God and Objective Morality: A Debate
By William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong


This article was given to me as a handout in a college ethics class, and was quite thought-provoking. I prefer natural philosophy to that of ethics, but the class reassured me that the philosophy of ethics is indeed a legitimate area of study and deserves our attention. -- Ryan Ries


God Makes Sense of Objective Values in the World

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If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. When I speak of objective moral values, I mean moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not. Thus, to say, for example, that the Holocaust was objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right and that it would still have been wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brain-washing everyone who disagreed with them. Now if God does not exist, then moral values are not objective in this way.

Many theists and atheists alike concur on this point. For example, Bertrand Russell observed,

Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at the University of Guelph, agrees. He explains,

Friedrich Nietzsche, the great nineteenth century atheist who proclaimed the death of God, understood that the death of God meant the destruction of all meaning and value in life. I think that Friedrich Nietzsche was right.

But we must be very careful here. The question here is not "Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives?" I'm not claiming that we must. Nor is the question: "Can we recognize objective moral values without believing in God?" I think that we can. Nor is the question: "Can we formulate an adequate system of ethics without reference to God?" So long as we assume that human beings have objective moral value, the atheist could probably draft a moral code that the theist would largely agree with.

Rather the question is: "If God does not exist, do objective moral values exist?" Like Rusell and Ruse, I don't see any reason to think that in the absence of God, the herd morality evolved by homo sapiens is objective. After all, if there is no God, then what's so special about human beings? They're just accidental by-products of nature that have evolved relatively recently on an infintessimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and that are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. On the atheistic view, some action, say, rape, may not be socially advantageous, and so in the course of human development has become taboo; but that does absolutely nothing to prove that rape is really wrong. On the atheistic view, there's nothing really wrong with your raping someone. Thus, without God there is no absolute right and wrong that imposes itself on our conscience.

But the problem is that objective values do exist, and deep down we all know it. There's no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world. As John Healey, the Executive Director of Amnesty International, wrote in a fund-raising letter, "I am writing you today because I think you share my profound belief that there are indeed some moral absolutes. When it comes to torture, to government sanctioned murder, to 'disappearances' - there are no lesser evils. These are outrages against all of us." Actions like rape, cruelty, and child abuse aren't just socially unacceptable behavior - they're moral abominations. Some things are really wrong. Similarly love, equality, and self-sacrifice are really good. But if moral values cannot exist without God and moral values do exist, then it follows logically that God exists.

We can summarize this argument as follows:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.


Again, let's consider the possible objections that might be raised against this argument.

Some atheist philosophers, unwilling to bite the bullet and affirm that acts like rape or torturing a child are morally neutral actions, have tried to affirm objective moral values in the absence of God, thus in effect denying the premise (1). Let's call this alternative Atheistic Moral Realism. Atheistic moral realists affirm that moral values and duties do exist in reality and are not dependent upon evolution or human opinion, but they insist that they are not grounded in God. Indeed, moral values have no further foundation. They just exist.

I must confess that this alternative strikes me incomprehensible, an example of trying to have your cake and eat it, too. What does it mean to say, for example, that the moral value Justice simply exists? I don't know what that means. I understand what it is for a person to be just; but I draw a complete blank when it is said that, in the absence of any people, Justice itself exists. Moral values seem to exist as properties of persons, not as abstractions - or at any rate, I don't know what it is for a moral value to exist as an abstraction. Atheistic moral realists seem to lack any adequate foundation in reality for moral values, but just leave them floating in an unintelligible way.

Further, the nature of moral duty or obligation seems incompatible with Atheistic Moral Realism. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that moral values do exist independently of God. Suppose that values like Mercy, Justice, Love, Forbearance, and the like just exist. How does that result in any moral obligations to me? Why would I have a moral duty, say, to be merciful? Who or what lays such an obligation on me? As the ethicist Richard Taylor pointed out, "A duty is something that is owed. . . . Here 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. The words remain, but their meaning is gone."

In the end, Craig himself says, "If someone really fails to see the objective moral truth about rape, then he is simply morally handicapped." This is no better (or worse) than saying, "Rape just is morally wrong."

Theists might give deeper accounts of morality, but atheists can adopt or adapt the same accounts - with only once exception. The only theory of morality that atheists cannot accept is one that refers to God, such as when theists claim that what makes rape immoral is that God commands us not to rape. This view faces a difficult question: Why should we obey God's commands? The answer cannot be that God will punish us if we disobey, since might does not make right. Even if a government commands you to turn in runaway slaves and will punish you if you don't, that does not make it morally wrong to hide runaway slaves. Some theists answer that we should obey God's commands because God gave us life. But our parents also gave us life, and yet, at least in modern societies, we do not have to marry whomever our parents tell us to. Theists might answer that it is simply immoral to disobey God, but that claim is no more illuminating than when atheists say that it is simply immoral to cause unjustified harm. A better answer is that God has good reasons for his commands. God commands us not to rape because rape harms the victim. But then that harm (not the command) is what makes rape immoral. Rape would be just as harmful without God, so rape would be morally wrong without God. To think otherwise is like a boy imagining that, once his parents leave, he may beat up his little sister, because the only thing that makes it wrong for him to beat up his sister is that his parents told him not to.

The basic point was presented long ago as a dilemma in Plato's dialogue, The Euthyphro. Is rape immoral because God commanded us not to rape or did God command us not to rape because rape is immoral? If God forbids rape because it is immoral, rape must be immoral prior to his command, so his command is not necessary to make it immoral. On the other hand, if God forbids rape but not because it is already immoral, God could have failed to forbid rape, and then there would be nothing immoral about raping whenever we want. That implication is unacceptable. Theists often respond that God cannot fail to command us not to rape, because he is good, and rape is bad. That response brings us right back to the first horn of the dilemma. If God's nature ensures that he will forbid rape because of how bad rape is, then God's command is not needed to make rape wrong. Rape is immoral anyway, and God is superfluous, except maybe for punishment or as a conduit of information.

This dilemma arises not only for rape, but for all kinds of immorality, God's commands are arbitrary if he has no reason to command one act rather than another; but, if he does have reasons for his commands, then his reasons rather than his commands are what make acts immoral. Divine command theorists think that they can solve this dilemma, but all of their solutions fail, in my opinion. Anyway, I don't need to claim that much here. My current task is only to refute Craig's argument, so all I need to show is that atheists can coherently believe in an objective morality. They can, and I do.