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In this clip, I review a YouTuber who goes by the name of The Rabyd Atheist who discusses his issue with the “Moral Argument For God” and he completely fails at understanding what the theist is saying in this argument. Let us first start with the basic Moral Argument for God that Mr. Rabyd Atheist is complaining about although there is more to the argument that he either doesn’t know about or just didn’t mention in his video. His issue is that he believes that theists, mostly Christians, are saying that since atheists don’t believe in God that they are automatically immoral. This isn’t even close to what is being proposed by most Christians, given there could be some exceptions who believe this but we should know that exceptions don’t prove the rule. What Christians are saying is that our belief in God gives us grounding for a standard for what is moral or immoral. This being the case wouldn’t imply that the disbelief in God means it would be impossible for the person to live a moral life from the understanding of a Christian.
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This also doesn’t imply that the atheist is unable to develop their own standard for morality and for them, we could just grant an infinite amount of moral standards that they can choose from. The problem then becomes an issue for grounding whichever standard they deem suitable for them and justifying how that standard is objective and why everyone ought follow their standard. Unfortunately, most atheists do not understand what it means to ground their moral standard and think just stating a reason for why they think it is good for society is what it means to ground their standard. When we think about what grounding means, a good analogy I think helps to understand this is a foundation for a house because essentially, philosophical grounding is laying down the foundation for the belief and when we think about the foundation of a house, what is it that makes a good foundation? The fact that it is unmovable and ensures that the house can rest firmly in place forever not accounting for some catastrophic event. So to properly ground your moral standard is to provide a justification that is objective and by that meaning that it will always be the same standard and is unchanging. For the Christian, this is done by appealing to God and His unchanging nature but for the atheist, this becomes difficult if not impossible. I would have to lean towards it being impossible as most atheists who have tried grounding various moral standards have either failed to do so or have just admitted that morality is a social construct and is relativistic and everchanging through different cultures. I will get into an argument for how we can justify the existence of morality in a bit but first, I want to explain why this is important to discuss in today’s society.
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So why is this topic so important in today’s society? Well for anyone paying attention to the current cultural/political landscape, there is a growing divide for how our society ought be governed and how the people in society ought act. This becomes problematic as more and more people are advocating for our nation to be treated as a secular nation as secular ethics/morals are impossible to be grounded. Let’s take Utilitarianism for an example. Utilitarianism is a secular ethical system that states that what provides utility or benefit to the society is what society ought use but this begs the question of who determines what is useful or beneficial for society and, if we can determine what is useful or beneficial, why society ought value it. These are the two most common problems that most every secular ethical system faces, who determines the variables of the system and more importantly, why society ought value the variables. This is the classic Is/Ought Distinction laid out by a secular philosopher, David Hume. David correctly pointed that just because something IS the case, it doesn’t follow that it OUGHT be the case otherwise saying that just because something is descriptively true doesn’t logically mean it is prescriptively true. For example, smoking can cause lung cancer but it doesn’t logically imply that people shouldn’t smoke. The simply statement that smoking can cause cancer doesn’t in itself suggest that people shouldn’t smoke, it is merely stating what is true but the prescription that people ought not smoke would be derived elsewhere such as the person’s value for health. So the question that I have for Christians and, I guess other theists (I don’t really care), why should we allow people who can’t even give a justification for what they consider moral or immoral a say or even authority/power in society? My position on the matter is that secular ethics can’t exist if they can’t be justified and the secularist who is mentioning morality is nothing more than a nonsense machine who shouldn’t be taken serious. Also, when it comes to the topic of other theists, they have a different understanding about the nature of God and therefore have a different justification for their moral system that I wouldn’t agree with which is why I advocate that only Christians OUGHT have authority in our nation and would need a justification for why that would be immoral because if it isn’t immoral, why should I care?
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Here is where I lay out the argument for how we justify or moral/ethical standard and it is up to the atheist as to whether or not they accept it or they can try and make an argument against it. To justify morality from the Christian worldview we would first have to justify the foundation of our morals which that would be God. This is what the atheist is always asking for is that they want “PROOF” for God’s existence but the problem becomes is that the atheist wants you to assume their worldview of empiricism and present physical evidence of God’s existence. This is the disingenuous tactic of the atheist by assuming their worldview is true and we have to just grant it for them. They essentially want us to present God on a silver plater and say “Here is God, now you can believe” but of course this isn’t our worldview and if the atheist is honest, they would do an internal critique and grant our worldview and point out the contradictions and impossibility from inside our worldview. The problem with that is that as soon as you grant the Christian God it is hard to say that something is impossible which is probably why they don’t try to internally critique the Christian’s worldview. For the argument, I will first point to something that we can agree exists that is immaterial and that would be the Laws of Logic.
The three basic Laws of Logic are:
The Law of Identity: which states that X is X. An example of this would be, a rock is a rock.
The Law of Excluded Middle: which states that it is either X or not X. An example of this would be, it is either a rock or an apple.
The Law of Non-Contradiction: which states X cannot also be not X. An example would be, a rock cannot also be an apple. To further explain this, you could sculpt a rock to the shape of an apple and paint it red but that would not change the truth that it is still a rock.
Of course, the atheist can try to say that these Laws are just concepts of the mind and that they don’t exist but can that really be the case? They would have to admit that it would be impossible for us to operate in this world or even to have discussions if that were true. With the mention of concepts and the mind, the atheist would have to also justify how those exist if everything that exist in the world can be found in nature. A lot of people seem to conflate the brain and the mind and atheists will even assert that the mind is an emergent property of the brain but the problem with this is that they could never tell you where the brain ends and the mind begins. From the Christian perspective (I may not have this exactly correct so don’t quote me haha), the mind is an external, immaterial organ of the human being that facilitates our connection and union with God. Aside from all of that, even if we grant the atheist view of the “mind” or that the Laws of Logic are concepts, they would still have to admit that the Laws of Logic are mind-dependent as it requires the mind to interact with the Laws of Logic. So how does all of this justify the existence of God? If the Laws of Logic are true, that a rock is a rock and can never be anything other than a rock and the Laws of Logic are mind-dependent the question then becomes, if there are no human minds to determine that a rock is a rock would it still be true? The answer would have to be, of course it is true which would mean that the Laws of Logic would still be true absent the human mind and if the Laws of Logic are mind-dependent it would logically follow that there is a Mind other than the human mind. That mind would have to be God. Now, this doesn’t necessarily conclude that this god would be the Christian God but further argumentation (from an actual Christian apologist or someone with the authority to speak further on that matter as I am not someone who is capable of doing that) would be required to justify that point but this will at least gets the wheels turning in the conversation for how Christians have a better justification for morality than the atheist.
To be honest, I didn’t really plan on writing all of this out as I was just going to upload the original clip but of course, as I began writing the description of the clip I just kept going. The reason why I am stating this is because I don’t have a lot of experience making this argument so it might not be as fined tuned as I want it to be but it is definitely a start and if anyone has any suggestions on how to improve the argument then I am definitely up for hearing it. I hope you enjoyed reading this post and would hope that you give it a Like, leave a Comment about your thoughts and be sure to Share the post with others.
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