The Moral Argument for the Existence of God

What is the nature of moral values? Are moral values objective or subjective? What does that distinction mean for the argument for God? As it turns out, probing into the nature of moral values leads us to ask some very interesting follow-up questions. Ultimately, one would have to contend with the moral argument for the existence of God.

If moral values are subjective, then they are established based on personal opinions and cultural norms. Within that realm, moral values are relative and depend on a consensus within a particular group, state, or nation. Alternatively, if moral values are objective, they have their grounding outside of human opinions and preferences. Within that realm, the grounding of moral values has to transcend human opinions and preferences. 

What is the Moral Argument?

The moral argument for the existence of God shows how we should expect the moral world to be if God does not exist. It lays out the notion that the moral world is contrary to that kind of world without God and concludes that God must exist. It goes a little something like this:

P1: If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist
P2: Objective moral values and duties do exist
∴ God exists

In short, we readily observe objective moral values and duties daily. Everyone intuitively and inherently accepts it. This is why there’s so much public outrage when someone commits heinous acts. 

Moral Ontology vs. Moral Epistemology vs. Moral Action

Perhaps the most common way people misunderstand the relationship between the moral order and God is by confusing categories. I don’t know how often I’ve heard the following: “We don’t need a god to know what is moral and to be moral. Atheists can be just as moral as Christians (or others with other religious persuasions).” The issue with that sentiment is that it conflates moral ontology with moral epistemology and moral action.

Moral ontology is the essence of moral values, whether subjective or objective. It deals with the existence of the moral world. Moral epistemology is how we know moral values. Moral action is acting on those moral values and performing moral duties.

The existence of objective moral laws and duties is completely separate from whether or not creatures abide by those laws and duties. One has to do with its ontology or its very existence, the other with its epistemology or how we know moral values. Atheists may be moral people (I have friends who are), and there is nothing amiss with that. The issue is not whether we can be moral without God but whether there are objective moral laws and duties in the first place. Knowing morality (moral epistemology) largely involves a process of enculturation, and our parents are certainly heavily involved in that process. Still, it does not mean that ALL parents teach their children what constitutes an objective set of virtues in the first place or that parents are echoing an objective set of moral laws.

The moral argument for God does not include anything with respect to whether or not people can know what is moral or that they can live moral lives as is popularly held within the specific culture in which an individual finds himself. The existence of objective moral laws and duties has to do with moral ontology. The knowledge of those laws and duties has to do with moral epistemology. One’s reaction to those moral laws has to do with moral action. It is crucial that we do not mix those up; otherwise, we’re bound to commit a logical misstep.

What Do We Mean by Objective Values and Duties?

To be precise, the moral argument deals primarily with moral ontology. It points out that the only way to have objective moral laws and duties is to have a transcendent grounding of moral laws. In other words, God is a necessary condition for their existence. Grounding moral laws on human beings makes them subjective and relative. 

On atheism, there is no ground for supposing moral values and duties to be objective. On this view, since change (natural processes) is solely responsible for all of reality, there is no objective “ought.” Evolution provides a description of how things operate/have operated. It does not give us prescriptions for how things ought to operate. Whatever organisms survive, they simpy survive as a matter of fact. The other die out. There’s nothing intrinsic in that system to produce objective moral laws. Social contracts are also wholy incapable of generating objective moral laws. They do not provide a foundational means by which creatures may call something objectively moral, especially not when fully volitional creatures employ reasons for their actions. Within naturalism, however, much social abstraction is added onto the basic building blocks of reality, namely survival and reproduction. Creatures may be hardwired to “act cohesively” to those ends, but this is nothing more than a means to an end. It is NOT an objective moral framework. It does not mean we have an objective frame of reference for moral laws and duties, it simply means those are the acts that will allow for mere survival and reproduction – it is nothing more than a means by which we may propagate our DNA. There is nothing meaningful beyond that. Truly objective moral laws must supersede mere conventions, and this ultimately means that they must transcend the mere processes that allow sentient creatures to operate.

Why Can’t Moral Values Be Subjective?

Now, one can concede premise one and argue that objective moral values and duties do not exist, falling into a subjective, relativistic moral ontology. Some people cite isolated indigenous tribes as an example of how a social order can be established by what appears to be moral standards relative to the rest of the world. However, no sane person in the West would accept that as a relative matter of fact if an isolated tribe were to be practicing public beheadings and cannibalism. Moral judgment is inevitable. This is why the reaction from most people is that those people are morally flawed, backward, or morally naive.

While some normative behaviors within specific groups promote some moral acts and demote others, there are fundamental principles of morality that are universal in their unsuppressed and most naked state. Now, whether or not groups or societies adhere to those guidelines is another story entirely. We do not need to be part of any group structure to identify certain things as wrong and others as right.

Why would my morality be any more superior than that of someone else, and why would the rest of the world try to impose its morality upon others? Why was Hitler’s Germany inferior in morality to that of the Allies who fought against it? If moral values and duties are relative, not only could we not hold Hitler accountable for his actions, but we should question whether or not we should have stopped him. The only logical reason to have done so would have to be to avoid the danger of extermination. Relative notions cannot be logically fought against. They are simply all equally valid. We could not logically stand up to anything or call it wrong since “wrong” is entirely relative and isolated within whatever arbitrary boundaries are drawn up for the entities to which they apply.

Why Be Moral?

The implications of insufficient justification for moral values within naturalism also cast doubt on whether moral action is a thing to be reckoned with. On naturalism, there is no adequate justification for why reasonable creatures should choose to be “virtuous” by some ultimately senseless standard against their desires and self-fulfillment if, at its core, all that exists can be reduced to particles in motion. Many famous atheists (Nietzsche, most notably) have also recognized this. In his brilliant novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote,

"If there is no God, then everything is permitted." – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Share on X

We can reasonably go a step further – if our existence is temporary and there is no God, it’s foolish not to be selfish, self-serving, unscrupulous, and take advantage of people and situations to better our situations and enjoy all that the material world has to offer. A stark contrast emerges, and wiping it away is not easy.

Moral laws and duties appear to be funneled into our conscience as an intrinsic universal moral faculty of the human mind that transcends the mind itself. They are provided by God and embedded into our being as a supremely wise indicator of rights and wrongs. That sense of “oughtness” presents itself even when we are preoccupied with the wrongs we are readying ourselves to commit. It does not appear to be the byproduct of a blind evolutionary process.

The mind is instinctively aware of the objective absolutes when it comes to morality. We rationalize our way to relativism, but the mind is not bound by relative moral laws. Rather, it is bound by objective ones, which are valid and binding regardless of whether or not anyone methodically holds to them. If there is no transcendent rule set, then objective moral laws cannot exist. To say that the Holocaust was objectively evil is to say that the Holocaust was wrong, even though the Nazis who carried it out believed that it was right. It would have also been wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and exterminated or brainwashed anybody who disagreed with them. Only an absolute objective, transcendent rule set can make any sense of an objective sense of “oughtness.”

Though he believes that morality is a byproduct of evolution, agnostic professor and philosopher of science Michael Ruse does agree that in a materialistic sense, it is illusory, 

“Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth… Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, [ethics] is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves… Nevertheless,… such a reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, and any deeper meaning is illusory…” ^IRuse, Michael, The Darwinian Paradigm: Essays on Its History, Philosophy, and Religious Implications (London: Routledge, 1989) 268.