What standard are you appealing to when you claim something to be good or better?
“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who exchanges darkness for light, and light for darkness; who exchanges bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20)
In the world of apologetics, the moral argument is right up there with the most important ones to understand. I would argue it’s the most important, because if you watch long enough and carefully enough, just about every conversation and debate hinges on morality. All good apologetic conversations find their way back to the moral argument. We love the Moral argument because not only can we use it as a means of defending the existence of God but it helps us better illustrate to the world who exactly God is and what that name means.
As we can all understand, there are things in this world that exist but cannot necessarily be measured in a test tube. Take for example laws of logic. How much does the law of noncontradiction weigh? Or what color is truth? Have we ever seen math out in nature? Among this family of intangibles is Morality. Objective moral facts and duties. If such things do exist, then that begs the question, well where exactly do they come from? Not only that but what are they grounded in? Are they just naturally occurring/ were they inevitable? Or is there purpose and meaning behind it? Here’s the problem everyone is confronted with on the philosophical level. We live in a material universe, but non material things also exist. So is it the case that the material has given birth to the nonmaterial, or is it the other way around?
Before we get to the more simplified version of the moral argument that helps us connect it to God as being the necessary transcendent being in which these immaterial realities must be grounded, let’s set up a more fundamental argument that better helps us understand what exactly Morality is, and if we are moral agents.
Morality is a rational enterprise. What we mean here is that morality is deciphered through reasoning and rationality. It is something that you measure by thinking about, not something you can discover by empirical means, such as see through a microscope. For example, to a certain point, we don’t have the correct moral response to any dilemma engineered into us and we automatically trigger that response in our body. No, rather we reason our way to the moral way to respond to something. If you see an elderly lady on the street getting robbed, a signal goes off in your mind that says “Hey, I ought to do something about this.” Point being is that it isn’t something that is naturally occurring like when the doctor hits your knee with the little hammer.
Moral realism is true. Moral facts and duties do exist. It seems like a bold claim and this is where we typically see the fork in the road for naysayers. Moral realism is saying that there is a true and a false, a right and a wrong when it comes to moral judgements. And that these are true outside of our own beliefs or desires. We’ll defend this point a little later by using a couple historical examples.
Morality is not subjective. There is a distinction to be made between what we think to be morally correct and what is objectively morally correct. Moral subjectivism is the view that moral claims are just descriptions of our preferences. A moral claim is a ‘Truth Claim’ (a statement that is claiming to be either true or false.) Moral subjectivism is often confused with Emotivism. Emotivism is the view that our moral claims are expressions of our emotions pertaining to something. How we feel about a claim (not a truth claim in of itself.)
Example of Moral Subjectivism- When someone says, “murder is wrong” what they really mean is “It is my opinion that murder is wrong.”
Example of Emotivism- When someone says, “murder is wrong” what they are really saying is “boo murder.”
Moral subjectivism cannot account for genuine moral disagreements. The argument goes as follows… if moral subjectivism were true, there would be no genuine moral disagreements. But moral disagreements do occur. Therefore, moral subjectivism is not true. If moral claims are merely descriptions of our preferences, then there really cannot be any moral disagreement. The wide array of disagreement among humans as to what is moral and what is not goes to show that whatever is indeed ultimately morally true is not grounded in our limited ability to reason. Since we ourselve do not have perfect knowledge of the facts and are not perfect moral beings, it would be impossible for us to be the source of moral knowledge. This is more than demonstrated by our day to day interactions. We are contingent beings, things such as truth, and math would still exist even if no humans existed to discover them.
Ok so what have we gathered so far is that… 1, in order for moral facts and duties to be objectively binding, they would have to be grounded in something that is necessary and unchanging. 2, Moral facts and duties are grounded in a sentient rational source. The number 7 doesn’t have the ability to communicate ideas, only a sentient mind does. So what is this necessary, unchanging, rational, and sentient being? This is what we call God. Far too many people have this idea that we simply view God as a bearded old man that lives up in the clouds. We have to do a better job at demonstrating how God is the title we give to the necessary, unmoved, timeless, spaceless, uncaused, rational, personal, sentient being from which the universe emerged. Now this is a point for a different topic but we can look at it this way. Think about a computer. A computer doesnt have the ability to create itself, that would be a logical fallacy, it’s a fallacy because the computer would’ve had to preexist itself in order to create itself. So we can deduce that a being had to preexist the computer in order to create the computer, not only that but this same being would’ve had to make the personal/cognitive decision to make the computer. He would have to be powerful enough to do it, and would’ve had to been intelligent enough to have made it in its very specific way.
If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. Objective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore, God exists. If we are left without an objective standard of morality to appeal to for the purpose of differentiating that which is good from that which is evil, all claims to what is “right” or “wrong” is merely blind pitiless indifference. In the absence of a transcendent moral law giver, all morals become socioculturally relative. Yes, you can do acts of goodness without believing in God, but the ability to decipher between what is good and what is bad is only possible if there is a moral law giver. If there is no God, then we lack an objective reference in which we can base moral claims.
This is a danger of Postmodern thinking, when all truth becomes subjective, so does morality. The truth becomes ‘your truth’ and what’s objectively morally good becomes ‘good for you.’ I could claim that it is ok to slap anyone who crosses my path that’s wearing a red shirt. If you were to see me carry out that belief, you would justly say ‘hey that’s wrong.’ I can easily retort with, ‘That’s wrong according to you maybe, but according to me it’s alright.’ Then you may claim ‘it’s wrong to harm anyone’ I can easily then respond with ‘who or what is your basis for telling me that what I am doing is right or wrong?’ Naturally you may respond by saying that it is the collective opinion/society that sets the standard of what’s right and wrong. Let’s challenge that theory through the lens of historical context. This is a concept that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a great understanding of. Whatever society you happen to be living in at a particular time and place does not set the standard as to what is objectively right and wrong. Societies must appeal to a higher authority which dictates what is right and wrong. Striving towards a more morally just society implies a direction/a standard/ an ideal to head towards. He comprehended that there is a standard of goodness that a society must navigate towards. A north star to direct our path to a ‘better society’ where all men are viewed as created equal. A law exists above the law, as we saw play out through the Nuremberg Trials. “Trust in the Lord with all your hear, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, an He will direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil.” (Proverbs 3:5-7)
The most common objection we face to the Moral argument is called the Euthyphro Dilemma. I’m sure you’ve all been faced with some version of this question but generally it asks… is something ‘good’ because God says it is good? Or, Does God say something is ‘good’ because it is good. This is a false dichotomy that they’ll try and trap you with. They want to force you to pick one of the two options they have presented. If we choose the first option (something being good because he says it’s good) would imply that something that we deem as not good can become good if God simply commanded it to be. So the first option is an obvious no for us. So if we take option two (God commands something because it is good) we shoot our reasoning in the leg because we would admit that God isn’t the foundation for the standard of moral facts and duties. And that he would be looking to something else as being the source. Why the Euthyphro Dilemma fails is because it assumes that we are just arbitrarily grounding morality in God, rather, as we have gone over, we recognize God as being the necessary rational source that we look to for moral guidance. As we’ve gone over, God is simply the title we have given to that source. God (by definition) is the greatest conceivable being, therefore the highest good. Thus, providing us with the standard to which all actions can be measured. You can only judge the degree to which a line is curved if you have a straight line to compare it to. The only way we can judge the clarity of a picture of a scenic mountain range is if you have the original view of the mountain range to compare it to. We are then able to judge on a scale whether pictures of it are closer to or further away from the standard. The same can be said about moral claims. This is what is meant when we say that God doesn’t arbitrarily pick what is good, rather He is good. Hence why He is worthy of praise and worship.
God has expressed his moral nature to us through his commands which gives us a foundation to base our moral duties in. For example, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mathew 22:39) Now we are able to hoist and affirm the actions which reflect this order as objectively good. The things that fall under this umbrella would include generosity, sacrifice, and equality. We would also be able to reject that which contradicts our command, such as greed, abuse, and discrimination.
In atheism, there is no transcending authority responsible for laying out these moral duties and distinctions upon us. All we are in that worldview is; highly evolved bags of protoplasm that came into existence through a series of cosmic accidents and genetic mutations, no different than the dirt and animals that we share this universe with. The only problem with that theory is that we don’t live that reality out in our day to day lives. We live our lives fully recognizing that humans are built with an intrinsic value that isn’t assigned to mice or trees. As we are told in Genesis 2, our physical being is made up of earthly materials, but what sets us apart and makes us distinct from the earth is that God breaths into us the breath of life. The ability to comprehend and rationalize that which exists in this world that cannot be measured in a test tube. Such things include but are not limited to; laws of logic, mathematics, justice, and truth. Our beings are made up of both earthly materials with earthly instincts and desires, as well as these divine qualities that God allots to us. These two characteristics of our being are constantly at war with each other, making us such complex beings. God could’ve easily chosen to not give us a spiritually comprehensive mind, so why did he make the conscious decision to do so? (More to come on this in the Relationship vs. Religion blog.) Although we are a part of creation, his first command for us was to protect/keep the paradise he had placed us in (however, ironically enough it would turn out that it was in fact paradise that needed protection from us.) This implies that God wanted us to play a role in his creation, or else he wouldn’t have given us said divine qualities or authority over the rest of creation. Another one of these qualities being the ability to reason through a moral landscape. If a Lion kills a Zebra we don’t expect humans or the animal kingdom to charge the Lion with murder. He’s simply being a Lion. Someone who takes an axe to a tree is called a Lumberjack, but someone who takes an axe to a human is a murderer. Humans are held to a higher standard because we understand (whether we admit it or not) that we are made in the image of God with intrinsic value. In order for an atheist to claim an action done to another human being is either right or wrong, they would have to borrow from our worldview that we are made with intrinsic value.
We are not claiming that all Christians are ‘good’ people and morally superior. Too often we fall short of what the standard of what ‘goodness’ looks like. We fully and humbly admit that humans are fallible and corrupt, but… we get to claim a standard of goodness in which we can base moral appeals off of, and that standard is the one who says, “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.” (Luke 6:27-28.) As well as… Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Luke 6:31) He is our transcendent authority, our giver of the law above the law, our north star, our straight line, our view of the mountain range.
A Closing Prayer For You The Reader
Heavenly Father, thank you for taking the time to create me. You know me inside and out and everything about me. All creation shows there is a creator, and that You personally choose us to be yours is a true treasure. Help me daily to not take that for granted. I pray Lord for guidance and direction and for your spirit to teach me daily what is right and wrong from your word. I pray this in your precious name. Amen.