The core theme is that the best moral argument against atheism is not about whether individuals can act morally without God, but rather that the existence of objective morality, particularly concerning puzzling moral facts like the intrinsic value of certain human lives and the wrongness of specific sexual acts, is best explained by the existence of God.
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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
Schmid from 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, an 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 onlogical 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
Englishman during World War II which is
probably why Lewis avoided more
technical arguments like the
cosmological contingency argument which
his contemporary father Coppelston used
in his debate with Bertrren 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 at 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 100 miles of the God of Christian
theology, just that it shows there is
something which is directing the
universe. But among philosophers and
even lay people, 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 Slooh
in his booklength critique of CS Lewis
says other options include Platonism,
oralianism, stoicism, hedonism, natural
law theories, canonism, act
utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism,
actontology, rule deontology, virtue
ethics. Eric Wheelenberg, 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 2
plus 2 always equals 4. You can see this
brute fact approach in interactions
between lay people and Christians when
Christians ask, "Why is it objectively
wrong to do something evil like rape or
murder someone?" In response, the
critics 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 well-being
of conscious creatures, is the primary
thesis of atheist Sam Harris's book, The
Moral Landscape. He says, "Science, the
study of what is, can prove morality, or
what ought to be in this way." 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's 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.
untrue.
But values are a certain kind of fact.
Okay? They they are facts about the
well-being 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.
>> You see a similar pattern in this
exchange between Charlie Kirk and Kyle
Beavenon that I covered in my previous episode.
episode.
>> You know that zygote is not capable of
suffering as far as we know.
>> So you're by again by what moral
standard? Is that just your opinion?
Where did you get that moral standard from?
from?
>> Because suffering is a bad thing. We all
know suffering is a bad thing. That's an
objective fact, right?
>> Hold on. So, okay. So, you do believe in
objective morality.
>> I believe that suffering is an
objectively negative.
>> So, if you if you can't feel it, is it okay?
okay?
>> 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 that 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.
>> 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? [laughter]
[laughter]
>> Because child rape is wrong. >> Why?
>> Can you answer that?
>> Because you're raping a child.
>> Yeah. What is wrong about that? What is
Are you asking me why it's wrong to rape children?
children?
>> Yeah, I need to I need you to tell me
why it is wrong in your eyes
>> to rape children
>> to do that.
>> Yes. Did you do you need me to repeat it?
it?
>> I'm not 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. 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 I may not be able to respond to
the claim that morality flows from a
thing's objective nature apart from God
as argued in Kuneo Bergen and Schaefer
Landau's 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 from 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 nonhuman 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 SCEX 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
infanticide, but their reasons become
specious 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 and 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 and 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-scentient
parts that God entrusted to us. And just
like how you can take the wrongness of
murder and reduce it to a set of
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 Naima 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 Naima
would have no problem with a person
coming out as gay or trans, even if it
upset their family. So Wilson modifies
his example. Your whole family dies in a
tragic accident except your twin
brother. So now you can't destroy them
emotionally cuz they're all dead. Is it
okay or moral then to have a twin
brother uh 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.
right.
>> 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 are 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 they're adult twins,
then they warrant an ever 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 nonhumans.
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.
consents.
>> Ideically sex positive world. Someone is
able to pay conscious women to come and
be drugged so that I can get my kink
out, my my fetish on having sex with
unconscious people. There's a consensual
way to do that. 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 beastiality, which I covered in
a previous episode that I'll link to
below. Many people say beastiality 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-penetrative
sexual acts of a 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
2 hours of discussing really gross sex
stuff, I briefly lost my composure.
>> Cuz we're not religious. So you think about
about
>> No, you're not insane. You're an insane person.
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
beastiality and said there needs to be a
serious and open discussion on animal
ethics and sex ethics. David Benitar,
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 beastiality and
necroilia since, as Benitar 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 school children are being exposed
to this filth. After a presentation at
Renmark High School to year nine girls
last year allegedly referenced
beastiality 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. 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, beastiality,
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
necroilia I mentioned earlier, most
objections to this are rooted in
disrespecting a body or a person after
he's died, which, as Benitar notes, are
avoided if the deceased person consents.
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 since 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-procreative 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 nonsilly, 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 beastiality 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 exist 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 wrongest 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 JL
Mackey said objective intrinsically
prescriptive features i.e. truths that
command us to do something regardless of
whether we want to do it supervening
upon natural ones constitute 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 beastiality 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 is 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." All right. Now,
consider this objection from atheist
Walter and 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 greatmaking
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 Oderberg'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 goodness. 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
an 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
Shock's article, Mere Christianity and
the moral argument for the Existence of
God, linked 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 Walls'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 atheism's 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
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