all right everybody lecture number nine we're jumping in now to talk about moral arguments for God's existence we've already dealt with cosmological and teleological arguments now we deal with arguments from morality without doubt don't care who you are even those people just say there's no God there's no objective basis for morality everyone has an opinion about what we ought to be doing or how we ought to live our lives that sense of openness that everybody has seems to be fairly useful in making arguments for God's existence and so that's what we're gonna look at in this lecture its moral arguments or just like the family of cosmological and the family of teleological arguments we're gonna look at the family of arguments that are based their argument for God out of morality okay and like always we'll deal with at least a couple versions of these arguments to help you see how they work okay all right so here's what they do moral arguments start with the phenomenon of reality and argue for God on the basis of morality remember what I've said to you every argue every one of these first couple cosmological teleological and moral arguments they all start with some particular aspect of reality and argue for God from it the next argument we're gonna look at ontological arguments don't really do that they argue from the concept of God to God's existence but for these first family's cosmological teleological moral they all start with this some particular aspect of the universe in this case morality and say that given that you've got to have God okay so moral arguments I'll start with the phenomenon of morality now some moral arguments argue from a very specific moral command to the existence of God so in other words here's what I want you to understand by that some arguments will say look given this particular kind of no no this particular kind of moral rule we could say there's a God in the light of okay I'm gonna call those in this lecture morally specific arguments all right so some do that more recent versions face focus less on specific commands and more on a universal sense of morality itself and so they don't attach it to a particular one they just say hey look generally speaking we all feel like we ought to live certain ways and so that sense of openness is gonna be what they focus on either approach is tricky and does face obstacles I have to admit to you I tend to think that these arguments are perhaps some of the harder arguments to make simply because I see a variety of naturalistic alternatives that have been put forward the good news is there's some good answers to those alternatives that we could look at and we could criticize those but generally speaking with atheists per se these arguments are not always real persuasive with popular level folks yes these arguments are very very persuasive so in short I don't tend to think that these are the most successful arguments and yet they tend to be some of the more influential arguments and I'll let you decide for yourself what you think about that okay all right so let's look first at what I've called a morally specific argument coming right back to the slide what I mean by morally specific is this we can point to a particular or a specific moral command and we can make an argument for God's existence from that command all right so here's how an argument like this could work premise one we could say something like this that if there are actions that are morally wrong for all people then there must be an objective moral universal moral standard okay so this is essentially if P then Q P therefore Q type of argument premise two there are indeed certain actions that are morally wrong for all people like for example murdering raping torture and so on okay premise three objective moral standards can only come from God therefore conclusion there must be a God God must exist so that in a nutshell is how one could make a morally specific kind of argument for God's existence all right but no what about this well in short there's a lot of pushback on these types of argument and so here's a critique that has been given along these lines or sort of a collection of critiques it could be to be given here premise 2 and again premise 2 says well there are certain commands certain actions that are morally wrong for people some critics deny that that's actually true they'd say despite what you think not everybody agrees to the same standards this was very much the kind of argument that one would have put forward in the Enlightenment right during the Enlightenment there was this idea that we all just had the same objective rationality we all thought and process the same so therefore you could go anywhere in the world and you'd find the same rational cognitive patterns amongst all people we could all agree to the same kinds of general standards like don't kill people don't murder people well as we advanced in sociology and anthropology and all those areas over the last hundred and some years what we've learned is no that's not actually true unfortunately it's not the case that everybody everywhere always sees things exactly the same there sometimes we find cultures where raping is acceptable or tortures acceptable or murders acceptable or something like that so premise 2 might not be as easy to establish as you'd be inclined to think hey how about premise one again premise 1 if you wanted to see it very quickly premise 1 says if there are actions that are morally wrong for all people then there must be an objective universal moral standard so it's the if-then part of it if there are these moral rules then there's got to be this moral standard well premise 1 can actually be denied by Freudians people following Sigmund Freud and basically they would say that there's nothing more than just a feeling of guilt with nothing behind it these moral inclinations that we have yes we feel that way but that's all there is to it there's just a feeling there's not a moral standard behind it you and I just feel that way so it could be that man everybody everywhere certainly feels like we shouldn't do any of those things but it's just that it's just feeling right it's not because there's an actual standard right so we could feel those ways or since those things and it wouldn't necessitate an objective moral standard would be the upshot of all that well premise three and if you not don't remember what premise three is well premise three objective moral standards can only come from God well Immanuel Kant denies that one he says no that's not actually how that works at all it could be that we all agree that there is indeed a standard a moral standard not to kill people where's that standard come from well in your argument mr. Christian it comes from God but in reality it doesn't have to come from God it could come from our own collective desire to treat everybody the exact same way and that's what makes it objective right so anyway all that to say despite how these quote morally specific arguments might have an initial appeal to us philosophers throughout history have actually debated these quite a lot and come up with any number of ways that they could dispute them all right so those are morally specific arguments let me turn now to a different kind of moral argument and I'm gonna call this a general moral argument so in other words in this case I mean let me clarify I'm coming right back to the slide in morally specific commands what I'm pointing to are kept like specific no no's specific don'ts don't murder don't rape don't torture so in light of those morally specific commands people have made arguments more general moral arguments wouldn't say this one or that one they would just simply point to the sense of honest that all of us have even if we disagree on what that is it's just the general disposition that there's a right way in a wrong way to live our lives that general disposition is what these arguments are gonna point to okay now here's a version of an argument by Paul copán that I think that does something like that premise 1 if objective moral values exist then God exists we don't have to get into designating what those moral values are or those moral rules are all we got to do is say that there's certain moral values right objective moral values do exist and then therefore God must exist and so that's an example of a condom argument that you could pick up on now here's the critique of these kinds of argument premise 2 which basically says objective moral values exist it's a little harder to criticize in this version because it requires you to identify it does not require you sorry that should say it does not require you to identify specific actions that are right and wrong it leaves it open to what those are going to be okay so in other words again it's not focusing on this particular command or this particular rule it's just a general disposition of oughtness or rightness or wrongness that people are going to have and it could argue for God's existence from it so premise 2 might be a little harder to criticize but premise 1 seems to be a little bit vulnerable premise 1 again says if objective moral values exist then God must exist and so again it's this if-then thing if this is true then that must true be true what if you could say objective moral values do exist and you don't have to have God to explain it and that's essentially that the rejection here why I say premise one could be vulnerable seems to require us to show that God is the only possible explanation of reality but what about other explanations that we've already considered like Freudian ones or conching ones or what about Darwinian ones or brute facts one this is a way that some people want to go let me explain Darwin evens first a Darwinian account of morality would probably also say that there's like this Universal objective value right protect life or something like that or honor life but they'd say but we can explain it with nature and we can explain it with evolution we don't have to have God from the outside adding that in we can simply explain it with the natural process of evolution in short they could say creatures have simply evolved better when they have not murdered when they've not raped or when they've not done any of those types of things and as a product of evolution there's therefore this disposition or maybe we could even call it a moral principle don't do those things because naturalistically you Hertz the evolutionary process and so Darwin Ian's might say something like that some people have said well no maybe these moral principles are just brute facts they're just they don't have to have God as next money there's brute facts of the universe now I'd say to that one nice try I mean yeah I guess we can start saying anything is a brute fact now if you do that brute fact types of accounts or responses seem to me just to be a cop-out I mean you're really just quitting and saying I don't know it's not my problem that sounds like what it's what they're saying I'm not convinced that a brute facts response will work I'm not convinced that a Darwinian approach would work because truth of the matter the evolutionary process so described by Darwin sounds awfully vicious sounds awfully much like you don't really care if anything else dies you do what's in your own interest for your survival so that doesn't seem to work the consciente proach maybe back in the Enlightenment when we thought that everybody thought the same but nobody thinks that way anymore so that one doesn't seem to work either and so all that to say hey look I'm a little more optimistic about these arguments these general moral arguments despite these kinds of heavyweight criticisms of them it seems to me that these are not out of reach okay alright so far we've looked at two kinds of moral arguments one moral argument is a morally specific argument one is more general of an argument that points to the oughtness that we have okay well there's at least one other category of argument and oh by the way like I did with some of the last ones let me point out what kinds of arguments we've been dealing with both of those arguments are deductive arguments okay let's look now at a different kind of argument an abductive argument we'll skip over the inductive ones because those don't I don't think of top of my head if anybody makes those types of arguments but people do make abductive arguments from morality and people do make deductive arguments from morality so let's look at some abductive ones for just a minute i now remember that an abductive reasoning does not seek certain conclusions in other words we're not seeking absolute certainty here rather it seeks simply to show that God is the best explanation for a given thing so you remember the example I gave you as we did that lecture so here's a fact that needs to be explained the lawn was wet this morning possible explanations it rained last night also may be kins neighbor watered the glut grass in the middle of night maybe option three the sewage line busted well as we analyzed those options two and three don't really seem to fit the data that we've collected weather forecast we've surveyed other neighbors yards we don't have stinky sewage bob is super lazy or bill is super lazy so on and so forth one the idea that rain last night really fits the data really nicely quite perfectly actually so we draw the conclusion that it rained last night and what that is it's an inference to the best explanation remember that so that's how AB ducted arguments work now what if we can make moral arguments for God's existence that run something like that I just run along those kinds of lines where we're not trying to prove with absolute certainty in a deductive way that God is the only way to explain morality and prove his existence no rather what we do here is we just simply say God is the best explanation for morality and I think that this is how an argument like this could work premise one objective moral values exist I mean maybe someone pushback on that but generally speaking it seems like we're in good shape premise to God is best explained is the best explanation for moral value sorry I goofed that up God is the best explanation for moral values and then therefore in conclusion in all likelihood God exists now you'd have a lot of work with premise two I know I'm on just giving you sort of the nutshell of the argument you'd do a lot of work to establish premise two that God is the best explanation for things right you'd want to look at the Darwinian accounts and the Freudian accounts and the consciente counts and all those different accounts you'd want to show why they don't really fit the data and you'd want to show why God the existence of God does fit the data so all that to say we'd still have our philosophical work to do to establish premise 2 ok so let's work through these for just a minute and try to do that all right premise one says objective moral values exist the some may try to push back on that but try as they might I'd suggest you cannot escape the fact that human beings universally cents have a universal sense of honest and operate within moral frameworks right I mean look people all what they may deny morality they may deny the existence of God they may deny all those things but at the end of the day people have strong passionate opinions about how we ought to live and what we ought to be doing and what's right and what's wrong in protests and things like that so we may differ on what moral norms should be right but we don't differ that there are such things as moral norms right we all agree with that and so we do occasionally find some who claim to our motor oil norms but they often live in conflict with that claim so I'm just simply saying look those people they're rare to find number one and number two even if you found somebody said that do not worry about them cuz all you got to do is sit there listening to them for three seconds and they're gonna start mouthing off about their opinion about what's wrong and what's right and the moment they do that they're contradicting themselves okay so it seems to me that objective moral values do exist why are they objective well because remember the person that's denying them is still trying to persuade you of what's right and wrong and how you ought to live it's clearly something bigger than them are you it's something outside of them so it seems to be premise one of this argument again just to help you see the argument here it is objective moral values exist it looks like premise one is in pretty good shape all right what about premise two premise two says well God is the best explanation for moral values so that's not to say that there aren't some other possible explanations for morality right I mean indeed Darwin ian's have an explanation of it Freudians have an explanation of it conscience have an explanation of it there's any number of people that provide an explanation of it I'm not suggesting in premise two that there aren't other explanations I'm just saying they're not very good right so what I'm trying to say is that there indeed are other just but they don't fit with what we find in the world I think it's all that to say it's easier to poke holes in the darwinian accounts and the Freudian accounts and the the the teleological accounts and the brute facts accounts I think it's easier to poke holes in those things than it is to poke holes in the theistic account and if that's true then that means that God really is the better explanation of reality so now what would that mean well to take it back to the original argument premise one objective moral values exist premise two God is the best explanation for those values so in conclusion we've been climbed to say something like this in all likelihood God really is the best explanation for morality and so this is an abductive approach to the existence of God from morality we've looked at a wide variety of arguments over the last three lectures cosmological teleological moral argument I'm giving you some brands and flavors of both we looked at deductive arguments we've looked at some abductive arguments we'll continue to do that in the next argument this is technically deductive what we're gonna look at next in ontological arguments these are gonna be more deductive in nature but they're gonna make a big shift from what the other arguments we've looked at so far have done in cosmological teleological and moral arguments they all start with a particular either the universe itself or a particular aspect of the universe design or morality and then they argue from that for the existence of God in these next arguments we're gonna start off with the very concept of God or the definition of God God as the maximally great being or the greatest conceivable being and what these next arguments are gonna do is argue for his existence from that very idea if that idea of God is right what they're gonna argue is then at the end of the day God must absolutely exist now I just tell you philosophers are all over the map as to whether or not these are persuasive but I'll let you decide as I will all these other arguments what you think about those when we get there so we'll see in the next our lecture and we'll deal with ontological arguments