Actress Mira Sorvino:
“When you are a Christian, your law is laid out for you in codified form,” the actress told GQ. “I find that extremely restrictive and impossible.”

NATURALISM

“Naturalism,” the most popular type of atheism, says:

“Moral values and duties don’t exist. They’re an illusion because science can’t observe them. They’re something we make up so that we don’t kill each other and cultures can survive. But humans’ morals are no better than the morality of any other species.”

As naturalist Richard Dawkins stated:
“There is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind indifference. We are machines for propagating DNA. It is every living object’s sole reason for being.”

According to surveys, many scientists are naturalists. This view runs counter to premise 1 of the moral argument, which says, “If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.”

OUR RESPONSE TO NATURALISM

Regarding this first group of atheists, the easiest way to demonstrate that moral values and duties exist is to ask a few questions:

• If right and wrong are just an illusion and if moral duties are just something humans made up for survival purposes only, is anything “morally unacceptable”?

• If I place a little baby on a table in front of you and use a large machete to chop it into tiny pieces, would you actually say that there’s nothing morally wrong with that?

• If I torture and kill a small child in front of you, are you actually saying there would be nothing immoral about that because morality doesn’t exist?

• Those things are obviously immoral, but where does the moral sense come from that tells us there is such an objective morality?

CONCLUSION

The idea that there is a lawgiver who instills this moral sense or conscience in us is a simpler and more elegant explanation than denying our sense of morality altogether.

So premise 1 of the moral argument seems to be more likely true than not: “If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.”

Given the above examples, most peoples’ conscience would tell them that those are immoral acts. Premise 1 in the moral argument at least implies that there are objective moral values and duties. This seems like a better idea than denying morality altogether.

Besides, even naturalists find themselves contradicting their own position. Naturalist Richard Dawkins once stated that he believes it’s “immoral” for a woman with a Down’s Syndrome fetus not to abort the fetus. If that is true, naturalism’s position on morality falls apart, or else Mr. Dawkins is suffering under the very “illusion” that he thinks the rest of the world does.

So it seems that there are objective moral values and duties!

THE MORAL ARGUMENT

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.