Can Objective Moral Values Exist if There is No God?
This is the question behind our Moral Argument for God’s Existence, and the one we’ll be discussing today. If you remember, it went like this:
- If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
- Objective moral values and duties do exist.
- Therefore, God exists.
If premise one and two are true, then it follows that the conclusion must be true as well.
Can we have a basis of objective moral values without God who is defined as the highest good? If we aren’t basing our moral values on God, what can we base them on?
Naturalistic Explanation for Moral Values
Naturalism holds that if it can not be explained outside of scientific theory, it doesn’t exist. There is no supernatural. We are a product of random evolution. Under this system, objective moral values cannot exist apart from the natural world.
Under naturalism, moral values must be an illusion of human beings…a product of random evolution and social conditioning. Moral values evolved to help the species survive and perpetuate.
If there is no God and we are all products of random chance, objective morality cannot exist. On this view, why think that human beings have any objective moral worth or value if there is no God? If all animal life is a product of random chance, why would humans be any more ‘morally valuable’ than rats or insects? We’d all just be species trying to survive and morality would be subjective to which viewpoint you wanted to take.
Choosing the worth of humans over other species would just be a form of ‘speciesism’, a name coined by a British psychologist in the 1970′s. It’s much like racism…bigotry toward another species (instead of race) by deeming them as an inferior species to yours. The naturalist/atheist may agree that human moral values exist, they just have no basis for stating that objective moral values exist if there is nothing beyond the physical world to base them on.
Objective Moral Values Thought Experiment
Imagine in 2020 a world dictator arises who is twice as persuasive and twice as strong as Hitler and the Nazis ever were. Imagine he initiated and won WWIII and continued to go throughout the world and gradually and systematically destroy nearly all people other than those of his same descent. He experiments, tortures, and kills all babies who are of races other than his own. Suppose his people flourished, curing diseases with help from their medical experiments on the children. Suppose they thrived by gradually destroying every other nation on earth and taking over their territory and resources, keeping some as slaves to work as labourers in their concentration camps. Suppose the world population was increasing at a steady, controlled rate because of the government breeding programs and immediate termination of unsanctioned pregnancies.
On a naturalistic view ,what is wrong with this situation? If 99% of the people left alive on earth believed that torture and slavery was OK, would that make it OK? If biological evolution and social conditioning are what moral values are based on, then the answer would have to be yes. There would be no basis to say that there is anything wrong with the situation. The human species would be flourishing and healthy with lots to eat and producing plenty of offspring for the next generation. According to naturalistic evolutionary theory they would be fulfilling their purpose just fine.
If social evolution determines moral value, then there is nothing ‘wrong‘ with this situation at all. Moral values would have just evolved into something a bit different than they are now.
Do Atheists Believe in Objective Moral Values?
Almost everyone, including atheists, actually believes that objective moral values DO exist, and atheist philosophers rarely deny the existence of objective moral values. Having moral values and following moral values is not the issue, there are many atheists that put Christians and other theists to shame with their ethical and moral integrity.
The issue here is not whether or not one can recognize objective moral values if they don’t believe in God. They obviously can. Our argument is based on where these values come from…the idea that they cannot exist without God.
You will not find many people who say the torture and experimentation on children would never be OK. Anyone who does believe there are situations where it would, frankly, I think is morally handicapped and I would not want to allow them to spend time around my son. It is my opinion that, perhaps with the exception of some actual psychopaths, most people who voice the opinion that moral values are subjective are giving lip service only. I believe the vast majority live their lives as if objective moral values exist and deep down truly do believe that human life is morally more valuable than that of a snake…or even a puppy or a dolphin…and that rape could never be OK, no matter what the situation, etc. etc…
It seems surprising if the naturalistic atheist still claims to believes objective moral values exist even though there is no naturalistic explanation…but not so surprising to the theist who believes that God is the God of everyone, atheists and theists alike. Evolution and the development of social conventions for ‘the good of the species’ can not be the source of objective moral values, only subjective ones.
Without a natural explanation for objective moral values, we must have a supernatural one: a God figure. There have been other attempts to explain morality away without God, and a couple of them will be discussed in later posts.
Next time we’ll discuss the necessity of a God in order to really have objective moral duties we are obligated to perform.
See You Then!
{ 2 comments }
Even if everybody agreed on something, it doesn’t make that thing objective.
Agreed. The Nazi regime may have agreed that killing Jews and Gypsies and Homosexuals, etc. was the best thing to do, but that doesn’t make it objectively right…however, if objective morals do not exist, it wasn’t objectively wrong either, just a mater of opinion. Because most people think this was objectively wrong, doesn’t make it so, but it does give support to the idea that morals are objective.
I believe there are first principles that we must accept as objective. Even if everyone agrees that we actually exist and are not just brains in a vat somewhere experiencing life through our minds in some Matrix-like situation…it doesn’t mean that it is objectively true…but most of us accept that our lives are real. I accept morality as objective in much the same way. One of the things that supports that conclusion is the universal experience of humanity when it comes to certain things that almost every sane person would agree are objectively wrong. In my opinion, trying to explain that objective morality leads to God as the best answer. If you do not accept morality as objective, it may lead you elsewhere. For me, I can’t accept that the “wrongness” of what Hitler did is just a matter of opinion.
Comments on this entry are closed.