A Probabilistic Moral Argument for God's Existence

It’s been a while since I’ve had time to write anything; I usually prioritize reading in my free time. And I’m still planning (theoretically, anyway) to continue the series on a Christian theology/philosophy of aesthetics. This post, though, will be on something different — the moral argument for God’s existence.

There are several (probably more) versions of the moral argument. Here’s a transcendental formulation, defended by thinkers like John Frame, Greg Bahnsen, and Doug Wilson:

If atheism is true, there’s no such thing as objective right and wrong. But clearly somethings are moral and some things aren’t; therefore, atheism isn’t true (i.e., God exists).

This argument is, I think, quite strong. But there’s one detail which has bothered me. You see, the key argument against atheistic sociobiological (I love that word…) theories of morality is this — why are we obligated to care about the interests of society? If morality is defined as that which is approved by, or advantageous to, society, why should we care? And this seems good on the surface, except that it leaves the door open to the atheist to ask why we should care about what God commands.

Now, intuitively, one could say that the analogy is inherently problematic, because God has the authority to command such things, being totally transcendent, but society does not. True enough, but how can this be proven to the atheist? It’s not as easy to prove as it is to grasp intuitively.

Neither would the atheist be persuaded by an argument based on God’s power and the consequences of immoral actions (eternal damnation), for this gives morality a purely pragmatic foundation: we act rightly only because it is advantageous to us (in our eternal state). Atheists can argue pragmatically, too: perhaps actions are moral because they benefit society and/or us in this life; the argument goes both ways. Besides, this approach isn’t even correct from a Christian perspective: in a hypothetical world where all (believers and unbelievers) simply ceased to exist at death, this wouldn’t negate our moral responsibility to obey God. No, the foundation for morality is more fundamental than mere pragmatism.

However, there is a solution. To see this, let’s back up and examine the atheist’s objection more closely. If morality is indeed objective, there must be some objective standard against which some things are declared right and others wrong. Otherwise, it’s merely a matter of personal opinion, and few atheists would say that rape, or genocide, or slavery, or child sexual abuse are merely matters of personal taste. But is this standard reason, or society, or some platonic ideal, or God, or something else altogether?

Let’s set aside this question for a moment and return to the atheist’s objection. If the question “Why should I care about what God wants?” is equally valid as the question “Why should I care about what society wants?” plausibly, regardless of the standard in question, one could ask, “Why should I care about the standard?” More precisely, for any standard S, someone could ask, “Why should I obey S?” The only way to avoid this question is to embrace moral nihilism, and, as C.S. Lewis notes, hardly anyone does this.

This really applies to any axiom. “Why is the law of noncontradiction true?” The answer is simply “because it is; by its own nature.” “Why does 1 + 1 = 2?” “Because it does.” “Why should I do the right thing?” “Because you should.” You simply can’t go deeper than your foundation; it’s impossible. Because something more foundational than your foundation would be your real foundation.

However, this seems to imply that there’s no way of resolving the debate. Atheists make society their ultimate standard; Christians submit to God. Where do we go from here? By examining the implications of the opposing standards.

This may be an oversimplification, but let’s say we have four possible secular foundations for right and wrong: pure reason, Platonism, social convention, and benefit to society. Let’s examine each in turn.

Pure reason:

Some thinkers have argued that moral truths may be based solely on reason. But clearly, there must be criteria for determining which actions constitute moral actions, and usually these criteria reduce to “morality is that which human flourishing,” or something along those lines. The criteria for causing human flourishing can then be determined using reason. This category would thus be subsumed under the “benefit to society” option.

Platonic idealism:

Plato noticed that logic and ordinary language depend on universals. How can we say, for instance, that a particular object is a tree? After all, no tree is identical to any other tree, yet we quite rightly consider them to belong to a particular class — trees. How are all these (admittedly different) objects all “trees”? Plato’s answer was that they all participate in an abstract, supratemporal, immutable, immaterial form — the universal “treeness.” And so on for other universals. One can further attempt to ground logic and mathematics in this way. Why can’t we say the same for morality?

1. The age-old problem with Platonism is epistemological. If these universals are outside of space and time, as well as being causally inert, how can we know anything about them in the first place (particularly if our minds are material, as most atheists believe)? And how are they instantiated in real world objects? The same applies to moral Platonism — how are we to know anything whatsoever about these mysterious, acausal, immaterial, supratemporal truths?

2. As Mitch Stokes has argued, morality seems personal. For something to have value, it seems there must be a valuer. If there are moral values, there must be moral valuers (or a Valuer) — and yet Platonism claims that value exists, irrespective of any actual person to do the valuing.

3. Finally, most atheists would be uncomfortable with a version of atheism where reality at its most fundamental level (logic, mathematics, morality, purpose, language, beauty, etc.) is immaterial, supratemporal, immutable, necessarily existent, and eternal. To all appearances, atheists who appeal to Platonism to avoid the existence of God are substituting one entity with divine attributes in for another. And as a result, few atheists actually defend moral Platonism.

Social convention:

This is probably the worst possible view of morality, for it is totally subjective. If society thinks rape, or genocide, or slavery, or child abuse are right, they are. Most atheists, at least when shown the implications of this view, would be extremely hesitant, for it is almost identical to nihilism. Rather, atheists would claim, right and wrong are based on what benefits a society (whether or not a society prefers or recognizes that benefit). Thus (they argue), morality is objective, but still grounded on material rather than transcendent reality.

Benefit to society:

Though undoubtedly the most popular view among atheists today, this option has several serious problems.

1. “Human flourishing” is vague. For if A murders B to gain B’s wealth, and if A is not caught, clearly A flourished through an immoral action. Rather, most atheists mean “Whatever causes society to flourish as a whole.” How do we define society? The majority of persons in a given population? Because by that logic, 51% of a population flourishing through enslaving the other 49% would fit this criterion for a moral action, yet few defenders of this view would defend such a situation.

2. It is arbitrary. Why would actions which would benefit 51% of society be somehow intrinsically good, while actions which benefit only 49% (and harm the rest) be intrinsically bad? What’s so magical about 49% vs. 51%, or any other percentages, for that matter? Where do we draw the line?

3. It is certainly plausible that certain institutions, such as slavery, would harm a very small percentage of humanity, benefit a vastly larger percentage, and yet are intrinsically immoral. This would serve as a counterexample to defining morality by human flourishing. And, really, this applies to any action: if rape were to (in some yet unanticipated way) benefit society, would it be morally right? The consistent atheist would be forced to say “yes.”

4. What if society didn’t believe that morality is that which benefits society? Then we seem to have an inconsistency.

5. Society is contingent; it came into existence and will go out of existence. And yet genocide and rape seem necessarily wrong; wrong even if society didn’t exist. Or, from a different angle, morality seems to transcend society insofar as society must conform to it, not vice versa. Thus morality, it would appear, cannot be dependent on society.

6. The very concepts of “moral law” and “human flourishing” seem immaterial, but society (per atheism) is pure matter. On atheism, “human flourishing” is merely atomic redirection; and if matter is all there is, how is one atomic state morally superior to another? To appeal to society at this point would be a vicious circle, for the point is precisely that “societal flourishing” is incoherent in a materialistic worldview.

I’m sure I could think of additional problems; this should suffice for our present purposes. Grounding morality on human flourishing seems incoherent and has untenable consequences.

The Christian view is far more rational — right and wrong flow from God’s very nature. Morality is universally applicable because God is Lord over all. Morality is unchanging because God’s nature is immutable. It is necessary, because God Himself is necessary. It is immaterial because God is outside of space. It is personal, because God is personal; reasonable, because God is logical. And it is good, because God’s very nature is pure, unadulterated goodness.

This argument is very, very strong. Unfortunately, it still has one minor (though perhaps inconsequential) weakness, and that is that it subtly changed from an absolute to a probabilistic argument. We began by making the strong claim that

1. If morality exists, atheism is false.

and ended with the weaker assertion that

2. If morality exists, all currently proposed atheistic explanations fail, and therefore theism is the only plausible explanation which remains.

In other words, the argument I gave leaves open the theoretical possibility that atheists could, at some point in the future, come up with a coherent explanation for morality. There are three things to note at this point:

1. Even if it leaves this open as a theoretical possibility, it seems extremely unlikely; I for one can’t conceive of any explanation for objective morality which does not rest on God, society, reason, or Platonic forms.

2. Most of our knowledge is gained through probabilistic arguments. All of science relies on inferences to the best explanation. So the inductive/abductive element in our argument is not necessarily problematic.

3. And even if atheists were able to postulate a theoretical explanation, it wouldn’t mean it was correct. In other words, should atheists accomplish this, it would in no way refute Christianity, but only reduce the strength of the moral argument for God’s existence.

But I’ve said quite enough. Let me ask you — can you think of a better way to prove 1) rather than merely 2)? Do you know of a way to show that, even in principle, all atheistic explanations will fail? It’s probably doable; I just haven’t figured it out.