There are so many ways to summarize the moral argument for God’s existence that I have a hard time boiling it down to just one or two. The most concise summary of the deductive moral argument for God’s existence could be stated as follows: “If objective morality exists (and it does), then God exists.”
This summary is so concise, however, that it does little more than state the logic of the argument. Why think that only God can explain morality? Here is a concise summary that also attempts to explain the connection in a bit more detail: “If God didn’t exist, there would be no moral laws and no moral obligations. But all of us know that moral laws exist and that we have an obligation to obey those laws, so God must exist. Laws require law-givers and obligations require persons to be obligated to. God is the source of moral values and the One to whom we are obligated.”
My favorite way of summarizing the abductive version of the moral argument is as follows:
- For there to be moral laws, there must be a moral law-giver.
- For moral laws to be objective, the moral law-giver must transcend human beings.
- For there to be moral obligations, there must be a person to whom we are obligated.
- For our moral choices to have moral significance, there must be a moral judge.
- For there to be a moral judgment, there must be an afterlife in which to experience it.
Another way of putting it is that “God is the best explanation for our moral experience.” How so?
- The existence of objective moral truths is grounded in a transcendent God whose very nature is pure goodness.
- We have knowledge of these moral truths because God made us in His likeness complete with moral intuitions.
- We have moral duties because God has commanded to us to act in ways consistent with His purpose for creating us.
- We experience moral guilt because we have broken trust with a personal God by rejecting the moral obligations He has given us.
- We desire moral accountability because we are made in the image of a just God.
Take your pick!
June 12, 2024 at 4:01 am
If there is no God of highest moral values, then we Humans are just smart animals that happen to get it right once in awhile. Why even care about morality if we were not designed to strive to be as pure and righteousness as our creator?
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June 18, 2024 at 5:07 am
If you are talking about the god of the Bible, then I don’t think you can reasonably argue that he has the “highest moral values.” After all, throughout the Bible he condones or commits virtually all the behaviors pretty much any sane, civilized person considers evil: murder and genocide, animal and human sacrifice, torture, child and animal abuse, theft, slavery, rape, forced incest, cannibalism, betrayal and lying. I could cite many, MANY examples from the Bible, but to keep this relatively short here is just one example of each:
Murder and genocide:
· Deuteronomy 20:16-17 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.
Animal and human sacrifice:
· Deuteronomy 13:15-17 You must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the open square and burn it. Burn the entire town as a burnt offering to the Lord your God. … Then the Lord will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. [Notice God demands human sacrifice.]
Torture:
· Revelation 20:10-15 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. … The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. … If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
Child abuse:
· Isaiah 13:16-18 Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives violated. See, I will stir up against them the Medes … Their bows will strike down the young men; they will have no mercy on infants, nor will they look with compassion on children.
Animal abuse:
· Joshua 11:6 The LORD said to Joshua … “You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.” [This is particularly slow, cruel way for horses to die.]
Theft:
· Joshua 8:27 But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua.
Slavery:
· Leviticus 25:44-46 Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life.
Rape:
· Numbers 31:17-18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. [Only virginal girls got to live, but they were forced into sexual slavery.]
Forced incest:
· Genesis 9:1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.” [God required just eight people to populate the world.]
Cannibalism:
· Jeremiah 19:9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters.
Betrayal:
· Romans 5:13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. [And yet God punished Adam and Eve and drowned the entire world BEFORE there was law.]
Lying:
· Ezekiel 14:9 And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet.
And just for good measure, God displays megalomania, sociopathy and narcissism:
· Ezekiel 35:7-9 I will make Mount Seir utterly desolate, killing off all who try to escape and any who return. I will fill your mountains with the dead. Your hills, your valleys, and your streams will be filled with people slaughtered by the sword. I will make you desolate forever. Your cities will never be rebuilt. Then you will know that I am the LORD.
So I wouldn’t hold him up as the standard of moral goodness, not by a long shot.
But to answer your question, as an atheist I help out my neighbors and I don’t steal from them because it’s in my best interest to treat others the way I would like to be treated. I enjoy the feeling of seeing the joy on a stranger’s face when I help them solve a problem they’re struggling with, I enjoy the feeling of saving an injured animal, and so on. Do I do those things because a god told me they are good? No, I do them because I enjoy the feeling that being helpful and living in a harmonious society brings. I don’t want to add to the suffering of others because I don’t want to suffer either.
Is this selfish? Well, selfishness is really the ultimate basis for morality—there is no evident inherent good or evil outside of the notion of doing helpful things or causing harm/suffering. If you believe this is the ONLY life we have, it makes perfect sense to make the best of it. I want to live in a world where people treat each other well, not one rife with violence, abuse and destruction…so I work toward making the kind of society I want to live in. You don’t need religion or deity-imposed laws in order to understand that. All you need is compassion.
It’s important to keep in mind that we’re genetically predisposed to care about others. Many species—even primitive ones—have genes that encourage them to be protective of their offspring because it increases their chances of survival. And as we often see in nature, it doesn’t take much to extend that protective instinct beyond the family unit.
This is the evolutionary basis for morality. Social species can cooperate and specialize, which gives them an advantage over solitary species. However, to be social requires codes of conduct to interact safely and effectively…which is why even piranha know not to attack one another. Thus, genes for behaviors that improve social cohesion and cooperation become selected for in nature. Since human beings are among the most social of social species, we have evolved a capacity for complex moral behavior…although how that manifests itself can vary substantially among different societies.
The point is, atheists do indeed have a good reason to care about morality, and it doesn’t require any lawgiver or any one set of absolute rules, just the result of normal evolutionary forces that occur in nature every day.
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