Consciencebound

The moral argument for the existence of God is something that is often brought up by believers.  Indeed, it has a lot of force to it and has been a question that has made me think considerably over the years as i have lost my faith.  I would like to take some time laying out some thoughts of mine on this argument over a few different posts.  There are different angles to deal with this subject and there are many things to consider.  My articulation of it may be a little disjointed and at some later point I may bring it all together in a more systematic way but I at least wanted to start writing to help me think it through.

Briefly stated, the moral argument of God is:

1. Some aspect of Morality (e.g., its objective force) is observed.
2. Belief in God provides a better explanation of this feature than various alternatives.
3. Therefore, to the extent that (1) is accepted, belief in God is preferable to these alternatives
   

The strongest force of this argument (in my opinion) is that it seems that we all TALK and FEEL as if morals are objective and absolute.  That is, that they are applicable to all people of all times.   Atheists and Religious people alike call things “wrong” or “bad” or “evil” and we speak in a way that suggests that everyone OUGHT to believe these same things are wrong (or right).

I personally FEEL as if morals are absolute and are not variant (at least the big ones).  I FEEL as if my moral convictions are not preferences but are timeless truths which we have no control over whether they are true or not.  I also FEEL as if this is something that has to be explained from whatever “world view” a person comes from.  Accounting for this seemingly obvious reality should not be taken lightly and is something that admittedly has kept me up at night thinking about it.

HOWEVER…  at times I have questions about what I thought was an obvious assumption to make.

Question #1.  If we are reasoning FROM morals TO God then shouldn’t the morals that we have all be the same?

As we look around the world at different cultures and different religions, we find many similarities of moral convictions. But we also find many differences.  Even if we look only at western culture, we see much disagreement about what exactly is right and what exactly is wrong.  What is even more telling, is that we can look even closer into western culture and examine one religion, Christianity, and we will find people still disagreeing over what is wrong and what is right.  And they all feel very strongly about their particular positions. Some examples of differing opinions of morality are the following:

- Is killing always wrong?  Some say it is ok to kill as punishment for certain crimes,  to kill in war, to kill in self defense etc.  Others say it is never right to kill even if your own life is at stake, that killing as punishment is in fact evil, and killing is war is always wrong.

- Is Sex Good or Bad?  Some say it is only good between two heterosexuals in the context of marriage.  Others say it is ok out of marriage and ok for homosexuals both in and outside of marriage.

-  Is it good to help the poor with tax money?  Some say it is evil not to help the poor with tax money and some say it is evil to steal  money from one person to give to another no matter how poor they are.

- Is Abortion Wrong?  Even those in the church disagree on this.  Some say it is not wrong to terminate a pregnancy since it is only a small collection of cells with no nervous system(at least in early development).  Others liken the abortion of a 1 day old fetus to the Nazi Holocust and think it is one of the greatest evils of our world.

These are only a few examples that I could think of while writing this but I am sure you can think of many more.  In fact, I don’t think there exists a moral issue that does NOT have major disagreement on it.  Why would this be if God had given a moral law to all human beings that we all internally know?  But more to the point of this post, how are we reasoning FROM morality TO a God if such disagreement exists?  I am well aware of the explanations that people have from a religious point of view to explain the differences of morality but that is not the point of the moral argument.  The moral argument for God is an argument that is rooted in an observation of our human experience and then reasons from this observation to the necessity of a God which is supposedly the only way that our human experience can be explained.  And as I said above, there is a certain force to this since we all FEEL as if OUR moral convictions must be not only true for us but also true for everyone else.  The problem for me comes when I take a second look at our human experience and see that we all in fact do not have the same morality and so I honestly don’t see how this is an argument for anything at all, let alone God.

I have a pastor friend who says that it is not WHAT we feel is moral but THAT we feel our convictions are moral which is what points us to God.  That is, it is the presence of strong conviction, no matter what it is about, which is the argument for God.  But here again, I just fail to see how this is the case.  It seems more likely that our feeling of strong conviction about our differing moral beliefs is a psychological need that we have for certainty.  It gives us comfort and we like to be strong in our beliefs.  You may have heard someone say, “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything”.  As if taking a stand was what is important no matter what you were standing for.

This is a topic that I still think long and hard about and as I said before, my inclination and conviction is that there is objective morality.  But the thoughts raised in this post is what makes me question whether there really is an OBJECTIVE morality.  At least not one that we seem to be able to know.

Jeff

Similar Posts:

• A Look At The Moral Argument for God: Part 2
• Questioning God’s Moral Character
• Conversation with Hitler on Morality
• Book Review: The Language of God by Francis Collins
• Happiness is a Moral Obligation?
• A Skeptical Look at the Bible
• Who Would You Rather Trust: God or Man?