This essay was written as background information for a seminar I gave on apologetics at Summer Wine 2001 and 2002. Consequently, it is not written as formally as some of my other essays.

What are objective moral values?

Objective moral values are valid, and binding, independent of whether someone believes in them or not. For example, labelling the Holocaust as objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis thought it was right. And it would still have been wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded at brainwashing everyone.

What is the link between God and objective moral values?

If there is no God, then objective moral values are merely the product of socio-biological evolution. The atheist philosopher Michael Ruse said: "Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth, and morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction - any deeper meaning is illusory".

Without God, morality becomes just a matter of personal taste, similar to statements like, "Broccoli tastes good". Well, it tastes good to some people, but not to others. It is not a matter of objective truth but a subjective matter of taste. This means that a statement like: "killing innocent children is wrong", becomes simply an expression of taste, such as: "I don't like the killing of innocent children."

In the absence of God, there is no reason to think that the morality evolved by humans is objective. After all, if there is no God, then what's so special about human beings? They're just accidental by-products of nature that have only recently evolved on a tiny speck of dust lost somewhere in a mindless universe and are doomed to perish forever in a relatively short time.

Thus, without God, there is no absolute right or wrong that imposes itself on our conscience. Without God, there are no objective moral values.

Do objective moral values exist?

Some people say that the idea of objective moral values is unsound, because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different ideas of what constitutes good moral behaviour. But this is not true. There have been differences between the moralities of different societies, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If you compare the moral teachings of the societies such as the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Hindus, the Chinese, the Greeks, and the Romans, what will really strike you will be how very similar their moral teachings are to each other, and to our own. The same common law can be recognised running through them all. The fact that this common theme can be seen through many different civilisations and ages points to the fact that moral values are not simply the product of a society, but are somehow larger than a single society. They transcend the culture of a single society. This points to the existence of objective moral values, that are not culture-bound.

When you think about the differences between the morality of one society and another, do you think that the morality of one society is ever better or worse than that of another? Have there ever been any improvements to the morality? If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. However, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others, and the moment that you say that one set of moral ideas is better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard. You are saying that one of the sets of moral values conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality. You are admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's moral ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something some Real Morality for them to be true about.

C. S. Lewis gives the following analogy: "The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said 'New York' each means merely 'The town I am imagining in my own head', how could one of have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all. In the same way, if moral values meant simply 'whatever each nation happens to approve', there would be no sense in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world could ever grow morally better or worse."

We all know deep down that, in fact, objective moral values do exist. All we have to do to see that is to simply ask ourselves: "Is torturing a child for fun a morally neutral act?" Most people would answer, "No, that's not morally neutral; it's really wrong to do that".

Actions like rape and child abuse aren't just behaviours that happen to be socially unacceptable - they are clearly moral abominations. They are objectively wrong. And such things as love, equality, and self-sacrifice really are good in an objective sense. We all know these things deep down. We all know that objective moral values do in fact exist.

The Inescapable Conclusion

The conclusion here is simple. Since these objective moral values cannot exist without God, and yet they unquestionably do exist, it follows logically and inescapably that God exists. Objective moral values have God himself as their source.

Summary

The moral argument for the existence of God proposes the following:

1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist as they are merely the product of socio-biological evolution.
2. Some actions and events are objectively right, and others are objectively wrong, regardless of what people think of them, so objective moral values do exist.

Therefore, God exists.

A number of sources were drawn on for this essay, particularly:

• William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, Moody Press, 1994
• Norman Geisler, When Skeptics Ask, Baker Books, 2001
• Norman Geisler, Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, 1988


• Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith, Zondervan, 2000
• C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Harper San Francisco, last published 2001
• Phillip Yancey, Where is God when it hurts?, Zondervan, 1997

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