A Brief Defense of the Moral Argument

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:

1. If objective moral values exist, then God exists.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. 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.^{1 2}

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.”
³ 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?”⁴

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.”⁵

      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.”⁶

 

 

1Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., Canto 56,

“Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law

Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed.”

2Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 380-1.

3Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values, (Simon & Schuster, 2011), 215.

4Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Parable of the Madman”

5Jean Paul-Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism,” trans. Bernard Frechtman, (Carol Publishing Group, 1945).

6C.S> Lewis, Mere Christianity, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 31.