How do we know what “good” is? When we say something is unfair or unjust, what are we comparing it to? How do human beings not only know the difference between right and wrong but have the ability to choose between them?
If a Christian is honest, we must point to God. But what about those who don’t believe He’s real? It may not seem obvious at first, but without God, these questions become incredibly difficult. In fact, our very understanding of “good” serves as evidence that God must absolutely exist.
While my last two articles dealt with evidence for God by looking at the universe, this one will show the need for God’s existence by looking at our experience with morality. Just like the previous discussions, I’ll first take a deeper look into why this argument exists, then end with a simpler understanding that you can use in a regular discussion with someone.
The foundation for the Moral Argument
I find the moral argument easier to understand when we look at it in chunks.
By what standard?
When kids are young, they start developing basic standards for what different objects are. A horse is a tall, 4-legged creature with a long neck and hair. A house is typically a square or rectangular shape with a door and some windows. A rainbow is a series of colored lines.
Thus when a child is confronted with something new, they can use these basic ideas to interpret new information. A cow or zebra can easily be a horse based on what they know about the world. Whatever enters a child’s perspective, they typically have something else they can compare it to. They grow up learning different standards to help them interpret the rest of their world. Even as adults, we are always comparing new information with what we already understand.
Morality is the same way. When we are trying to understand whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, we compare it to something else. We hold an idea or behavior up to a standard outside of ourselves, and we judge everything based on that standard. While our personal standards of morality may shift over time, we’re nevertheless always comparing it to some standard we try to hold to.
But this requires us to ask an important question: Where do we get our standard for morality? What objective measure do we use to determine whether something is right or wrong? Where, and why, did our ancestors develop something that isn’t seen anywhere else in nature?
This is the core of the Moral Argument. From a naturalistic worldview, morality simply makes no sense. We don’t see animals acting with any sense of morality – dogs and pandas (and those pesky mosquitoes) simply act according to their base instincts. Even a heartwarming story about a dog protecting their owner or going for help, deep down, is just an animal acting according to its hardwired nature.
However, morality is in a different league. If God exists, then humans understand what is good because we use God as our standard. Even if we don’t acknowledge He exists, He has created us with a sense of understanding right and wrong. When we see cultures throughout history adopting similar standards of morality, we can explain that it’s because even two groups living on opposite ends of the globe will trend toward things like forbidding murder and theft because, inherently, they know it’s wrong without anyone telling them.
Without God, however, it becomes much trickier. Why did early humans develop a sense of right and wrong without anyone teaching them? Without having a “horse” to compare things to, why has murder become universally wrong while helping the needy is seen as good? In fact, if morality is just an idea we’ve created and doesn’t have a higher standard, why follow it at all?
A world without standards
Let’s imagine that God doesn’t actually exist as we think about morality. How did it come about, if not from an outside source? The popular understanding is that it’s something that has simply developed as a means of self-preservation. We, as humans, have found that it’s generally better for us not to kill each other so that our species can continue. Likewise, we’ve evolved in a way to find it advantageous to do good, even at the cost of our own lives.
This seems to be an answer until we realize that even these definitions require us to act this way according to a higher, objective, and universal good. If we developed right and wrong as a way to protect our species, we need to have an explanation for why we decided that’s a good thing. Why is it better to protect our offspring at the cost of our own pleasure today? Why should we value future generations that have no effect on us? Why not seek our greatest happiness today, regardless of what it costs those around us?
It becomes difficult to explain morality without, at some point, appealing to a higher source of good. Even if we aren’t pointing to God, we must always say that there’s some higher reason beyond ourselves that we should act a certain way. And because morality is so ingrained in us, we don’t realize that all our attempts to explain morality without God can’t avoid the fact that we do things because it’s objectively right.
However, there can be no objective good if morality is just something we came up with. If there is no higher standard outside ourselves, and morality is just a matter of preference or opinion, then we truly have no reason to deny ourselves of any pleasure, satisfaction, or measure of happiness that we can attain.
Why live in poverty if we can steal from someone else? “Theft” being wrong is just a cultural structure, and it’s only a negative thing if I’m caught and punished.
Why not hurt or kill someone who upsets or offends me? If I’m strong enough to do it, and if I think it’s the right thing to do, what authority does someone else have to say otherwise?
Why enforce laws at all, rather than living under a “might makes right” worldview? We can’t say that laws exist to protect society, because there’s no higher standard that can define the continuation of society as a good thing.
Questions like these can only appeal to what the majority is doing. If most people say that something is right or wrong, then we go with it. If a larger, more powerful group rises up and says otherwise, then we have no choice but to obey their version of good. Right and wrong can have no real bearing on our lives, because without a higher standard to compare “good” to, we can make it whatever we want.
And, ultimately, the natural conclusion of an atheistic worldview falls apart under its own scrutiny. Let’s take murder, for example, and keep asking questions to understand why it’s wrong if “wrong” is just a matter of opinion.
- Murder is wrong.
- Why?
- Because it ends a human life.
- Why is that a bad thing?
- Because human life should be protected.
- Why should we protect it?
- Because it’s how we can continue our species.
- Why is it good for a species to continue?
- Because it’s important that we don’t go extinct
- Why?
- Because it’s good to not go extinct
- How do we know it’s good?
As we continue asking clarifying questions, it becomes more obvious that we can’t be honest and say that anything makes sense outside of a hedonistic lifestyle, where we do whatever feels good at the moment. With no standard outside of ourselves that we can compare our thoughts and behaviors to, we have no true motivation to do anything other than whatever provides us with the most pleasure. Doing good is a call to act apart from our own self-interest. If good is just a matter of opinion, then we have no reason to be anything other than absolutely selfish.
When atheists do good
I was watching a debate with a Christian apologist (either Frank Turek or William Lane Craig, I believe), and he brought up the moral argument. His opponent, an atheist, kept assuming his Christian opponent was saying that only Christian can do good because they believe in God. Yet, he pointed out, even atheists or people of other religions are capable of being kind, sacrificial, and loving to their children.
At first, I couldn’t figure out where this miscommunication was coming from. The Christian kept trying to emphasize that we can only do good because we understand it from a source outside ourselves, while the atheist kept trying to disprove God by saying that even atheists can do good. They were saying the same thing, and the mistake is something we can learn from.
The atheist was hearing that you can only do good if you believe in God. In other words, he thought the Christian was arguing that only Christians were capable of doing good. Yet what the Moral Argument actually says is that atheists can only do good because God exists.
A person doesn’t have to believe in God to act in a way that is in agreement with His character. Rather, the only reason they can do good is because God exists, and He has allowed us to think and act in ways that are good. Chrisitans understand that God is the source of good, but all people are capable of acting in a way that is good.
So, yes, all people can do good. That doesn’t mean that their good deeds save them, based on what we see in Hebrews 11:6 and Ephesians 2:9. However, it does mean that even enemies of God are capable of loving their children, sacrificing their lives to save others, or help those in need because God is good and has given all people the ability to act in a way that isn’t purely selfish.
What about the exceptions?
Up until now, many examples I’ve given always have a point of culture or history where the opposite is true. Murder is called good in many cultures, including our own, as long as it’s dressed up in a way that makes the murder somehow another kind of moral good. Cultures have praised things like adultery, gluttony, or theft, assigning those things some kind of status that makes them prized or valuable. So does that disprove the Moral Argument, since not all cultures always agree on a universal set of “rules for doing good”?
If we look at these cultures in a mere snapshot, it may seem that way. However, we must realize that all cultures are a result of cause and effect. They are the product of the compromises and values held by previous generations. Absolutely no belief in any culture springs up out of nowhere, but can instead trace itself back through a series of worldviews held for hundreds or thousands of years, slowly changing and morphing until we see them in their current state.
Take, for example, America’s praise of abortion. This didn’t just pop into existence, but is instead the result of generations of parents who thought and acted in ways that affected their children. Those children, in turn, grew up either refining or rejecting their parents’ beliefs, only to pass that new worldview on to their own children who likewise modified it.
So when we see that certain cultures take things against the nature of God and call them “good,” that doesn’t somehow negate the universal understanding of good that God has imprinted in us. Instead, it’s just an example of how depraved and in need of God we truly are.
After all, if individuals are in need of the transforming power of the gospel for them to see that many of the things they thought were “good” were actually evil, it makes sense that whole groups of those same sinful people would develop entire belief systems that would allow the to indulge in their evil in ways that allow them to ignore their consciences.
Subjectivity and our culture’s hilarious hypocrisy
A final point to make on the idea that good is subjective is how at odds it is with today’s culture. We have a worldview which says God doesn’t exist, and that things like morality are just constructs of society, but aren’t objective and therefore only matter within their own context.
This same worldview is also responsible for our “cancel culture,” where we are willing to ruin the careers (and lives) of people who speak or act in a way that goes against some higher standard that we expect everyone to hold to. Every statement a celebrity or politician makes puts them at risk for having an entire country shift against them. Friendships and careers quickly end because someone has a belief about current events that goes against what’s accepted, and thus they must be cut loose.
Even history itself is held under close scrutiny, with historical statues even being taken down because they represent a worldview that we find horrifying today. There are even entire countries we look down on because they carry certain beliefs that we find to be “behind the times” (such as how many Eastern countries treat women, or the risk of discrimiation and death awaiting homosexuals in places like Russia).
Yet if it’s true that there is no absolute standard for morality, what right do people have to condemn the beliefs or actions of anyone outside their own country and time period? After all, morality is like ice cream flavors, and what seems good to us may not be true for others. Will we really condemn an entire culture because they like caramel in their ice cream when we are clearly far-superior with our love of strawberry?
If that seems like a silly analogy, that’s because you have an inherent understanding that right and wrong isn’t a matter of opinion. And so do those who use “moral subjectivity” as a way to excuse their own behavior.
But in the end, no matter how we approach the topic, there’s simply no way to escape the reality that good can never be a matter of opinion. We all know that there are certain standards our actions are held to, and all of us know it’s good and right to obey that standard. Even if we want to deny God’s existence, no one lives outside of God’s standards for morality.
Thus, the fact that anyone has an understanding of good is proof that God exists. Sand crabs and eagles don’t think about right and wrong, and in an infinite amount of time they will never develop a way to do so. Like a child already knowing what a horse is when they see a zebra, we also know right and wrong because of something that already exists. While parents and society may reinforce what right and wrong mean, the very concept of it is found in an unchanging, absolutely source outside of our human experience.
Simplifying the Moral Argument
That’s the nitty-gritty of the Moral Argument. How do we use it in a conversation with our friends or family? Once you have a basic understanding of it, as I’ve tried to present, then I’d recommend considering two ways to discuss morality with those who doubt God’s existence.
The first is my favorite way, but it requires persistence. Start by asking someone if it would be wrong for their bank to walk away with all their money. If they say yes, ask why. When they offer a reason, ask why that’s true. As I demonstrated with my series of questions above, constantly asking clarifying questions forces a person to really think about what standard they use to hold things to. Whether they believe theft is wrong because it hurts society or just negatively affects them, it’s impossible to say why something is morally wrong without eventually admitting that there are certain standards of morality that all people should be held to.
Another way to think about this argument in simple terms is to show that morality is absolute. In other words, help the person see that ideas of right and wrong don’t just spring out of nowhere, but that they come from something outside ourselves. This can come in any number of ways once you understand what it means for God to be the one who defines good for all people. But here’s an example that might help:
Explain that animals don’t live by a moral code, and that a hawk doesn’t kill a rabbit because it’s choosing to do some kind of evil or violence. If human beings were truly driven by nothing but our natures, then we would consistently choose to do those things that solely benefited us, and we’d have no reason to choose things that are good and virtuous unless they fed into our own selfishness. But because we all hold to an idea of “good” that is more than just our own opinions, there must be someone out there who defines the “good” that we live by. Based on everything we’ve seen, that standard-setter must be God.
The end goal of the Moral Argument is to get people to realize they can’t define “good” without measuring it against something outside themselves. Whatever way you choose to discuss this with someone, the only thing required of you is to keep peeling away their easy answers and get them to the point where they must either decide that good is absolute because it’s defined by God, or it’s meaningless because it’s just a matter of opinion.
Weaknesses of the Moral Argument
As with every argument for God’s existence, the Moral Argument is a good one that still has limitations. The greatest limitation, of course, is that this argument really only proves that morality must come from a source outside ourselves. If someone wants to say that aliens or another deity have set the standard for right and wrong, then this argument can’t do much on its own.
Another hurdle you may face is that it’s a bit of a deep thought that many people may not have considered. At some point in their lives, most adults have probably wondered why there’s something instead of nothing, or how so many complex and unique things could have naturally evolved without any kind of intelligent guidance or design. It’s less common for people to deeply consider where our standards for right and wrong have come from. Even then, I imagine most people have stopped when they stumble upon the answer of “morality is something society teaches” or “it’s a survival mechanism.” Thus, it may require a deeper conversation with someone to get them to not only understand what morality is, but why it only makes sense if God is the unchanging standard for it.
This argument also assumes that people will naturally tend toward understanding and valuing moral goodness. It means that if a society were to purposely set out to teach its children evil, then over the generations it would still, somehow, find itself rejecting things like theft, rape, and murder because they are objectively wrong. Somewhat related to this, there’s also a problem in the specific cases of people or cultures who feel no moral apprehension towards certain evils.
Finally, the argument assumes that morality isn’t something that could be developed. Neither side can prove or disprove that our definition of “good” is a moral construct because it would require tracing morality all the way back to the beginning of human history. Since the Bible is our earliest recording of morality being a part of humanity, a person who rejects the Bible’s authority has little else that shows them morality didn’t just naturally develop on its own.
Closing thoughts
I’m always fascinated to hear people who come to Christ because of this argument. Just as we inherently understand right and wrong exist apart from our culture’s opinion, we also know that our standard for morality shows how wicked we truly are.
The Moral Argument isn’t just an opportunity to prove someone wrong – it’s a wonderful way to give them the gospel. When someone admits that there is an objective understanding of good, we have a perfect opportunity to tell them of the God who not only holds them responsible for their failure but has provided a way to escape their rightful punishment through Jesus Christ. We can share with them that God sent His own Son to take our place on the cross, taking the punishment for every time we’ve failed to live up to the unmoving standard God has set.
The Moral Argument certainly shows why God must exist. But in a much more important way, it allows us to present the good news of the gospel when we tell them that it’s not just God who exists, but also the Lamb who paid the price for their sin.
