Moral Argument

Wikipedia “Argument from Morality”

All forms of the moral argument begin with the premise of moral normativity, that is, that well-functioning human beings are typically aware of actions as being right and wrong. Furthermore, this awareness binds them to certain obligations, regardless of their personal goals and ends. In this sense, moral qualities have the appearance of objectivity; under this view, when someone say “I ought to do something” they do not mean the same as “I would like to do something.” Another aspect of this is that an assertion such as “torturing babies for fun is wrong” is generally intended as a statement of fact and not preference.

In its most general form, the moral argument is that:

1. Some aspect of Morality (e.g., its objective force) is observed.

2. Belief in God provides a better explanation of this feature than various alternatives.

3. Therefore, to the extent that (1) is accepted, belief in God is preferable to these alternatives.

C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

If a good God made the world why has it gone wrong? And for many years I simply refused to listen to the Christian answers to this question, because I kept on feeling “whatever you say and however clever your arguments are, isn’t it much simpler and easier to say that the world was not made by any intelligent power? Aren’t all your arguments simply a complicated attempt to avoid the obvious?” But then that threw me back into another difficulty.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too — for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist — in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless — I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality — namely my idea of justice — was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.