinds of evils? Couldn’t God have at least created humans in a way minimizes such evils, say, by creating men with less libido? Does the goodness of the gift of sexual pleasure righteously expressed outweigh or defeat the apparent gratuitousness of sexual evils?

Posted in Philosophy | 3 Comments »

Performing Inverse Operations on an Actual Infinite “In the Real World”

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Here is an objection to Craig-style arguments against the existence of an actual infinite “in the real world”. It is often said that inverse operations on transfinite numbers are prohibited. But this is not entirely true. As Nowacki explains, “inverse operations are prohibited for transfinite numbers in cases where performing the operation would yield a result that is not actually infinite.” (Kalam Cosmological Argument for God, p. 281, n.12. My emphasis). So where m = the number of books in an infinite library, n = the number of odd-numbered books, and o the number of books numbered 4 or higher, the following is permitted:

(i) (m – n) = ℵ₀

while the following is not:

(ii) (m – o) = 4

because (ii) yields a finite number. If inverse operations yielding finite numbers were permitted, then it would follow that we get inconsistent results by subtracting the same number from m since n = o (both n and o are infinite), and this of course is why operations like (ii) are prohibited. But this leads me to think the following.

Craig’s point is that while inverse operations yielding finite numbers may be prohibited on paper, nothing would prevent us from performing them in the real world (say, by checking out a book from the library). But is this right? What would performing such an operation “in the real world” really amount to? What (ii) makes clear is that one would have to check out an infinite number of books to get a finite difference, not just any finite number of books. But then does Craig’s point follow that “nothing would prevent us from performing them in the real world”? Here’s something that might prevent us: having to perform and infinite task (check out an infinite number of books).

I’m not convinced that this objection works, but I don’t know the answer to it.

Posted in Philosophy | 3 Comments »

Anselmian Goodness

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

When the theist says “God is good,” I take this to be saying something substantial about God himself; that is, goodness does not just describe the moral status of God’s thoughts, intentions, or actions, but the moral status of his very essence. Call the former sense of divine goodness “descriptive goodness” and the latter “essential goodness.” It should be clear that essential goodness entails descriptive goodness but not vice versa, and so essential goodness is greater than descriptive goodness. For this reason the anselmian theist will favor divine goodness as essential and not just descriptive. Moreover, it is essential goodness that is assumed in the standard response to the Euthyphro dilemma.

Descriptive accounts of divine goodness usually present goodness as a logical entailment or consequence of other divine attributes such as omniscience, omnipotence and freedom [E.g., Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford, rev. ed. 1993), 184-216; Daniel Jill, Divinity and Maximal Greatness (Routledge, 2005), 226]. On such accounts goodness is not essential to God in the same way that omniscience and omnipotence are, which are in some sense more primitive attributes because they are not derived or logically entailed by other attributes. So where B is a being with the properties necessary and sufficient to logically entail descriptive goodness, or G, we have something like the following relation:

(1) (∀x) (Bx ⇒ Gx)

But (1) is not strong enough to capture essential goodness. Here’s an analogy: although light is logically entailed by a red giant star, light is analytically distinct from and not essential to the star itself. Again, anselmian theists are likely to think of goodness as having the same status as these other more primitive essential attributes, and so I don’t think they’ll be satisfied with accounts that analyze divine goodness in terms of (1). Perhaps logical equivalence is strong enough (speaking here of a relation between yet two distinct things, lest divine simplicity rear its ugly head). Now where B is any being which exemplifies anselmian divinity and G is essential goodness:

(2) (∀x) (Bx ⇔ Gx)

But even (2) is not likely to satisfy the anselmian theist unless the good that is essential to God is maximal. Rationality might be essential to man, but man is certainly not maximally rational. So (2) can be see as saying that any being which exemplifies anselmian divinity will be one that is essentially maximally good and any being which is essentially maximally good will be one which exemplifies anselmian divinity. “God” is not analytically distinct from “essential maximal goodness.” So the logical entailment runs in both directions. The same holds for the other essential divine attributes such as omnipotence and omniscience.

Now here is an interesting consequence of this idea. Assuming what I argue in “Theism and the Metaphysics of Meaning and Value” is correct, while a single agent can be good in the sense of (1), no single agent can be good in the sense captured by (2). Just as three sides are essential to a triangle, at least two agents are essential to any being with essential goodness, and as I argued in the last post, perhaps exactly three agents are sufficient for maximal goodness. This means that a standard unitarian theist cannot say God is essentially good, and an anselmian theist must be a Trinitarian. This also means that if a theist wishes to avail himself of the standard response to the Euthyphro dilemma, his conception of God must be one in which there are at least two agents.

Posted in Attributes of God, Philosophical Theology, Philosophy | No Comments »

An Anselmian Deductive Argument for the Trinity

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

In “Theism and the Metaphysics of Meaning and Value,” fundamental to the main argument against unitarian monotheism is the Endowment Thesis, or the claim that all meaning and value is endowed or bestowed by agents. Following Nozick, we can classify these and similar intentional verbs as ‘V verbs,’ for ‘valuing verbs,’ so as to speak generally about this endowing activity as a V-ing relationship between agents and that which they value. The argument is as follows: where P is meaning or value, the Endowmwnt Thesis formally states that for any x, x has meaning or value if and only if there is at least one agent y such that y V-s x:

(ET) (∀x)Px ≡ (∃y) (Ay ∙ Vyx)

And where x is now some lonely object, or object with no wholly-distinct worldmates, (ET) entails that

(1) ◊(∃x)Px ⊃ (∃y)(Ay ∙ Vyx)

which is to be read as “if there possibly exists some lonely object x that has P, then there is at least one agent y such that y V-s x.” But exactly one agent, I argue, is not sufficient for x to have P:

(2) ◊(∃x)Px ⊃ ~(∃y){Ay ∙ Vyx ∙ (∀z) [(Az ∙ Vzx) ⊃ x = z]}

Therefore, for any world where x has P, at minimum two agents are necessary:

(3) ◊(∃x)Px ⊃ (∃y)(∃z)(Ay ∙ Az ∙ Vyx ∙ Vzx ∙ x ≠ z)

So if God possibly exists with no wholly-distinct worldmates and has meaning or value, then God must be at minimum two agents. The argument, if successful, shows that a necessary condition for God to have meaning or value is for God to be at least two agents. So we can summarize the main argument’s conclusion as simply

(A1) If God possibly exists with no wholly-distinct worldmates and has meaning or value, then God is at least two agents

As such, it only gets you to non-unitarian monotheism, not Trinitarian monotheism. However, other interesting considerations might be brought in to bear on the question of whether exactly two agents are sufficient for God to have the maximal degree of meaning and value possible. And I think there are good reasons to think exactly two agents are not sufficient for such, but exactly three are (a la Swinburne’s argument that three persons are necessary and sufficient for the most robust exemplification of love). So Swinburnian considerations could give us a second argument:

(A2) If God has the maximal degree of meaning or value, then God is at least three agents

Combining these two arguments, I think, gives a powerful deductive argument for not just non-unitarian monotheism, but Trinitarian monotheism. So any theist who endorses the seemingly innocuous premise

(P1) God possibly exists with no wholly-distinct worldmates and has the maximal degree of meaning or value

which would be most theists, should be ready to accept what (A1) and (A2) demonstrate that (P1) entails; namely,

(C) Trinitarian monotheism is true

But what would “maximal value” or “maximal meaning” look like? Suppose we understand the relationship between meaning and value as follows. It is not implausible that meaning supervenes on value, or for value to supervene on appropriate states of affairs involving agents. Something might be meaningful because of its intrinsic value. Moreover, the degree to which something is meaningful is plausibly determined by the value of the object with which it bears a relation. For example, consider the following list of different kinds of beings with which we can have relationships: inanimate objects → plants → animals → persons → God. It seems clear that the meaningfulness of the relationship increases in tandem with the amount of value each being has. Furthermore, if we adopt some version. G. E. Moore’s Principle of Organic Unities, such as the one Robert Nozick develops in Philosophical Explanations, then the degree to which some thing is valuable depends on how intimately and harmoniously related it is with its parts, and its parts are with themselves.

Now apply these insights to a divine being in which there are multiple agents. Consider the value divine agents would have if in necessary and substantial relation. Being omniscient and omnipotent, there would be a maximally intimate union of knowledge and will, and so maximal value would be exemplified. And if the degree to which a relationship is meaningful is determined by the value of the beings that make it up, then the most meaningful relationship is one in which the members are maximally valuable. The agents would enjoy a maximally meaningful relationship, as each would stand in relation to a maximally valuable other. Thus, any meaning or value endowed would be of maximal quality such that no greater meaning or value would be possible.

Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments »

Resolving Conflicting Intuitions

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Intuitions are roughly non-inferential seemings. But intuitions can be, and probably often are, conditioned by (not inferred from) occurrent or tacit beliefs.

It seems to me that part of the task of justifying an intuition over a conflicting one (or perhaps more accurately, defeating an opposing intuition) involves being able to plausibly explain the origin of the opposing intuition and why its origin is relevant to its defeasibility. Abstractly, take any two conflicting intuitions, i₁ and i₂. Say I want to justify i₁ over i₂. I engage as follows: The reason S has i₂ is because of reasons r₁, r₂, r₃, etc., where r₁, r₂, r₃, etc. are likely occurent beliefs S holds. But reasons r₁, r₂, r₃, etc. should not properly give rise to i₂ either because one or more of them is false or unjustified, or because they properly give rise to something else (some other occurent belief implied them?) that does not at all conflict with i₁.

This leads me to wonder whether all intuitions are actually just occurrent beliefs that we can’t identify or haven’t identified plausible origins of, perhaps because of weak powers of introspection. Of course, this does not mean no intuition is ever justified. In the case of i₁, it is entirely possible that undiscovered reasons r₁, r₂, r₃etc. do properly give rise to i₁.

And this means that in cases where our introspective powers are too weak to uncover the occurent beliefs relevant to either person’s opposing intuition, an argumentative (though not necessarily epistemic) stale-mate is reached. This also means that in cases like the one explained above where r₁, r₂, r₃etc. are exposed as not properly giving rise to i₂, if the reasons giving rise to i₁ are unknown, then merely argumentative superiority is demonstrated, not epistemic. After all, the reasons giving rise to i₁ could also be bogus, in which case there would be an epistemic stalemate.

And this leads me to wonder whether there can ever be a genuine case of epistemic stalemate between two conflicting intuitions, each of which are properly the result justified and true occurent beliefs. Sure it is possible that each opposing intuition can be properly the result of justified false beliefs, but once truth is thrown into the mix, it is a matter of propositions being either consistent or contradictory.

Posted in Epistemology, Philosophy | 2 Comments »

Live Free or Die Hard: There Is No Missing Body

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

In his forthcoming article “Resurrecting the Logical Problem of Evil,” Nathan Hanna purports to “offer a version of the Logical Argument from Evil that is immune to the Free Will Defense.” This would be significant, as most judge the FWD to have decisively solved the logical problem of evil. Hanna argues as follows (forgive the lengthy quotations. I’m after a quick and dirty reply, not necessarily an elegant one). Where “E can be all moral evil or a particular instance of or type of moral evil” and “G is free will or whatever other important goods free will might be necessary to obtain”:

(1) God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect

(2) E exists

(3) If God exists and E exists, God has not eliminated E while securing G (necessary truth)

(4) So, God has not eliminated E while securing G (1, 2, 3)

(5) If God has not eliminated E while securing G, God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he done so (premise)

(6) So, God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he done so (4, 5)

(7) There are possible worlds where this can be done and where God would do so

(8) So, there are possible worlds where God is more morally praiseworthy than he in fact is (6, 7)

(9) Being more morally praiseworthy than a morally perfect being is logically impossible (premise)

(10) Contradiction (8, 9)

If 5, 7 and 9 are necessarily true, 1 and 2 are inconsistent. Since 2 is obviously true, it would follow that 1 – theism – is false.

The crucial premise, it seems to me, is (5). Hanna defends (5) as follows. Imagine the moral status of a hero, H, depending on which action he performs in Thomas Nagel’s rescue scenario:

“However jewel-like the good will may be in its own right, there is a morally significant difference between rescuing someone from a burning building and dropping him from a twelfth-storey window while trying to rescue him.” Hanna further quote Nagel as saying “What has been done, and what is morally judged is partly determined by external factors.” External factors are “beyond [H]’s control, factors like the choices of others.” Hanna writes:

“If [H] manages to rescue him, [H] will arguably be more morally praiseworthy than [H] would have been [H] she failed. [H] will have accomplished something that affects one’s moral standing significantly. But [H’s] prospects depend on something beyond [H’s] complete control: the other person’s choices.”

So Hanna sets up a scenario that places God in the same situation with respect to the rescue of his free creatures from evil. He writes:

What acts God manages to perform – whether he eliminates evil, say – depends partly on his creatures’ free choices. In this respect, God bears important relations to us that we bear to one another. The acts we manage to perform depend on factors beyond our control, among them others’ free choices. Our moral standing depends partly on the acts we perform. Our moral standing therefore depends partly on what others do. This is a kind of moral luck. If moral luck is real and God stands in the appropriate relations to his free creatures, his moral standing depends partly on what those creatures freely do. But then evil’s existence threatens theism in a way that has been overlooked. How so? … God could succeed in eliminating evil and securing the relevant goods with sufficient cooperation from his free creatures. Succeeding at this endeavor would be a significant moral accomplishment. But whether God does this is not entirely within his control. It depends on his creatures’ free choices. Success at such cooperative endeavors affects the moral standing of those involved. This is an example of moral luck.

Whether … H can rescue someone from a burning building and whether God can…rescue his free creatures from evil depends on factors beyond their control. Among these factors are the choices of others. Whether H can rescue someone depends partly on whether the person helps or hinders her.

God bears relevantly similar relations to us that H bears to the person she tries to rescue. So, similar things can be said about God and H depending on their success or failure. Being morally perfect, God would want to rescue us and he would try to do so. Moreover, he must succeed. If God succeeds, he will accomplish something amazing, something that, like H’s successful rescue, bears the marks of an action that significantly affects one’s moral standing. If he fails, however, then, just like H would be if she failed at her rescue attempt, he will not be as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he succeeded – even if he is nevertheless very morally praiseworthy. So (5) seems true. … To rescue us is to eliminate evil while securing great goods. If evil exists, God has not done this.

The crux of the matter is the middle paragraph. It seems to me that Hanna’s argument stands or falls on the notion of “control.” Unfortunately Hanna doesn’t say much about this. A free will defender might be a molinist, in which case there is a relevant sense in which the actions of free agents are within God’s complete control: God chose to create a world in which agents act freely in the circumstances God knew they would. Moreover, the actual world could be a world, perhaps the only world, where the securing of G would have optimal consequences: say, a world in which God’s divinely inspired message is freely dispersed and, as a result, as most as possible are saved and as few as possible are lost. Therefore, if molinism is true, it is false that God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he not eliminated E while securing G.

Therefore, it remains safe to point out the tomb in which the corpse of the logical argument of evil has been finally placed—The Nature of Necessity.

Posted in Arguments for God's Existence, Philosophy | 2 Comments »

Decisively Refuted by 50 Cent

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Pondering the problem of how one accounts for the necessary existence of abstract entities such as musical pieces, works of art, novels, etc., I once thought that such entities could very well be types in the mind of God, very much like what Augustine referred to as divine ideas. So when Beethoven composed the 9^th symphony or Dostoyevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov, we can’t say Beethoven or Dostoyevsky literally created these works, but merely tokened them. I was satisfied with this explanation until I heard the most vile, farcical mockery of music come through the air waves: “Shorty you ain’t gotta take your panties off just pull em to the side / If you wanna ride on the roller coaster baby come and ride.” Repulsed by the idea that this “song” could possibly exist as a type in the mind of God, I immediately jettisoned the view.

I’m sure I hold many philosophically-naive views, but I doubt I’ll ever experience such an immediate and decisive refutation as that ever again.

Posted in Philosophy | 3 Comments »

Theistic Conceptualism

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

A version of theistic conceptualism can be distilled by conjoining three independently defensible theses, where ‘objects of kind F‘ are those typically characterized as abstract (numbers, properties, propositions, etc.):

Necessary Existence Thesis: There are necessarily existent objects of kind F

One over Many Thesis: Objects of kind F are tokenable types

Conceptualism Simpliciter: Objects of kind F are mental (conceptual) particulars

The resultant thesis would be very appealing. On the one hand, it would welcome many of the strongest realist arguments in favor of the Necessary Existence Thesis. On the other hand, Conceptualism Simpliciter would accommodate many strong nominalist strategies by avoiding commitment to a bloated or tripartite ontology of abstract objects. This is to say nothing of the merit of the actual arguments for the theses themselves, which I think are a good many.

Of course, many peoples’ strongest motivation for resisting this line would be that the resultant thesis would be explicitly theistic, where objects of kind F are grounded in a necessarily existent mind. But that’s not my problem.

Posted in Arguments for God's Existence, Philosophy | 1 Comment »

(1)	It is wrong to engage in self-destructive behavior for its own sake
(2)	Homosexual behavior is self-destructive
(3)	Therefore, it is wrong to engage in homosexual behavior for its own sake

(1)	A system functions properly only when it functions as it was designed to function
(2)	A system ought to function properly
(3)	Human reproductive systems were designed to function within heterosexual relationships
(4)	Therefore, human reproductive systems function properly only within heterosexual relationships
(5)	Therefore, human reproductive systems ought to function only within heterosexual relationships

(1)	God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect
(2)	E exists
(3)	If God exists and E exists, God has not eliminated E while securing G (necessary truth)
(4)	So, God has not eliminated E while securing G (1, 2, 3)
(5)	If God has not eliminated E while securing G, God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he done so (premise)
(6)	So, God is not as morally praiseworthy as he would have been had he done so (4, 5)
(7)	There are possible worlds where this can be done and where God would do so
(8)	So, there are possible worlds where God is more morally praiseworthy than he in fact is (6, 7)
(9)	Being more morally praiseworthy than a morally perfect being is logically impossible (premise)
(10)	Contradiction (8, 9)

Archive for the 'Philosophy' Category

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