God Is Necessary For Morality

My opponent has said correctly that I have the burden of proof. He must prevent me by either proving that a form of moral relativism is true or that God is not necessary for morality. If he fails in doing this then my argument is much better than it's negations and thus more rational to believe in. My opponent has started out by saying "the first problem I have is the second of your premises "Objective moral values and duties do exist." (you are already doing better than many users in posting premises)" And if I'm not mistaken, he has not given any evidence as to why my second premise is wrong. He has only given us his preferable definition of morality. As it stands my second premise has not been refuted or debunked in any way. My opponent says that morality should be defined as "actions or series of actions that result in the most good" he goes on and says that moral good is "a measure of total happiness". He then says he sees no reason why God is necessary. Before I give the reasons as to why God is necessary my opponent must understand that God is only necessary for morality if and only if morality is objective and not humans acting according to a pattern of social behavior. God isn't necessary for human beings to exhibit certain patterns of social behavior. And here are the reasons as to why: 1) God grounds objective moral values; i.e. what counts as good and what counts as evil 2) God grounds objective moral duties; i.e. what we ought to do and ought not to do 3) God grounds moral accountability; i.e. our ultimate fate depends on how we act morally In defence of (1): A. Moral Values Moral values are based in God. God is the model for all that is good and holy; He is the paradigm of what is right. God's objective holy nature is by what we may set the standard of moral actions. Thus if God exists then objective moral values exist and are grounded in Him. B. Human Worth But if God does not exist, what basis remains for objective moral values? In particular, why think human beings have moral worth? Why think that humans have value, such that they should be treated a particular way? In an atheistic universe, humans are just animals and are simply by-products of evolution. If we gain morality by evolution, this means that moral values are the product of the struggle for survival. One might say that since morality is of biological worth, homo sapiens have developed a sense of a herd morality. This standard is arbitrary and isn't really a true moral standard. In an atheistic universe, moral values do not exist independently, they are merely descriptions of behaviors that are the product of biological and cultural evolution. And if we would rewind the evolutionary tape, so to speak, and start from the beginning we would see that human beings could have developed an entirely different set of moral values. In other animal species, many things that we think of as wrong are practiced, like stealing and rape. So why think that our practices are objectively true, instead of just customs and fashions of our species? To say that our moral values are better than other species is committing the fallacy of specieism. C. Free Will Many naturalists regard man as a purely animal organism. And thus, everything we think and do is determined by the input of our five senses and our genetic code. Therefore all of our moral choices have no moral value or significance. As William Lane Craig puts it, "moral actions would become jerks of a puppet on strings." What moral value or moral responsibility does a puppet have? Moral choices require a non-physical mind distinct from the physical brain in order to make free moral choices. In defence of (2) As I said before, on atheism, humans are merely animals. Animals, obviously don't have any objective moral obligation to do anything. I ask my opponent, where would moral duties come from on atheism; to whom is the duty owed? In an atheistic universe, morality is just a subjective impression ingrained into us by social and biological pressure. Things like rape and incest, that aren't biologically or socially advantageous, have become "taboo". But this shows nothing as to why this is actually wrong. As William Craig puts it, The rapists "breaking this social contract is the same as a man belching loudly at the dinner table, it's just being unfashionable". In defence of (3) On theism, the moral choices we make affect where we end up in the afterlife. We are all held accountable of our moral choices. God balances the scales of justice in the end. Thus all our moral choices have an eternal effect. In an atheistic universe, it is irrelevant how you act; everybody ends up in the same place regardless of how they live. We are just a species on a speck of dust called earth in a vast universe. It really does not matter how you live. You could be an Adolph Hitler or a Mother Teresa. Why be moral in an atheistic universe? Why shouldn't a person pursue self interest instead of following the moral conventions of the social contract? It is certainly not always the case that doing the right thing is also doing the thing that gives you pleasure. What binds us to act morally? A very powerful person would not need to be moral, since they can escape all the social sanctions that result from their breaking the social contract. They could simply be without conscious. Why would a very powerful human being do the right thing when it is against his or her self-interest? Moreover, acts of self-sacrifice are completely irrational in an atheistic universe. The inevitable result is that no one will be morally accountable when to do the right thing when it is hard. This is because in the long run, it is both disadvantageous and it certainly doesn't really matter as to what you do. In conclusion, without God in the picture it is difficult to understand why would we would have objectively true morals. If God does not exist, then there would be no objective moral values nor moral duties nor moral accountability for how we live and act. The horror of such a relative world is obvious. But, on the other hand, if we believe that objective moral values and duties do exist then we have good grounds for believing in a Lawgiver, I.e. God. As we have seen, we cannot truly be good without a Lawgiver, but since we can be good to some degree, then it logically follows that a Divine Lawgiver does indeed exist. These are the questions what atheists must answer: - What is the basis of objective moral values? - What is the basis of human value on atheism? - Why ought we to do the right thing and avoid doing the wrong thing? - What is the basis for moral accountability?