Before you readwatchlisten to If You Can Read This I Can Prove God Exists, read THIS first. I was reminded of the memory wars of the 1990s yesterday when listening to an episode of Marc Marons popular WTF podcast. The guest, comedian Tom Arnold. Airline chicken Airline chicken can be several things, depending upon who you talk to. It can be a fancy cut, a special presentation, or a negative appelation. Last week, we were so happy to report that Kendrick Lamar confirmed his engagement to his high school sweetheart, Whitney Alford. However, it appears that not. And the Memory Wars Wage On Phenomena Only Human. I was reminded of the memory wars of the 1. Marc Marons popular WTF podcast. The guest, comedian Tom Arnold, told Maron about his traumatic childhood, which included an alcoholic mother who abandoned him and a neighbor who molested him. Arnold said he came to terms with the trauma through therapy, which culminated in him confronting the neighbor in person. The man denied it, apparently yelling at Arnold that his memories were wrong. It was a heartbreaking story, and obvious from Arnolds telling that he deeply believes his memories are not at all wrong. Watch Mr. Church HIGH Quality Definitons' title='Watch Mr. Church HIGH Quality Definitons' />The moral argument for the existence of God refers to the claim that God is needed to provide a coherent ontological foundation for the existence of objective moral. I dont know any details about Arnolds case other than what he recounted to Maron. I want to believe that his memories are sound, and that confronting his molester provided him with some form of relief. Update, 36 And, as a commenter pointed out below, Arnold also said on the podcast that he found several other neighborhood boys who said they had been molested by the same man. But it must be said that this sort of revelation in which a person uncovers, through therapy or hypnosis, a memory that had been repressed for years or even decades happened a lot in the early 1. In October 1. 99. Arnolds wife at the time, Roseanne Barr Arnold, was on the cover of People Magazine with the headline Roseannes Brave Confession I AM AN INCEST SURVIVOR. According to the piece, Roseanne had repressed these memories until Tom, then her fianc, told her what he had uncovered about his own childhood. Immediately after hearing his story, I began to shake and sweat, Roseanne told People. Pictures started to appear before my eyessurreal and frightening, looming large, then crystallizing into my mothers face. I remember being abused. After more sessions with a therapist, Roseanne began to dream about specific abuse memories. Just a few months earlier, former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur had made similar claims. And it wasnt just celebrities. Stories of everyday adults suddenly recovering memories of childhood abuse appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Time, among others. Why was this happening It was due, at least in part, to several popular books that provided instructions for recovering repressed memories. The books urged therapists to ask their clients about childhood incest, notes William Saletan in his excellent 2. Slate series on memory. And they had a huge impact. Women were suing their parents for millions of dollars. Hundreds of accused families sought help. As these accusations mounted, several high profile psychology researchers began speaking out against the idea of repressed memories. In a 1. 99. 3 article in American Psychologist, memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus pointed out that little if any scientific evidence supported the idea of repressed memories Nobody knew how commonly traumatized people repress memories, or how accurate the memories are, or how juries are likely to react to them. And considering the lawsuits waged against alleged abusers, Loftus found this lack of evidence disturbing. When we move from the privacy of the therapy session, in which the clients reality may be the only reality that is important, into the courtroom, in which there can be but a single reality, then we as citizens in a democratic society are entitled to more solid evidence, she wrote. This debate between practicing therapists and research psychologists became known as the memory wars. Over time, scientific criticisms by Loftus and others got more attention in the press, and some accusers recanted their stories. Loftuss own research helped drive the increased skepticism. As Saletans article describes in depth, Loftuss studies showed just how easily false memories can be implanted by a trusted source. Whatever happened to the memory wars Do people still believe in the power of repressed memories Loftus and her colleagues addressed these questions in last months issue of Psychological Science. Their study includes two experiments. In the first, the researchers gave 3. The surveys asked participants whether they agreed or disagreed with various statements. Some of the statements such as Memory is constantly being reconstructed and changed every time we remember something and Memory can be unreliable are supported by lots of evidence. The respondents seem to have known that, for 9. Other statements focused on repressed memories, which as I mentioned are not rooted in a whole lot of evidence. But the students felt otherwise 8. And 8. 6 percent agreed that if a person has emotional problems and needs therapy, childhood sexual assault is a plausible explanation even if the person has no memory of any kind of abuse. But who cares about college kids. What about the opinions of mental health professionalsTurns out that many of them also believe in repressed memories, though in somewhat lower numbers than they did in the 9. The researchers surveyed hundreds of clinical psychologists, experimental psychologists, psychoanalysts, hypnotherapists, primal therapists, neuro linguistic programming therapists, life coaches, scientologists, and family therapists, as well as via Mechanical Turk members of the public in the U. S., U. K., and India. Watch Farewell Streaming on this page. Heres a comparison of how the beliefs of mainstream Ph. D psychotherapists have changed over the past decade Patihis et al, 2. They have evidently lost some faith in hypnosis, and have gained respect for the idea of implanting false memories. On the question of the objectivity of repressed memories, though, the responses havent changed much, with agreements hovering between 1. Perhaps unsurprisingly, experimental psychologists are more skeptical of repressed memories than are psychoanalysts, and psychoanalysts are more skeptical than alternative therapists. Concerning the statement, Traumatic memories are often repressed, 2. Loftus and her team take these data to mean that theres still lots to be done in the way of disseminating findings about memory research to mainstream practitioners and the public at large. These findings suggest that the memory wars are not over, they write. Nevertheless, these battles may now be limited largely to discrete pockets of practicing clinicians, especially those with specific theoretical views regarding the nature of memory. This may be true, but also glazes over a few academics who are more sympathetic to the idea of repressed memories. Take Ross Cheit, a professor of public policy and political science at Brown University. Cheit directs the Recovered Memory Project, an online archive of cases of repressed memories that have been independently corroborated. Cheit wasnt happy with this recent Loftus paper, to say the least. The article is so flawed that one scarcely knows where to begin, he wrote on the Projects website. He points to several studies showing that trauma can, rarely, be repressed. Loftus and her colleagues, he adds, offer a false dichotomy between scientists and practitioners, ignoring the substantial number of research scientists, like Jennifer Freyd, whose work challenges their beliefs. To recap In the 1. Many of these were probably cases in which the abuse was suggested in therapy, but didnt actually happen in real life. And some of these, some unknown but small number, were probably real cases of abuse. Clearly Tom Arnold believes his case was real, and now many of Marc Marons millions of podcast listeners may also believe in the power of repressed memories. For what its worth, Arnolds now ex wife, Roseanne, has revised her story of abuse. In early 2. 01. 1, Roseanne appeared on the Oprah show and said that she regretted her 1. I think its the worst thing Ive ever done, Roseanne told Oprah. The moral argument for the existence of God refers to the claim that God is needed to provide a coherent ontological foundation for the existence of objective moral values and duties. The argument can be summarised in the following syllogism Premise 1 If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist. Premise 2 Objective moral values and duties do exist. Conclusion Therefore, God exists. Since this is a logically valid syllogism, the atheist, in order to maintain his non belief in God, must reject at least one of the two Premises. By objective morality we mean a system of ethics which universally pertains irrespective of the opinions or tastes of human persons for example, the holocaust was morally wrong irrespective of what Hitler and the Nazis believed about it, and it would have remained morally wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and compelled everyone into compliance with their values. This view, known in philosophy as moral realism, contrasts with moral relativism which maintains that no one is objectively correct or incorrect with respect to their moral values and judgements. Most people want to uphold premise 2 of the moral argument. After all, if there are no objective ethics, then who is to say that Hitler was objectively morally wrong Humans have an intuitive sense of right and wrong. The moral argument requires only that at least some actions are objectively right or wrong e. Premise 1 relates to the perfect standard against which everything else is measured. God, being the only morally perfect being, is the standard against which all other things are judged. Moreover, in the absence of theism, nobody has been able to conceive of a defensible grounding for moral values. Moral Argument An Important Distinction. It is important to bear in mind that the moral argument pertains to the ultimate source of objective moral values and duties moral ontology and not how we know what is moral or immoral moral epistemology and not what we mean by goodbad or rightwrong moral semantics. The theistic ethicist maintains that moral values are grounded in the character and nature of God. Those who are divine command theorists maintain that moral duties are based on what God commands. Philosopher William Lane Craig puts it this way Duty arises in response to an imperative from a competent authority. For example, if some random person were to tell me to pull my car over, I would have absolutely no legal obligation to do so. But if a policeman were to issue such a command, Id have a legal obligation to obey. The difference in the two cases lies in the persons who issued the commands one is qualified to do so, while the other is not. Moral Argument Euthyphros Dilemma. Plato, in his dialogue Euthyphro, presents a fictional dialogue between his philosophical mentor, Socrates, and a character by the name of Euthyphro. Euthyphro explains to Socrates that he has come to lay manslaughter charges against his father, because of his involvement in the death of a worker. This worker himself had killed a slave who had belonged to the family estate. This worker was found dead, gagged, and bound in a ditch. This gives rise to a lengthy dialogue between Euthyphro and Socrates, which eventually leads to the famous Euthyphros Dilemma. Socrates says, But I will amend the definition so far as to say that what all the gods hate is impious, and what they love pious or holy and what some of them love and others hate is both or neither. Shall this be our definition of piety and impiety Euthyphro goes on to say Yes, I should say that what all the gods love is pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious. Socrates subsequently inquires of him, The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods. The question is posed this way Is x the right thing to do because God commands it, or does God command it because it is already the right thing to do I take the former option. Normally, the problem with accepting the horn is that there is a presumption that the commands in question from God are arbitrary i. God could have commanded that we ought to lie. But thats just false. The theist wants to say that God is essentially loving, honest etc., and therefore, in all worlds at which God exists, his commands are going to be consistent with his nature. And therefore, in all worlds, he will disapprove of lying. Moral Argument The Shortcomings of Utilitarianism. There are various nontheistic systems of ethics, none of which succeed in providing a robust ontological foundation or objective moral values and duties. One of these systems, popularised recently by Sam Harris in his book The Moral Landscape, is called utilitarianism, and in its most common formulation refers to the view that ethics are determined by what constitutes the greatest happiness for the greatest number. One difficulty lies in the fact that it attempts to balance two different scales employed to assess the moral virtue of an action i. This can often lead to conflicting answersin some cases an activity might be considered better for a greater number of individuals whereas a different activity might create a greater overall utility. Utilitarians try to maximize with their actions the utility of the long term consequences of those actions. However, short of possession of omniscience, it is impossible to evaluate the respective long term results of different activities. Utilitarianism also does not take into account the individuals intentActivity X could be done sincerely by an individual who believes that what he is doing will create the maximum utility. But if activity X turns out in the long term not to produce the desired utility, then his action, under the philosophy of utilitarianism, would be considered less moral than an activity that created more utility. Conclusion. In conclusion, the moral argument is a robust argument for the existence of God. It is important to distinguish between moral ontology and epistemology when engaging in this debate since these categories are frequently conflated by atheist critics. Humans, being shaped in the image of God, have an intuitive sense of right and wrong. It is not at all clear how the atheist, except at the expense of moral realism, can maintain an objective standard of ethics without such a being as God as his ontological foundation. This article was originally published on All. About. Philosophy. Free Cross. Examined. Resource. Get the first chapter of Stealing From God Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case in PDF. Success Your free resource is on the way Check your email.