Matt Slick: Merely for Your Personal Pleasure

It is always wrong for you to torture babies merely for your personal pleasure.

Matt Slick has developed this proposition over the years to support his claim of “absolute morals”. As he states in the link:

“If it is always wrong, then that supports a universal moral absolute. But how is it possible in a worldview that contains no God and/or does not allow universal moral truths?

So let’s respond to the “If it is” and the “If it is not” as Slick explains at his carm.org website:

“If it is always wrong (to torture babies to death for personal pleasure), then that supports a universal moral absolute. But how is it possible in a worldview that contains no God and/or does not allow universal moral truths?”

Incoherent/does not follow. A well-known Atheist Community Youtube commenter expresses this very well: “If you have to use a very specific example ‘raping babies for mere pleasure’ in order to demonstrate an objective moral standard, the moral standard can't be very objective (at least not in the transcendent, god given morals, kind of way ).” (Shaar roambeams , YT comment on BTWN Show, 8/7/2016)

Reductio Ad Absurdum. Slick is attempting to find something he can claim is universal in that no one can deny it, but in doing so, raises its specificity to an absurdity The immediate question arising is: who would EVER torture babies to death “merely for personal pleasure”?  It is the specifier, the "merely for personal pleasure" clause, which takes the proposition to this level.

At his carm.org website, Slick tries to extend this appeal-to-emotion-framed statement to a table of “objective" wrongs:

Notice that they are set up in a table which perfectly reflects the false dilemmas he sets up.  He starts with a universal ("always") in the first column, with another universal (for "anyone/everyone") then to the act, and then obscures it with the emotionally-infected false choice "specifier".  The second proposition about mothers is obviously a thinly-veiled reference to abortion.  The choices make these propositions, again, something that would only be done by a sociopath, someone mentally ill, because of the "personal pleasure" phrasing.    The appeal to emotion "specifier" in the last column is meant to remove any compelling rational reason for an exception, but also renders it almost impossibly uncommon (reduces it to an absurdity).

Straw man/Reification. Where does it say that an atheist worldview cannot allow universal moral truths? Matt’s insinuation is that only a theist worldview can support them, I’m assuming because it has a ”morality giver” (which of course is his version of god). In other words, universal moral laws require having a “law giver.”

Altruism and empathy can be used to develop objective, universal moral truths in both a theistic and secular world.  Five of them will be discussed later in this post.

Divine Command Theory. Slick tries to get around the DCT quandary in various ways, but it always comes back to the fact that any act his god would command him to perform is morally permissible. This is expressed well in a Personal Challenge by Raymond Bradley in his book “God’s Gravediggers: Why No Diety Exists”—

Consider First Samuel 15:3 in which the Lord commands his people: “Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him: but put to death both man and woman, child and infant."

Now ask yourself three questions:

(i) Was "put to death both man and woman, child and Infant" the very word of the Lord whom you believe and worship?

(ii) Is it conceivable that your Lord could again issue the same command in our time?

(iii) If you did believe you were so commanded by your Lord, could you and would you obey?

If you answer "No" to question (i), you deny the authority of God's so-called word, the Bible. If you answer "No" to question (ii) (perhaps because you think your Lord might have mended his ways), then you deny that God's commands have the kind of universal applicability which is a necessary condition of their being in accord with, let alone the source of, moral truths [Note from Karen: you also deny that God is “changeless” as defined by the Westminster Confessional definition of God]. If you answer "No" to question (iii), you must think that it is sometimes right, or even obligatory, to disobey God. You thereby admit that moral truths are independent of, and may even conflict with, God's dictates. You admit that, as most philosophers since Socrates have long insisted, ethics is autonomous; and that we must, therefore, do our moral thinking for ourselves. But if you answer "Yes" to each question, then I submit that your belief in the God of biblical theism is not just mistaken but morally abhorrent.

My Answer to Slick
Torturing babies “merely for personal pleasure” is an appeal to emotion that entails that one enjoys giving pain, which is sadism.  Sexual sadism disorder is the “medical/psychological condition for sexual arousal [i.e., personal pleasure] from inflicting pain/humiliation on unwilling, non-consenting victims.” Babies are by definition “unwilling, non-consenting victims.” So it’s not wrong as indicative of someone who has a psychological disorder who needs to be helped (i.e., with empathy, altruism). The person who is “deriving personal pleasure” may not think it is wrong, because they have a psychological problem—they are “sick” from a mental condition which requires treatment.

Furthermore, this speaks to humanity’s moral advancement as part of our modern civilization. At one time this would be considered a moral wrong—the torturer would likely be charged with a crime and punished severely, either through confinement, and if the baby ended up dead, whatever the law prescribed (death sentence or long-term/life imprisonment). Today (at least in the western world) the torturer may be incarcerated institutionally and treated through therapy and medication. In other words, empathy, altruism and science (study of psychological disorders) have changed “raping babies merely for personal pleasure” from an “always wrong.” Morality has in essence EVOLVED to make this a subjective.

Now, I can just imagine hearing Matt’s morality script on some Sunday night BTWN Show. One might ask Slick to clarify “personal pleasure”—for example: “Matt, could you further explain the phrase ‘merely for personal pleasure’? What do you mean by it? Does personal pleasure include sexual arousal?” (You could also elaborate to embarrass Slick: “Do you derive personal pleasure from sex with your partner/wife?”) If he says no, then he has severely undermined the meaning of pleasure because he has removed one of the more obvious facets of pleasure that a baby torturer would likely derive from doing it (and perhaps upset his wife!). He is selectively using the word pleasure to suit his argument. But we can even concede that for the sake of argument: because saying personal pleasure is only “happiness” could still invoke the psychological disorder of sadism.

****

If it NOT always wrong…. Slick continues:

If it is not always wrong (to torture babies to death for personal pleasure), then I ask the person to give me an instance when it is morally acceptable to torture babies to death "merely for their personal pleasure." Sometimes they offer some situation, such as everyone in the world would die if a particular baby wasn't tortured to death, or something like that. I then tell them they are misrepresenting the statement since they are not addressing "merely for their personal pleasure."

False dilemma. In the cases of speculative responses from non-believers, Slick’s answer is correct, because the act of torturing the baby, even if it would result in “saving the world”, would not be pleasurable to any reasonable, mentally healthy person. In this respect, Slick has presented a dichotomy: if not for “pleasure” it’s a misrepresentation—if for pleasure, there’s NO known situation where one would torture a baby for personal pleasure (except if it’s because of sexual sadism disorder).

As for the case of torturing babies merely for personal pleasure as the equivalent of sexual sadism disorder, this is NOT a speculation by any means. We can explain why this would be a disorder, it would be up to Slick to counter this.

There are also some “non-speculations” or actual instances where torture to children is morally acceptable. Although Slick might dismiss them because he’d likely claim that they also misrepresent his “absolute moral proposition”, a case can be made that it is possible they were done merely for personal pleasure, and some of them even occur today. For example, there’s the prosecution of those inflicted with albinism in regions of Africa, such Tanzania. Albino children in Tanzania are often kidnapped, brutally attacked or murdered because of myths that their lack of pigmentation confers a special power: “…recent years witch doctors have been teaching misconceived ideas about the promise of wealth, success and power when albino hair or limbs are used in a potion as part of witchcraft practices.” Often their limbs are hacked off. It’s also been reported that consuming their blood while the Albino is still alive (a form of torture) imparts greater power. Until outside forces condemned the practice and urged the government into action, the perpetrators and witchdoctors likely found it morally acceptable.

Matt Slick might counter that this does not meet the definition of “merely for personal pleasure" (as he would also put forward for all the moral propositions in his "table").  The discussion would be: does the perpetrator get pleasure from the fact that he will be gaining greater power—cured of a disease, gaining wealth/success, etc.? There can be other discussions of sacrifice, Canaanite (biblical) sacrifice (the Tophet) as well as child cannibalism and foundational sacrifice, all done in the name of ritual and religion, and whether they are were morally acceptable at the time. As I believe Slick would claim these misrepresent his moral proposition in minor ways, I’m not going to elaborate on them. But if you follow the link, you will read that they come very close to an acceptably moral “torturing babies to death merely for personal pleasure.”

A non-believer’s moral absolutes. Let’s return to the claim by Slick that atheists do not have moral absolutes, or objective/universal moral standards. Atheist (and Theist) Universal Moral Truths (again from Raymond Bradley in his book “God’s Gravediggers: Why No Diety Exists”)—lists 5 of them.

Here, now, are a few examples of moral principles that I take to be paradigms of absolute, objective, moral truths:

P1: It is morally wrong to deliberately and mercilessly slaughter men, women, and children who are innocent of any serious wrongdoing. A particularly gross violation of this principle is to be found in the genocidal policies of the Nazi SS who, following the orders of Hitler, slaughtered 6 million Jews, together with countless Gypsies, homosexuals, and other so-called "undesirables." It is no excuse, as I see it, that they believed themselves to be cutting out a cancer from society, or that they were, as Hitler explained in 1933, merely doing to the Jews what Christians had been preaching for two thousand years….Another, more recent, violation of this principle is to be found in the alleged genocidal practices of Milosevic and his henchman for whom it is no excuse to say that they are merely redressing past injustices or, by ethnic cleansing, laying the foundations for a more stable society.

P2: It is morally wrong to provide one's troops with young women captives with the prospect of their being used as sex-slaves. This principle, or something like it, lies behind our moral revulsion at the policies of the German and Japanese High Commands who selected sexually attractive young women, especially virgins, to give so-called "comfort" to their soldiers. It is irrelevant, I want to say, that most societies, historically, have regarded such comforts as among the accepted spoils of war.

P3: It is morally wrong to make people cannibalize their friends and family. Perhaps we can imagine situations--such as the plane crash in the Andes--in which cannibalistic acts might be exonerated. But making people eat their own family members--as many Polynesian tribes are reputed to have done--in order to punish them, or to horrify and strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, is unconscionable.

P4: It is morally wrong to practice human sacrifice, by burning or otherwise. To be sure, human sacrifice was widely accepted by the tribes against whom the children of Israel fought and, on the other side of the Atlantic, by the Aztecs and Incas. But this, I think you'll agree, doesn't make the practice acceptable, even if it was done to appease the gods in whom they believed.

P5: It is morally wrong to torture people endlessly for their beliefs. Perhaps we can think of situations in which it would be permissible to torture someone who is himself a torturer so as to obtain information as to the whereabouts of prisoners who will otherwise die from the injuries he has inflicted on them. But cases like that of Pope Pius V who watched the Roman Inquisition burn a nonconforming religious scholar in about 1570, fall beyond the moral pale; he can't be exonerated on the grounds that he thought he was thereby saving the dissident's soul from the eternal fires of Hell. On all of these examples, I would like to think, theists and other morally enlightened persons would agree with me. And I would like to think, further, that theists would agree….

Now comes the lynch-pin of my moral argument against theism. For, as I shall now show, the theist God--as he supposedly reveals himself in the Jewish and Christian Bibles (and, for that matter, the Qur’an)--either himself commits, commands others to commit, or condones, acts which violate every one of our five principles.

Bradley then gives the many verses in the Bible where Yahweh violates them. The links are shown with each moral proposition above.

The Presuppositional “Shut-out” Answer: “You can’t believe in GOOD if you don’t believe in GOD.”  Those Christians who subscribe to the TAG or presuppositional argument for the existence of God, believe that morals can only be “accounted for” in a Christian worldview, as their God provides the objective standard. For atheists or non-believers, there is no standard and hence they cannot “account” for them. This is the “you cannot (or have no right to) answer because you have no moral standards in your worldview” response. But it doesn’t answer the substance of any moral question from the presuppositionalists’ perspective.  The type of question you might pose to the presuppositionalist would be:

• Just because the Christian claims the non-believer has no right to judge or has no moral standards, does that make anything Yahweh proclaims morally right?
• Is it still wrong regardless of what the pre-sup thinks as to the non-believer’s moral standards?
• So is it wrong even if I have no accounting?
• You say I have no standard to say I’m wrong, so therefore you can’t say it’s wrong?  (I'm asking YOU if it's wrong, not if it's wrong from MY perspective.)
• So can I assume it’s morally permissible according to you, since you say I have no standard to judge?...or you just don’t know either?

Some presuppositionalists (ones like Slick and Tim [Biblethumpingwingnut] and especially Sye Ten Bruggencate engage like this) to criticize non-believers for their “absurd thinking” with regard to logic and that they have no way to judge morality because they have no standards, as if the non-believer has some failings and needs correction (which is attained by submitting to the Christian worldview).

At one time I would propose a “logic scenario” to presups/TAG proponents who call atheist thinking “absurd”—if a group of students took a logic test and all passed successfully, should the atheist students be failed or downgraded because their logic was not properly grounded/accounted for? The same goes for morals. For example, if a motorist does a “rolling stop” (runs a stop sign) and is caught by a traffic cop, should atheist motorists get a ticket for this violation while a theist motorist would get a warning, simply because atheists “cannot account for their morals?”

The most a presuppositionalist can actually say is that the atheist is appropriating the theists’ grounding for logic and morality, because the two examples above show that the atheists’ reasoning and morality is no different than the theists. This is actually all they have to argue: that logic and morality “belong” to the Christian (worldview), and they want the non-theists to acknowledge that.  But if non-believers are illegally hunting on crown land--as Canadian Sye Ten likes to analogize it--there is evidence (a way to demonstrate) that there's land and that it belongs to the Canadian government (not to a private person or the U.S.).  So to do that, they have to (1) justify their justification, that is, demonstrate their god manifests in reality and (2) differentiate their religion from other religions claiming the same (most notably the Muslims).      So here we are back at Number (1) again. <Sigh!>