The Moral Argument for God

The Moral Argument for God is another favourite of WL Craig. He sums it up here:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

Let us think about whether it actually holds water. First, I will note that the argument is valid - i.e., if we assume that premise 1 and premise 2 are true, then the conclusion must necessaily follow. But is the argument sound? Are the premises really true?

As evidence of premise 2, Craig offers the example of child rape being universally considered wrong.

Although you present your reservations as worries about (2), it’s evident that you agree that (2) is true, for you say not only that you are “morally repulsed” by child rape, but that you think “child rape should be universally condemned.”

But does it them follow that there must be an objective morality? The argument would seem to be that if there is an issue that all humans agree on, then that can only be because there is a universal standard somewhere, and the only place that universal standard can be is God.

Is it not possible that we all agree on an issue that exists in our own minds? For example, we all agree that two plus two is four. Do we need that fact to be in god? I see no reason to suppose we do.

Christian objective morality

The curious thing about this argument is that there is no such thing as a single Christian objective morality. If there was, Christians would universally agree on moral issues like abortion and homosexuality.

A few centuries ago pretty much all Christians thought slavery was moral, nowadays, no Christians do. While I applaud this change around - and recognise that it was Christians who made it happen - I have to wonder how that can happen if there really is an objective morality.

The Old Testament has several passages clearly condoning genocide. Christians today consider genocide to be morally wrong. If genocide is right when God wants it and wrong otherwise, that is the very antithesis of an objective morality.

Remember, Craig's argument is predicated on there being some moral issues that we universally agree on. And yet, when it comes to some big issues, like slavery and genocide, that is not true.

Despite that - and despite being an atheist - I do think there is likely to be an objective morality, so let us see premise 1 in more detail.

If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

Why must this be so? Is it not possible that moral values exist in the abstract?

Think about the rules of geometry. For example, the interior angles of a triangle always add up to the same value, which is exactly half the total of the internal angles of a quadrilateral, which is itself equal to the external angles of any triangle or any quadrilateral. These rules were not invented; they are intrinsic to the shapes. They were true before mankind discovered them. They will be found by any sufficiently advance races of extra-terrestrials. They exist in the abstract - they do not need a mind to store them, they just are.

Why can objective morality not be similar?

I could not find a web page where Craig supports his claim (he may well do so in one of books), so let us look at a couple of other web pages.

http://powertochange.com/students/uqmorality/

If there is no God it is difficult to see how there could be any objective foundation, any universal standard for good and evil. How do you get ethics from only different arrangements of space, time, matter and energy? A purely materialistic universe would be morally indifferent. We would have only individual or cultural opinion, but no objectively binding moral obligations!

Great. An argument from ignorance, followed by a baseless assertion. The author goes on:

But if God does not exist, the critical assumption that human beings are objectively valuable is not available.

Why is it not available? The author offers us no clues.


Here is a guy who tries to defend premise 1 on his own blog. He establishes morality is (at least in part) non-physical, then says:

To begin with, think of how truly bizarre nonphysical objective moral properties are on a naturalistic worldview (they are also rather strange on atheism, but let’s set that aside for the moment). A property like moral wrongness is a nonphysical property of unconditional oughtness (e.g. an action is morally wrong for subject S only if S ought not to do it) that somehow exists independently of human belief and perception of it. On naturalism this sort of objectively existing ought-property is rather strange, utterly unlike anything in the natural universe. And how is it on naturalism we could know that these nonphysical ought-properties are attached to actions in the physical world, like a man stealing a television having the nonphysical property of moral wrongness?

And yet atheists have no problem with abstract concepts like tomorrow, love, success, freedom. Do these seem "truly bizarre" to the author?

The properties of polygons, as discussed before, "somehow exists independently of human belief and perception of it". Is that "truly bizarre"?


Like much of apologetics, this argument is designed to reinforce the faith of the Christian, and not to convince the non-believer. Craig is preaching to the choir.