“The Naturalistic Fallacy” (alt.atheism, Joseph Bullach, June 2002) purports to show how the “Moral Argument” for God is fallacious. It does this in a convoluted way namely by showing that it is based on the assumption (by theists) of a “Naturalistic Fallacy” (in atheists) and that this itself is fallacious and contradictory! In particular, the Moral Argument is reworded as “morality cannot have a natural explanation, so it must be supernatural in origin”. He goes on to say that “In philosophical terms, this idea is expressed by saying that OUGHT cannot be derived from IS. In simpler terms it says that value cannot be derived from fact.” This, I would argue, is re-wording the argument in order to demolish it. It is relatively easy to show how anything not derived from fact is false especially when “fact” is considered synonymous with “truth”. This becomes particularly clear when we read, near the end, that: “Such values could only be inferred from fact”. The conclusion is just his axiom restated – a circular argument.

The essay continues to show the absurdity of this tenet (value not deriving from fact) and the hypocrisy of theists who claim this but live otherwise. In addition, in a later essay entitled “The Christian Fallacy” the absurdity is purportedly supported by several Bible verses (which requires some additional stretching of the passages, ignorance of context and, adaptation of the original Moral Argument). The author seems to be convinced that the Bible’s moral teachings are considered God-breathed and cannot have any grounding in the reality we see around us. The practical implication is that we cannot be moral without God.

At the outset it is, I think, important to recognize and affirm that the classical “Arguments for God” are not Biblical arguments upon which Christianity is based. Jesus did not come to earth to present us with the Cosmological, Teleological, Ontological and Moral arguments for God and depart assured that we’d be just fine. The arguments come from philosophers, some fairly modern (like Kant) trying to find a rational basis for their beliefs. For this reason anyone who demolishes one or the other would be wise to tame his ego – the Bible’s teaching still stands. I can offer you bad arguments or explanations for the existence of electrons, DNA molecules or Freemasons but they exist nonetheless.

Because the moral argument has been “straw-manned” it would make sense to re-state it. I do not feel it intrinsically offers conclusive proof of the existence of God (as does the Cosmological) but it does indicate the nature of God and highlight some problems in naturalistic thinking. A naturalistic thinker, who denies God or lives as though there were no God is faced with the problem of grounding his or her thinking. On what basis can reason and morality be justified, valued and accepted as correct and good? Without some absolute standard the answer is obvious, on our own basis! We humans, the highest life-forms we know of, are the only ones who can justify, evaluate and accept a rational argument or a moral tenet as acceptable, good and worthy of implementation. “Man is the measure of all things” – Protagoras.

Aquinas however, observed that we humans make value judgments all the time which amount to something being judged good if it is “more perfect” than something else less good. He reasoned that such value judgments are either completely subjective or grounded in an absolute and common knowledge of perfection. Humans all know what a perfect circle is although no one has ever seen one. We are able to judge millions of imperfect circles against the agreed but non-physical standard of a Perfect Circle.

Moral value judgments being, by nature, laws and standards must, if they are not to be subjective, conform to an agreed and absolute standard. That the evaluation of human behaviour is complex and that there are many gray areas does not detract from the necessary existence of such a standard.

The atheist may counter that we can make reliable and objective value judgments without referring to God but this is speculation which cannot be tested. The Bible says we have God’s Law written in our hearts – it is part of our nature – and we cannot remove it and see what happens. God risked much in creating us but apparently not enough to trust us to “discover” the moral absolute. We can however oppose this law, and the result is a barbaric and inhumane society. Such examples are not rare and go a long way to proving the point that God’s law, an absolute moral code is mandatory for civilized human existence. Anyone who denies an absolute moral standard and claims naturalistic determination should be pushed off a bridge and told “That was bound to happen, it’s morally OK too!”.

And so we see that the author’s assertion that we only learn morality from a “supernatural” origin is both correct and incorrect from a Biblical standpoint:

  1. We all owe our morality (and existence) to God (value derived from the supernatural)
  2. We are born with it and cannot test the world otherwise (value intrinsic to us)
  3. Moral codes can be observed in the world and tested for values

We do not have any assertion or proof from the author that morality cannot be determined empirically (from “fact”).

In conclusion we see that the author has misrepresented (or misinterpreted) the Bible and the Moral Argument. He has also not abandoned his a priori assumptions that the Bible is false and that God does not exist.

God did indeed create us in his image and we are beautiful, strong, intelligent and loving when we reflect his nature. At the same time, we are not an arbitrary simulation with arbitrary values of morality. The morality God requires is Good because it is from Him and he is Goodness. There is no question of finding a better morality and challenging God with it or asking “what if” he had done things differently. God is real and we can indeed derive our morality from reality or “fact” because that fact is God and his image permeating our world.

Posted: 2 June, 2007 on alt.atheism