Audio only:
In this episode Trent puts forward what he considers to be the most effective version of the moral argument for God’s existence.
The Disgusting End of the Slippery Slope
Mere Christianity and the Moral Argument for the Existence of God
God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning
Transcription:
Trent:
In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the best moral argument against atheism and to help us do that, I’ve asked non-theistic PhD candidate Joe Schmidt for Majesty of Reason to review today’s script to make sure all the philosophical ground is covered properly. First, we have to remember that just as there is no single cosmological argument for God’s existence and argument from the origin of the universe, there is no single moral argument for God’s existence. Instead, there are a collection of arguments that all agree there is something about morality, good and evil right and wrong, that points to the existence of God, and because of this, you’re going to have better and worse arguments. The absolute worst arguments are usually Reddit level summaries that most Christians don’t even use. These are arguments like you can’t be good without God or you can’t have morality without God.
But the moral argument is not saying belief in God is necessary to act in moral ways. That’s a bold claim given that there are many people who don’t believe in God that still act in moral ways, the argument would be better rephrased. You can be good without God, but you can’t have good without God That way we move the focus away from personal conduct and towards the strange properties associated with morality. The moral argument is also not making the simplistic claim that it’s impossible to have morality without God setting aside questions of ontological existence. You can have morality without God in the same way you can have football without God. Morality would just be a series of mutually agreed upon rules to make the game of life more enjoyable for everyone to play. A better summary would be that the moral argument claims you cannot have objective morality without God.
CS Lewis made this kind of argument famous in his book Mere Christianity, which was based on a series of radio addresses. These were meant for the common Englishmen during World War ii, which is probably why Lewis avoided more technical arguments like the cosmological contingency argument, which is contemporary Father Copleston used in his debate with Bertrand Russell. A few months ago, I published an episode surveying what 150 Christian Thinkers Catholic and Protestant thought was the best argument for God’s existence. The majority said the cosmological argument was the best, and I agree it’s the best logically that supporting a being with divine attributes existing, but often regular people’s eyes start to glaze over when you talk about contingency or the paradoxes of an infinite past for the universe. So the moral argument can be more helpful to share with regular people. CS Lewis began mere Christianity with the moral argument by describing people arguing over things like who deserves a seat on the bus, and that both people who argue in these cases appeal to some standard of morality that transcends their individual opinions.
Lewis also pointed out that even if cultures disagree about morality that supports his argument because that means there’s something objective for them to disagree about. He writes, if your moral ideas can be truer and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something, some real morality for them to be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. Lewis goes on to say his argument isn’t getting within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology, just so that it shows there is something which is directing the universe, but among philosophers and even laypeople, the moral argument can fall flat. First, moral philosophers point out that even if Lewis is right, that there are objective moral truths, God isn’t necessarily the best explanation of them.
John Beaver SLU and his book length Critique of CS Lewis says, other options include Platonism, Eris, essentialism stoicism, hedonism natural Law Theories Canteen Act, utilitarianism Rule, utilitarianism Act, deontology Rule, deontology Virtue Ethics. Eric Weinberg, the author of Value and Virtue in a Godless universe says A better explanation than God is that there are necessary moral truths statements about morality that are always true. For example, it’s wrong to cause pain for pain’s sake is something that is just always true, like how two plus two always equals four. You can see this brute fact approach and interactions between laypeople and Christians. When Christians ask, why is it objectively wrong to do something evil like rape or murder? Someone in response, the critic will say, because it’s bad to cause pain without a good reason and it’s bad to do bad things. The idea that morality is objective because there are objective truths about reducing suffering and improving the wellbeing of conscious creatures is the primary thesis of atheist. Sam Harris’ book The Moral Landscape. He says, science, the study of what is can prove morality or what ought to be in this way.
CLIP:
Now, it’s often said that science cannot give us a foundation for morality and human values because science deals with facts and facts and values seem to belong to different spheres. It is often thought that there’s no description of the way the world is that can tell us how the world ought to be, but I think this is quite clearly untrue, but values are a certain kind of fact. They are facts about the wellbeing of conscious creatures. Why is it that we don’t have ethical obligations toward rocks? Why don’t we feel compassion for rocks? It’s because we don’t think rocks can suffer.
Trent:
You see a similar pattern in this exchange between Charlie Kirk and Kyle Bevin that I covered in my previous episode,
CLIP:
That zygote is not capable of suffering as far as we know. Again, by what moral standard is that just your opinion? Where did you get that moral standard from? Because suffering is a bad thing. We all know suffering is a bad thing. That’s an objective fact, right? Hold on. Okay, so you do believe in objective morality. I believe that suffering is an objective negative, so if you can’t feel it, is it okay?
Trent:
So when Christians ask why is it wrong to cause suffering for no good reason, non-Christians might just look at them like they’re crazy for missing a self-evident fact about the universe, not the Christian has pointed out a flaw in their own worldview. Here’s an exchange between atheist Dean Withers and a caller that shows this.
CLIP:
Let’s say you’re right. I’ll grant that you’re right and he’s on the list and all the things, and you’re right about all the accusations you’ve been making. Why is it wrong that he did those things? Trump in particular, why is it wrong that he did those things?
Because child rape is wrong. Why
Can you answer that
Because you’re raping a child?
Yeah, and what is wrong about that?
Are you asking me why it’s wrong to rape children?
Yeah, I need you to tell me why it is wrong in your eyes
To rape children
To do that. Yes. Do you need me to repeat it?
I’m not going to give you more of an explanation than that because if I do need to give you more of an explanation than that, then you need to be on a list.
Trent:
I think Withers thought the caller was saying Trump being involved in an Epstein scandal is okay because maybe violating children isn’t wrong. That would be an insane level of idolatry on behalf of Trump. That would certainly belong in my previous episode on that topic if that’s what he meant, but I suspect the caller was trying to pull the rug out from under withers and say that he can’t complain about Trump allegedly being involved in violating children because Withers as an atheist cannot even explain under his own worldview why violating children is objectively wrong in the first place. The problem with this approach though is that it might have a hard time getting off the ground and getting over the response that, well, it’s just a brute fact or it’s self-evidently true that you ought not do such a horrible thing or that this is wrong or it may not be able to respond to the claim that morality flows from a thing’s objective nature apart from God as arguing in Kune Bergson and Schaeffer Landau new book, the Moral Universe.
So I’d like to offer a better approach. The best moral argument for God’s existence focuses on being modest and zeroing in on the most puzzling moral facts to explain from a naturalist perspective it’s modest in that it doesn’t try to say it will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that God exists. Instead, it says that God is the best explanation for many strange features about morality rather than just the generic concept of morality itself. In fact, it’s more of an argument about the moral poverty of secularism that opens the door for God than a strict argument for God for morality. For example, most people think murder is objectively wrong because it’s wrong to cause suffering for no good reason, and murder does that even if the person is murdered in his sleep, people would still cite the suffering to family members and friends or the frustration of the murder victim’s plans as objective reasons.
Murder is wrong, but suffering is a species neutral category. It’s more puzzling to explain why we should treat human beings who have less rationality and thus less capacity for suffering as being victims of murder, having intrinsic dignity than we would treat the killing of non-human animals like dogs that are more rational than some disabled or underdeveloped humans. In my debate with destiny on the whatever podcast destiny conceded that his worldview could not condemn in principle intentionally altering fetuses in the womb so that they could be used as brainless organ farms or even as toddler SEX dolls, Jeff McMahon, a respected pro-choice philosopher says it would be permissible to kill a healthy orphaned newborn to use his organs to save three sick children. McMahon admits most people will find this implication intolerable, and I confess that I cannot embrace it without significant misgivings and considerable unease. Now, many secular philosophers oppose and infanticide, but their reasons become species when they try to carve out an exception for abortion.
They often say infanticide is wrong because newborns are close to being persons or that other people would want to adopt these children or that killing newborns would make society more disrespectful towards human life arguments that also apply to unborn humans, which the critic would reject as reasons to condemn abortion. This is why some of the most consistent defenses of abortion bite the bullet on infanticide. Now, an atheist might say, having the potential to be rational is what gives us value apart from God, and so this explains why infanticide is always wrong even though it’s not wrong to painlessly kill more cognitively developed animals, but that wouldn’t explain why severely handicapped humans who will never be rational still have intrinsic value beyond all other animals, to which an atheist might say that merely possessing a rational nature even if a being will never engage in rational thought is enough to confer intrinsic dignity in human rights apart from God, to which I say, if you believe that, then you should be pro-life and oppose the direct killing of any unborn human being.
Since every human embryo in fetus has a rational human nature, but you might also be suspicious about the existence of this immaterial highly valuable property in a godless universe, especially since 91% of atheists identify as pro-choice and don’t seem to recognize it within their own worldview. The unique value of human beings, even the most disabled and helpless human beings in comparison to non-humans is puzzling under many forms of atheism, but it makes sense if all human beings are made in God’s image and are beloved by God. That would not justify mistreating non-human animals though because things like unnecessary factory farming or other things that cause pain for no good reason would be wrong. My point is just that morality consists of much more than this single basic truth. Indeed, theism provides grounds to care for all of God’s creation, including the non sentient parts that God entrusted to us and just like how you can take the wrongness of murder and reduce it to a set puzzling cases of killing that are hard for atheists to explain, you can take the wrongness of rape and reduce it to a set of puzzling cases of sexual evil that are also hard for atheists to explain.
Consider the following exchange between Andrew Wilson and Ama on the whatever podcast where they discuss sexual ethics. When Wilson brings up the morality of incest between two twin brothers, she admits it’s gross but has a hard time saying it’s immoral and she knows she just can’t say it’s immoral because it’s gross, because then she’d open the door to condemning all kinds of behaviors like sodomy or other sex acts and fetishes that many people also think are gross. The best you can come up with is that it might upset other family members, even though I’m sure Nima would have no problem with a person coming out as gay or trans even if it upset their family. So Wilson modifies his example.
CLIP:
Your whole family dies in a tragic accident except your twin brother, so now you can’t destroy them emotionally because they’re all dead. Is it okay or moral then to have a twin brother incestuous relationship based on your principle of bodily autonomy?
I guess if you’re not hurting anyone including yourself, then sure, but I don’t think that this negates the basic belief that bodily autonomy is a human right.
Trent:
I bet Wilson picked twin brothers because this evades other explanations for why incest is immoral. Many people will say incest is wrong because it harms people specifically, it causes children to exist who are more likely to have genetic deformities, and it often involves family members grooming young members and exploiting them through power imbalances even when they’re no longer children, but the genetic deformity argument doesn’t work because it’s not wrong for women to get pregnant over the age of 35 even though their children are more likely to have birth defects and it doesn’t work. In cases of same sex incest where the duo cannot reproduce and if their adult wins than they warrant a case, a case of grooming each other. You could even bring up real cases of genetic sexual attraction that occur when separated blood relatives meet for the first time as adults, and so there’s no grooming that happened when they were children and become attracted to one another. This isn’t as uncommon as you might think given that men who donate sperm to create hundreds of children often create situations where people fall in love with half siblings that they never knew existed. You can also pick examples of disordered sex acts involving non-humans. This includes consensual necrophilia or people allowing a partner to engage in sex acts with their dead body or consider this clip from the BBC saying that maybe we should help people with rape fantasies. As long as everybody consents
CLIP:
Idyllically sex positive world, someone is able to pay conscious women to come and be drugged so that I can get my kink out, my fetish on having sex with unconscious people. There’s a consensual way to do that.
Trent:
An atheist might say this is wrong because it makes people more likely to commit actual rape, but that’s an empirical judgment, not an argument that this kind of act itself is just wrong for its own sake because sex should not be used in this way or consider bestiality, which I covered in a previous episode that I’ll link to below. Many people say bestiality is wrong because sex requires consent and animals cannot consent, but most of these people eat animals without their consent on the whatever podcast I brought up the fact that you can’t work for the police unless you’re a consenting adult, but most people don’t morally object to police canine units even though that’s much more hazardous to a dog’s health than non-penetrating sexual acts of the human being. In the end, destiny and Jasmine had to bite the bullet and admit there’s nothing wrong with humans engaging in sex acts with animals.
Destiny even said the only reason he could consider it wrong was because he’s not religious, which after two hours of discussing really gross sex stuff, I briefly lost my composure because we’re not religious. So you think that no, you’re not saying you’re an insane person, and it’s not just shock streamers like destiny who will bite the bullet on this. Philosophers like Peter Singer have flirted with the permissibility of bestiality and said there needs to be a serious and open discussion on animal ethics and sex ethics. David Benatar, another respective philosopher says that if a person believes there is nothing immoral about casual sexual hookups, then they have no grounds to object to some forms of bestiality and necrophilia. Census. Beitar says animals are not always harmed by sexual activity with them, and living people can give consent to the use of their later dead bodies by necrophiles. Even some schoolchildren are being exposed to this filth
CLIP:
After a presentation at Renmark High School to year nine Girls last year allegedly referenced bestiality and incest presenters using the terms sister love and brother love, and my daughter comes home and feels uncomfortable hugging her brother because she’s confused about whether that’s because it’s her brother,
Trent:
But if you believe that God made the universe according to a very specific design, namely that he loves human beings, wants them to be treated as persons with intrinsic dignity regardless of their functional ability and that their sexual powers are meant for union with other humans outside their immediate family in order to create new families, then the moral wrongs of incest, bestiality and infanticide and growing brainless human beings makes perfect sense. Consider as much as you can, and I apologize, this has been gross for a while, the case of necrophilia I mentioned earlier most objections to this are rooted in disrespecting a body or a person after he’s died, which as Benatar notes are avoided if the deceased person senses the fact that relatives might disapprove shouldn’t be compelling since most critics wouldn’t care if family members disapproved of other sexual acts like sodomy. But what really strikes us to the core about why sex acts with animals, dead bodies, inanimate objects or people pretending to be unconscious rape victims, why it’s wrong is not because of what it does to the recipients sense harms like pain or infection can be reduced or eliminated.
It’s about the wrongness of misusing a particular biological process that has much, much more value than any other mere biological process. In fact, while reviewing this episode, Joe Schmid made the following comment to me. Here’s where we have a surprising area of agreement. I think a much better account of the impermissibility of non-pro sex acts than natural law theory is one that cites God specifically setting aside the sexual faculty as distinctively sacred with a life-giving and sacramental purpose and serving as an icon of the trinity. I will admit the following, while I do think there are non silly non-theistic accounts of why many of the non procreative sex acts you’ve covered are wrong, I admit that it’s difficult to explain why at least difficult in the absence of God. It’s not impossible to explain the wrongness of these acts from an atheistic view, but the explanations can get strained, so you might doubt that they’re plausible.
For example, an atheist might say there just happen to be very specific necessary moral truths related to bestiality or infanticide that are part of the fabric of a purely natural universe, but it starts getting a bit too coincidental that the universe also happens to be repulsed by the same thing that repulses most humans. In fact, there’s a common objection to moral realism. The view that objective moral facts exists beyond human minds rooted in the strange coherence between moral facts and evolutionary facts. Basically, evolution predisposes us to have beliefs that contribute to our survival, but many moral beliefs such as the wrongness of acts that don’t cause identifiable suffering or physical harm like the ones we previously mentioned, don’t contribute to our survival, but are still true moral beliefs. This is why so-called evolutionary debunking arguments say we can’t trust our moral code, which came from a mindless process like evolution, that it will also correspond to these abstract necessary moral truths that have always existed.
But instead of abandoning moral realism or think that we cannot trust our moral senses, we should take comfort in the fact that God gave us moral senses so we could rise above our merely animal natures. Even the famous atheist j Mackey said, objective, intrinsically prescriptive features IE truths that command us to do something regardless of whether we want to do it. Supervening upon natural ones constitutes so odd a cluster of qualities and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events without an all powerful God to create them. This is why Mackey denied objective moral truths and said that all claims about morality are false, a view called error theory. Of course, we might be mistaken about certain moral truths just like we could be mistaken about certain mathematical truths, but that doesn’t mean we are incapable of finding the right answer among our disagreements.
At the very least, I hope an atheist who is watching this will think clearly about these moral puzzles, and even if they don’t immediately move him to see God’s relationship to morality, hopefully these evils will be a motivation for him or her to move beyond a stunted as long as everyone consents or don’t cause unnecessary pain view of morality. An atheist could adopt a view like virtue ethics and read a book like After Virtue by Alistair McIntyre, which for an intellectual atheist might be more effective at helping him believe in God than all the apologetics books in the world. Although an atheist might say that theism is a solution that creates even worse problems. For example, if morality comes from God’s commands, then would it be right if God commanded Adam to marry his dog Steve rather than Eve? If it would still be wrong for Adam to do that, then that shows the wrongness of these perverted acts has nothing to do with God.
Well, God won’t command that we commit bestiality or grow brainless humans as organ farms, not because there’s a moral law above God that even he has to obey. God’s commands are good not because he’s powerful, but because he’s perfect by nature. That’s why the Catholic catechism says God’s almighty power is in no way arbitrary in God. Power essence will intellect, wisdom and justice are all identical. Nothing therefore can be in God’s power, which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect. Alright, now, consider this objection from atheist Walter sin at Armstrong. Even if theism is true, because some God exists that God still might not be loving, generous, just faithful or kind, except God by definition has all great making properties, including the morally great making properties. This fact is not arbitrary. It flows from God’s identity as the foundation of all reality.
St. Thomas Aquinas said that the reason God is the cause of all existing things and causes all potential things to be actualized is because God just is existence. He just is pure actuality, creatures receive existence from others, but God just is existence. This would be like how a locomotive on a train is motion analogously speaking and the box cars behind it merely receive motion from the locomotive. And if God is pure actuality itself or perfect being that lacks nothing, including not lacking the virtuous responses to all states of affairs, then God must be perfectly good because evil is not a positive thing. It is an absence of good or a particular good. God’s goodness is not an arbitrary fact about him. It flows from God’s nature that is established in the cosmological arguments I mentioned earlier as the perfect act of being itself. Now, there are objections to the privation view of evil, and I’d recommend David Berg’s book The Metaphysics of Good and Evil to address them and to bring this episode full circle.
CS Lewis had a similar view on evil when he said in mere Christianity that goodness is so to speak itself. Badness is only spoiled and there must be something good first before it can be spoiled. In fact, CS Lewis’s moral argument is highly underappreciated because the first chapters of mere Christianity merely lay out the clues that there is a moral law. And the remainder of the book shows that things like the desire for mercy and forgiveness show the moral law is not found in unforgiving platonic forms or in impersonal law like karma, but it’s found in that which is supreme love itself, the triune God of Christianity. For more on that, see Christopher Shocks article Mere Christianity and the Moral Argument for the Existence of God. Link below and if you like, a good introduction to a modest yet powerful set of moral arguments for God’s existence, check out David Badget and Jerry Wall’s book God and Cosmos Moral Truth and Human Meaning. So to summarize, when using moral arguments for God’s existence, I recommend focusing on Atheisms difficulty in explaining the wrongness of very particular immoral acts like objectifying non-rational humans or engaging in perverted, painless sexual acts and how the wrongness of these acts is what we’d expect if God existed and had a plan for the most important parts of human life. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.