The Moral Argument is Sound

Warrant For PremisesPremise 1 If God does not exist, then objective moral values & duties do not exist. ValuesObjective moral values are most plausibly based in a maximally great being, for if a being is ontologically maximally great, then it intuitively follows that his moral nature is maximally great. It is ontologically greater to have a highest moral value than not, therefore God is maximally Good.Since he's known for defending this argument, William Lane Craig offers,"Traditionally, moral values have been thought to be anchored in God, who is the supreme Good. Traditionally, God has been thought in theology as the greatest Good or the highest Good or in Latin 'summum bonum.' Other goods are determined by how they relate to God as the anchor or the yardstick or the moral plumb line for value. But suppose God does not exist. Then what is the basis for objective moral values? What plumb line or anchor remains in the absence of God for moral values? In particular, why think that human beings would have objective moral worth on an atheistic view?" [1]WLC touches upon an interesting idea here, that human worth or dignity is just arbitrary given atheism. Perhaps Con's rebuttal will allow me to expand on this idea.DutiesChrist sumed all of man's moral obligation with two great commands: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." -Mark, 12:30-31As a Christian, I can selflessly love man because I first tap into the greatest love of all. So given Christianity at least, we have a moral duty to Love humanity, indeed the love we show comes directly from first loving God, the source and standard of Love. Such love is self-sacrificial, which flies massively in the face of whatever naturalism may affirm. For in a purely natural existence, self-sacrifice would be wholly absurd! Thus it would appear the most preferrable (and arguably the first) form of humanism is Christianity; the worldview that offers secularists a sound basis for the moral obligation they already want to affirm. Given atheism, moral choices are ultimately meaningless since life ends at the grave and there's no plausible ground for objective moral duty. But given theism, the choices made in this life are so suffused with significance, both eternal and divine. Even the well known atheist Richard Taylor notes that Theism offers a sound basis for moral duty, "The idea of moral…obligation is clear enough, provided reference to some lawmaker higher…than those of the state is understood. In other words, our moral obligations…can be understood as those imposed by God. This does give a clear sense to the claim that our moral obligations are more binding upon us than our political obligations…" He continues, "The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well.... Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things as war...or the violation of human rights, are ‘morally wrong,’ and they imagine that they have said something true and significant. "Contemporary writers in ethics, who blithely discourse upon moral right and wrong and moral obligation without any reference to religion, are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying that they discourse without meaning." [2] We have yet to hear Con offer his moral ontology, but I suspect it too will fall prey to just another discourse without meaning. For in a truly atheistic world, what justification is there for differential treatment of a species? Running evolution backwards would perhaps yeild a very different set of morals. To think humans are special is just to assert an unjustified bias towards one species over another. Moral Ontology, not EpistemologyThe issue before us is NOT,〻 Must we believe in God to have moral lives?〻 Can we formulate an ethics system without reference to God?〻 Can we recognize the existence of objective morals without reference to God?Refernce this diagram for clarity, http://www.debate.org...Everyone, regardless of beliefs, can appeal to their intuition of objective morals; for the bible says God's law is "written on the hearts" of all men-- that means Christian or non-Christian people. Thus the central question about morals concerns their ontological foundation, not how we can know them.Finally, I'll await Cons rebuttal to contend that it's just not obvious that atheism provides as sound a foundation for objective morals, I'll simply assert for now that our moral sense on naturalism is merely an illusion wrought by socio-biological conditioning.Premise 2 Objective moral values & duties do exist.It appears that our moral experience is equal with our sensory experience insofar as we perceive external truths just as we perceive the internal truth of objective morality. For in moral experience we apprehend a realm of objective morals, just as in sensory experience we apprehend a realm of the physical world.Therefore, there's no more reason to deny moral objectivity than there is to deny the physical world. Literally, if you are skeptical of the objectivity of morals, then you ought to also doubt that you have a head! So in the absence of any type of defeater for both perceptions, we're rational to trust both types of our sense perceptions.Philosopher Michael Ruse affirms that "the man who says it's acceptable to rape a child is just as mistaken as saying 2+2=5!" People who fail to see this are simply morally handicapped and there's no reason to allow their impaired vision to call into question what we clearly sense in our moral perception. Thus any arguments for moral nihilism will always include premises which are less obvious. Unless of course we're provided some sort of defeater.Therefore, since premises one and two are more plausible and obvious, it necessarily and logically follows that God exists. It just seems obvious that objective moral prescriptions requires an objective moral prescriber. What more is plausible a presciber than a metaphysically maximally great Good, who's bestowed the moral law upon our hearts?Citations1. Defenders Podcast, Existence of God (pt 20)2. Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (1985)