Objective Moral Values and Duties Show that God Exists

Ok, so I want to remind you of the premises of my argument. 1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist. 2. Objective moral values and duties do exist. 3. Therefore, God exists. Whether my opponent realizes it or not, we agree on premise one. Notice that premise one is not incompatible with either atheism or the absence of objective moral values and duties. It says that if atheism is true, then there are no objective moral values and duties. My opponent says that atheism is true, and that there are no objective moral values and duties. I cannot be more clear, we are not in disagreement on this premise. Our disagreement lies in premise 2, "Objective moral values and duties do exist. " Now my opponent feels that I am appealing to emotion, but this is not the case. I am appealing to your moral intuition. Now we need to be careful here, I don't mean "intuition" in the sense of some sort of clairvoyance or feeling. Moral intuition can best be explained by comparison to your rational intuition. Consider one of the rules of logic, the law of non-contradiction. This law states that A is not non-A at the same time and in the same way. It is intuitively obvious that something cannot both be itself and its negation at the same time and in the same way. One can never create an argument to demonstrate the truth of the law of non-contradiction, because any argument you might construct would rely on the law itself. One understands the truth of this law "intuitively", that is to say that the truth of the law is obvious to us once we understand the terms. In the same way that the law of non-contradiction is rationally intuitively obvious to us, the "wrongness" of acts such as child abuse and rape are morally intuitively obvious to us. Merely by understanding what the term "child molestation" means one understands intuitively that it is wrong. It is this obvious understanding that I am appealing to. Now my opponent seems to think that the rule of law or societal construction can substitute for this. I have shown that this is false by presenting to you situations where societies have engaged in immoral acts. If morality is a mere social construction, then societal norms can never be immoral. They are the rule by which morality is measured. My opponent suggested that "violating the society's agreed upon moral terms in the form of law or social structure" should be punished. This is an affirmation of my point. In Nazi Germany, protecting Jews was a violation of the society's agreed upon moral terms and form of law. In other words, on my opponents view it wouldn't be inherently right or wrong to protect the Jews, but it would be subjectively wrong to protect them in light of the "social structure and form of law. " Yet this is obviously false to us. It is obvious that the moral thing to do in that situation is to aid the Jews. I want to remind you that my opponent has only given one argument in favor of his view. He has said that since different societies come up with different moral systems, that therefore there is no set of objective moral values and duties. I showed previously that this simply does not follow. The fact that different societies come to different conclusions does nothing to undermine the objectivity of the subject they are working on. As I said before, consider science. Different societies at different times have come up with different conclusions with respect to the nature of the natural world. If my opponents line of thinking is correct, then this should undermine the objective reality of the natural world. Clearly it does not! Difficulties in moral reasoning do nothing to undermine the objectivity of morality any more than difficulties in scientific reasoning undermines the objectivity of science. The only argument he has presented in favor of his views cannot support his conclusion. My opponent posed the challenge to account for the wrongness of rape if God exists. This is simple. Moral values are rooted in God's unchanging nature. God is love, and therefore love is a moral virtue. God created us in his image, thereby giving us the duty of reflecting his character in the world. The act of raping someone is an inherently unloving act. In other words, it both fails to uphold the moral value of love that corresponds to God's nature and fails to carry out the moral duty of representing him that was given to mankind. God exists as a necessary reality. It is outside of the scope of this debate to fully unpack what that means, but essentially it means that God exists in every possible world and is unchanging in his nature. His existence is an objective and non-contingent one. It is for this reason that his moral nature can be objective. Only if such a being exists is there any objective standard in which objective moral values and duties can be rooted. In the absence of such a being, there can be no objective moral values and duties. My opponent said something that is very telling. I had said that on his view there is no inherent moral difference between molesting children and wearing white after labor day. He affirmed this statement saying, "neither are inherently wrong or right. " In evaluating our debate, I ask you to consider if this is a view you are willing to adopt. Is this a view that is persuasive to you? If you agree with me that there is a fundamental (inherent) moral difference between molesting children and poor fashion sense, then you agree that at least some things are really wrong. This entails, however, that there are objective moral values and duties. As I have shown, these moral values and duties can only exist if God exists.