The other day I was talking to a co-worker about the nature of morality and whether it was objective–true regardless of what someone thinks or feels; or if it was subjective–a belief that is based on feelings and personal preference. Initially, she was sure that morality was subjective and that its truth was dependent upon how we think and feel.
This was a prime opportunity for me to demonstrate the objectivity of morality to her. It also allowed me to show the incoherency of cultural relativism which suggests that moral values are determined by each culture.
She told me that our morality was subjective because we’ve all been raised to hold different moral beliefs in different parts of the world. Ironically, she was complaining about missionaries going into other countries and imposing our Western moral values on others. She claimed that each culture had their own morality that was “true for them.”
I respectfully replied, “If morality is subjective, and its ultimate foundation is the culture or the individuals, then do you have a problem with several different cultures that currently oppress women? Or how about the cultures that mutilate the genitalia of little girls? Many individuals and cultures not only permit those actions–they celebrate them.”
She paused for a moment trying to think of how to respond since it was in direct conflict with her previous statement about the relativistic and subjective nature of different cultural moral beliefs. With some hesitancy, she proceeded to explain that those actions were still morally wrong.
I simply reminded her that they were acting out their own morality based on their individual and cultural preference. Who was she to determine that it was morally wrong? After I asked what objective moral standard she was appealing to in order to make this moral judgement that contradicted her former one, she began to understand that cultural relativism appeared inconsistent and incoherent.
Before long, she understood that some kind of objective foundation that transcends individuals and cultures was needed for appealing to, and that subjective morality (individual/cultural relativism) seemed to be demonstrably false. It was a great conversation, and I was able to explain what, or Who, was the source of these transcendent, universal objective moral truths. This provided another opportunity to share my faith. C. S. Lewis said,
“The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either.”[1]
Let’s take a closer look at this moral standard Lewis references.
Relationship Between God and Morality
Philosophers have debated for centuries about the origin of moral values and normative (prescriptive) ethical principles, and what we ought or ought not do. We all believe we should live or behave in certain ways, and that others worldwide should do likewise. So, where did these principles ultimately come from? Did we get them from God? Our brains? Or some abstract source that’s independent of both? Notable philosopher Michael Peterson et al. explain these principles are “normally thought to be an eternal truth that has always existed in the mind of God.”[2]
That makes sense because moral facts involve propositions, such as “Torturing kittens for fun is wrong” or “Feeding starving people is better than starving them.” Philosopher Douglas Groothuis believes that if humans think these moral statements, then “his or her statement is true if and only if the statement corresponds with some reality outside of the statement itself. A moral statement made by a human (whether right or wrong) constitutes a thought in the human mind. How can a true statement (with normative force) exist apart from some kind of mind?”[3]
It appears that the existence of objective and normative statements about morality is best explained as thoughts within a mind; the mind of God makes this possible.
There is an immense amount of technical literature on this topic. I recognize that your time is valuable, and I appreciate and commend you for taking some time to learn about moral philosophy. This is why I have condensed this article into two-parts. This is the first article containing Part 1, focusing on a simple moral argument for God’s existence. The second article (Part 2) focuses on alternative moral theories that fail to account for objective moral values and duties.
The Argument
If God doesn’t exist, then how could there be any sort of reality for the existence of objective moral values and duties? The moral argument is one of many arguments that can be used cumulatively to demonstrate the existence of God. I have seen it persuade many while talking to them about the existence of God.
Well-known philosopher and theologian, William Lane Craig, says it’s been the most successful for him on college campuses. Additionally, one of the most distinguished Christian philosophers in the world, Alvin Plantinga, believes the reality of moral duties is the best piece of evidence natural theology has to offer. [4] Wow…this deserves some attention!
There are different types of moral arguments out there, but for simplicity’s sake, we will go with an easy deductive model that Craig puts forth in his debates. It goes like this:
If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Objective moral values and duties exist.
Therefore, God exists.
Many theistic and non-theistic philosophers concede the first premise of the argument: If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist. First, let’s briefly review the difference between objective moral values and duties.
To say there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or bad independent of human belief; and to say there are objective moral duties is to say that certain actions are right or wrong independent of human belief. You may be thinking, aren’t “good and bad” and “right and wrong” the same thing? Nope (I’ll explain the difference in detail later).
Several non-theists have argued that if God does not exist, then morality is ultimately subjective. In other words, morality depends on our brains and is nothing more than invented linguistic terms with no reality behind it; they are moral anti-realists. It’s all a matter of preference and opinion. What are the implications here?
Renowned atheistic philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre rightly echoes Dostoyevsky, stating, “Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist.”[5] Atheist biologist Richard Dawkins famously declared,
“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”[6]
Other prominent atheist philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell, Frederick Nietzsche, J. L. Mackie and Michael Ruse, have also thought that objective morality couldn’t exist within a naturalistic framework (naturalism is a worldview that says matter is all that exists).
So, the questions remain: If the universe is entirely composed of physical particles, where would moral values and duties be located? What source are they grounded in? To say something is “grounded” means there is a source that accounts for the existence of something else; i.e., language is grounded in humans.
Now, you may hear someone say (like I have several times) “We don’t need to believe in God to be good.” Or how about the classic internet atheist who shouts, “I know the difference between right and wrong without having to consult some magic sky-fairy!” Well, both of these statements are correct. Of course atheists can lead good lives and be morally upright, even more so than some self-proclaimed Christians.
In fact, atheists can still believe humans possess objective moral value, recognize other objective values, and even formulate a moral framework without believing in God; however, that’s not the argument here. Here is a crucial point to understand:
It’s not that belief in God is needed for objective morality to exist, rather, it’s the existence of God that is needed for the reality of objective morality.
This is where many people confuse epistemology with ontology. Epistemology deals with knowledge of moral truths while ontology deals with the reality of moral values. Ontology serves as the grounding source for moral values and duties. Moral philosopher Mark Murphy explains grounding by noting,
“When we ask what grounds the existence of some thing x, we are asking whether there is some thing y that is more ontologically basic than x and explains x’s existence.”[7]
Just because you know good from bad or right from wrong, doesn’t mean that these things exist objectively within reality. You know details about mythical fables, but that doesn’t make them objectively real. Atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen states,
“Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.”[8]
So, you don’t have to believe in God to live a moral life, however, if God does not exist, then there is no objective morality and hence, a moral life cannot be lived (you would only think it’s moral).
The Bible teaches that we all know about moral truths, for these are written on our hearts (Romans 2:14-15). Secular humanists also rely on this intuition to discern between right and wrong. We are not arguing from moral epistemology (knowledge), but rather demonstrating that an ontological (being) foundation is needed in order to ground these moral truths.
In order for these moral values and duties to be universal and authoritatively binding, they must be anchored in something that transcends all individuals and cultures. Individuals and cultures have different values and continuously change, so, if it is anchored or grounded in them, then they are by definition–subjective and nonbinding.
But we all know there are just some things that are objectively wrong no matter how one tries justifying them, regardless of the circumstance or culture as I pointed out to my co-worker. Even if you hate cats (I don’t know how that’s possible), we know it’s objectively wrong to torture them for fun. How can these universal truths be known to all cultures and individuals? Did our species just evolve to invent these truths, or did we discover them?
Moral Values on Naturalism
As for moral values, if God doesn’t exist, then why should we think human beings have objective moral value and intrinsic worth? On a naturalistic view, we exist in a purposeless universe and have evolved by chance through a mindless, unguided, and accidental process.
Just because we exhibit certain behaviors, such as self-preservation or herd instincts that are similar to other animal species, doesn’t mean we are more valuable than they are. There are social primates that display cooperative behaviors and live in communities, so what makes us more special than them?
We have both evolved to survive and nothing more. We are all animals composed of matter, but human’s cerebral matter just evolved differently that afforded us more intelligence. Our differences may give us a survival advantage, but can we say that is what makes us more special? If other species evolved beyond our cognitive abilities, would they possess greater value than us?
If our intellectual capacity is the only thing making us superior, then we can argue that other Homo sapiens who lack certain cognitive abilities are inferior; thereby making toddlers, mentally challenged, and Alzheimer patients not fully persons. They would seem to be of lesser value. Natural causes through evolutionary mechanisms have simply determined these characteristics about us, but that doesn’t mean we have a higher source of intrinsic worth than other animals.
On atheism, our universe was a cosmic accident; it’s purposeless with no ultimate meaning and we evolved to hold certain moral beliefs. What makes these moral beliefs objective (true independent of our thoughts)? It seems they would be nothing more than an illusion as atheist philosopher Michael Ruse and others have noted. In Craig’s debate with Paul Kurtz, Craig gives a thought experiment similar to Ruse’s to demonstrate that Homo sapiens cannot be special or have objective moral worth in a naturalistic world.
Craig invokes the idea that if extraterrestrials, who were far superior in intellect to us as we are to pigs and cows, came to this earth and began to slaughter us for food and use us for laboring purposes, then atheist humans couldn’t demonstrate to them that we possess intrinsic worth. They might plead with them and say we are special, but the extraterrestrials could retort that our values and principles are merely blind by-products of our evolutionary process.[9] Why should they submit to our customs or respect our invented moral principles?
On naturalism, I guess the atheist could say that humans are valuable because we ascribe value to each other, but if the individuals who assigned value to you suddenly disappeared, then you would no longer be valuable because the extrinsic value they assigned was contingent upon their existence. This means the individual only has instrumental value–not intrinsic value.
So, it seems that if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. There are other ways philosophers have argued to show objective moral values exist without God, however, there seems to be some problems with that idea, and they fail to account for our prescriptively binding moral duties and moral accountability.
Objective Moral Values on Theism
Let’s review the second premise of the argument: Objective moral values and duties exist. On theism, there is explanatory scope and power that accounts for our objective moral value. God has made us to bear his image and created us with value that is an intrinsic feature of humans. We are valuable because we have been made that way by God and were created to represent him on this planet.
It is objectively bad (independent of what we think) that Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals were slaughtered by the Nazis. Or that children are kidnapped and sold as sex slaves. Likewise, regardless of what someone thinks or feels, we have an objective moral duty to rescue a toddler that has just fallen into a bucket of water (without any danger to you).
Respected philosophers David Baggett and Jerry Walls explain:
“Moral value pertains to the worth of a person or action, good or bad, whereas moral duties pertain to matters of rightness and wrongness, usually of actions.”[10]
Moral goodness or value is grounded in the nature of God, and God’s nature is perfectly Good which cannot change (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). He is Perfection!
In classical theism, the “God of the philosophers” or the “Anselmian God,” has been the majority view that theists hold to in understanding the nature of God. Massive volumes of literature have been published on this topic and there is no room to scratch the surface here.
Simply put, in Perfect Being Theology, God possesses all of the omni-qualities–omnipotence, omnibenevolence and omniscience–he is the Maximally Great Being. There is nothing greater that can be conceived, otherwise, that “thing” would be God. You can also check out the Ontological Argument to better understand this concept.
And so, because God possesses these great-making properties and is the supreme being, creator and sustainer of the universe, and the grounding source for all of reality: his nature, by definition, is perfect and is the Good itself. Therefore, when we refer to goodness, we are actually referring to the Ultimate source of all goodness, i.e., God. Craig says,
“God’s own holy and loving nature supplies the absolute standard against which all actions are measured. He is by nature loving, generous, just, faithful, kind, and so forth. Thus if God exists, objective moral values exist.”[11]
And even if moral truths were necessary truths which exist in some abstract way, they would only exist because God exists, and he is explanatorily prior to the necessary moral truths that we would experience. This is because God is the Maximally Great Being that exists necessarily in every possible world,[12] so it follows that moral truths will exist necessarily as well. However, Craig believes that if God doesn’t exist, then objective moral truths would not exist necessarily. They would be illusions at best. I explain more on this in Part 2.
Objective Moral Duties on Theism
What about objective moral duties? Why are there actions that we know we should do no matter what, and if we fail to do them, we are blameworthy or guilty? This actually goes deeper than a mere knowledge of right and wrong. There must be a foundation for right and wrong.
What is the foundation or grounding source for these inescapable and universal duties that every human experiences? Where do they come from and what makes them exist objectively? Why do we always have a duty to pull a helpless baby out of a bucket of water that he/she just fell in? There must be an ontological foundation and grounding source to account for our moral obligations.
Many theistic moral philosophers believe that our moral duties are identical to God’s commands, and so our moral duties are grounded in the commands of God. These commands are general and known universally because they are “written on our hearts” as Paul tells us in Romans 2:15. Some believe there are also specific commands given to individuals, such as vocational callings or burdens for certain ministries.
These inescapable duties are felt worldwide regardless of culture. C. S. Lewis and others have noted that you’ll never find a tribe in the remote parts of the jungle where double-crossing each other is an honorable thing to do.
Some may object and say that if our duties are grounded in God’s commands, then what if he commanded us to do evil? This counterpossible scenario fails because God’s nature is the Ultimate Good; therefore, his divine commands will be reflections of his perfect goodness, despite some commands involving duties that are not “good,” such as having to kill someone in self-defense, just wars, picking the lesser of two evils, and so on.
Likewise, not everything that is morally good is also the morally right thing to do in the obligatory sense. Baggett and Walls explain,
“God’s commands determine what’s morally obligatory, but not what’s morally good.”[13]
For example, we are not morally obligated to do something just because it would be good to do it. It would be good for me to become a veterinarian, but I am not obligated to become one. It would be good if you volunteered 3 days a week at a homeless shelter, but you are not morally obligated to do so, and you shouldn’t be criticized if you don’t.
Moral obligations are universal and binding prescriptions for what someone must do, must not do, and may do. They are duties that if we fail to perform, then we are blameworthy. They are not mere suggestions or prescriptions, rather they are inescapable duties or imperatives. Notable philosopher C. Stephen Evans says,
“To have a moral obligation to perform an action is to have a reason of a special type to perform the act.”[14]
Immanuel Kant spoke of hypothetical and categorical imperatives. Hypothetical imperatives involve conditional guides to action, for example: To become more fit you ought to exercise. This hypothetical prescription is not universally applicable. A categorical imperative, on the other hand, involves a “perfect” duty which is universally applicable, for example: Everyone has a duty to rescue a toddler who has fallen into a bucket of water.[15]
Morality requires an additional and fundamental feature that non-theistic worldviews cannot account for–authority. This helps us better understand why we must do something, and if we don’t, a violation has occurred which we may even experience guilt from.
This guilt is a moral condition and not just a subjective feeling, because actual guilt is not the same as the feeling of guilt (although a feeling can make us aware of the presence of actual guilt); someone can feel guilty when they really aren’t, or not feel morally guilty when they really are, therefore they are distinct from each other.[16]
Moral Duties on Naturalism
If naturalism is true and God doesn’t exist, then there is no ontological foundation or grounding for objective moral duties. On this framework, we are mere animals and animals do not have moral obligations to one another. When a chimpanzee kills or another chimp, he is not murdering that chimp. They are simply exhibiting their animalistic urges that are determined by the neurochemicals in their brain.
Philosopher George Mavrodes thinks it is odd that objective moral duties/obligations exist within a naturalistic (Godless) world. Mavrodes employs atheist Bertrand Russell’s philosophical interpretation of the world, in that human cognitive faculties are nothing more than a collocation of atoms, hence there is no afterlife, but only the future heat death of the universe.[17] Mavrodes refers to this naturalistic interpretation as a “Russellian world” and that it fails to provide objective moral obligations.
For instance, some people will end up having to sacrifice their lives or material possessions that bring them comfort in order to make someone else’s circumstance better; so, Mavrodes says it is queer to impose moral obligations upon others. These moral obligations do not provide Russellian benefits (desired states of self-interest), rather, they are counterproductive to our well-being.
Now, secularists will argue that we have built a moral society and we just know that it is good to help others because you would want to be helped. But as Baggett and Walls say,
“Naturalism can make good sense of why we might feel or believe that we have moral obligations, but it has a much harder time explaining moral obligations themselves.”[18]
Here’s the issue. Many people fail to realize that these are just descriptions of behavior, and do not adequately supply authoritative prescriptions for what we ought to do. You cannot derive and ought from an is.
We may know how something helps us or why animals behave in certain ways for survival purposes, but it doesn’t follow that there in an ontological foundation prescribing these undeniable objective moral duties forcefully emerging within our lives. Evans rightly adds,
“To say that we can gain knowledge of morality by reflection on social practices does not mean that those social practices can adequately ground morality. What is lacking is an account of the authority of the norms that are embedded in our social practices.”[19]
Knowing some truth about x is entirely different than why x exists objectively within reality. However, divine commands provide us an overriding reason to act and fulfill those objective moral duties because it is inextricably bound to the ontological status and prescriptive force of God and his commands (which align with his perfectly good nature).
How Do We Know Objective Moral Values and Duties Exist?
God has made known our common objective moral values and duties through moral intuition, natural law, general and special revelation, and conscience. Philosophers typically say that we see objective values and duties as properly basic beliefs, that is, they are just obvious truths to us that we don’t have good reasons or defeaters for denying their existence.
We believe the same thing about our planet not being created 1 hour ago, or that you aren’t the only mind in existence, or that we aren’t living in a virtual simulation being programmed by a crazy computer scientist. We can’t ultimately prove with absolute certainty that this isn’t the case.
Maybe we’ve all been created 20 minutes ago by an advanced alien species who have implanted memories and other things in our brains in undetectable ways that make us think the earth is millions of years old, regardless of what “evidence” we believe we’re properly analyzing. But of course, we don’t have good reasons to believe this to be true, so we reject such a bizarre notion.
Evans explains that if our experience of the external world as an objective reality gives us reason to believe it is an objective reality, then we have no reason to treat our experience of morality differently than we treat our perceptual experience of the physical world, even though someone could argue the physical world cannot be proven to exist.[20] Our senses don’t have to be infallible, rather they only need to be reliable and trustworthy, which we know is true!
Baggett and Walls also explain that it’s reasonable to claim that our axiomatic moral convictions qualify as properly basic beliefs and state they are,
“starting-point beliefs on the basis of which other propositions are derived and inferred deductively, inductively, or abductively. They are not believed on the evidential basis of other propositions; one simply sees that they are true and accepts them.”[21]
Eminent philosopher Richard Swinburne heartily agrees, noting,
“it is on the foundations of these basic beliefs that we must construct a worldview; for no foundations are surer than the most evident ones, and these include some of the most obvious moral beliefs.”[22]
Swinburne says that even if some skeptical philosophers argue we can’t know moral truths, then we can reject their theory because it’s more obvious that genocide is wrong than that their theory is true. Swinburne nails it.
If ethics is merely subjective, or even illusory as atheist Michael Ruse notes, then doing the “moral” or “right” thing, appears to be the irrational thing to do in certain settings. Again, why not look out for my own self-interests rather than others? Helping others is often a major inconvenience and involves sacrificial efforts that take away from my own benefits.
Some may reply that we should help others because we feel obligated to, and we would want the same in return. However, if you recall, this is only talking about how we know something to be true, but it is not talking about the ontological reality of the obligation itself which makes it objectively true.
Feelings of obligations roughly correspond to actual obligations, but no identity relation obtains because they are distinct from each other. A sociopath may not feel like helping a baby that fell into a bucket of water, but he is still obligated to save that baby and knows it intuitively. I may feel obligated to attend my distant relative’s funeral that is 1,000 miles away, but I am not obligated to do so. If moral obligations really exist, the challenge is to account for their objective reality and to explain their nature.
Theism Just Makes Sense
I have attempted to briefly show that theism satisfies all the major criteria needed to adequately account for the existence of objective moral values and duties. Theism provides the ontological foundation and grounding, universal applicability and inescapability of duties, the proper authority to command them, and the explanatory power and scope for guilt.
I have also attempted to briefly show that naturalism fails to adequately account for objective moral values and duties. It seems that if God does not exist, then it would be highly unlikely for objective moral values and duties to exist in a naturalistic world. However, as you have seen, objective moral values and duties do exist, which means God exists (and if you don’t like deductive arguments, there are abductive arguments that demonstrate God is the best explanation for objective morality).
God is the Ultimate Good and his perfect nature is the grounding source for objective moral values; and God’s commands are the grounding source for objective moral duties. Because objective moral values and duties exist, we can end with our conclusion from the moral argument: God exists.
Blessings,
Andrew Drinkard
[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2015), 13.
[2] Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger, Reason and Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 5th ed (NY: Oxford University Press, 2013), 346.
[3] Douglas R. Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), 358.
[4] David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 290.
[5] Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm.
[6] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 133.
[7] Mark C. Murphy, Theism, Atheism, and the Explanation of Moral Value, in Robert K. Garcia, and Nathan L. King, Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 121.
[8] Kai Nielsen, “Why Should I Be Moral? Revisited.” American Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 1 (1984), 91. www.jstor.org/stable/20014031.
[9] William Lane Craig, The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness without God Good Enough?, in Robert K. Garcia, and Nathan L. King, Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 41.
[10] Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 16.
[11] Craig, The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness without God Good Enough?, 30.
[12] Possible worlds are what philosophers use as tools of thought to contemplate what other realities could possibly hold if they were true, but they cannot include logically impossible scenarios. It is not actually referring to other physical worlds, such as Earth 2, 3, 4, and so on. For example, there could be a possible world in which I am 6’6” tall instead of 5’9”; but there can’t be a world where I am 6’6” and 5’9” tall, at the same time and in the same sense, because that is logically impossible.
[13] David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 47.
[14] C. Stephen Evans, God & Moral Obligation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 9-10.
[15] Boyd and Thorsen, Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy, 105-111.
[16] Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 150.
[17] George I. Mavrodes, ‘‘Religion and the Queerness of Morality,’’ in Rationality, Religious Belief and Moral Commitment: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, edited by Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright, 580. file:///C:/Users/ADRINK~1/AppData/Local/Temp/Mavrodes%20Religion%20and%20the%20Queerness%20of%20Morality.pdf.
[18] Baggett and Walls, Good God, 28.
[19] Evans, God & Moral Obligation, 49.
[20] Ibid., 162.
[21] Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 191.
[22] Richard Swinburne, What Difference Does God Make to Morality?, in Robert K. Garcia, and Nathan L. King, Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 152.
