Godtacular Study - Moral Argument Notes

There are two main types of apologetics arguments:
Evidential and Presuppositional

Evidential - provide evidence that supports Christian claims (usually scientific and historical and usually corrects misunderstandings)
Presuppositional - assumes people really do know the existence of God but are suppressing it.

Here is the most popular example of a presuppositional argument.

Imagine you are a young child and another child steals something from you.
What is your reaction?
A. Hey that's mine!
B. He has no right to take what is mine!
C. I guess that just happens since I'm weaker than him, oh well
D. If only I had a better genetic makeup
Why?

Suppose you are with your child and you see a child stealing from another child.
What is your reaction?
⁃ Kid got what he deserved for being weak
⁃ it's wrong to steal
Why?

Commandment - Thou shalt not steal?

Even our modern ideas of rights to property must come from a proper understanding of the moral law. Without it, your "property" could be taken at anytime.

From John DePoe's summary of the Mere Christianity moral argument this is CS Lewis' case for a moral law:

1) Without a universal moral law, all moral disagreements make no sense. We appeal to a universal standard all the time such as in the above examples. When evil happens, murder, rape etc, we know it is evil and don't feel the need to explain why. When people do not understand certain moral values we think there is something seriously wrong with them.

2) Moral judgments would be meaningless. "The Nazis were wrong to murder the Jews". Is this just personal opinion? If there is no moral law, this puts such a statement on par with personal preferences between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. The Nazis happen to prefer their morality and you prefer yours. Neither is inherently better.

Interestingly, CS Lewis hasn't mentioned God yet.

Next what explanation can there be for its existence. We have trouble crediting the universe itself with the existence of moral laws. Collisions of molecules creating ethics seems non-sensical. However, a law Giver makes sense. A law Giver must have the power to create such a law, be good in order to be the standard for the law, and be interested in our behavior. Sound like someone we know?

Therefore, God exists.

Opposition:
What about herd instinct? Our strongest impulse is not always the right thing to do. If someone is drowning we feel an urge to help and urge to remain safe ourselves. Certainly, remaining safe would help ensure the continuation of our genetic line's survival. However, helping the person drowning even at the possible expense of our own life, is the right thing to do.

What about social convention? We often learn morality through social conventions but that does not mean they are the source. How can we say a society is morally improved if the standard is set by that society. If morality comes from convention, it leads to the ridiculous conclusion that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was morally evil since he acted against his society's conventions.

Is the moral law something the individual imposes on himself/herself? Why bother? The person can change them at their convenience (for example: being generally against stealing, except when your bank account hits zero)

Denying the moral law altogether leads to moral relativism where moral distinctions are meaningless. Thus Hitler and Mother Theresa could be equally good or evil which is absurd.

SO:
The other explanations for the universal moral law and the denial of its existence simply do not cut it. A God like the one described in the Bible (not like Zeus or Ra) exists.

Specifics of the law are outlined in the scripture in various places.
Matthew 22:34-40
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37 Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

More notes to follow.