Fundamental Atheistic Beliefs: Atheists deny that we need God (1) to be good, (2) to know what’s good, and (3) to ground morality.
Fundamental Christian Beliefs: (1) God’s existence is known through creation and conscience [Rom. 1:18-21; 2:14-15]. (2) It is impossible to ground objective morality in anything other than God [Pro. 1:7; Col. 2:3].
Two Versions of the Moral Argument for God (MAG):
- If objective moral values and duties exist, then God exists.
- Objective moral values exist.
- Therefore, God exists.
- If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
- Objective moral values exist.
- Therefore, God exists.
Three questions that must be answered:
- Reality - What must exist in order to ground objective moral obligations?
- Knowledge - How do we know objective moral obligations exist?
- Ethics - Why ought I follow objective moral norms?
Atheists usually fall within three camps when attacking the MAG:
- Empiricists will disagree with premise 2 and argue that moral realism doesn’t exist because only material entities exist and moral behavior is merely a social convention.
- Some atheists believe in moral realism and so agree with premise 2. They attack premise 1 to refute the MAG.
- Some atheists attack premise 1 and are moral relativists.
To quickly determine whether or not someone believes in moral realism, I ask them (1) whether or not they think atrocities like child molestation and rape could ever be right, and (2) if so, whether those actions could be right if perpetrated against them or someone they love.
Two answers:
“Absolute moral laws don’t exist.”
Response: “If you don’t believe that some actions are inherently immoral, then let’s start with having your little girl raped and tortured for fun!”
- Morality isn’t like Ice Cream, it’s like Insulin: A denial of objective morality reduces moral norms to mere preference, like ice cream flavors.
- "Is/Ought" Fallacy: If people determine morality, then moral norms reduce to statistics. But what is the case doesn’t necessarily tell us what ought be the case.
- Argument from Power/Majority Rule/Reduction to Absurdity: Given social contract theory, rape and child molestation aren’t inherently wrong, they’re just socially unacceptable. But if man is the measure of all things, which man and which society? If someone with enough power happened to like rape and molestation, what would be wrong with the person or society that has enough power to impose their morality on you if might determines right? If the majority of people in a society determines what’s right and wrong, upon what basis do you condemn Nazi society for following their self-imposed morals? Why did the Nazi society not have the right to break from the tradition of morality in western civilization if society determines what’s moral? There is no question that societies have different interpretations of morality but if you examine the following sentence you will see the illogic of thinking that societies determine morality: “The majority of the people in our society participated in that evil deed.” If morality was up to society, that sentence would never make sense, but we know that morality is beyond societies and thus, such a proposition is possible.
- A Self-Defeating Position: The moral relativist denies that absolute moral laws exist but they appeal to them all the time when they argue for just laws and better societies. They say that rape is wrong because they intuitively know that it is not just against their personal preference, it is an inherently evil action (Rom. 2:14-15). Many moral relativists deny with their lips they know in their hearts to be true (Rom. 1:32). It is obvious that some actions are evil. The existence of morality is most obvious when we suffer by being personally offended or violated. When we are wronged, we quickly feel the moral imbalance.
Response: “If so, then given naturalism, (1) how do you ground them, (2) how do you know that they are objective, and (3) why am I obligated to follow them?”
- Re: (1), how do you ground immaterial, universal moral laws in a materialistic universe that is inherently impersonal and amoral?
- Re: (2), how do you know that they are universally binding?
- Re: (3), why ought I be moral?
- Re: (3), why ought I be rational? Since logic has a normative component (i.e., you ought to be rational), what obligates me to be rational since according to the atheist there is no objective, transcendent, personal, theistic moral lawgiver to ground moral obligations?
Response: Yes you do. There are no good people (Rom. 3:10-11). You need to be counted good by God even though you’re not and the only way that happens is if you are forgiven of your sins through faith in Christ (Romans 4:4-5; Phil. 3:9). When you repent and believe in Him, you are credited as perfect even though practically you still sin (Heb. 10:14).
“I don’t need God to know what’s good.”
Response: Yes you do. Regardless of what you believe, if you didn’t have a God-given sense of right and wrong, you wouldn’t know the difference between the two (Rom. 2:14-15).
Other atheistic objections:
Evolutionary Ethics: A more comprehensible attempt to refute the moral argument suggests that a naturalistic explanation of morality can be given by the theory of evolution. Given a world in which the resources necessary to support life are scarce and danger is all around us, people will have to compete to survive. Those that compete well will survive and reproduce more people like them; those that compete poorly will disappear via natural selection. Groups of people that cooperate are more likely to survive and reproduce than are groups of people that do not. Natural selection, then, will favor those forms of behavior that we call moral, because they have survival value. Over time, this process will lead to a moral instinct in human beings, a natural propensity to act well. Atheists will sometimes appeal to various forms of the Golden Rule[1] as an example of a universally accepted rule that has come about through human evolutionary development.
Response: However plausible this explanation may be for some elements of morality, there are other elements of morality that cannot be explained in this way,
- Altruistic behavior is not in one’s own interests. The extreme of altruism—giving up one’s life in order that others might live—cannot be the result of conditioning through natural selection. Those who give up their lives for others are eliminated from the gene pool. Extreme self-sacrifice is a trait that natural selection not only does not encourage, but should even eliminate from society. The selfish are more likely to survive and reproduce than are the selfless.
“My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene’s law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live. But unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop it being true... Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.” [Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press (1989), 3]
- Even if it were possible to explain our moral instincts using evolution, this would not explain morality so much as it would explain those instincts away. We would then be in an epistemological quagmire, wondering which moral intuitions we should reject as evolutionary leftovers versus those that we should protect in order to perpetuate the species.
- We believe we are subject to moral obligations; i.e., that we ought to act in certain ways. An evolutionary explanation of those beliefs would completely undermine them because it would tell us why we have those beliefs but it would give us no reason to think that they are true nor would it obligate us to follow them now3. Thus, it would explain why we have those beliefs even though there really is no such thing as objective morality. Consider the following quotes from Charles Darwin and physicalist philosopher Patricia Churchland:
“With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind if there are any convictions in such a mind?” [Charles Darwin, Letter to William Graham, Down, July 3rd, 1881. In The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Including an Autobiographical Chapter, ed. Francis Darwin (London: John Murray, Albermarle Street, 1887), Volume 1, pp. 315-316.]Plantinga's argument contends that natural selection, as it is currently understood, is not thought to produce in organisms the ability to reliably perceive the external world — let alone construct accurate cosmologies. He quotes contemporary philosopher of mind and philosophical naturalist Patricia Churchland to buttress this claim.
“Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principal chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.” ["Epistemology in the Age of Neuroscience," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 84 (October 1987), pp. 548-49. Quoted in Alvin Plantinga, Evolution vs. Naturalism, http://www.uw.ruf.org/evolution-vs-naturalism]Thus, if we believe that there really are moral principles that bind us and other people, then this appeal to evolution does not satisfy because (1) it tells us why we believe, not whether those beliefs are true, (2) it tells us what we believe, not what we should believe, and (3) it doesn’t show us that these morals norms are objective and universally binding.
“Why does it have to be the Judeo-Christian God?”
Response: Because the Bible tells you so. More specifically:
- Metaphysical: The immaterial, universal Personality of the Triune God grounds personal, immaterial, universal moral obligations. Transcendent personal moral obligations only come from a transcendent, personal moral Lawgiver; i.e., God. The God of the Bible, contra Islam, has eternally enjoyed the intertrinitarian relationships found in His very being (I-thou distinctions in the Trinity allow for eternal personality), and hence can ground personal moral obligation since personality is necessarily part of His nature as the uniplural, multipersonal Creator God.
- Epistemological: You know objective moral obligations exist by the light of conscience, Scripture, and given the conjunction of those two, by the impossibility of the contrary.
- Ethical: You ought follow God’s objective moral norms as revealed in Christ’s law because the Creator who owns you has the sovereign right to tell you how to live.
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1. Moral realism is objective morality. “Objective” moral values aren’t person dependent.
2. “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you.” (Matt. 7:12). The Golden Rule is found in negative form in rabbinic Judaism and also in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. It occurred in various forms in Greek and Roman ethical teaching. Jesus stated it in positive form. It is a widespread teaching because God has put this on every human heart (Rom. 2:14-15).
