The Moral Argument

Contends that God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties in the world.

It's notasking if belief in God is necessary to live a moral life, but if God isnecessary to live a(n objectively) moral life.

P1: If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

P2: Objective moral values and duties do exist.

C: Therefore, God exists.

If both premises are true, the conclusion follows by logical necessity, whether you like it or not.

Can only deny the conclusion by denying the premises, but you shouldn't deny the premises merely to avoid the conclusion God exists (dishonest).

The argument is inescapable - every day by the way you behave and interact with others, you answer the question: do I believe that objective moral v/d exist?

Values refer to whether an act is 'good' or 'bad' (moral worth); duties refer to whether an act is 'right' or 'wrong' (obligations - oughts).

But just because an act is good, it doesn't mean I'm morally obligated to do it.

There are lots of good things I can do (become a doctor, farmer), but if they were obligatory, I'd have to do all of them (which I can't).

Objective: independent of people's opinions (certain acts are good/bad or right/wrong regardless of what people think).

Subjective: dependent on people's opinions.

To say the Holocaust was objectively wrong is to say it was morally wrong even though the Nazis thought it was right.

The most plausible form of atheism:

N: The view that everything arises from natural causes (spiritual explanations are discounted).

EN: The combination of naturalism and the Darwinian account of the origin of species.

Alex Rosenberg (naturalistic philosopher): Darwinism is the only game in town for the naturalist (without it, naturalism is at loss for an explanation).

Otherwise, it seems natural to accept God for the reason the world is filled with things that appear to have been designed for a purpose.

Michael Ruse: morals are an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate - any deeper meaning is illusory (we have the beliefs we do because of their reproductive advantage, not their truth).

David Hume: morals are based on feelings (not reason), mistaken for perceptions of objectivity. Without a mind, on N, everything we think is determined by inputs from our senses and genes – there’s no personal agent who has free will.

C. S. Lewis observed those who admit morals are illusory are those promoting moral causes - urging us to work for the good of the human race.

They live as though objective moral v/d do exist, rendering moral scepticism impossible in practice (so, all things being equal, we have reason to reject naturalism).

Without God, what is the basis/standard for objective moral v/d and human worth (who/what lays these upon us)?

Moral values are intrinsic only to persons, not things; so, what Plato called "the good" must be a personally embodied good - we call God (His essentially good nature is the standard).

Notion of moral duty arises from the notion of a command from a personal being - like a moral lawgiver, so the ground of morality must be in a personally embodied good.

Morals are properties of persons - a rock doesn’t contain moral properties. Things have extrinsic value in that they can serve the purposes of persons - money can help buy food.

Things are extrinsically valuable in that they serve as means to ends, but persons are ends in themselves (intrinsically valuable, not just extrinsically valuable as means to be used for some end).

As Augustine said, we should love people and use things (duty).

Why think humans have moral worth on N?

No scientific theory postulates the existence of moral values, so if N istrue, it follows they don't exist.

To prioritise human values is to commitspeciesism (without God there's no reason to regard humans as special).

When confronted with acts like murder and torture, it’s evident they’re truly evil.

No more reason to deny our moral experience of objective moral v/d than our sensory experience of the physical world.

In the absence of some overriding reason to defeatmy experiences, I am justified in trusting the deliverances of thoseexperiences (that objective morals/world exist).

For any argument for moral scepticism, I can run aparallel argument of why we should be sceptical of our sensory experience anddoubt the physical world.

Louise Antony (atheist philosopher), ‘any argument for moral scepticism will be based upon premises which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values themselves.’

The sceptic has a burden of proof (obligation to provide sufficient reason for a position) to come up with a serious defeater to convince us to reject the strong deliverances of our moral intuitions/experiences.

'[1] Is something good because God wills it, or [2] does God will it because it's good?'

If 1, moral v/d become arbitrary (He could have willed that cruelty is good, and that would be our duty).

If 2, what is good is independent of God, which undercuts P1.

False dilemma - there's a third option: God wills something because He, by nature, is good (His nature determines what is good).

His moral nature is the standard of values (not independent).

His commands are necessary reflections of His nature (not arbitrary), and these determine our duties.

Plato: there's a realm of abstract objects (including moral values) that objectively exist independent of the concrete world - don't need God to ground them.

1) Moral vices (greed, cruelty) would also exist as abstract objects, so why should I be obligated to live according to one rather than another?

2) Gives an account of moral value, but not of moral duty - where does the duty arise to be kind rather than cruel? Rather, duties seem to arise by command - in this way God makes sense of our moral duties.

Why is contributing to thegreatest flourishing of humans objectively good?

Why would anyone have a dutyto become a virtuous person?

Seems arbitrary - still haveno foundation/basis for affirming the objectivity of your moral v/d.

Moral agents have direct duties only to themselves and indirect duties, if there are any duties at all, to anyone else.

If they conclude rape is wrong, it's because they have determined it wrongs the rapist (does damage to themself in the process, but the concern ought to be for the victim).

Ethical system based on preference.

But your preference (like for food) has no power and authority over the guy who does like to murder people.

So, you can't create an ethical system off of preferences as people have different preferences (that's why we have jails - some people prefer certain behaviours over others).

If we grant this presupposition, Hitler wasn't wrong - Germany wasn't wrong - as their society determined by democratic vote Hitler was in power and that "that's not a person it's a Jew."

If society is the basis for ethics, anyone fighting against society is thus immoral = no social transformation. Sociological standards change, not moral standards.

Assumption of human value and that it's good forsociety to flourish (Christian values).

Neil deGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist) — 'We arestardust brought to life.'

What makes you think stardust must flourish?

Arbitrary - why think, given atheism, humanflourishing is good, or inflicting harm on others is wrong?

Genetic fallacy: invalidating a belief by showing how a person came to believe it.

The truth of a belief is independent of how you came to hold it. Even if it were true my moral beliefs are the result of conditioning and evolution, that wouldn't show these beliefs aren't objective.

It shows our perceptions of moral v/d have evolved, but not that they don't exist .

Irrelevant – this argument is about moral ontology(the reality of moral v/d), not moral epistemology (how we come to a knowledgeof moral v/d).

It’s not always clear what's right and wrong (e.g.smoking in moderation), but there are lots of cases it's clear acts areobjectively evil (e.g. child abuse and rape).

Pseudo question because thecondition is logically impossible: God cannot command something contrary to Hisnature.

It’s as absurd as saying,'what if He created a square circle?’ No meaningful answer as it’s logicallyincoherent.

Implausible on atheism or N that non-natural properties like goodness exist, much less somehow attach to natural states of affairs.

You'd need an explanation.

They are morally handicapped - like a person may bevisually handicapped (blind).

No reason to let their impairment - physical ormoral - undermine or cause us to doubt what we clearly perceive.

Not to tell me why - I don't need God to know right and wrong or be good - I just need God to justify what good is.

It's not an epistemological question.

If you believe it's wrong, why is it wrong independent of you believing it's wrong?

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