The Moral Argument

There are a variety of arguments offered that prove the existence of God. Well, of course, "prove" is an overly generous term, but you get the idea. Lots of people have lots of reasons available to rationally conclude that there is indeed a God. You have the Argument from Efficient Causality, the Design Argument, the Argument from Miracles, the Ontological Argument, the Kalam Argument ... the list goes on and on. Peter Kreeft offers Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God. Philosophyofreligion.info includes the Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument, and the Argument from Religious Experience. And, of course, there's Pascal's Wager.

Included in these lists is the Moral Argument. This one goes something like this: Since there is a common moral code in all humans, there must be a common moral code giver (so to speak) that is outside of humans. Kant, the philosopher who brought us Critique of Pure Reason, a book aimed at arguing that you cannot prove the existence of God, also argued that there must be a God if morality has any purpose. That is, if there is any real "good" and "bad", there must be a Lawgiver and there must be Ultimate Justice, both requiring ... God.

Now, I have to be honest. I've never really been a fan of the Moral Argument. I mean, look around you. Can you actually claim some sort of common morality? I say that homosexual behavior is sin and I'm rapidly becoming a minority. We claim that murder is wrong, but there are people who consider it a virtue. Pull up the most heinous crime you can imagine and it will be inevitable that there will be those who don't find it so bad at all. Common moral code? I think not.

Interestingly, I've become more convinced of this argument of late ... because of atheists. Yeah, that's right. An argument offered to those who don't believe in God not well received by one who does is being solidified by those who don't believe. Interesting, isn't it? (Well, at least to me ... but I come from the Land of the Easily Amused.)

Here's the thing. The most common, almost exclusive argument offered by atheists¹ is the problem of evil. From Epicurus in 3 B.C.:

Either God wants to abolish evil and cannot,
or he can but does not want to,
or he cannot and does not want to,
or lastly he can and wants to.

If he wants to remove evil, and cannot,
he is not omnipotent;
If he can, but does not want to,
he is not benevolent;
If he neither can nor wants to,
he is neither omnipotent nor benevolent;
But if God can abolish evil and wants to,
how does evil exist?

I am not here to argue with Epicurus. I'm only pointing out how atheists are convincing me that the argument for the existence of God from morality is better than I originally thought. You see, what is assumed here is "evil". This atheist argument falls apart without the reality of good and evil. But good and evil don't exist without a standard, and that standard must be universal or the argument is meaningless. Thus, the atheist argument demands a moral Lawgiver in order to prove that no such Lawgiver exists.

Second to this is the sister argument, "How can a moral God behave immorally?" They will point to such things as the biblical accounts of annihilating a group of people or biblical slavery and such and say, "See? We all know these are immoral, so your God cannot exist because He did them." But, again, we're stuck with an a priori argument -- "We all know these are immoral."² And, again, the atheist is arguing for a universal moral code while arguing against any possible source for such a code.

There are lots of reasons I believe in God. I don't need the tricked out, fancy approaches. I like some of them -- don't get me wrong -- but I don't need them. But the more the anti-theist protests against God on the basis of morality, the more convinced I become that God exists and the Moral Argument is a good one. Thanks, atheists. That's helpful.

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¹ Remember, an atheist is one who believes there is no God. It is a positive statement. Agnostics don't know. They can safely say, "I don't know if there is a God" without making an argument. But an atheist by definition claims, "There is no God." Since it is a claim, it must have an argument. This is their primary one.

² In truth, this is one of the most popular arguments of skeptics of all stripes -- even theistic ones. God doesn't do what we declare to be right or just, so God is in error. It is perhaps one of the most popular "deconversion" arguments around. "God doesn't do what I believe to be right, so God is wrong."