CalebGo Blog: July 2008

For many Christians, one greatest difficulties of telling the Gospel—or even just getting along with the world—is facing up to the admirable morality of the nonbelievers next door. As some say, “Work that into your theology.”

The typical naturalistic attempts to supply a why and how for morality, we’ve seen, come up short. But that doesn’t necessarily convince the people we talk with that God’s existence is the only satisfying explanation for objective morality. Atheists can be morally upright. People do construct fine ethical systems without God. Even so, we can point out, questions linger: “Why ought I to be moral at all?” “Why should I do the right thing if it doesn’t pay off?” “How did I get to be a moral being?” “Why do human beings have dignity and value?” At this point, we can argue that the God of theism offer solid grounding for moral obligation, accounting for number of facts that naturalism can’t explain.

We start by saying; there is not good reason to deny the general reliability of our most basic moral instincts. Humans intuitively know that certain objective moral values exist. For example, we know that kindness is a virtue and not a vice, that torturing babies is immoral, that child abuse is wrong, and that a person like Hitler or Stalin is morally repugnant. We know these things virtually without reflection, without thinking them through. While reason confirms the basic rightness of these intuitions, we don’t seem to know this by means of reason. And we regularly rely on these intuitions to make practical, everyday moral judgments. To deny such beliefs flies in the face of basic human knowledge and instincts.

If someone doubts these moral basics—someone, for example, who sees no ultimate distinction between a Hitler and a Mother Teresa – we can’t really hold a decent conversation about morality. Instead of trying to prove the evilness of evildoers, we should call into question that person’s mental health. Denying the objectivity of our moral intuitions is denying a deep part of our humanity, we can press the moral skeptic by making our point another way, we could say, “Most people would find themselves in confident disagreement with your attitude. Now, why is this? How would you explain it?

Second, God’s character explains the objective moral value that logically precedes our having a moral sense. Although the nontheist may believe that objective moral values exist without reference to God, there is an ultimate question: What underlines those objective moral values?

Here is an opposing argument made by atheist Kai Nielsen. He admits that a objective moral obligation exists. Though he maintains that naturalism can’t account for this, he won’t concede that theism offers a better solution to the problem. He presents the following yet, interesting argument. Suppose a parent who believes in God “abandons” or “loses” his faith in God. Is that parent going to love his child less—or not at all – because his supposed “basis for objective morality” is apparently lost? Of course not, Nielsen asserts. A parent would still maintain that it is objectively right to love his child even if God doesn’t exist.

Nielsen offers other evidence to deny that God is necessary to explain the existence of objective morality. He says that when Christians, for example, make moral judgments about God’s act and commands or about the superb ethic of Jesus Christ on the Sermon on the Mount, that implies a standard of goodness independent on whether God exists. To make moral assessments about God’s action or Jesus’ teaching presupposes the existence of an objective morality.

While I’ll admit this is a persuasive argument, however, it is flawed. For some reason when I say something is “flawed” it gets me excited, I don’t know why. Anyways, his argument rests on a confusion of being and knowing. The normal sane person certainly knows—or at least acts as though he knows – that objective morality exists. But here is the crucial question: How did we get to be that way—moral beings who recognize right and wrong? We have to be moral being before we can know what is moral. An atheist might suggest that if all humans—both those who believe in God and those who don’t—have correct, objective sensibilities, that fact implies moral intuition isn’t somehow rooted in God.

Nielsen, as an atheist and materialist, seems hard-pressed to show how randomness and chance can make sense out of moral obligation or human dignity. Getting back to the parent-child relationship, we have to ask how ewe could show love and sacrifice when it conflicts with our natural self-interest. Why resist selfish interests for the sake of the children? As the philosopher George Mavrodes has argued, a solely materialist universe might produce in us feelings and beliefs of obligation—like the protection of our children or the survival of our species or subculture—but that’s a different matter from actually having such obligation we ought to carry out. It truly seems odd that objectives moral obligation could arise in such a world.

In the third place, the connection between objective moral values and God has to do with God’s personhood and ours. Christians see an unbreakable connection between objective morality and God. If objective moral values exist, as even atheists like Kai Nielsen believe, it seems plausible to argue that a personal, transcendent, perfect God is the source of and ground for morality. We resemble God—created as valuable persons by a personal Being, divinely endowed with conscience, with a capacity for morally significant relationships, and with certain objectively correct moral intuitions. We are moral being because we have been created in the image of a moral God. Even those who don’t believe in God possess an ingrained moral sense that corresponds in some measure to God’s moral sense.

This explains how an athiest can know the content of morality without acknowledging God's existence. For instance, we read in Amos 1 and 2 that God threatens judgement upon the neighbors of Judha and Israel. Why? Because they have flagrantly violated an objective moral law that they knew and should have obeyed. Sytria treated its enemies barbarously (1:3); Philistia, with utter inhumanity, sold whole communities into slavery (1:6); Tyre broke a pact and treated Edom treacherously (1:9). The citizen of such nation should have known better.

In Romans 2:14-15, we read, Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law [of Moses], do by nature things required by the law, they are law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.

Scripture assumes that God has written this binding law on the hearts of people. Although the awareness of these objective standards is clouded by the Fall, a seared conscience, and social decline, this doesn’t mean people can’t form moral beliefs or act virtuously through God’s common grace to all.

Another indication that God is the basis for morality is the problem of evil. One of the most common objections to a nontheist’s belief in God is that evil exists—and that it exists in such vast measure. Why does God allow little countries to get hit again and again with disastrous tropic storms? Why does he let child molesters carry on their vile activities? Why would he permit large scale inhumanities to take place in an Auschwitz—or through the brutality of Soviet communism? Although those who raise this objection seldom realize it, the existence of evil and our grasp of the awfulness of evil cries out for an explanation. Even in a relativistic world, people are still struck with horror at human atrocities like genocide or gang rape. They get the distinct impression that evil really exists. Although the problems raised by evil are frequently marshaled against belief in God, an often-overlooked presupposition in the discussion of evil is God’s very existence.

What is evil? It isn’t simply chaos or pain or feeling bad. Real, objective evil is the lack or absence of goodness. That is, the presence of evil presupposes the existence of an objective moral standard that is being violated. If real evil exists, then an objective standard of goodness by which something is deemed evil must also exist. It is hard to see, given a naturalistic view of things, where this standard of goodness could come from if we are simply cosmic accidents produced by purely physical forces.

Theism answers questions that are problems for the naturalist: Why should we deem human being to be intrinsically valuable? Why should I sacrifice my brief life for another human being? Why should we take the moral point of view when it seriously conflicts with our own self-interest or does not satisfy us? Appealing to a social contract or pragmatic basis for acting morally doesn’t work. It tells us only that doing the right thing is, practically speaking, a good idea, but this hardly shows why we’re dutifully obligated to be moral. Rather, we act morally for moral reasons, because it is morally right to do so—just as we should believe the true thing because it is true. No further reason is needed. Nontheists can agree about such basic moral truths, but what are the grounds for these truths and human dignity?

Theism provides adequate answers to the question just raised. We ought to be moral because we have been made as moral being in the likeness of God, to whom we are also personally responsible as his creatures. Furthermore, knowing this God personally is the highest end of humans. When we are in right relationship with God, all other goods—which have also been created by God—find their proper place.

When we carry out our moral duties we approximate the character of the Creator, the ultimate Good, and function according to God’s design for us. We carry out the purposes for which we are made. We find self-sacrifice praise worthy because it fits these purposes and assume the intrinsic dignity of others. We experience guilt not simply because we have violated laws of the society or of the universe but because we have violated the ultimate Source of moral values—a personal God. And just as human relationships serve as motivation and basis for loyalty and obligation, so our having been created by God—and our relationship with him—serves as the source of ultimate obligations and one real basis for moral understanding of human relationships.

And to close this up, I’d like to give just a few pointers.

We should not confused our knowledge of ethical values (epistemology) with the basis for ethcis (ontology). While atheists may beleive in objective moral values, at issue is the fact that we are moral beings. The fact that we are made in God's image furnishes us with the basis for believing in objective morality and human value-- even if we reject God.

Our moral intuitions generallly reflect an objective moral order.

Most people believe in the intrinsic worth of human beings. Is more plausible explantion that we are nothing more than matter, or what we are made in God's likeness?

If people object to God's existence on the basis of evil, they are assuming that objective moral values exist. Evil presupposes a standard of goodness.

We can ask,"What kind of universe makes the best snese out of our moral intuitions, our sense of guilt, and our beliefe in the intrinsic value of persons-- naturalism or theism?"