A Brief Defense of the
Moral Argument
Posted by Clark Bates
August, 23, 2016
What moral difference would it make if God did not exist? A large
portion of society today would probably say, “None.” An
excellent example of this is found in the U.N. Declaration of Human
Rights. It says:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards
one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Now compare this with the U.S. Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.”
The point of agreement within these two worldviews is the objective
value of humanity, but the area of discord is the source of this
value. According to the U.N., objective moral value presumably comes
by naturalistic processes. Humans are simply “born with it.”
Whereas the Declaration of Independence asserts that this objective
moral value comes from something greater, namely God.
This is the heart of the Moral Argument for God. Formally stated it
would sound like this:
If objective moral values exist, then God exists.
Objective moral values do exist.
Therefore, God exists.
On the basis of this argument naturalism cannot account for objective
moral values, such as those stated in the U.N. Declaration of Human
Rights, because naturalism functions as a valueless process. The
same naturalism that Tennyson called “Red in tooth and claw,” and
that Richard Dawkins said in , “should not be used as a guide for
society”, is a valueless process that cannot conceivably produce
valuable personal beings.
Let's examine each premise to see if the conclusion follows:
Premise
1: If Objective Moral Values Exist, God Exists.
Now
the only way to determine if this premise is true is if it can be
demonstrated that naturalism cannot produce moral values and duties.
Let's begin by defining what I mean by an objective moral value or
duty. An objective moral value or duty is a an obligation to do what
is right in a given circumstance regardless of one's personal
opinion. It's often asserted that many atheists or non-theists are
just as, if not more than, moral as Christians. This is used as
evidence that belief in God is not necessary for morality to exist.
This is absolutely true. You don't have to believe that God exists
in order to be moral. But the argument before us is not that it is
necessary to believe
in God for objective moral values and duties to exist, but that for
objective moral values and duties to exist God must exist. It has
nothing to do with whether or not one believes in God, for all
mankind is created with the same image of God regardless of their
belief system and therefore all mankind is able to recognize the same
objective moral standards.
According to Sam Harris, “If there are psychological laws that
govern human well-being, knowledge of these laws would provide an
enduring basis of objective morality.”
What Harris is proposing is a form of “atheistic realism” which
asserts both that the physical universe is all that is and yet
objective moral values are brute facts that exist within it. The
issue here is that what he's asserting is that metaphysical realities
somehow exist within a strictly physical world and we should just not
question that. To take it a step further, a moral obligation is a
type of proposition, i.e. “Rape is bad.” We make propositions
all the time, but they arise from our mind; Harris is insisting that
these objective propositions somehow arise from mindlessness. This is
a kind of expansion on the work of another atheist named Michael
Martin who wrote that “One could affirm the objective immorality of
rape and deny the existence of God with perfect consistency.” In
both instances these men are making the claim that moral values and
duties are just the result of human evolutionary development, however
they are guilty of equivocating what “is” with what “ought”
to be. It “is” true that mankind psychologically acknowledges
laws (that exist apart from themselves mind you) that provide an
enduring basis of reality. It “is” true that one can affirm that
rape is wrong and deny God, but neither of these factors can answer
“why” those things are true. They tell us that rape “is”
wrong, but not why rape “ought” to be wrong. They confuse an is
with an ought.
To put it another way, the evolutionary process is primarily
interested in survival, not in true belief. It can, and has been,
argued that moral values help us survive, but this says nothing about
whether those moral values are true, and for morality to be objective
it must necessarily be true. We may believe, with the UN, that human
beings have intrinsic value and that this has helped us survive, but
this may still be false. We may believe in moral obligations as a
means of preservation of the species, but this belief may be wrong.
And if an appeal to objective moral values is going to be made, such
an appeal requires that these values not only be real, but that they
be true. For if they are not true, there is no longer an objective
reason to abide by them. If naturalism fails to account for the
“Why” of objective moral values and duties it cannot serve as
adequate explanation for them.
Premise 2: Objective Moral Values do Exist
The nihilist Friedrich Nietzsche famously, and rather dramatically,
stated that “God is dead” in his “Parable of the Madman”, but
even he recognized that with the destruction of God came the
destruction of objective value. He wrote in that same parable,
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?
What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned
has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?
What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of
atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the
greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become
gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
The existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre saw this too when he wrote,
“It is very distressing that God does not exist, because all
possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along
with Him.”
Now it's often claimed that objective morality cannot exist given
the wide diversity of moral values throughout the world. However,
C.S. Lewis, in his work The Abolition of Man, surveyed the
basic moral precepts of various cultures and found at least 8 points
of commonality with all. There were agreed upon moral laws regarding
general and special benevolence, or kindness, an expected moral duty
towards parents and the elderly, moral laws regarding justice,
regarding integrity and truth, regarding mercy and generosity. In
short, while differences in particular moral circumstances may exist
in various cultures, there are multiple areas of cross-cultural
common morality. As Frank Turek rather comically reiterates, Hindus
believe that it is immoral to eat cows, whereas Americans do not.
The reason that Hindus find it immoral to eat cattle is their belief
in re-incarnation and the potential for that cow to be inhabited by
an ancestor. Americans eat cows because we don't believe that
Grandma is in the cow. However, while the practice is different the
moral value remains the same, both Americans and Hindus agree, it's
wrong to eat Grandma!
While it might be en vogue to deny the existence of an objective
moral law, it is impossible to live consistently with that belief.
Our daily lives belie the reality of objective moral values. Our
reactions to perceived violations reveal a sense of moral justice.
You might say that you don't believe in an objective moral standard
but if you've ever been the victim of theft or been in a hit and run
accident you've filed a police report! You did this because you
intrinsically acknowledge that it is morally objectionable for
someone else to take your belongings or for someone to damage your
car without retribution.
Without an objective moral law there would be no standard for human
rights. Just as we've seen in the U.S. Declaration of Independence,
human rights are endowed by the Creator, making them unalienable,
that is to say, inherent. When Nazi war criminals were brought
before the Nuremburg trials they were convicted of violating human
rights inherent to all people. If moral values and duties were
merely subjective, the Nazis did nothing wrong. For them, the
extermination of various races and people was the morally right
action to achieve the Ubermensch (Supermen). The Allied
nations could not accuse them of committing criminal actions unless a
standard of moral values and duties exists beyond personal
preference. What's more, any moment we as individuals or as a
society declare one particular set of moral values deficient to
another, we are claiming to know a standard by which they are
measured.
Let me ask you this, “Why do Black Lives Matter?” I don't ask
that to be inflammatory. I agree that black lives do matter, but
unless you have some objective moral standard by which to determine
that they matter, there's nothing to protest. The sense of social
injustice that we see rising up in various areas of this country
point to the recognition of a universal standard of human value.
Ironically, the political group that most often denies the existence
of objective morality yet vociferously supports social justice
movements are labeled “progressives”. The very name of which
implies that a change in moral values must occur, meaning we are not
living up to an unspecified objective moral standard that is claimed
to not exist.
Truth can be defined in many cases as that which best corresponds to
reality. Objective moral values surface in every facet of our daily
lives, bleeding through the reality of our existence. When someone
consistently maintains a belief despite its being contradicted by
what is generally accepted as reality it's called being delusional.
No matter how loudly one might shout down the existence of objective
moral values or duties, the truth of reality will always prove them
wrong.
Which brings us to:
Premise 3: Therefore, God exists
In the absence of a naturalistic
explanation for objective moral values and the verifiable existence
of these same objective moral values, the explanation must exist
beyond the realm of naturalism. The fact that moral values are
equivalent to moral propositions means that they must be made by a
moral mind that transcends our own in such a way that all of humanity
can perceive it. In the same manner that physical laws cannot be
asserted without being applied by a lawgiver, neither can moral law
be acknowledged without a Moral Lawgiver. This Mind or Lawgiver is
best understood as God. The rejection of such a possibility finds
its existential bite in the accountability that necessarily follows.
If there is a moral standard to which we are held, set by a
transcendent Moral Lawgiver, then we are accountable to that
Lawgiver. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere
Christianity,
“It is after you have realized that there is a Moral Law and a
Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put
yourself wrong with that Power – it is after all this, and not a
moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.”
