The Moral Argument for God's Existence
By Paul Copan
Philosopher John Rist is right; there is "widely admitted to be a crisis in
contemporary Western debate about ethical foundations."1 It
seems that, ultimately, the crisis is the result of approaching ethics without
reference to God. When morality is severed from its theological roots,
secular ethics cannot sustain itself - it withers and dies.
I can only sketch out a brief defense of the connection between God and
objective moral values (which I have done more extensively
elsewhere).2 I will argue that if objective moral values
exist, then God exists; objective moral values do exist; therefore, God
exists. To resolve our ethics crisis, we must recognize the character of
a good God (in whose image valuable humans have been made) as the necessary
foundation of ethics, human rights, and human dignity.
1. Objective Moral Values Exist: They Are Properly
Basic: Moral values exist whether or not a person or culture
believes them ("objective"). Normally-functioning human beings take these
for granted as basic to their well-being and flourishing.
a. Humans do not have to find out what
is moral by reading the Bible such knowledge is available to all people.
Romans 2:14-15 says that those without God's special revelation (Scripture,
Jesus Christ) can know right from wrong. They have God's general
revelation of his basic moral law in their conscience, "Gentiles, who do not
have the Law [of Moses] do instinctively the things of the Law". (Rom 2:14,
NASB). No wonder they have been made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-7).
They're constituted to function properly when they live according to God's
design. So people (including atheists) whose hearts have not been
hardened or self-deceived will have the same sorts of moral instincts as
Christians-that torturing babies for fun (along with rape or adultery) is
wrong, and kindness is good.
When a person says, "Maybe murder or
rape isn't really wrong," he does not need an argument. He is self-deceived. If
he really believes this, he needs spiritual or psychological help because he is
just not functioning properly. Even relativists who claim that someone's
values may be true for him but not for others are likely those who say, "I have
rights" or "You ought to be tolerant." But rights and tolerance do
not make any sense if relativism is correct. Rather, they entail
that objective moral values exist.
b. Just as we generally trust
our sense perceptions as reliable (unless there is good reason to doubt
them), we should treat general moral intuitions (aversion to torturing babies
for fun, rape, murder) as innocent until proven guilty. Why do we trust
our five senses? Most of us find they are regularly reliable. Even if we
misperceive things once in a while, we are wise to pay attention to our
senses rather than consistently doubt them. Similarly, we have basic
moral instincts-for example, a revulsion at taking innocent human life or of
raping (the "Yuck factor") or an inward affirmation regarding
self-sacrifice for the well-being of my child (the "Yes factor"). The
burden of proof falls on those denying or questioning basic moral
principles. We are wise to pay attention to these basic moral
instincts - even if these intuitions need occasional fine-tuning.
Morally-sensitive humans can get the
basics right regarding morality. In the appendix of C.S. Lewis' book
The Abolition of Man,3 he lists various virtues that
have been accepted across the ages and civilizations (Greek, Egyptian,
Babylonian, Native American, Indian, Hebrew, etc.). Stealing and murder
are condemned in these law codes while honoring parents and keeping marriage
vows are applauded.
Some might argue: Aren't there moral
conflicts as well? Some cultures permit polygamy, for instance. Yes, but
marriage customs and vows that bind marriages together also prohibit
adultery. While applications and expressions of moral
principles may differ from culture to culture, there are basic moral principles
that cut across cultural lines. What happens when we encounter (at least
on the face of it) conflicting moral principles? We start with
morally clear cases and work to the unclear. In light of apparent
moral conflict, it would be a faulty jump to conclude that morality is
relative. As lexicographer Samuel Johnson put it, "The fact that there is such
a thing as twilight does not mean that we cannot distinguish between day and
c. Moral principles are discovered,
not invented. Moral reforms (abolishing slavery, advocating a
woman's right to vote, promoting civil rights for blacks) make no sense unless
objective moral values exists. Even if creating the atmosphere for reform
may take time (even centuries), this does not imply that morality just
evolves during human history and is just a human invention. Rather, it more
readily suggests that moral principles can be discovered and are worth
pursuing, even at great cost.
Atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen
acknowledges this point: "It is more reasonable to believe such elemental
things [wife-beating, child abuse] to be evil than to believe any skeptical
theory that tells us we cannot know or reasonably believe any of these things
to be evil…I firmly believe that this is bedrock and right and that anyone who
does not believe it cannot have probed deeply enough into the grounds of his
2. God and Objective Morality
Are Closely Connected: It is not unusual to hear, "Atheists
can be good without God." Atheist Michael Martin argues that theists give
the same reasons as atheists for condemning rape: it violates the victim's
rights, damages society. What Martin really means is that atheists can be
good without believing in God, but they would not be good (have
intrinsic worth, moral responsibility, etc.) without God. (Indeed, nothing
would exist without him.) That is, because humans are made in God's image, they
can know what is good even if they do not believe in God.
Atheists and theists can affirm the same values, but theists can ground belief
in human rights and dignity because we are all made in the image of a supremely
Just think about it:
Intrinsically-valuable, thinking persons do not come from impersonal,
non-conscious, unguided, valueless processes over time. A personal,
self-aware, purposeful, good God provides the natural and necessary context for
the existence of valuable, rights-bearing, morally-responsible human
persons. That is, personhood and morality are necessarily connected;
moral values are rooted in personhood. Without God (a personal Being), no
persons - and thus no moral values - would exist at all: no
personhood, no moral values. Only if God exists can moral properties
3. Non-theistic Ethical Theories
Will Be Incomplete and Inadequate: Some secularists would suggest that
we can have ethical systems that make no reference to God (e.g.,
Aristotle, Kant). However, while they may make some very positive
contributions to ethical discussion (regarding moral virtue/character or
universal moral obligations), their systems are still incomplete. They
still do not tell us why human beings have intrinsic value, rights, and moral
What about naturalistic evolutionary
ethics, in which we develop an awareness of right or wrong and moral
obligation to help us survive/reproduce? Ethical awareness has only
biological worth.5 Such an approach leaves us with the following
problems: First, can we even trust our minds if we are nothing more
than the products of naturalistic evolution, trying to fight, feed, flee, and
reproduce? Charles Darwin had a "horrid doubt" that since the human
mind has developed from lower animals, why would anyone trust it?
Why trust the convictions of a monkey's mind?6 The
naturalistic evolutionary process is interested in fitness/survival-not in true
belief; so not only is objective morality undermined so is rational
thought. Our beliefs-including moral ones-may help us survive,
but there is no reason to think they are true. Belief in
objective morality or human dignity may help us survive, but it may be
completely false. The problem with skepticism (including moral
skepticism) is that I am assuming a trustworthy reasoning process to
arrive at the conclusion that I cannot trust my reasoning! If we
trust our rational and moral faculties, we will assume a theistic
outlook: Being made in the image of a truthful, rational, good Being
makes sense of why we trust our senses/moral intuitions.
In addition, we are left with this
problem: if human beings are simply the product of naturalistic evolution, then
we have no foundation for moral obligation and human dignity. This could
easily undermine moral motivation. The sexual predator and cannibal
Jeffrey Dahmer acknowledged the seriousness of the matter: "If it all happens
naturalistically, what's the need for a God? Can't I set my own rules?
Who owns me? I own myself."7
To reinforce further the point about the
God-morality connection, a number of atheists and skeptics have noted it.
The late atheist philosopher J. L. Mackie said that moral properties are
"queer" given naturalism "if there are objective values, they make the
existence of a god more probable than it would have been without them. Thus we
have a defensible argument from morality to the existence of a
god."8Agnostic Paul Draper observes, "A moral world is very probable
As the Declaration of Independence
asserts, humans are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights." This good Creator is the true foundation of ethics and the
ultimate hope of rescuing it from its present crisis.
1 John Rist, Real
Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 1.
2 See Paul Copan, "Is Michael
Martin a Moral Realist? Sic et Non." Philosophia
Christi, new series 1/2 (1999): 45-72; "Atheistic Goodness
Revisited: A Personal Reply to Michael Martin," Philosophia
Christi, new series 2/1 (2000); p. 91-104; "The Moral Argument" in The
Rationality of Theism, ed. Paul Copan and Paul K. Moser (London:
Routledge, 2003), pp.149-74; "A Moral Argument" in To Every One An Answer:
A Case for the Christian Worldview: Essays in Honor of Norman L.
Geisler, eds. Francis Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland
(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 108-23; "Morality and
Meaning Without God: Another Failed Attempt," Philosophia Christi, new
series 6/1 (2004); pp. 295-304; "God, Hume, and Objective Morality" in In
Defense of Natural Theology: A Collection of New Essays in the Philosophy of
Religion, eds. Douglas R. Groothuis and James R. Sennett (Downers, Grove,
InterVarsity Press, 2005), pp. 200-25.
3 C.S. Lewis, The
Abolition of Man (San Francisco: HarperSF, 2001).
4 Kai Nielsen, Ethics
Without God (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1990), pp. 10-11.
5 Michael Ruse, The
Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 262.
6 Letter (3 July 1881) to Wm.
G. Down, in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin
(London: John Murray, Abermarle Street, 1887), pp. 1:315-16.
7 Jeffrey Dahmer: The
Monster Within, A&E Biography (1996).
8 J. L. Mackie, The
Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 115-16.
9 In Greg Ganssle, "Necessary
Moral Truths" Philosophia Christi, new series 2, 2/1 (2000), p.