A teenage girl came across my blog one afternoon and left the following comment:
I have a totally different view on the value of Christianity. Do we really need religion in this day and age? If you know the difference between right and wrong, why do you need religion? If you can show respect, why do you need religion? If you can make a positive difference in someone’s life, why do you need religion? What matters is how you treat someone. Put a smile on their faces. It’s that easy.
I’ve received many similar comments over the years. People often believe that Christianity is simply a system of moral rules (it’s not, but that’s another subject) and subsequently claim they don’t need that system because they already know the difference between right and wrong. Who needs a teacher when the subject has already been mastered?
Ironically, this claim proves too much. The fact that almost everyone recognizes that they innately know what’s right and wrong is a significant piece of evidence for God’s existence. This is called the moral argument. The moral argument makes the case that (1) objective moral values exist (that is, there are things that are right or wrong for all people, regardless of anyone’s personal opinion) and that (2) the existence of these objective moral values implies the existence of a moral authority (such as God). In other words, if there are certain moral “laws” that apply to all people—such as you shouldn’t kill someone for fun—then there must be a moral lawgiver with the authority to create those laws.
In this chapter, we’ll consider the two key questions addressed by the moral argument: (1) Do objective moral values exist? and (2) Where would objective moral values come from?
Do Objective Moral Values Exist?
Like the commenter on my blog post, most people assume there are things we all know are right or wrong. When a child is kidnapped or an innocent person is killed by gang violence, no one asks a friend, “Hey, what’s your opinion on what happened? Do you think that was a good thing or a bad thing?” We don’t ask because we assume others would make the same value judgment: these things are wrong.
If there are things that are indeed right or wrong, regardless of anyone’s opinion, then objective moral values exist. They are as much facts about reality as statements like “humans breathe air.” But is it possible that, despite what may seem self-evident, there is no objective morality? That actions such as kidnapping are actually neither right nor wrong, as much as it may make us cringe to admit it? That’s exactly what some people claim—that seemingly “objective” moral truths are simply an illusion. They believe we’re just so accustomed to our societal norms that we incorrectly assume objective moral values must exist.
Skeptics commonly point to two things to make the case that morality is subjective (relative to individual opinion) rather than objective. First, they say that cultures differ in what they consider moral. For example, some cultures have practiced senicide—the authorized killing of elderly community members. In other cultures, this would be considered immoral. Doesn’t that suggest that objective moral values, like “murder is bad,” must not exist? Not at all. Oftentimes, apparent moral differences between cultures reflect a difference in their evaluation of circumstances, not a difference in underlying values. Every culture agrees, for instance, that the intentional, unjustified killing (murder) of other humans is wrong. Cultures sometimes differ, however, on what justifies killing someone. In the case of senicide, cultures may justify killing their sick elderly as a loving act of mercy—something very different to them than murder. Many supposed moral differences between cultures are not actually differences in underlying moral values at all.1
For the sake of argument, however, let’s say we could find a culture that truly believes killing people at any time is acceptable. Would that prove objective moral values don’t exist? Again, not at all. Some people may insist that two plus two equals five, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an objectively right answer. Even if examples of true moral disagreement could be found, that doesn’t outweigh the fact that a core set of moral values runs throughout almost all cultures—evidence that strongly suggests objective moral values do exist.
The second way skeptics make a case against the existence of objective moral values is by attempting to demonstrate that our sense of right and wrong is just a by-product of evolution. This claim is one our kids are especially likely to encounter because they’ll hear it in biology classes. I experienced this recently when I taught an apologetics class at a nearby church. After the first meeting, in which we discussed objective morality, a teenage girl approached me to talk about her biology class. She said she had learned that evolution drives animals to cooperate and help one another because, ultimately, doing so aids in the survival of their species. If, for example, an elephant sees another elephant in distress, it may self-sacrificially come to the elephant’s assistance because doing so will help the group survive overall. The girl asked, “Doesn’t that explain why we think morality is objective? Aren’t we just conditioned to see certain things as right or wrong because those things have helped our species survive for millions of years?”
There are two things to understand about the claim that evolution explains our sense of morality. First, it assumes evolutionary theory is true. A discussion of the evidence for and against evolution is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it’s enough for our current purpose to say that the accuracy of evolutionary theory is not a foregone conclusion. And if evolutionary theory isn’t accurate, then neither is this claim. (For a discussion of what evolution is and the evidence for and against it, see part 5 of Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side.)
Second, it’s highly questionable to describe animal behavior in terms of morality. Dolphins, for example, are known for “random acts of kindness.” They’ve saved swimmers from sharks and have even guided stranded whales back to sea. But morality, as humans intuitively understand it, is not merely a description of what’s good and bad. It’s also a prescription of what we should or shouldn’t do. We don’t just say that murder is bad, for example; we say we shouldn’t do it. There’s a moral obligation attached. If we apply this same understanding to the animal world, we would have to say that dolphins should be kind to others. But no one applies moral obligations to animals. We see their actions as facts of their existence, not something appropriate for moral judgment (is there ever moral outrage when animals kill each other—or, for that matter, when animals do anything?). Even if evolutionary theory accurately explained how certain behaviors evolved to aid survival, it wouldn’t explain the jump to our human sense of moral obligation.
So can we prove that objective moral values exist? No. However, the weight of the evidence, based on our deepest human intuition and cultural observation, is that certain objective moral values transcend human opinion and are binding on all people.
Where Would Objective Moral Values Come From?
If objective moral values do exist, as we have good reason to believe, we must then ask ourselves where those objective moral values come from. In other words, to what or to whom do we have a moral obligation based on those values? Universal moral laws would logically require a moral lawgiver who has the proper authority to make such laws. As ethicist Richard Taylor explains, “A duty is something that is owed . . . but something can be owed only to some person or persons. There can be no such thing as a duty in isolation. . . . The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God.”2
This necessary relationship between the existence of objective moral values and a moral lawgiver is so clear that most atheists deny the existence of objective moral values in the first place. Interestingly, however, a few atheists do believe objective morality exists without God. Atheist neuroscientist and author Sam Harris argues, for example, that moral questions do have objectively right and wrong answers but that the source of those answers is science. In his book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Harris says, “Questions about values—about meaning, morality, and life’s larger purpose—are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures. Values, therefore, translate into facts that can be scientifically understood.”3 Some atheists point to Harris’s work to validate the idea that even if a case can be made that objective moral values exist, it doesn’t necessarily imply a moral lawgiver.
But let’s look more closely at what, exactly, Harris is saying. He defines morality as the “well-being of conscious creatures” and then says that science can tell us which behaviors are good and which are bad based on how those behaviors impact well-being. This is a redefinition of morality. Harris isn’t talking about what we normally call morality at all. He’s talking about what leads to creatures having the “best”—most comfortable—lives possible (and, of course, science can answer some of those questions).4 This is wordplay—not a case for the existence of objective moral values in the absence of a moral authority. Even many high-profile atheists have recognized the problems with Harris’s thesis and have publicly critiqued its multiple issues.5
If objective moral values exist, it’s extremely difficult to avoid the natural conclusion that the best explanation for those values is a Being consistent with whom we call God.
KEY POINTS
CONVERSATION GUIDE
Open the Conversation
Advance the Conversation
Apply the Conversation