Breaking down the moral argument

I harp on about the moral argument for theism, some think. That’s only because I think it’s an under-appreciated argument that has a lot more going for it than most of its critics believe. Here I want to lay out a simple version of the argument, explain why I think it works and how to defend it.

A very simple version of the moral argument, probably the most common that I see, goes like this:

1. Unless God exists, there are no moral facts
2. But there are some moral facts
3. Therefore God exists

The truth is, I think this argument is sound. All of its premises are true (so say I), and the conclusion logically follows. But the thing about sound arguments is that soundness is not the same thing as persuasiveness. Nobody’s going to be persuaded by a move that’s quite this swift. Even once the argument is unpacked a bit more (which is the purpose of this post) a person may not be convinced (indeed, I think the force of the argument really just gets people thinking a bit more, it rarely convinces on its own), but more unpacking is certainly needed.What I want to do here is to lay out a fairly simple version of the moral argument and explain its steps. Hopefully in doing so I can convince some people that the argument really does have something going for it – or at very least that it’s not a swift manoeuvre without justification. This might be useful to others who use the argument, or it may simply explain the argument with a bit more clarity to people who don’t think much of it. Either goal seems worthy enough.

The argument (or at least, a version I find plausible) goes like this:

1. If there are moral facts, then their basis is either natural or non-natural
2. The basis of moral facts is not natural
3. Therefore if there are moral facts, then their basis is non-natural (from 1. and 2.)
4. The most plausible way to think of a non-natural basis of moral facts is in terms of a supernatural person who brings moral facts about.
5. Therefore, if there are moral facts, the most plausible way to think of their basis is in terms of a supernatural person who brings moral facts about.

 Defending the premises of the moral argument

 Let’s look at the steps in a little more detail.

Steps 1-3 are an argument on their own, designed to get us to premise 3. Premise 1 is analytically true. It’s just a case of saying “Either Q is the case, or Q isn’t the case.” Premise 1 shows that we’re not presupposing that there are any moral facts. This argument is only of interest once we’ve already accepted that there are moral facts. Remember, you don’t have to argue in this direction. It may well be that you have other arguments for God’s existence – and the Christian God in particular, and then you want to argue “If God exists, then there are some moral facts.” I think that’s a fine argument to make, but obviously the argument sketched above is designed for scenarios where people want a reason (or perhaps an additional reason) to think that God exists.

“Natural” here simple means “something that is a part of the physical universe.” And clearly, something is either part of the physical universe, or it’s not. Some people might come to the argument with the belief that there’s nothing that isn’t part of the physical universe. That’s fine, for now. But it’s still analytically true that something is either part of the universe, or it’s not. And if you think that everything is part of the physical universe, then at this stage in the argument you think something like “If X is not part of the physical universe, then X doesn’t exist.” But you still have to grant premise 1 if you understand it at all.

Premise 2 clearly contains all of the controversy in the initial argument 1-3, and also a decent amount of the controversy in the whole argument 1-5. Why should we believe that if there are any moral facts, their basis is not natural? I know that plenty of non-religious people have tried to argue that moral facts are just natural facts with no need of a divine lawgiver, but I don’t see that they’ve been very successful (and I’m not about to survey them here). The problem is here: Moral facts are not facts about the way that things just are in the world. They are facts about the way that things should be in the world. But what if atheism is true, and there just is no forward looking reason why the universe exists? What if it wasn’t planned? If unintended nature is all that exists, then there isn’t a way that things were meant to be, because things weren’t “meant” at all. Natural facts (in the sense of “facts about what is in the physical universe”), surely, are facts about what is, not facts about the way things should be. We observe animals killing and eating each other and we don’t regard it as a moral atrocity because it is merely a fact of nature. It is that way. But if natural facts are the only kinds of facts, then the same is true of human beings. People maim and torture each other, they rape, exploit and terrorise each other, and that is they way it is. Granted, if we desire certain ends (e.g. personal happiness, social cohesion), then in pragmatic terms there are better ways of getting them, but the facts here are firstly the fact that we want those ends, and secondly the fact that doing X is an effective way of getting those ends. Neither of these is a fact about what we should want, or what ends we should aim at.

Since premise 1 is analytically true, and (so say I) premise 2 is at least eminently plausible, that leaves us with 3. We can now re-use premise 3 in the moral argument, where the argument has been shortened to:

3. If there are any moral facts, then their basis is non-natural.
4. The most plausible way to think of a non-natural basis of moral facts is in terms of a supernatural person who brings moral facts about.
5. Therefore, if there are moral facts, the most plausible way to think of their basis is in terms of a supernatural person who brings moral facts about.

Now, what about premise 4? “The most plausible way to think of a non-natural basis of moral facts is in terms of a supernatural person who brings moral facts about.” By “supernatural” I mean nothing other than “non-natural,” but when people think of a person beyond the physical universe, they tend to think “supernatural,” which I think is just what the word means. This premise is the other premise (along with premise 2) that carries the controversy in the argument. Why introduce a person? This premise stands in opposition to the view that there is a non-natural and entirely non-personal basis of moral facts. In that view, moral facts are like Plato’s “forms.” They are non-material necessarily existing things that just are. We can make sense, perhaps, of some things like this: Numbers or propositions come to mind (although whether such things really exist is a controversy in its own right). But there’s something different about moral facts. There are, I think, two features of moral facts that make them impossible to categorise in this way.

First – and this was also an objection to the claim that the basis of moral facts is natural – moral facts have an inherently teleological aspect to them. They are forward-looking. They command us; that is, they tell us what to do (or not do). They aren’t merely propositions that tell us what is the case, they seek to move us. They motivate, they call us to act. They appear to express what can only be called a will or a desire. Abstract entities don’t want us to do anything, only personal entities could do that. It is no good saying, as some say, that “we can have simple, brute non-natural moral facts just as easily as you can have the simple, brute existence of a God who brings moral facts about. It makes sense to think of an intelligent being who places demands on us – we do it all the time. But it doesn’t make sense to have some thing-I-know-not-what making demands. In short, moral facts appear to express intention. That’s the kind of things persons do.

This is closely related to the second thing about moral facts that makes them seem personal rather than impersonal, namely the way that moral requirements compare with requirements in general. It would take some space to fully unpack the idea here, but Robert Adams has made a plausible case that moral requirements are simply one type of social requirement (this doesn’t mean an obligation that is generated by our society). Obligation more generally is a social requirement. Obligations have a built in relational aspect to them. Obligation, having a social aspect to it, is never just about you as an individual, it always involves another. To see this unpacked in the detail it deserves you should have a look at Adams’ account in “Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Obligation.” As Adams went on to explain, bringing God into the picture allows us to make much better sense of moral obligations as something objective by moving beyond various different social arrangements which may have different obligations (e.g. different nations with different laws) and towards a transcendent (that is, objective) standpoint from which the moral status of an act can be assessed. I’ve offered my own summary of this argument elsewhere.

As for the conclusion, it’s effectively another way of saying “therefore, if there are moral facts then it’s best to think that there is a being who is crucially like the thing that many people call God.”

So let’s look again at the argument as a whole: Premise 1) is analytically true, and premise 3) logically follows from 1) and 2). The conclusion logically follows from 3) and 4), which means that the only opportunities to discredit the argument are by attempting to rebut premises 2 (moral facts are not natural) and 4 (the best way to think of a non-natural grounding of moral facts is in terms of a non-natural/supernatural person). There are reasonable grounds for believing that 2) and 4) are true.

Assessing the strength of the moral argument

But how strong is the argument? Well, here’s one way of coming up with a very rough and ready assessment. By multiplying the probability of the premises, we arrive at – not the probability of the conclusion – but the minimum probability of the conclusion. This method doesn’t tell us that the result is the conclusion’s likelihood, it only tell us that it can’t be any lower. It could certainly be higher if there are additional reasons for believing it. So, let’s apply this method to the above argument.

First let’s handle 1) – 3), because that will tell us the minimum probability of 3) (remember, 1-3 is a logical inference all by itself).

1. If there are moral facts, then their basis is either natural or non-natural. 100% (analytically true)
2. The basis of moral facts is not natural 85% (I might put it higher, but let’s estimate low)
3. Therefore if there are moral facts, then their basis is non-natural 85% (100% x 85%)

That’s the end of the first argument. The conclusion has a minimum probability of 85% – if premise 2 is as plausible as I think it is. Now we can take that premise as a starting point in the next argument, which has two premises and a conclusion:

3. If there are any moral facts, then their basis is non-natural. 85%
4. The most plausible way to think of a non-natural basis of moral facts is in terms of a supernatural person who brings moral facts about. 85% (so say I)
5. Therefore, if there are moral facts, the most plausible way to think of their basis is in terms of a supernatural person who brings moral facts about. 72% (85% x 85%)

You might see that and think “what? Only 72% That’s not very high! If I got 72% in an end of year exam I would wish that I had studied harder!” Don’t panic. In the first place, remember that this is not the probability of the truth of the conclusion. Instead, it’s the lowest possible probability of the conclusion, given the assumptions I have made about the plausibility of the premises. I think the actual probability is higher, given a range of other considerations (for example, a historical argument about God’s existence and nature from the historicity of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth). Also, we’re dealing with probability, which is not at all like looking at an end of year grade. Any claim with an actual probability up to 50% is more likely false than true. A claim with an actual probability of exactly 50% is just as likely true as false. Any claim with a probability of greater than 50% (so this includes, for example, 50.00000000000001%) is more likely true than false. If you knew that a claim had an actual probability of 60% and you knew nothing else, then you should affirm rather than deny that claim. If you knew that a claim had an absolute minimum probability of 48% based on one argument, you would be justified in thinking that its actual probability is higher (because many claims have multiple lines of reasoning supporting them) and therefore it’s likely that the claim is more likely true than false (it’s likely that it’s likely!). So to think that a claim – such as the conclusion of this moral argument – has an absolute minimum probability of 72% is to have a very strong reason for accepting it indeed.

So there you have it: A simple run down of (what I think is) a good, clear version of the moral argument which 1) is undeniably valid, 2) has premises that are very plausible, and 3) gives us reason to think that the conclusion is very likely true. Like many arguments, it makes assumptions, the most obvious one being that the audience will already be disposed to accept that there are moral facts. Those who think otherwise would first need reasons for believing that morality exists at all. But at the risk of being presumptuous, the above argument should, once fully appreciated, be persuasive to normal people, who genuinely believe in right and wrong.