Objective Moral Values and Duties must be grounded in God

The argument I will defend is simple: Premise 1: Absent God, objective moral values and duties do not exist. Premise 2: Objective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore, God exists. First, a definition of terms: what does it mean to say that something is an "objective" moral value or duty? By this I mean that duties and values are good or evil, right or wrong, absolutely " in other words, prior to, and regardless of, any subjective opinion about them. To use the most frequently-cited example: the genocide committed against the Jews during World War II was evil, and would have remained evil even if Germany had won WWII and brainwashed everybody who thought otherwise. Actions are good or evil, regardless of what anyone thinks. Premise two is simpler, so I"ll address it first. If objective moral values and duties did not exist, if moral values and duties were purely subjective, then there would be no way to condemn or condone an action; all that could be said is that "I find that action displeasing". The problem is, some actions, such as torturing a baby to death, really are wrong, and some, such as loving your neighbors, really are right. These actions are wrong and right relative not just to a person, society, culture, etc., but as a basic fact. If everything is relative, the ontological foundation for moral criticism evaporates. Onto premise one. How does God provide a foundation for objective moral values and duties? As a maximally great being, God is the embodiment of great-making properties: love, charity, justice, are perfectly expressed by our divine creator. These are our values. God's morals are communicated to us via divine commands, which constitute our moral duties. To effectively defeat this argument, the opposition must give an explanation of how it is possible to derive objective moral values and duties absent God. Several responses deserve consideration. One of the most common alternatives that has been proposed is that in the course of human evolution, one of the traits that emerged as advantageous was a sense of morality. Whether this morality is developed in a cultural, national, or religious context, is of little importance. The crucial point is that the morality we sense as objective is actually the result of a long process of evolution. This view has multiple problems: In this view, morality is only perceived as objective. If we were to rewind the evolutionary clock, a different set of morals might very well emerge. Since contradictory morals could emerge from the evolutionary process, these morals are in no sense objective as the theist uses the word. Moreover, what makes this set of morals binding upon all members of society? One cannot use this theory to convince someone whose moral feelings disagree with yours that he is wrong, and ought to behave differently. Nor can he convince you. If you made such an argument to a sociopath who took this position on the sources of morality, but who had a taste for human flesh, he could say to you: "your rules are just the outcome of a long process of totally contingent events, each of which was governed by nothing but happenstance. Every one of them might have turned out differently. The same goes for me. My rules are different.." And he would be correct. Because under this theory, the rules of society are not really moral, in the sense that they are not objectively binding on us; they do not oblige us. Similarly, conflicting morals among societies would have no way to be resolved. Where one society viewed tribal genocide as a Good to be pursued, and another, as an evil to be stopped. the two would have no higher authority to appeal to for resolution of their dilemma. The same duty could be viewed as both good and evil. Finally, societal or cultural moral reform would be impossible. A reformer by definition contravenes the existing norms in which he operates. By advocating a reform of the moral principles of the majority, he would necessarily contradict that majority"s moral values and duties. Any moral progression would be impossible. Objective moral rules are not like that; there is no getting out of them. And so, I think we have seen that this theory really fails. It may tell us how we evolved our social rules, and how they work to our advantage in the world, but it cannot tell us whether our rules are right, or whether our moral views are true. Other attempts have been made to ground morality objectively, apart from God. An atheist might also adopt a Natural Law stance, and say that a realm of objective moral values and duties exists apart from physical matter, and we humans are able to apprehend this realm through a fortunate evolutionary coincidence. By saying this, the atheist is abandoning his original position (that the physical world is all that exists) for a much more radical one: that there exists a separate reality, entirely apart from the physical. He offers no evidence of this reality, only that it indeed exists, as certain as matter, or gravity. The questions compound: How did the reality come to exist? How can he know that he perceives this reality accurately? How is he able to explain how humans, each evolving differently, would possess the ability to perceive this reality in the same manner? More importantly, even if we grant that a separate moral reality exists, and that all or most humans are able to perceive it accurately, problems remain. What basis does the atheist have for concluding that the values this reality seeks to impose are obligatory? Where the survival and procreation of one"s genes run contrary to these morals, it would make sense to ignore them completely. If there is a Natural Law but no God, then morality turns out to be just as much a matter of happenstance as it did under the evolutionary theory we"ve already disproved. The only difference between these two theories is in where they locate the sheer happenstance at the root of what we call morality. Under the evolutionary theory we have already discredited, morality arose as a matter of sheer happenstance within the history of our universe. The atheist Natural Law theory says that it arose as an integral aspect of our universe that, because there is no God, itself arose as a matter of sheer happenstance, mere brute fact. Under this theory, the sociopathic cannibal could say, "I recognize that there is a Natural Law that says I ought not to kill and eat you. But the Natural Law, like the rest of existence, is a matter of sheer happenstance. I, too, am a matter of happenstance, and I happen to feel differently about morality than the rest of our universe." And, again, he"d be right. In the absence of God, both the theories we"ve talked about boil down in the end to "there is no absolutely binding, objective moral truth, but rather only happenstance." When push comes to shove, then, the only way there can be such a thing as morality is if there is an omniscient, necessary God who knows without possibility of error what is right. In conclusion, I think that we have seen how objective moral values and duties can be grounded, by divine command morality, in God. I have pointed out some of the problems inherent in alternative systems of morality. The opposition must illustrate both how divine command morality is flawed, and how objective moral values and duties, can be derived from an atheistic metaphysical landscape. Unless and until the opposition can accomplish these two tasks, I think that the rational thing to do is to accept divine command morality, and consequently, God. Share on facebook