Ten Minas Ministries

MORAL ARGUMENTS AND THE CHARACTER OF GOD
 

            When people argue, everyone believes they are “right” and the other person is “wrong.”  But in calmer moments some wonder whether “right” and “wrong” actually exist or are figments of the imagination.  Many philosophers believe “right” and “wrong” are rooted in objective moral values.  In fact, some contend that on the basis of morality we can deduce the existence of God.

 

Different Variations of Moral Arguments

 

            There is no one “moral argument” for God’s existence.  Varying formulations have been proposed, but they share a common core.

The Highest Good
 

            Immanuel Kant advanced perhaps the most well known moral argument.  Kant denied that the senses provide knowledge of things as they actually are.  People apply a priori concepts (called “categories”) to their sensory input to make order of what they perceive.[1]  However, they can never be certain that their understanding accurately reflects the true nature of things because it is gained through the “lens” of the categories.

            Moral reasoning is also based on an a priori principle (like the categories),[2] the categorical imperative: “[A]ct that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle of universal legislation.”[3]  To live consistently, humanity must presuppose the existence of a moral law.  From this presupposition, reason can derive the categorical imperative as the basis for all morality.[4]

            Kant believed the highest good that could be adopted as universal legislation was the distribution of happiness in proportion to virtue.[5]  Those who are the most virtuous should live the happiest lives and vice versa.  Furthermore, people ought to pursue this highest good.[6]  To say that someone ought to pursue something, though, implies that it can be achieved,[7] and happiness and virtue do not appear to be necessarily connected in the natural world.[8]  Therefore, people must assume that a being capable of uniting happiness and virtue exists; i.e., God.[9]

            Kant’s argument does not claim to demonstrate that God actually exists, only that people must assume he exists in order to live consistently with the moral law.  Other varieties of the moral argument, however, advance a bolder conclusion.
 

Maximum in a Genus

 

            Thomas Aquinas advanced a number of arguments for the existence of God, including a moral argument.

Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble, and the like.  But more and less are predicated of different things according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum. …  Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus. … Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.[10]

Aquinas seemed to assume his audience would agree that an objective standard of morality could come only from God.  Other philosophers, however, have not granted this assumption, leading to moral arguments that addressed this question more directly.

Intrinsic Moral Worth

             Starting from the premise that all people possess intrinsic worth, Stuart C. Hackett arrived at a personal and transcendent source.[11]  He reasoned as follows:

(1) All people possess intrinsic moral worth.
(2) That worth cannot find its source in any one person or even in the community of people as whole.[12]
Therefore, there must be an ultimate and absolute source of intrinsic worth.

Hackett then argued that this source must be personal:

(1) Moral obligations, by their nature, apply between persons, not things.
(2) These moral obligations find their origin in the ultimate and absolute source of intrinsic worth.
Therefore, the source of intrinsic worth must also be personal in order to be the source of personal moral obligations.

            While this argument has much to commend it, a simpler version is more useful when evangelizing outside of a scholarly setting.
 
Objective Moral Values
 

            C.S. Lewis proposed an argument that reasoned directly to God from the existence of objective moral values.  All people, at least in practice, accept the existence of a moral law.  In order to be truly objective, though, this law must find its source in something above the laws of nature.  Therefore, something transcendent must exist behind it.[13]

            Ravi Zacharias advanced basically the same argument but in a simple syllogism:

(1) Objective moral values exist only if God exists.

(2) Objective moral values do exist.

Therefore, God exists.[14]

The simplicity of this argument is perhaps its greatest asset.  The logic is easy to follow, even for someone without any philosophical training.  Therefore, if it is to be attacked, the premises must be challenged.

 

Criticisms of the Lewis/Zacharias Argument

 

            Critics of this argument must either contend that objective moral values can exist without God or do not exist at all.  Skeptics have attempted both approaches.

Can Objective Moral Values Exist Without God?
 

            In order to defeat the argument’s first premise, objective moral values must find their origin in something other than a transcendent God.  A number of theories have been advanced, but three of the most popular are Kantian, Aristotelian and Utilitarian.

            Kant believed that moral rules were derived from the categorical imperative, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”[15]  Ultimately, though, his theory fails to adequately define the content of moral rules.  “Do not lie,” begs the question of whether society could truly wish that this be a universal law when, for example, a would-be murderer asks which direction his potential victim fled.[16]  The rule could be expressed as “Do not lie unless an innocent life is at stake,” but this invites infinite qualifications.  “[F]or any action a person might contemplate, it is possible to specify more than one rule that he or she would be following; some of these rules will be ‘universalizable’ and some will not.”[17]  The “trouble with all these noble maxims is that they need Mishnaic or Talmudic types of interpretations, and each can easily die the death of a thousand qualifications and still be universalized.”[18]

            In contrast, Aristotle’s ethic hinged on moderation, arguing that in all matters (virtue included) any excess or deficiency is equally undesirable.

The man who shuns and fears everything and never makes a stand, becomes a coward, while the man who fears nothing at all, but will face anything, becomes foolhardy.  So, too, the man who takes his fill of any kind of pleasure, and abstains from none, is a profligate, but the man who shuns all (like him whom we call a ‘boor’) is devoid of sensibility.  Thus temperance and courage are destroyed both by excess and defect, but preserved by moderation.[19]

  The moral norm is found in the mean between two extremes.

            J.L. Mackie, however, showed that Aristotle’s theory (like Kant’s) fails to provide an accurate method to define moral rules.[20]  “Goodness” cannot be expressed as a mathematical sum, nor can any other virtue or vice.  The statement “morality is found in the mean” is empty without guidance on how to establish that mean in such a nebulous system.

            John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism explained that theory in terms of the “Greatest Happiness Principle.”[21]

According to the Greatest Happiness Principle … the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable … is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality. … This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality.[22]

            Mill had a backward understanding of the role happiness plays.  “Happiness is not something that is recognized as good and only sought for its own sake, with other things appreciated only as means of bringing it about.  Instead, happiness is a response we have to the attainment of things that we recognize as goods, independently and in their own right.”[23]

            While some modern Utilitarians base their theories in something other than happiness, they still look to consequences.  But some types of consequences should be unworthy of consideration.  The pleasure of a Peeping Tom, for example, should have no moral value.  The victim has a right to privacy and no amount of twisted pleasure should be capable of overcoming that right, whether or not the victim is aware of the intrusion. Utilitarianism leaves no room for personal rights and therefore cannot be an accurate account of morality.

            Non-theistic rationalist arguments as a whole confuse ontology with epistemology and thereby commit the genetic fallacy.[24]  Any theory that bases morality upon human reason can at best show how people arrive at their particular moral convictions (i.e., epistemology).  It cannot show that these beliefs are the sum total of what is ontologically true.

            C.S. Lewis has suggested that the act of reasoning itself points to a transcendent source.  The word “because” can convey a cause/effect relationship (the branch moved because the wind blew upon it) or a ground/consequent relationship (my child must be sick because she is not eating).  The former demonstrates how one thing leads inevitably to another while the latter posits a justification.  The laws of nature explain phenomena only on a cause/effect basis.  The act of generating a thought occurs within nature.  Therefore, thoughts should be completely determined by pre-existing causes.  But people believe they have the freedom to generate their own thoughts.  This belief can only be justified if the ability to reason finds its source in something other than the blind forces of nature.[25]

            Of course, the failure of other theories to explain objective morality does not mean that a divine theory fares any better.  The theist has an affirmative responsibility to show that theism offers a rational explanation for objective values.  This explanation lies in “Divine Command Theory.”[26]

            Every moral law contains both substance and imperative.  Consider the simple rule “People ought to be good.”  There are two aspects to this command: (1) the quality which it conveys (i.e., “goodness”), and (2) the order to exemplify that quality (i.e., “ought”).  The former is the substance of the moral law.  The latter describes the imperative.  An adequate theory must explain both.

            According to classic Divine Command Theory, “ethical wrongness consists in being contrary to God’s commands.”[27]  In a viable theory, however, the commands of God provide only the imperative, not the substance.  The substance of morality is found in God’s character.  For example, there is a quality exhibited within God’s perfect character that can be described as “goodness.”  This and other similar qualities within God form the substance of morality.

            Just because God exhibits a certain moral quality, however, does not mean that humanity is under any obligation to imitate him.  In Divine Command Theory the imperative of the moral law comes from God, the transcendental source of morality, issuing commands obligating us to mirror certain qualities that exist within him.

            Some critics blend the two halves of divine command theory and claim that morality is arbitrary if its substance comes from God’s act of issuing commands; e.g., God could have commanded evil to be good.[28]  However, it is God’s immutable character, not his act of issuing decrees, which provides the objective source for morality’s substance.[29]  Therefore, theists have a viable foundation for objective morality.  In the absence of competing alternatives, the first premise appears sound.

Do Objective Moral Values Exist?
 

            If skeptics cannot succeed in offering an alternative source for objective values then they must argue that all morality is relative.  Based upon the existence of both good and malice, David Hume claimed that the first cause of the universe had no moral quality whatsoever.

There may be four hypotheses framed concerning the first causes of the universe: that they are endowed with perfect goodness, that they have perfect malice, that they are opposite and have both goodness and malice, that they have neither goodness nor malice.  Mixed phenomena can never prove the two former unmixed principles.  And the uniformity and steadiness of general laws seem to oppose the third.  The fourth, therefore, seems by far the most probable.[30]

            Atheist J.L. Mackie conceded that objective values would give strong support to the existence of God, but he therefore rejected moral objectivity.[31]  Mackie argued “it is easy to explain this moral sense as a natural product of biological and social evolution, rather than as having been implanted in us by an Author of nature.”[32]

            Richard Dawkins agreed with Mackie that the illusion of objective morality can be explained by natural selection.  According to Dawkins, altruism toward kin is the result of gene pools that favor such behavior within the family group.[33]  Altruism toward those outside the family can be explained as the outgrowth of “reciprocal altruism.”

‘Always be nasty’ is stable in that, if everybody else is doing it, a single nice individual cannot do better.  But there is another strategy which is also stable. (‘Stable’ means that, once it exceeds a critical frequency in the population, no alterative does better.) … ‘Start out being nice, and give others the benefit of the doubt.  Then repay good deeds with good, but avenge bad deeds.’ … [G]iven a population dominated by reciprocators, no single nasty individual, and no single unconditionally nice individual, will do better.[34]

If Dawkins is correct and morality is nothing more than society’s response to gene pools that have reached “critical frequency” then objective values do not exist.

            Again, however, evolutionary theories commit the genetic fallacy.  Even if people arrive at moral beliefs through an evolutionary process, objective moral values may still exist.  Perhaps the biggest obstacle for subjectivists, however, is that their theories are unlivable.  Nobody acts as if morals are matters of personal taste.

While the claim ‘There are no absolute values’ is not self-defeating, the existence of absolute values is practically undeniable.  For the person who denies all values, values his right to deny them.  Further, he wants everyone to value him as a person, even while he denies that there are values for all persons.  … In other words, even those who deny all values nevertheless value their right to make that denial.[35]

As C.S. Lewis observed, someone who says another person is “wrong”

is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him.  He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about.  And the other man very seldom replies: ‘To hell with your standard.’  Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse … It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. [36]

            Subjectivist theories (especially those based upon natural selection) also fail to explain how moral beliefs came into being in the first place.  For example, Dawkins does not defend how a moral value could reach “critical frequency” when at any lower level it would be detrimental to the survival of an organism and therefore eliminated.  “This will preserve society cannot lead to do this except by the mediation of society ought to be preserved,” [37] which is circular reasoning.  For Dawkins to be correct, an altruistic norm must inexplicably jump into being at critical frequency.

            Moral convictions also cannot be the result of natural instinct.

[T]o be prompted by instinct… means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way.  And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person. … But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. … But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help. … Now this thing that judges between the two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them.[38]

Lewis argues that even if an instinct to preserve humanity exists, instincts are in conflict and override one another.  Why should we follow this instinct at the expense of others?  Any attempt to describe it as higher or nobler is smuggling in an ethical prerogative.[39]

            Reason cannot answer all of life’s questions.  Any syllogism requires starting premises.  A skeptic could ask for each premise to be supported.  If a new syllogism is formulated to support the premises of the first, the skeptic could ask for the premises of that new syllogism to be justified, and so on ad infinitum. The result is an eternal regression of justifications.  Inevitably, any reasoning process must begin with an assumption. Some beliefs must be “properly basic” to form a starting point for reason.[40]  Because everyone in practice presupposes objective morality, and because moral theories without a transcendental source can never rise higher than epistemological explanations, C.S. Lewis proposes that the existence of objective values be that starting assumption.[41] “[I]f nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.”[42]

 

Conclusion

 

            Objective moral values exist only if God exists.  Objective moral values do exist.  Therefore God exists.  Divine Command Theory provides a solid foundation on which to rest objective moral values whereas all non-theistic theories have failed, giving support to the first premise.  The existence of these values is assumed by all people whereas pure reason can at best rise to the level of epistemology, leaving the question of ontological truth unanswered.  Therefore, the second premise is a necessary presupposition in order to hold a philosophy consistent with the manner in which all people live.  Given the support for both premises, the conclusion naturally follows: God exists.

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