The Moral Argument

[Isaiah 6:8]

From Mere Christianity, By C.S. Lewis.

1. The Law Of Human Nature

Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely

unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to

the kind of things they say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to

you?"—"That's my seat, I was there first"—"Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm"— "Why

should you shove in first?"—"Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine"—"Come on, you

promised." People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children

as well as grown-ups.

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying

that the other man's behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard

of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies:

"To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not

really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some

special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that

things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which

lets him off keeping his promise.

It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or

decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they

have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human

sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there

would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right

and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless

there was some agreement about the rules of football.

Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature. Nowadays, when

we talk of the "laws of nature" we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of

chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong "the Law of Nature," they

really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law

of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law—with this

great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a

man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.

We may put this in another way. Each man is at every moment subjected to several different sets of

law but there is only one of these which he is free to disobey. As a body, he is subjected to gravitation

and cannot disobey it; if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice about falling

than a stone has. As an organism, he is subjected to various biological laws which he cannot disobey

any more than an animal can. That is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things;

but the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables

or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses...

<snip>

...

But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real

Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his

promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you can

say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case

by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter,

and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong— in other words, if there is no Law of Nature—what

is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and

shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?

It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken

about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and

opinion any more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on to my next

point, which is this. None of us are really keeping the Law of Nature. If there are any exceptions

among you, I apologise to them. They had much better read some other work, for nothing I am going

to say concerns them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left:

[Isaiah 6:8]

By the way the above morals are morals that are above all the other morals that are brought up such as murder and rape. These are down to the individual person and every person on the planet does the same and feels the same way when cheated or wronged in some way.

[Guest shiloh357]

You explain to me why God is "good", isn't it because he's the creator of the Universe? Isn't it ultimately because he's powerful and what he says goes? Well if this is true, then in the case that Allah is the one true god, killing unbelievers is moral. Remember, you guys are the ones that aren't happy with appealing to rational thought and logic, you assume that whatever god says is "good".

You think in a box sometimes. Your god isn't the only one out there, there have been many before and many after, not all gods are cute warm and fuzzy. This is the problem with god to begin with, nobody can nail down anything about him. You can't prove that the Muslims are wrong about their intolerant tyrant of a god. When you attach your claims of morality on an invisible being we can't even have dialogue with this is what we're left with.

These questions demonstrate a fundamental flaw. You don't understand Islam. People like operate from faulty notion that all religions pretty much make the same claims as if they are all cut from same template. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When you study the history of Islam, you will discover that the "morality" of Islam has nothing to do with their god. Mohamed's moral code was very subjective it was developed as a response to the Jewish tribes in cities like Mecca that did not accept his ideas. The moral code Mohammed operated under was his own and was based on getting what he wanted even to the point of decieving those with whom he made "peace." Mohammed's morality and the morality discplayed by like minded violent Muslims today has nothing to do with their god.

So your comparison is invalid. Christianity is the ONLY faith that views morality as coming from a wise and loving Creator

Assuming the security guard and the police officer are protecting people then I say they are on a higher ground morally speaking [so does most of society I bet]. We don't operate in a vacuum.

Which makes my point. We live as if there is an objective morality. Our laws are predicated on the notion that there is a standard of right and wrong and our laws are designed to reflect that standard.

That's the problem, who's god is giving us "right and "wrong"? It very well may be that you're simply crediting your god for what our modern era moral framework has developed into.

LOL, I would not insult God by crediting him with how our society has turned out. By right of being our Creator, God is the lawgiver. He is also the Judge. He is not responsible for how society as disregarded his morality in favor of their own.

Just as we've had to struggle for many centuries to develop our scientific standard we have also fine tuned our ways of dealing with each other. At one time we thought the Sun revolved around the Earth, just like at one time we thought it was ok for one human to own another.

And yet the bloodiest wars of all time were fought in 20th century. 500,000,000 human lives destroyed through abortion, poverty and oppression in many countries is rampant. You seem to really ignorant of just how bad things have gotten in the world. We have nothing to brag about when it coms to how humanity has "fined tuned" itself.

You assert this innate sense of morality that God has given us but you don't demonstrate it.

Generally speaking, we exhibit all of the time. Even in societies that have never been indoctrinated by any other religion and have never had contact with the outside world, we have found an innate moral code that shapes how they operate. In addition, we find them to be religious in that they worship something. It may be the moon or something, but there is something within them that longs to connect with someone bigger than themselves.

Would you agree that one of the primary goals for humanity is survival? Would you agree that we are social creatures?

We all have a survival instinct. It is why we don't purposefully do things to harm ourselves (generally speaking). We don't drink bleach or douse ourselves with gasoline and set ourselves on fire. The human body is designed to heal itself and tell us when something is wrong.

Logic, reason and the will to survive. You mean to tell me we can put robots on Mars, create works of art such as the Sistine Chapel, develop the equation E=mc2, write songs, poetry etc but we can't figure out objective ways to create a social structure such that survival of our species is increased?

During WWII, Germans attended concert halls and enjoyed operas, concerts containing the works of Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, Haydn, etc. while right in their own backyard Jews and Gypsies and mllions of others were sent to the camps and the gas chambers. Germans were morally indifferent to the horrors that thier own country was committing. Germany was, by all accounts a sophisticated society and fostered a culture that produced many of the finest music and works of art ever seen, yet could not care less about the barbarism they were inflicting on an entire race of people.

In fact, Hitler couched his Holocaust and the final solution on the very notion of the survival of German people. He painted the Jews as a threat to the well-being and survival of Germany and the German people.

So yes, it is possible to have all the intellect and create magnificient inventions and make stunning technological advances and with all of that vaulted knowledge still murder, hate and brutalize your neighbor. Look at countries like China and North Korea and how they brutalize people over there. Human cruelty is not limited to jungle tribes or third world nations. Even in Japan, torture is seen as an acceptable means of disciplining a wayward employee.

Just as I've stated earlier, we are capable of refining our methods and our ways.

Yep and all we have done is make ourselves into more sophisticated thieves, murdersers, adulterers, etc.

At one time survival may have been the main focus, but today we can not only focus on survival, but survival in a society where you are free to pursue a happy life [so long as you don't deny someone else their pursuit].

Morality and ethics are not grouned to survival and Luftwaffle has done a good job at demonstrating why that claim doesn't work. If ethics are grounded in survival, what happens if there is a shortage of food and some guy decides breaking into your house and stealing YOUR food is necessary for his survival? Do have any idea what people did to survive in the aftermath of Katrina??

Survival does not bring out a moral side of humanity at all. Survival brings out the base behaviors as survival is a base instinct. The need to survive will drive people do things they would not otherwise do.

[Isaiah 6:8]

A: Well I'm not going to believe no matter how logical or how much evidence you could show me because I don't like the Christian God and I don't what to live by His standards. I want to live my life as I see fit, in my own good way. I am my own best authority. I call the shots. It is me! It is me!

LOL, I had to comment on this because it did make me smile. You're right you now, the life of a Christian has got to be one of the most difficult to lead. I mean the constant sacrifices that are made is staggering, the complete memorization of the Bible, the giving to the poor, the visiting the downtrodden to rebuild homes and lives after disasters etc. Going to church on Sunday, or well, usually every Sunday you know unless it's a big hunting day or whatever...you guys really give the world an example that's hard to follow.

I live work and play with Christians around me, you probably don't have it that bad my friend.

Hmm I don't know many if any Christians like that. Not of that is a requirement only the cross of Christ is. That's the difference only Christianity does not have us work our way in to heaven. The good works flow from a change in our lives.

[Guest i can't cope]

"Premise 1: Objective moral values and duties cannot exist without God"

This is the problem--this is the statement that cannot be qualified. There are peoples all over the world who have never heard of God and yet they establish and abide a moral code within their societies. Those codes may differ from our own, but they have them, and every society has standards of decency which dictate murder, lying, cheating, stealing, and rape are wrong. Conversely, there are a lot of professed Christians who do things that are considered immoral even by the tenets of their own faith. There are atheists who know about all the religions and Christian denominations, have chosen to not believe, and who still abide a moral code--they're not running around killing people and eating babies.

Statement one, above, cannot be established as fact. It's been my experience that when a person truly wants to feel good about themselves, they do right. When a person wants to do wrong, regardless of their beliefs, they'll fight tooth and nail to justify what they want to do and then they keep doing it. I've never met an immoral person who couldn't justify what they were doing or speaking, backing every bit of it up by yet another interpretation of the Bible. They don't respond to their conscience. If you're running looking things up, that's clue number one you're thinking about doing wrong. When you're doing something you know is right, you don't go looking up laws and Bible verses to see if it's okay.

[Guest shiloh357]

This is the problem--this is the statement that cannot be qualified. There are peoples all over the world who have never heard of God and yet they establish and abide a moral code within their societies.

Which actually stands in favor of the existence of God and not against His existence.

[Isaiah 6:8]

"Premise 1: Objective moral values and duties cannot exist without God"

This is the problem--this is the statement that cannot be qualified. There are peoples all over the world who have never heard of God and yet they establish and abide a moral code within their societies. Those codes may differ from our own, but they have them, and every society has standards of decency which dictate murder, lying, cheating, stealing, and rape are wrong. Conversely, there are a lot of professed Christians who do things that are considered immoral even by the tenets of their own faith. There are atheists who know about all the religions and Christian denominations, have chosen to not believe, and who still abide a moral code--they're not running around killing people and eating babies.

Statement one, above, cannot be established as fact. It's been my experience that when a person truly wants to feel good about themselves, they do right. When a person wants to do wrong, regardless of their beliefs, they'll fight tooth and nail to justify what they want to do and then they keep doing it. I've never met an immoral person who couldn't justify what they were doing or speaking, backing every bit of it up by yet another interpretation of the Bible. They don't respond to their conscience. If you're running looking things up, that's clue number one you're thinking about doing wrong. When you're doing something you know is right, you don't go looking up laws and Bible verses to see if it's okay.

First off welcome to worthy.

Second are you a Christian

And third off if a"savage" tribe has a moral code where does it come from? You state that you feel good when you do good in other words you have a conscience where does that come from? Why are you offended if some one cheats you or lies to you or steals from you?

You see you prove the point. There is a universal moral law that every one feels and where does that come from?

[LuftWaffle]

If I may, allow me to make a few clarifying points regarding morality and the Christian argument from morality.

The reason for this is that it's becoming evident that there may be some misconceptions regarding these issues and to prevent everybody talking past each other, I figured I'd write about it.

The Q & A style isn't to be patronising, it's just a casual, but effective way, I think, to deal with some of the objections and issues.

What do you mean by objective moral values and duties?

There is an important but often misunderstood distinction between objective and subjective where morality is concerned.

Simply put, objective says something about the object, in this case the thing or action being observed.

Subjective says something about the subject, in this case the observer or speaker.

From the subjective position, statements like "Murder is wrong", or "rape is wrong" really says something about the speaker. It is the equivalent of saying, "Yuck, murder!" or "I don't like it when people rape women".

A naturalist version of this may be, "murder invokes in me a chemical response which I find unpleasant" or "my genetic makeup causes my brain to view murder as suboptimal for the flourishing of my species"

In each of these cases, "right" and "wrong" are statements telling us about the person observing the event.

The above deals with duties, but the same applies to values. "To value human life" really means, "Hurray for human life", or "I prefer humans to survive" or "human survival optimizes my survival"

The other side of the coin is "objective". This says nothing about the speaker but, as mentioned says something about the action itself. In other words objective moral values and duties are normative properties of events and actions, regardles of how the speaker/observer feels or what they prefer.

"Murder is wrong", therefore says something about murder. The act of murder has the property of wrongness.

"To value human life", says that human life really is valueable, no matter what an arbitrary observer thinks or feels.

In order to establish whether moral values and duties are objective is to ask, "is female circumcision really wrong?" or "Do I find female circumcision to be not preferable?"

But don't different cultures have different moral views?

This is where another distinction needs to be made; the distinction between ontology and epistomology.

Ontology refers to what something IS, epistomology refers to what we KNOW ABOUT something.

Cultural morality therefore are statements ABOUT morality, not statements OF morality.

Some cultures believed that the earth is flat. We believe that the earth is spherical.

Do the various beliefs regarding the shape of the earth prove/show that the earth has no objective shape?

Ofcourse not. While our epistomology regarding the earth may have changed based on our knowledge, the ontology of the earth's shape is objectively fixed.

The same applies to morality. A certain culture may believe that killing the elderly is wrong because human life is valueable and that the aged, being frail, needs our care.

Another culture may believe that when you die, the condition that your body is in when you die, is the condition it will be in when you have to complete a certain journey in the afterlife. Killing people when they reach a certain age is therefore beneficial to the victim.

The former believes they do the right thing by taking care of their aged.

The latter believes they do the right thing by killing their aged before their bodies become to weak.

The difference between the two examples are therefore epistomological. Both cannot be correct, and thus I think both cannot be morally correct.

In short, contradictions in moral epistomology cannot be used to refute moral ontology.

Just like the flat earth belief cannot be used to refute the notion that the earth has an objective shape, so cultural differences cannot be used to refute the notion that objective moral values and duties exist.

What's the problem with subjective morality?

Subjective moral values as I mentioned is that they say something about the observer/speaker. The problem here is why should the speakers feelings, genetic predisposition or preference dictate whether an action ought to be done or ought not be done? From a subjective viewpoint any moral statement can simply be answered by "who says?" or "so what?"

If a person wants to hold to a naturalistic viewpoint and retain moral absolutes they need to explain how normative properties such as right and wrong can come from brute natural facts. In short, how do you get from an "IS" to an "OUGHT"?

An example to illustrate the problem is this:

Suppose your playing scrabble and the tiles happen to fall out of the bag spelling the words, "quit playing now?" Because of the random origin of these words there is no real imperative to adhere to them. It just happened that the tiles by pure chance spelled words which are recognisable. You might argue that the coincidence would freak you out enough to quit playing scrabble, but that happens because you're concluding that there must be a powerful agent behind this occurrence.

If our morality is the product of random evolutionary processes, then there really is no imperative to adhere to those moral notions.

Does this mean that atheists are immoral?

Not at all. In fact the moral argument appeals to the fact that when atheists make moral judgement they not just telling us how they feel or what they prefer, they're telling us something about an object or action.

Nowhere does the argument from morality state explicitly or implicitly that atheists are incapable of being good or that Christians are more moral.

As such referring to good works that atheists do and bad works that Christians do are simply irrelevant.

Why do Christians say that atheists have no right to judge?

When we say during a discussion on morals that atheists don't have the right to make moral judgements, we're by no means plotting to strip atheists of their civil rights to complain when they are wronged. Neither are we saying that atheists are incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong. Our point is simply that without an objective point of reference their claims have no real imperative beyond making a statement about the speaker.

If I really like chocolate icecream that by no means compels you to like it also. Likewise if morality is subjective it by no means compels another subject.

So, if a Christian wrongs an atheist no Christian will prevent that atheist from going to a police station and laying a charge, but if the atheist says that morality is basically an illusion and that it has no objective basis, while Christians will support your civil right to complain, we cannot really see any philosophical basis for complaining.

In other words, despite the fact that Richard Dawkins claims that there is at bottom no good, no evil, just blind pitiless indifference, I'll defend his civil right to complain when an evil act is perpetrated against him, while I'll be scratching my head about his intellectual inconsistency.

Sorry for the rather lengthy post, I hope this clarifies a few things.

[LuftWaffle]

Luftwaffle, I haven't been even hinting to the idea that our morality is "random". When did I say we roll dice or draw from a hat on whether something is good or bad?

I don't know what you mean.

Did God decide what is right and wrong or is right and wrong set in stone and God is the messenger?

No, I don't believe that. I believe right and wrong are manifestations of God's nature, not mere decisions that God made.

What if someone who has a different view of morality than you do and they don't recognize your God, how do you show that your morality is on higher ground? Or let's say their god is a god of war and he is the one true god, how do you trump them?

It seems what you're asking here is, "Would you still hold to your views if the world was entirely different?" Asking how I would argue if God was replaced by a god of war, is really quite irrelevant. How would you argue atheism if the true god was a god of war?

I'm afraid I don't have much time to respond. While as far as I can see, none of these issues relate to my clarifying post, I hope atleast that you have read it?

Blessings.

[Guest shiloh357]

So I see what you're doing here, you take the good bits of society and attribute that to God and then the horrible bits you blame on humanity. It's easy to win when you can't possibly lose.

God is absolutely holy and just. His laws are based on that standard. Mankind is separated from God and unlike God, mankind operates on a sliding moral scale.

Social creatures have an "innate' code to [generally speaking] work together to survive. This doesn't mean they have some Utopian society but they depend on each other for survival and even happiness [yes, social animals exhibit this in the wild].

That has nothing to do with morality. Animals can often eat their young. How is that good for their survival? I would also point out that there is alot about animals that have a "pack" mentality that you would not want humans to exhibit. Again, your appeal to the animal kingdom is selective. If we were to push that argument a little further, the erroneous nature of it would be obvious. Humans are not "animals." We operate from a higher state of existence than animals.

Do you also acknowledge that we are social creatures?

Sure, but that is nothing to ground morality to.

During WWII, Germans attended concert halls and enjoyed operas, concerts containing the works of Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, Haydn, etc. while right in their own backyard Jews and Gypsies and mllions of others were sent to the camps and the gas chambers. Germans were morally indifferent to the horrors that thier own country was committing. Germany was, by all accounts a sophisticated society and fostered a culture that produced many of the finest music and works of art ever seen, yet could not care less about the barbarism they were inflicting on an entire race of people.

In fact, Hitler couched his Holocaust and the final solution on the very notion of the survival of German people. He painted the Jews as a threat to the well-being and survival of Germany and the German people.

So yes, it is possible to have all the intellect and create magnificient inventions and make stunning technological advances and with all of that vaulted knowledge still murder, hate and brutalize your neighbor. Look at countries like China and North Korea and how they brutalize people over there. Human cruelty is not limited to jungle tribes or third world nations. Even in Japan, torture is seen as an acceptable means of disciplining a wayward employee.

And what happened to Hitler and his regime? It sounds like his idea of a "good" world came crashing down around him....the rest of the world fought against his sick ways.

But that is beside the point. That has nothing to do with issue I raised. Being more rational, intelligent, culttured and sophisiticated did NOTHING to stem the bigotry, barbarity of the Nazis and it also did nothing to affect a change in the moral indifference of the German people. Hitler was able to do what he did because he couched his immoral actions in principle of "survival."

It proves that you cannot ground your morality to society especiall when society lends its tacit approval to such atrocites.

Ethics are not solely grounded on survival, but as social creatures who value survival it is a big piece.

When survival is at stake, you see very quickly how "morality" and "ethics" fly out the window. We are not kind to each other because of the need to survive. We do not tell the truth in order to survive. Usually it when survival is the goal that we become greedy, selfish, resort to dishonest, underhanded tactics when we think our survival is threatened.

Many years ago, my dad had a heart attack and my parents lived too far out of town to wait for an ambulance and so my mother (who had never ever had even a speeding ticket) broke every law in the books to get my dad to the hospital. She ran every red light and drove some 20 miiles over the speed limit. Being a law abiding citizen took a back seat to survival. I am not saying what my mom did was "wrong" morally give the circumstances. She did what most people would have done in that situtation. The point is that laws and standards of behavior are always the first casualties in a survival situation.

I really don't see the advantage that theists have who say their morality is grounded in "God", what if the person who is trying to invade your home and your land doesn't recognize "God" or at least not YOUR God?

That also misses the point. The point is that if morality is based on "survival," then depending why the person is breaking into your house you may or may not have a right to say they did anything wrong. A person who doesn't recognize any moral restriction on his behavior can argue that you have no moral right to seek justice because you have nothing objective to point to as a standard for how you view his behavior.

What does it matter what Jesus said or what YWHW said, who cares? You act as if you have a "trump card" you can flash in someone's face and say "Here! see this, this means I'm right and we can know this objectively". You don't have that merely because you assert you get morality from "God".

God is the eternal Judge of the universe. He has the right to set the standard for what is right and wrong according to His righteousness. That is the standard He operates by and the standard by which man is judged by Him.

Laws do not exist without lawgivers. Even in our judiciaries laws are seen as objective standards against which guide, regulate and judge a person's beavior. If there is an objective standard of morality, it cannot come from humanity. Our laws reflect the fact that on some level we KNOW there is a right and wrong way to behave. In that way humanity reflects its Creator.