The Moral Argument for God

Introduction

What is morality? Where does it come from? Why do we universally understand that some things are objectively wrong? This is something that we rarely, if ever, put much thought into. We often follow the convention, “you know when you see it.” There is truth in this. Our knowledge of what is moral and what is not seems to come naturally to us as if it were innate to our being. Even criminals, the worst elements among us, have an understanding of what is right and wrong.

For example, it is said that child molesters often have to be separated from the general prison population because they are not safe as that is a crime that is even unacceptable in the criminal population. Criminals also understand that loyalty is better than betrayal or “snitching”. Our basis for incarcerating people who commit crimes hinges on the fact that 1) some things are objectively wrong and 2) they inherently understand right from wrong. 

Relativism

Relativism is not new; however, it has hit a fever pitch in our society today. It is the idea that truth, culture, and morality are relative (i.e. not absolute). You know you are dealing with someone who claims to believe in relativism when you hear someone say “that’s my truth” or “I would never do that because I think it’s wrong, but I would never stop anyone else from doing it.” 

When you take the relativist’s stance to its logical conclusion, you arrive at the underlying assumption that morality is subjective. This means that there is no ultimate right and wrong. There is only what is preferred by the person and/or culture. However, we intuitively know this to be incorrect. Some things really are wrong in an objective, universal sense.

We Can’t Live Relativism

For example, if someone claims morality is relative, just steal their phone and then claim “it’s not wrong to me.” We all know that the relativist person will not accept that. Their response will betray their beliefs because they will react as if you have done something objectively wrong to them. In other words, they can say morality is relative but they can’t live that way. They live like morality is objective, especially when a wrong is done to them. 

They, like all of us, know that some behaviors are objectively better than others and some things are truly evil no matter what culture you are in. Relativism or subjective morality reduces right and wrong to mere human preference. A relativist couldn’t really say Mother Theresa was better than Adolf Hitler. They could only say that they prefer one over the other. This is where the atheist runs headlong into reality with respect to right and wrong (good and evil) and God. Dr. Frank Turek expands this nicely in his book “Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case.”

The Moral Argument

In the debate between theists and atheists regarding the existence of God, the Moral Argument is one of the most powerful arguments on the theist’s side. It explains that God is necessary for objective morality to exist and that atheism/naturalism has no way to explain the existence of objective morality based on their worldview. I have heard many intellectual and academic atheists, when pressed, concede that there is objective morality. In other words, they believe that some things, like torturing people for fun, are universally evil. Yet their worldview can’t explain WHY something is evil. 

I have to pause here because this is where the misunderstanding typically occurs. I’m not saying that an atheist can’t know what morality is or that they can’t be moral. In fact, they instinctively know morality the same way theists do. I’m saying that the atheist can’t justify WHY something is good or bad based on the principles of their atheistic worldview. I will explain using two different lines of thinking, “Meaning” and “Standard”.

Meaning

Any intellectually honest atheist will also admit to being a naturalist/materialist. This means that they believe that there is no spiritual realm. Only the physical exists. Therefore, the earth exists because of lots of time and natural processes. Humanity exists because of lots of time and evolution. If this is true, then where does objective morality come from?

Many will say that it is a product of evolution because cooperation through a moral code allows the species to survive. This sounds good on its face. However, a few well placed questions causes this assertion to come crumbling down like a house of cards. For example, why is cooperation good? Why is the survival of humans good? Was the extinction of the dinosaurs immoral? Why then is the extinction of humans immoral? This can go on and on.

Atheist’s Are Betrayed by Their Own Beliefs

The purpose is to drive it back to the core beliefs of the atheist. Their core beliefs betray them. 1) The atheist believes that we are just like the other animals but with larger brains. 2) There is no meaning to life. There is no spiritual world and no afterlife. Life is just a product of random chance. We are meaningless stardust just like the rocks and other animals. If we are just stardust, here today and gone tomorrow, what we do ultimately does not matter. We are without meaning and purpose.

The logical conclusion of this is that we have no more dignity or value than the other animals. So how is human survival any better than the survival of mice or roaches? Why is killing a person any worse than killing a cricket? We are both just stardust bumping into stardust, molecules in motion. If life is meaningless, why shouldn’t we steal or kill to get what we want? In a meaningless world, the atheist cannot say that one is better than the other or one is right or wrong, they can only say that they prefer one over the other. 

Atheist Principles

Truly living according to the atheist’s principles would make one more like a sociopath. Like the relativist, most atheists can’t live this way. Their life and speech is thick with morality as if there is meaning to life and a God to be accountable to. In a way, they can’t help it because, though they deny God, they still have to bear His image in a world that He made. It’s what bumping face-first into reality looks like.

It is God who endows us with dignity and value  because He has made us in His image. When we acknowledge this, we now have a place to ground our morality. We find this in Genesis 9:5-6 when God says to Noah, “whoever sheds human blood, by humans his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.” It is only if God exists, He made us for a purpose, and we are accountable to Him can we consider human life valuable in a moral sense and not just something we as individuals or as a culture prefers. 

Standard

Comparison is another one of those things that comes naturally to us. We constantly compare things and people calling one better than the other. What we don’t realize, however, is when we use terms like “better” to compare, we are implying a standard.  We are saying that one thing comes closer to the ideal standard than the other.

For example, if I say that square A is a better square than square B, what exactly do I mean by “better square”? The only way I can call square A better than square B is if I have some idea of what a perfect square, say square C, looks like. In this case, when I say A is better than B I mean that A conforms more closely to C than B does. Whether I realize it or not, this is what I am doing when I make any comparisons. 

So what about moral comparisons? When I say that Mother Teresa is better than Adolf Hitler what do I mean? I use these two as an example because all of us would agree that, objectively, the love and service of Mother Teresa was indeed better than the murderous dictatorship of  Adolf Hitler. But what, or who, am I comparing them to? What standard did Mother Teresa come closer to than Adolf Hitler?

Origin of the Standard

Does this standard come from the culture? Does it come from the individual? Many argue this. Morality comes from man and is a social or cultural construct. If that were true, however, morality would be reduced to human preference. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mother Teresa all had their own moral compasses. Who’s morality is correct? What happens when two peoples’ or cultures’ morality collides? Does might make right?

If the Nazis had won World War II and spread their ideology all over the world, would that have made them right? The answer is no. We all know that what the Nazis did was objectively wrong. In fact, when the Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg after the war, they tried to use this argument. They claimed that they were just following orders given by the leaders of their culture. In other words, they were following the morality setup by their culture. We rightfully rejected that as we claimed that the atrocities they committed were objectively wrong and that they were responsible to a higher morality. 

God as the Standard

So if the moral standard originates outside of people and cultures, yet all people are accountable to it, then it must originate above mankind. This is the primary problem for the atheist. Naturalism and evolution are unguided processes. They might be able to tell you what is, but they cannot tell you what ought to be. These processes are cold and uncaring. They can’t make moral choices. C.S. Lewis explains it well in his book “Mere Christianity.”

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?

A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too — for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.”

C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity

The Law Giver

Laws only come from a law giver. The moral law is the same. The moral standard that we align our moral laws to is the character of God. He is the one, the moral law giver, who is above mankind and can hold mankind accountable to a moral ought. It is God to whom all cultures are accountable to. There would be no objective right and wrong without God, only human preference.

Evil

The core problem the atheist has with the moral argument is that we all, including atheists, know that there is real evil in the world. When asked, “What do you mean by evil?”, the intellectually honest atheist is stuck. Real evil is objective, not subjective. Objective evil doesn’t come from unguided, amoral processes. If we are just moist robots made of meaningless stardust with no ultimate purpose, then there is no such thing as true, objective evil. There is only preference. The actions of meaningless beings are meaningless.

We can only call something evil in an objective sense if God exists and we are accountable to Him. By utilizing God’s character as the standard, we now have a logically consistent place to ground objective morality in a way that transcends human preference. At the same time the atheist is denying the existence of God, he is importing moral language from God’s world to make sense of the objective evil that he sees because his worldview can’t explain it. 

The Moral Argument for God shows the logical inadequacy of atheism while at the same time demonstrating that God’s moral character presses down on us all even though we are fallen and sinful. Our sinful nature has not completely wiped out the image of God that is in us. Even those of us who deny Him still bear His image and are loved by Him. His rain falls on both the just and unjust, even if we suppress the truth about Him. (Matt. 5:45b, Rom. 1:18-22)

Blessings