The Unproven Assumptions of Morality's Need for Religion

If someone claimed that our human intellects, our human perceptive faculties, suffice for knowing ourselves, our fellow human beings, and nature, but that we cannot know God by resorting to our intellects, and therefore we cannot say how our relations with God should or should not be, what in these relations with God is bad and what is good, what is right and what is wrong—then someone might say that morality, in this respect, needs religion, because religion tells you how your relations with God should and should not be, and what in these relations with God is bad and what is good, what is right and what is wrong, since we do not know one of the parties to the relation, namely God.

If someone made this claim, they would not have made an unreasonable claim, but their statement has two presuppositions that they must prove. The first presupposition they must prove is that there is a God at all with whom we then have interaction. If the very existence of God is proven, then naturally morality here must say something; after all, God is one of the beings of the world, and I, as a human being, wish to have relations with Him, and morality must say how these relations should and should not be, and determine their right and wrong.

The second presupposition that must be proven is that, in addition to the existence of God, we do not have sufficient and adequate knowledge of God through our own perceptive faculties. If these two presuppositions are proven, then it can be said that at least in the human relation with God, we are in need of religion; we must ask religion what relations with God are good and what relations are bad.

Let me also mention two subtle points here, friends:

1️⃣ The first point is that we now have a great deal of knowledge about God; after all, we consider God to possess attributes, we consider God just, omniscient, benevolent toward us, quick to be pleased, accepting of repentance, and we know of quite a number of attributes of God. But these should not deceive us into thinking how much information we have and that we need no more than this, because the proponent might say: I know that you claim to have knowledge of God, but this knowledge has not been obtained through your human intellects and by relying on your perceptive faculties; rather, this knowledge has been placed at the disposal of you humans by God Almighty through the revelation and inspiration He granted to His prophets. Therefore, the mere awareness we have of God, or claim to have, does not suffice to say that this second point we wished to prove—that we do not have sufficient and adequate knowledge of God—cannot be proven, and indeed that its contrary can be proven because we have so much knowledge of Him; for the other party might hold that all of this knowledge, or the vast majority of it, we have obtained through religion, and because we have been raised and brought up with religion, we think we have all this information about God.

2️⃣ The second point is that, at the same time, for the first presupposition—that God exists at all—we cannot prove God's existence without presupposing one of God's attributes. Therefore, proving existence itself depends to some extent on quiddity, because in the first presupposition we said God's existence must be proven, and to prove God's existence one cannot be entirely indifferent to God's quiddity. Proving the existence of anything depends to some degree on the quiddity of that thing; that is, one cannot prove the existence of any x unless one presupposes at least one attribute for that x, otherwise proving the existence of x is impossible. If you told me to prove that x exists, and then I asked what attribute of x you know or assume you know, and you said you know absolutely no attribute, then I would pick up the first thing at hand, for instance this glass, and say this is the very x whose existence you wanted me to prove, and I prove its existence by showing it to you. And you cannot say this glass is not the x whose existence you wanted me to prove, because when I ask why this glass is not that x, you are compelled to introduce one of x's characteristics in your answer and say, for example, because x is immaterial and what you are showing us is not immaterial. That is, you had presupposed at least one attribute of x, otherwise you could not, for any reason, say this glass is not the x whose existence we wanted you to prove.

?Philosophers do this all the time; every philosopher who attempts to prove God's existence presupposes one attribute for God from the outset, before the proof. Someone who wants to prove God's existence through the argument from motion first presupposes that God is the Unmoved Mover, then says: now I will prove that the Unmoved Mover exists.

❓❓Question: What if someone arrives at the Necessary Being through the examination of contingent beings? In that case, they had not presupposed any attribute beforehand.

?Answer: I will make two points here:

1️⃣ The first point is that it is impossible for a human being to carry out any reasoning unless they first have the conclusion, which later appears as the result, as their desired outcome. That is, reasoning is impossible unless I first know what I want to prove (which, before the reasoning, we call the "desired outcome" and after the reasoning we call the "conclusion"). If I know that my desired outcome is "A is B," then, in the words of the ancient logicians, when I refer to the storehouse of my mind, I know which pieces of information—from among all this knowledge, which, praise God, is abundant!—I must select to lead me to "A is B." Otherwise, if you do not know what your desired outcome is, when you refer to the storehouse of your mind, which of the billions of items of knowledge preserved in the storehouse of your mind—may God preserve them from harm!—will you pull out? The reason a person can pull out two or three is that they know from the outset what they want to prove. Therefore, they want to say that the person arrived through reasoning at the conclusion that the Necessary Being exists, and I say that the person who wants to arrive, through reasoning and reflection on contingent beings, at the conclusion that the Necessary Being exists, must have this "the Necessary Being exists" in their mind from the outset as a desired outcome, so that they can assemble a piece of reasoning whose conclusion is that "the Necessary Being exists."

2️⃣ But the second point I wanted to make is this: now let us suppose the person arrived at the conclusion that the Necessary Being exists—whether through my explanation or the explanation of our esteemed colleague. Now, this person who says the Necessary Being exists (and, as our esteemed colleague says, arrived at this through reflection on contingent beings), on what basis do they say "God" exists? How can they go from "the Necessary Being exists" to proving that "God exists"? Unless they presuppose that God is the Necessary Being, and then say: the Necessary Being exists, the Necessary Being is God, therefore God exists. Otherwise, what connection does the Necessary Being have to God? So it becomes clear that they had presupposed one of God's attributes, and that is the necessity of God's existence. This holds true in all other philosophical endeavors as well.

?I have repeatedly said in my talks that when philosophers prove that there is an unmoved mover, Muslims should not rejoice that the existence of Allah has been proven, nor should Jews rejoice that the existence of Yahweh has been proven, nor should Christians say that the existence of our Heavenly Father has been proven, because one could say that we have understood that there is an unmoved mover in the universe, but how is this Allah? How is it Yahweh? How is it Ahura Mazda? How is it our Heavenly Father? And so on. One should only rejoice when we have a presupposition, and that presupposition is that we have assumed from the beginning that, for example, the Allah of us Muslims has one characteristic, and that is being the unmoved mover; otherwise, the existence of Allah has not been proven, only the existence of an unmoved mover has been proven.

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The Unproven Assumptions of Morality's Need for Religion

Mostafa Malekian, Fideism, Session 7

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