Introduction
Introduction
I (Dave) remember as a child watching a television commercial about an organization that provided food for needy children around the world. An image haunts me to this day of a child in obvious physical need being handed food to eat. I can still recall how deeply moving it was, filling me with the visceral sense at the time that what I had just seen was something morally good. To feed that hungry child was beautiful; it was right and good. Obviously, it was tragic that the child was in so desperate a plight, but addressing the child’s abject need in this way was deeply appropriate. Of that I was quite sure. In fact, I remember thinking that I was unlikely ever to experience anything that could make me seriously question the goodness or rightness of the action. What else could I be as sure of as this? That was what I thought then, and fifty years later, my conviction remains. Little did I know that this was one of my first thoughts as a budding philosopher and ethicist; in a real sense, this childhood experience set me on a trajectory that I still travel.
Other people share similar stories. A poignant example can be found in the great American abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s memoir My Bondage and My Freedom. From the perspective of 1855, he tried to remember how as an innocent child he had encountered the “raw unfairness of the world and the essential venality of humankind”: “There are thoughtful days in the lives of children—at least there were in mine—when they grapple with all the great, primary subjects of knowledge, and reach, in a moment, conclusions which no subsequent experience can shake. I was just as well aware of the unjust, unnatural, and murderous character of slavery, when nine years old, as I am now. Without any appeal to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, it was enough to accept God as a father, to regard slavery as a crime.”1
Morality is ineliminably experiential. It is like aesthetics, the study of beauty, in this way. It is not enough merely to think about such topics in a passive manner, nor merely as an objective body of knowledge. In “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C. S. Lewis once reflected on an experience he had contrasting two ways to experience a sunbeam making its way into a dark shed through a crack at the top of the door. One way is to look at it, noticing, perhaps, the floating particles of dust it illumines in an otherwise dark shed. The other way involves putting one’s eye into the path of the light in order to look along the beam. When Lewis did so, here is what he saw: “Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”2
This book is, most generally, about the topic of God and morality. More specifically, it is about a moral argument for God’s existence. What we aim to do is not just to talk about the argument but instead to try to help readers feel its force. Not merely to look at the argument but to look along it. We do not intend merely to discuss the moral argument but rather to explain why we personally find it persuasive and compelling. We do not imagine that everyone reading will agree, and that is just fine. People need to think these issues through on their own and come to their own conclusions. Our claim is not that those who remain unpersuaded can resist the argument only on pain of contradiction, irrationality, or perversity. We instead simply aim to show why we find it to possess powerful force.
So this book is a rather concise essay or handy primer to introduce the moral argument for God, an exercise in discussing what it is about the argument that we find compelling and why. We endeavor to present the moral argument in a way that is persuasive, although of course we harbor no hopes that the argument will be found universally persuasive. After a rich history leading up to contemporary times, the argument has attracted quite a bit of attention in the last few decades, and we thought it a good time to consolidate its history and concisely encapsulate ways in which the argument can be presented. This gives us a chance to identify various proverbial forks in the road where those presenting the argument have options from which to choose, resulting in subtly different variants of the argument. We will also have occasion to anticipate and answer various objections along the way. We aim for this book to be fairly accessible to a wider audience.
A moral argument attempts to infer God’s existence (and perhaps some of his attributes) from moral evidence of various sorts. By “God” we mean nothing idiosyncratic but rather a supernatural being rather classically construed as possessing such great-making qualities as power, benevolence, goodness, and the like to the maximally compossible degree. This means there may be some built-in limitations; if God knows it is going to rain in Houston tomorrow, for example, he cannot simultaneously have that knowledge and make it not rain. This is less an intrinsic limitation on God than simply a function of God’s attributes manifesting coherence. Presumably not even God can make logical contradictions true.3
Similarly, God’s omnibenevolence, or all-goodness, would preclude his engaging in certain kinds of actions. If God’s goodness is at all recognizable, attributing to him such a quality is to impute some determinate content; God’s goodness is not consistent with just any and every behavior, no matter how morally questionable. Usually our discussion will involve the God of the philosophers, but on occasion we will delve into aspects of specifically Christian theology. We ourselves are Christians and think this reference to a distinctively Christian understanding of God justified; but when we do so, we will make it clear that this is happening.
We decided to write this book together because we have each done work on the moral argument individually, and we thought it would be a worthwhile project to pool our efforts and, to the extent that we can, integrate our approaches. In addition to laying out a moral argument incorporating elements of both of our versions, we will try to motivate the argument, explore some of its implications, discuss some of its historical variants, and anticipate and try to answer some notable objections.
As we get underway, it is worth noting that we think the argument works best in combination with other arguments of natural theology. Both of us are convinced that cumulative cases for God’s existence are the most effective way to go. In this way, limitations of particular arguments may be rectified and augmented by other arguments included in the cumulative case. Nor do we aim to produce an argument whose conclusion must be accepted on pain of irrationality. We are not offering a definitive demonstration of God’s existence by any stretch but simply an argument with some evidential force that, especially when combined with other arguments, can provide rational justification for belief in God.
In 2014 a conference at Baylor University was held for the purpose of reading preliminary drafts of several chapters that would eventually make up a book edited by Trent Dougherty and Jerry Walls called Two Dozen (Or So) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project.4 The inspiration for the book came from a long-unpublished lecture Alvin Plantinga had first given in a summer seminar in Bellingham, Washington, in 1986. He repeated the lecture later that year at the Wheaton College Philosophy Conference.
Plantinga is well known for lots of reasons, one being the fact that he is a proponent and major representative of reformed epistemology, according to which, even if there were no discursive propositional evidence for God’s existence, belief in God could still be fully justified, rational, and warranted. Critics might take this to suggest that there are no good arguments for God’s existence, but this is not Plantinga’s view. He thinks that rational belief in God does not require good theistic arguments, but he believes several such arguments are actually available.
Indeed, his lecture “Two Dozen (or So) Theistic Arguments” drives this point home.5 Such arguments are in fact on offer, he thinks, and they can actually serve quite a variety of purposes. Plantinga has identified four such purposes:
First, [theistic arguments] can move someone closer to theism—by showing, for example, that theism is a legitimate intellectual option. Second, they reveal interesting and important connections between various elements of a theist’s set of beliefs. For example, a good theistic argument reveals connections between premises and conclusions, connections that in some cases can also contribute to the broader project of Christian philosophy by showing good ways to think about a certain topic or area from a theistic perspective. Examples would be the arguments from counterfactuals, numbers, propositions, sets, and properties. Third, the arguments can strengthen and confirm theistic belief. Not nearly all believers hold theistic beliefs in serene and uninterrupted certainty; most are at least occasionally subject to doubts. Here these arguments can be useful. Finally, and connected with the last, these arguments can increase the warrant of theistic belief. For me as for most, belief in God, while accepted in the basic way, isn’t maximally firm and unwavering; perhaps it isn’t nearly as firm as my belief in other minds. Then perhaps good theistic arguments could play the role of confirming and strengthening belief in God; in that way, they might increase the degree of warrant belief in God has for me.6
To Plantinga’s thinking, arguments for God can add intellectual credibility to theism, reveal interesting and important connections between various elements of a theist’s beliefs, strengthen and confirm theistic belief, and increase the warrant of theistic belief. Note that not all of these purposes are strictly apologetic; short of demonstrating God’s existence, there can be other important functions served by theistic arguments, including moral ones.
It is not at all our view that questions of God and morality are all and only about the evidential matter. This natural theological dimension of the discussion is almost certainly not the most important topic of discussion about theism and moral truth, and we do not intend to intimate otherwise. Still, what evidential significance important moral truths may possess is an important and worthwhile matter, and it is our desire here to explore this question. We do so in the hope of acquainting readers with the shape of the discussion, some of its history, and the separable parts of the case to be built.
In recent years there has emerged in apologetic circles a divide of sorts between philosophical and cultural apologetics. This book will feature aspects of both. There will be no shortage of philosophical arguments and counterarguments and such, but we will also attempt to provide plenty of thick thought experiments, some drawn from such resources as literature and popular culture. Moral apologetics invariably includes elements of both philosophy and the culture in which we live and that, in ever so many ways, shapes our perspectives.
We have each had many occasions to offer a moral argument for God’s existence before. Our first extended discussion about it was at a book panel discussion at the Evangelical Philosophical Association in 2011. Our friend Mark Foreman had orchestrated it, and it included Jerry Walls and Paul Copan. The result was a stimulating, enjoyable, and collegial exchange, the opening salvo in a conversation that we have enjoyed through the years.
Then, about four years ago now, we were able to teach a course on this topic together at Houston Christian University, a class that included both official students and several dozen attentive and curious auditors. The occasion furnished us the chance to think about our mutual approaches to this argument, noting both similarities and differences. The similarities, to our thinking, are more numerous and important than the differences, but the variety that featured in our disparate arguments made the ensuing conversation a fruitful one. Eventually the idea independently occurred to us both that we might wish to collaborate together on a book on the moral argument(s). That’s the origin story of this volume.
Having debated numerous times on the moral argument and having written about it at length, we hope that this book provides a valuable opportunity to take stock of the current state of discussion about it. Complexities have arisen along the way, objections raised, rejoinders offered, nuances added. This is an apt moment to appraise the discussion, offer the lay of the land, and consolidate an array of findings. It is difficult to find one book that encapsulates the whole discussion in relatively brief format; this is what we attempt to do, in order to give readers an aerial perspective of the range of issues that such arguments raise. Of course, this means that sometimes we will have to give unforgivably brief treatments of aspects of the discussion, but when we do, we will try to offer suggestions for further reading.
As we see it, there are three main, conceptually distinct agendas that need to be undertaken. What logically comes first is a defense of a sturdy version of moral realism. A moral argument for God seems to need this as a starting point. Talk of objective moral values and duties provides a useful example. A defense of such moral realities requires two steps. First, a critique is needed of metaethical theories other than moral realism. These include such theories as error theory, expressivism, and constructivism. Second, positive reasons should be provided to endorse moral realism.
When Plantinga gave his lecture on a couple dozen arguments back in 1986, his eventual goal was to write a book based on the arguments, each of which, he thought, deserved loving attention and development. He came to hope that others would be moved to work them out and develop them in more detail since the arguments as they stand are merely argument sketches or maybe pointers to good arguments.
Of the two dozen arguments, Plantinga was asked at the conference which argument(s) struck him as the most compelling. To which Plantinga responded, “I’m inclined to think the moral arguments the most compelling. I find it hard to see how there can be genuine moral obligation apart from a divine command. And since I think there really is genuine moral obligation—I’m wholeheartedly committed to that—that seems to me to be an argument with a very strong premise and a pretty good connection between premise and conclusion.”7 We adduce this reference not to appeal to Plantinga’s authority to establish any such point; we merely offer it as intriguing and suggestive as we get underway in our investigation.8
As it happens, however, upon further reflection Plantinga changed his mind and identified a different argument as the most compelling—namely, a cumulative case argument for God. This involves the attempt to put a number of arguments together into an overall case. Their collective force is stronger than any single argument in isolation. We tend to concur, and thus see the effort of this book as part of a much broader discussion of which moral evidence is just one part. Nevertheless, we concur with Plantinga that moral arguments do indeed have a great deal of intuitive appeal and evidential force. Readers will have to decide for themselves at the end of our treatment whether they agree.
In a nutshell, what is our operative game plan for the book? Part 1 canvasses a criminally brief history of the moral argument culminating in our current moment. The history of the argument is far richer than many realize. We will have to be quick about it, featuring more breadth than depth, but it’s a history worth considering. History plays an important role throughout the book; when we canvass various metaethical perspectives, we often try to trace them to their original sources, contextualizing them a bit in the process. Philosophy sometimes suffers for being a bit ahistorical, but we aim to avoid that pitfall here by at least gesturing at the fertile history of the moral argument.
Please be forewarned, when it comes to contemporary figures in particular, that there were too many of them to do them justice, so we end up having to be painfully succinct, privileging breadth over depth. We offer, for those who are interested, more resources in the notes to find fuller treatments of such luminaries. This challenge, however, had the salutary effect of inspiring the idea for a book-length project of contemporary formulations of the moral argument. This book obviously does not provide that needed treatment, but it’s one we might like to write in the future. Whether we do or someone else does, it’s a project that needs to happen.
Then part 2 offers an overview of metaethical issues in an effort to defend moral realism—the notion that there are robustly objective moral realities in need of explanation. Since moral skepticism seems to be on the rise in certain quarters, the natural starting point in our investigation is an examination of the case for such moral realities as objective moral values and duties. This will require that we critically examine various metaethical alternatives to moral realism and construct a positive case for the truth of moral realism. At that point in the discussion, we will argue that theism should remain on the table of its possible explanations.
Part 3 builds on this history by offering a fivefold moral argument for God’s existence. The five aspects of our case will be these: (1) objective moral values and human worth, (2) objective moral duties, (3) moral knowledge, (4) the coincidence of happiness and virtue, and (5) moral transformation. Just as there are cumulative cases for God’s existence that draw on several arguments from natural theology, so too a cumulative moral case for God can be built by combining several moral considerations into one overall argument, which we will do in the final chapter of part 3.
Finally, in part 4, we will consider naturalistic and secular accounts. We will focus especially on atheistic Platonism, the most important nonnaturalistic metaethical theory that poses a rival to theistic ethics. This discussion helps when one wishes to argue for the comparative superiority of theism as an explanation of moral phenomena, but we intentionally defer it until the end because in the main body of the book we want to emphasize the strengths of a theistic explanation and hold in abeyance the comparative analysis. Doing it this way will hopefully conduce to clarity and help structure the discussion without devaluing the importance of this final step.
The conclusion, in a merely tentative and suggestive sort of way, gestures toward several ways in which one might attempt to extend the moral argument to something more distinctively Christian. Much cutting-edge work remains to be done in this area.
1 Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (Yale University Press, 2014), 100.
2 C. S. Lewis, “Meditation in a Toolshed,” in God in the Dock (Eerdmans, 1970), 230.
3 For a succinct account of theistic personalism, a variant of classical theism as we see it, see Ronnie P. Campbell Jr. and David Baggett, A Personal God and a Good World: The Coherence of the Christian Moral Vision (B&H Academic, 2024).
4 Jerry L. Walls and Trent Dougherty, eds., Two Dozen (Or So) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project (Oxford University Press, 2018).
5 The notes for Plantinga’s talk were not published until 2007, appearing as an appendix of a volume devoted to Plantinga’s work edited by Deane-Peter Baker. See Deane-Peter Baker, ed., Alvin Plantinga (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
6 Alvin Plantinga, “Preface to the Appendix,” in Baker, Alvin Plantinga, 209.
7 Walls and Dougherty, Two Dozen, 447.
8 In his experience of debating on college campuses, William Lane Craig has found the moral argument to be generally the most convincing argument to college students.