Of all the arguments for theism and attempts to prove a god exists, usually assuming it's their chosen favourite, the Moral Argument is probably the most powerful. I say powerful not convincing for several reasons. But first lets be fair and give a rundown of what that argument entails.
The arguement often put forward entails what is called 'objective' morality existing. This presupposes god existing automatically to justify what the theist is aiming for when he defines objective.
Basically it runs like this:
If objective morality exists, then it exists externally to mankind. Morality requires a mind to formulate and understand what is right and wrong and if it transcends all of man, then it must be a mind external and greater than mankind. This mind can only be God.
Since objective morality exists, then God exists. QED.
Some go further and say that their God is the personification of Morality itself, the source not only in revelation but in essense. God cannot be immoral or he would not be God. Being moral IS part of God's nature.
This is basically how it is commonly argued by apologetics like William Lane Craig or John Lennox.
They then say that atheists cannot have objective morals without God, and if they say they do have such morals they are either lying, inconsistant with atheism, or too ignorant to know what they are talking about. Such apologetics usually claim then that total subjective relativism on moral issues must be how atheists think to truly be atheistic.
They usually throw in a cavaet that they are not saying atheists cannot be moral but that they cannot justify being so if they are atheistic as they have no basis for it.
Often they also throw in social darwinism into the mix and even attempt to bring up Hitler or raping babies too.
Now for my response:
This has a vast amount of problems with it and has been discussed by philosophers for centuries, and like many theistic arguments, never really dies because its so complex while seeming simple and obvious, that most people struggle and handle it badly. I hope to give at least a solid attempt to deconstruct it.
First off, lets look at the icing on the cake comments about raping babies or Hitler and Nazi Germany. These are simply emotional assaults to put their opponent off guard and poison the well for rebuttals. Many atheists stumble a bit in sheer horror and outrage at these comments and certainly in a debate such comments are hard to ignore.
1. Social Darwinism has nothing to do with Atheism or Darwinian Evolution. So its a red herring. We can discuss that in another post.
2. The idea that if the the Nazi's won the war then it would be seen as subjectively ok to exterminate the jews because 'everyone' would see it the way Hitler did is wrong on many levels. One it is a simplistic view of a hypothetical outcome that ignores any factor outside of Hitler and some Nazi members thinking it was ok to murder Jews. Even if that happened the outcome presented is unrealistic and likely false. But even so it cannot be seen as subjectively 'right' because the JEWS would have disagreed. Its similar to the concept that if everyone thought that raping a woman was ok would it be ok to rape a woman. No, because the definition of rape means the woman objects, regardless of how many OTHER people think it was ok.
Its a strawman argument.
Now that we have dismissed the little adhomim attacks and emotional sabotage lets really look at whats left.
1. There is an equivocational fallacy here for the term objective. It is defined to retrofit a preconcieved conclusion and ONLY that narrow definition is allowed in the theist mind.
So what can 'objective' truly mean? Well it can mean any form of morality not dependant on a single individual or group or state of humans' personal whims. It can be hypothecially a course of moral decisions in potentia that leads to the most beneficial outcome.
Well can such concepts exist in an atheist's worldview? Well yes, if defined in such manners and not limited to the narrow and misleading theist definition of objective that requires a mind.
Many scientists do propose a mix of genetic and social contract obligations that transcend the individual or any group, and in some cases even the current species.
These ALL are objective yet not rigid and change as we evolve as a species and as a society, that can superseed personal agendas or political agendas. These impulses and reasoning exist regardless of personal choices so if understood and adhered to, or avoided, can be a form of objective morality.
Sam Harris has some excellent points about the landscape of morality and I think he is onto something.
2. Its a false dichotomy presented. Theists have presupposed that their objective morality already exists and the ONLY alternative to it is total subjective morality where every individual is justified in deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong and no one has any right to criticise anyone else. This of course is a very black and white view and is meant to force opinion into the theists favour. Who in their right mind would advocate for total relativism. Law and Order would break down. But there are, as discussed in No. 1 point, far more options than what is presented and so this is also a failure. They have to show that NO other option is available than the 2 offered.
They use deeply emotional statements about Hitler to obscure this and provoke an emotional outburst from their viewers and the opponent.
3. Now for the really sneaky part that is often something theists like to railroad over in any debate.
Is their objective morality actually objective if taken seriously and is it even morality at all.
This is often missed as atheists can be so busy defending not supporting total relativism that they forget that the whole argument is a smokescreen or a paper tiger.
So is it truly objective if a God makes the rules for what is right and wrong. Instead is it merely handing responsibility over to something external and not growing up and handling it ourselves? In some ways you could justify doing something similar if advanced aliens arrived on the planet. Is that truly objective or merely subjective to the alien or God and objective to humans. This is simply similar to a dictatorship where all power is given to one individual because he is seen as being better than anyone else for some reason. Certainly the bible shows that faith in God to be 'better' at being moral is questionable at best and suicidal at worst.
Is it even Morality in a secular viewpoint. Theists may use the words, but morality also requires responsibility for our actions and if that is taken out of our hands and given over to a third party, that is merely obeying divine mandate. Good is whatever a god says is good. Again the bible certainly seems to indicate that God considers murder, genocide, infantcide and rape 'good' if it suits his purpose and I have heard apologetics like William Lane Craig defend such actions AS GOOD as long as God commands it.
That should send a shiver down anyone's spine.
Now the extra bit I mentioned in green about Morality being God's nature is meant to counter this criticism of divine mandate. However it is simply an assumption without ANY basis in fact and can be dismissed in the same manner. The Bible clearly shows that God does ask some truly evil and immoral things to be done, so saying he is incapable of commiting an immoral act is playing a shell game with what morality means and involves circular reasoning (morality is what god is so therefore anything he does is moral by definition so immorality is impossible for him, but that means ANYTHING is permissible because it is MORAL because god did it.)
4. This is perhaps the most obvious of all but can be a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.
IF no god exists, or at least not a personal god that reveals itself to mankind then the version of objective morality proposed is nonsense and all the rules given by priests over the centuries from the thousands of religions were not objective but subjective to their own considerations. Indeed this is supported by the very fact that there are thousands of religions and they all have various and often conflicting 'objective' morality. Only the most primal laws have any commonality in many cultures, things like not killing your own tribe or not stealing from your own tribe are commonplace and it does not take much intelligence to see why any society might work those laws out for themselves without needing 'objective' guidence from a third party.
Even looking at the ten commandments there are multiple versions and protestants and catholics disagree on one of them. 4 of them are not even really morals at all but demands for submission and obediance to that god and one of them is not possible to fulfill (covet) and results in everyone failing and requiring forgiveness for an unavoidable thought crime.
5. Even if a god did exist, and objective morality exists and he was the source of it, even granting all that, theists still are no further than deism really. They have to prove that they have an avenue of FINDING these objective morals out from that God. What they have done of course is work backwards and hope that each point is cumulative, but the problem is that EACH point that builds from deism to a particular denomination of christianity has to be rock solid or ALL the points fail.
Only if a path of knowledge from a God is proven can it be known if objective morality truly exists otherwise its just an assumption.
Since all religions fail in their efforts to show that their 'objective' god exists, then there is no reason to consider their version of objective morality as anything more than wishful thinking.
Well those are my thoughts on the Moral Argument as commonly presented. I do not claim that my response deals with EVERY possible version of it, only those that I hear over and over again from well know apologetics.
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