Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? Evidence for God from Objective Moral Truth

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? 

Evidence for God from Objective Moral Truth

Posted: 30 Jan 2019 01:56 AM PST

There are several compelling arguments for the existence of God, and many of them are rooted in science (i.e. thee Cosmological Argument) or philosophy (i.e. the Transcendental Argument). Sometimes these disciplines are foreign to our everyday experience, however, and not many of us are prepared to debate (or even describe) scientific details or esoteric philosophical concepts, especially as they might be related to God’s existence.

  Should we blame that on the Holy Spirit, who apparently wants to be known as your teacher?  Sure is funny that we have no problems blaming the teacher if the kids remain uneducated, but when it comes to "god", then suddenly, any and all imperfections seen in "his" work can never never never be blamed on him.  Feel free to take comfort in your insanely inerrant security blanket, but don't expect the atheist's goosebumps to rise up from their skin as high as your goosebumps do.

Another set of evidences may be far easier to assess and communicate. Is God real?

 You'd serve the cause of truth more efficiently if you narrowed the debate proposition, so you can focus your attention more to less issues  Don't ask whether God exists.  Ask whether Kalam's first premise is fatally ambiguous.  Don't ask whether Jesus rose from the dead.  Ask whether a non-Christian can be reasonable to find apostolic authorship of Matthew's gospel too obscure and problematic to be granted.  See how that works?

The presence of objective moral truth validates the existence of God and this evidence may be much easier to communicate to others.

 So since burning teen girl prostitutes to death was commanded by God (Leviticus 21:9), you are forced to view that form of justice as objective morality.  You can assert that not everything God commanded through Moses was morally objective, but you'll find yourself in theological gridlock in no time.  The end of the Mosaic theocracy appears to have less to do with God's will and more to do with naturalistic historical circumstance.  If killing all the gays was good for the Mosaic society, how could it possibly be bad for any other society?  Would it be true that in every such execution, the people were "putting away the evil from among them"?

We live in a world filled with moral truths and most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, believe these truths are more than a matter of personal opinion, evolutionary development or social convention. “Torturing babies for fun” is (and has been) morally repugnant regardless of the time in history, place on the planet, or identity of any particular people group.

 But there is a perfectly good naturalistic explanation for the common human aversion to torturing babies.  The natural mammalian desire to protect the young.  Furthermore, there is the fact is that torturing babies doesn't appear to serve any mammalian purpose, and contradicts mammalian genetics.  If the whole purpose of life is to procreate, then obviously the parents are going to view anything that inhibits the life of the newborns, as something to be shunned.

Torturing babies does not keep the food supply stable, it does not replenish needed water, it does not tell you which person would be good for the company, etc, etc. You also forget that many older siblings do indeed torture their younger brothers or sisters.  "Torture" doesn't have to be water-boarding or smashing knees with hammers, to be torture.  Your own bible consistently affirms the goodness of physically harming children with a "rod", and one could easily argue that this is a form of torture even if it doesn't last very long.  Torture doesn't require a minimum length of time.

You also forget that plenty of people throughout history have engaged in child torture via slavery, hard work, harsh discipline, or placing them out in open territory to let them die slowly.  You are not very scholarly if you just automatically exclude such adult opinions from your analysis.  One could also argue that if morals come from God, we probably wouldn't find anybody in history torturing babies or children.

Moral truths of this nature transcend and precede us.

 Sorry, but there you go again, preaching the choir, since you know perfectly well no atheist is going to agree that any truth we exhibit "transcends" us.

We don’t invent or construct them, we discover them.

 In the sense that we were raised by parents who imposed on us the morals they discovered from their own caretakers, yes.  In the sense of the moral truths existing outside of humanity?  No.  Go work in a daycare for a few days, them come back and tell me God put his laws into our hearts.  No, he only puts his laws into our hearts when our caretakers put their laws into our hearts.  I'd say the timing is suspicious.

Transcendent, objective moral truths such as these form the foundation of the Axiological Argument for the existence of God. “Axio” means the “study of values” and the Axiological Argument uses the existence of objective values or “mores” to prove the existence of God:

(1) There is an Objective (Transcendent) Moral Law

 No.  I already grilled Matthew Flannagan on this:  when he told me that we shouldn't torture babies to death solely for entertainment, I asked him what moral standard he was using to condemn the practice, and he skipped town.  The best he could do was to simplistically bleat that if any person needs to be told why such act is wrong, then they have something wrong with their brain.  That's nothing but an appeal to emotion.  Flannagan knows the basis for saying such act is wrong, but is rightfully fearful that if he admits what it is, he will infuse his argument with more subjectivity than he wants his viewers to think is necessary.  So he just skips town instead of honestly admitting that his argument for God from objective morality is fatally subjective.

(2) Every Law Has a Law Giver

Not when the law in question is merely the name we attach to patterns of thinking we observe in mammals.  There is a "law of gravity", but that's obviously something far different from "law says you can't drive over 55 mph."

(3) Therefore, There is an Objective (Transcendent) Law Giver

(4) The Objective (Transcendent) Law Giver is God

Dream on.

If objective, transcendent moral truths exist, an objective, transcendent moral truth giver is the most reasonable inference.

No, the concept of "god" as an immaterial intelligence is incoherent, so since naturalistic explanations are at least coherent, they will always be better than this appeal to 'god'.

Living in a world filled with moral choices, we often confuse description with prescription. It’s one thing to describe “what is”, but it’s another thing to prescribe “what ought to be”. Humans are good at the former, but have been historically uneven with the latter.

And Christians have always been divided on the latter, i.e., what ought to be.  Your trifles about how this doesn't get rid of god, really don't accomplish much.  If you people ARE that divided on morality, and have been for 20 centuries, the mere possibility this could still be consistent with God's existence does precisely nothing to enable the atheist to figure out which Christian morality is from god. If you couldn't attain like-mindedness on this for 20 centuries, its pretty reasonable to conclude you aren't going to be achieving that goal with an internet post.

Individuals and groups often allow their own selfish interests to color the way they evaluate moral truth.

Sort of like the greed involved in a land-grab conveniently has the grabbers suddenly discover that grabbing land is more holy than allowing its original occupants to live there.  Sure is funny that you think every group doing a land-grab in the ANE was immoral to do so...except of course, conveniently, the Hebrews.

When this happens, we sometimes come to very different conclusions about the “rightness” of our beliefs or actions. When we disagree about the moral value of a particular action, we usually try to convince the other side to accept our position. But why would this be necessary if all moral truths come from individuals or groups? If humans are the source of moral truth, why should we consider one group’s values to be any better than another?

 This usually takes place in the context of showing how your particular moral stance is more likely to achieve your opponent's goals, than his own moral stance.  That's why.  Last I checked, you don't require your little daughter to wear matching clothes to school because God hath decreed it so, yet her obedience to her parents is a "moral" issue.  If morality comes from God, then there you go:  God has an opinion about what clothes she should wear to school. Let me guess:  you've always asked God about this matter, amen?

Nope, you believe your sky-daddy only gives a fuck about the big issues, and doesn't really care what color your shoes are, despite the fact that the biblical teaching that Christ holds all things together would imply that God is ultimately responsible for how the neurons fire in your brain, in ways that often manifest as you choosing a certain color of shoe.  Your bullshit idea that God doesn't care about your personal details, is theological heresy.  God could no more be apathetic toward what you'll have for dinner tomorrow night, than he could just remove his presence from rocks.

When we argue for what “ought to be” we’re not simply asking someone to accept our subjective opinion; were asking them to see the “rightness” of the objective moral truth we happen to hold.

When a group of societies come together to discuss the moral value of a particular action (as is often the case at meetings of the United Nations), they are appealing to a standard transcending the group in an effort to convince any one member of the group.

No, one group is trying to show how their unique morality will more efficiently achieve the common goals of the united nations, than the morality of any other group.

When one nation asks another to conform to some form of moral behavior, it’s not saying, “Do it our way,” it’s saying, “Do the right thing.”

 Correct, the "right" thing being the subjective view held by the nation whose representative is doing the talking.  

Our appeal to a particular behavior isn’t based solely on our collective, subjective opinion; it’s based on an appeal to objective moral values transcending our opinion.

 I find that to be rather disingenuous given that even conservative Christians disagree on morality so much they will accuse each other of defying common sense.  Forgive me if I refuse to believe that one of them speaks from the Holy Spirit and the other doesn't.  Your God could fix this stupid bullshit by just waving his magic wand to get people to believe whatever he wants them to believe, as he allegedly did in Ezra 1:1.  You always blame the parents if they allow their stupid kids to starve themselves to death.  Do you call God a "father"?  

We can argue about the identity of these values, but we must accept the transcendent foundation of these moral truths if we ever hope to persuade others to embrace them. Nations may dislike one another and resist the subjective values held by other groups. That’s why we argue for the transcendent moral value of an action, rather than appealing to a subjective national opinion.

 I don't find a UN speaker's appeal to "divine rights" or similar to be any more compelling than a terrorist's speech that says Allah wills the massacre of thousands of Americans.   I'm sorry Wallace, but bellowing out moral commands in the name of Jesus does precisely nothing to "show" that they come from god.  Which you probably don't care about since you didn't intend to do apologetics here anyway, you are simply preaching the choir with all the smug blindness of a 1940's teacher in a Book of Mormon class.  In our little world, we can tell ourselves whatever we want and feel good about it the whole time, amen?

The evidence from the existence of objective moral truth points to God as the most reasonable explanation.

No, "god" is an incoherent concept, and if he is the most infinite thing in existence, as you classical theists are forced to allege, then Occam's Razor would slice away the god-hypothesis long before it would slice away any less complex explanatory theory.  What now?  Did you suddenly discover that Occam's Razor isn't quite as bright as most Christian apologists say it is?

Now you start in with the irrelevant questions that arose only because you formed an illegitimate theological foundation:

If transcendent moral truths exist, from where do they come? Is God real? The evidence from the existence of objective moral truth points to God as the most reasonable explanation.