Objective Moral Values and Duties Show that God Exists

My opponent has made a fundamental mistake in understanding. She has misunderstood the argument to be saying that you must *believe* in God in order to behave morally. My argument is not that you must *believe* in God in order to behave morally, but that God must exist in order for morality to be objective. I am also not arguing that morality comes from religion, as that would merely be another subjective basis for morality. My argument shows that objective moral values and duties require an objective grounds for their existence, and that God is the only possible candidate to ground them. My opponent seems to understand this as she denies objective moral values and duties and instead asserts that morality is subjective. She gives two candidates for moral values, society and evolution, and she rightly understands that these are subjective basis. Let"s consider the implications of her view. She states that morality is a social construct, that it has no objective reality. First, it turns out that morally reprehensible acts are not really morally reprehensible. In fact, to say that something is morally reprehensible is only to describe our reaction to it and NOT to say anything about the act itself. If my opponent is correct then actions such as rape and child abuse are not really wrong, they are just taboo or opposed to social norms. On this view, molesting a child is morally equivalent to wearing white after labor day. This also means that social reformers are, in fact, immoral because they oppose social norms. Consider the Valkyrie conspirators who risked, and ultimately sacrificed, their lives in an attempt to end the tyrannical and murderous reign of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. If my opponent is correct, then it is the conspirators who acted in a morally reprehensible way and Adolf Hitler who was the paragon of morality (because he embodied the cultural norms and expectations of his society). I"ll say that again, on my opponent"s view Adolf Hitler turns out to be the moral hero of the story because he embodied the social norms of Nazi Germany. Moral progress is also impossible on my opponent"s view. The United States engaged in the horrible practice of slavery many years ago, and today it does not. If my opponent is correct, then this represents no moral improvement whatsoever. The difference in the practice and prohibition of slavery is no more superior morally than differences in popular fashion between the two eras. Are we really going to say that acts like child abuse and rape are not really wrong? Are we really going to say that social reformers like Martin Luther King Jr. were actually moral villains? Are we really going to say that evil but socially consistent men like Adolf Hitler are actually moral heroes? Are we really going to say that social developments like the prohibition of slavery represent no moral progress whatsoever? If we are to adopt my opponents view, then we must answer "yes" to each of these questions. What can we say of evolution? Is the story better there? Not at all. Charles Darwin himself has said, ""If " men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering." (Darwin, Descent of Man) On this view, acts like child molestation and abuse are not really wrong, they are just going against the herd. In fact, Adolf Hitler becomes the hero again on this view because his actions were directed at the elevation of his own aryan race. The fact is that our common sense experience of "right" and "wrong" shows us that there is a real difference between the two. This is obvious to us, and unless and until my opponent gives us some reason to doubt objective moral values that is more obvious to us than our common sense experience, we are rational to maintain our belief in them. If my opponent abandons her position of moral subjectivity and instead denies premise one, "If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist", then she must give us some alternate objective grounds for moral values and duties. This objective grounds must be the same in every possible world (unchanging and independent from any external cause) and it must be capable of obligating us to conform our behavior to it (it must be capable of issuing moral duties to us).