Morals, therefore God?

The Argument from Morality as proof for the existence of God in its early form is: “Human beings have morals. These morals cannot have come from anywhere else than from God. Therefore God.” As usual, advances in science and philosophy have destroyed this naïve “proof of God”. Apologists have therefore come up with more sophisticated versions of this argument, hinging on the assumptions that morality must be objective, and that God is required to objectively ground human morality. In my opinion all versions of the Argument from Morality are based on circular logic, because in the end they can always be summarized as “The only morality I will accept is divinely grounded morality, therefore God”.

In order for the Argument from Morality to really work one would need to:

1. Show that morality must be objective, and that the labels we use for moral judgments, like “good” and “bad” are necessarily grounded in an objective moral foundation. This is not an easy task, since the dictionary definitions of “morality”, “good” and “bad” do not mention the word “objective” at all, and the vastly different moral frameworks around the earth and through the ages very much appear to point at morality being (inter)subjective.
2. Show that a God is necessary to provide the objective foundation of morality. Note that many secular philosophers have devised objective moral frameworks that do not require any God, so objective morality in itself is not argument for the existence of God per sé.
3. Show that there is an objective way to access God’s objective foundation of morality. Note that without being able to objectively read God’s mind about moral decisions there is no way to tell God-based objective morality from humanity-based (inter)subjective morality. It appears that the Bible does not work at all as an objective way to read God’s mind, since Christians cannot even agree on life and death matters such as capital punishment.

After completion steps 1-3 we can start talking about the next important question: “Which God?”. But since no apologist has ever even come close to completing step 1 that question is rather moot in this context.

People pushing the Argument from Morality often use childish arguments such as “murder is always bad, so therefore objective morality”. However, the interesting questions would be: When is killing another human being murder? When is killing another human being bad, and when is it good, or at least justified? When you can come up with an objective moral standard to answer those questions you might have a case. Was the killing of over a million mostly innocent Japanese civilians in the relentless fire bombing and nuclear bombing of Japanese cities near the end of WWII good or bad? Is the killing of convicts by the state as retributive punishment good or bad? By what objective standard did you arrive at your conclusions?

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