Conscience and the Moral Argument as Evidence for the Goodness of God.

[Nishant Xavier]

Lol, I love Atheists. Sherlock Holmes (albeit fictional) is literally like the most famous deductive reasoner of all time, being after all an investigative detective. How does one be a Detective without Deductive Reasoning? Deductive reasoning is the process of forming premises (based e.g. on data) and then building a conclusion from those premises; both detectives and those interested in the question of whether God exists or not definitely have to make use of it. I'll start a thread on Design Detection subsequently, and how detectives and others use it, and why Intelligent Design, especially after the scientific discovery of DNA and the Genetic Code (ref. Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell), and Fine-Tuning, is based on a sound premise. 

Now, let's get back to our question of whether Morality is Objective vs Subjective. 
First, let's define with some examples Objective Truth and Subjective Feelings.

Subjective Feelings: I like tea, he/she prefers coffee. A purely subjective preference. Another e.g. color preferences. Morality clearly is not like this.
Objective Facts: that the Earth is round, that 2+2=4, that murder, rape, theft are objectively wrong etc. Even Michael Ruse, Agnostic Moral Philosopher cited earlier, admitted moral facts are like scientific facts (therefore objective) in reality, yet contradicted himself elsewhere by repeating the Agnostic/Atheistic perspective that morality is just about "reproducing and surviving", i.e. subjective. Morality is much more than that, as shown by the fact that moral obligation sometimes impels us to give up our lives and families to save those we love, as e.g. firefighters, soldiers etc do. 

Please note that (1) someone disagreeing with an Objective Truth does not suffice to make it subjective. Some believe the earth is flat, but that does nothing to change the Objective Truth. Rather, what matters in deciding whether a proposition P is objectively true or not is (2) whether P remains true even if largely everyone disagrees with it or not. In other words, let's assume there's a Rapist Island where 90% of the inhabitants believe rape is ok. If you believe rape would continue to be evil irrespective of that, then whether you know it or not you believe morality to be objective. Objective means mind-independent. It continues to be true even if some or even many people believe otherwise, like rape being wrong.

Now, let's take another example, this time historical, of Infanticide. Wiki says: "Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history". In fact, a study will show it was mainly Christianity that abolished it. Both Judaism and Christianity, to be sure, were against the practice, as evinced by numerous texts from both the OT and the NT (and extra-Biblica texts like the Didache, written nearly 2000 years ago, which condemns both Abortion and Infanticide), while many pagan or polytheistic religions both accepted it and even believed in killing children to offer them as blood sacrifices to certain gods. I can't give links for 30 days, so I won't, but you can read this on Wikipedia or any other Secular Encyclopedia.

Now, apart from being a Great Accomplishment of Christianity (Emperor St. Constantine the Great outlawed it after his conversion to Christianity), it shows that many people, and sometimes even whole societies for a significant time, can believe something wrong to be morally acceptable.

The question: was infanticide ok just because it was legal in those societies? If you had lived in those societies, where it was perfectly legal to kill babies, and you would face no legal or societal consequences for killing children, would you do so? After all, if morality is subjective, then in those societies, it was perfectly moral to kill babies, for e.g. by "exposure", as it was called (just abandoning them, so that they would eventually die). [Later on, Clergy instituted orphanages to care for such abandoned children.] If you say, Yes, then ok. But I wager most of you would say, No.

And why? Because deep down we all know, through our God-Given Conscience, that moral Truths are objective facts. Societal Consensus does not determine Moral Truth. Another example, if you had lived before Lincoln, Wilberforce, etc (inspired by their Christian Faith) helped liberate Slaves, and knowing what you now know, would you believe it was ok to own a slave just because it was legal to do so? And again, if you answer no, as I think most of you will, then once more it clearly shows Morality is an Objective and Universal Truth not determined by any human law.

And yet, such Objective and Universal Moral Truth must originate with some Authority, just like every human law originates from civil authority. It follows that they originate from a Higher Power, A Supremely Good Being, just like Alexander Hamilton said in the quote I cited earlier on.

God Bless.