#STRask - What Evidence Can I Give for Objective Morality?

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Questions about how to respond to someone who’s asking for evidence for objective morality, what to say to atheists who counter the moral argument for God by rejecting the necessity of objective morality, and the definition of intuition.   An atheist who’s debating me about objective morality ignores what I say about our just knowing it deep inside and keeps pressing me for evidence. What should I do? What should I say to atheists who counter the moral argument for God by rejecting the necessity of objective morality? What is intuition?

This is Amy Hall and Greg Kockel on Stand to Reason's hashtag STRask podcast. Now Greg, in the last episode, we were talking about morality. We talked, we kind of ended on youth of froze dilemma and morality. So we're going to keep going on the subject of morality. This one comes from Levi. I'm debating an atheist on a forum about objective morality, and he keeps pressing me for evidence for objective morality.

I keep saying that it can't be proven by science or logic, but we just know deep inside. He ignores it and keeps pressing me for evidence. What should I do? I think the most significant evidence, if you will, and unfortunately, this is going to be, that word will be put in scare quotes because for people like the atheist, I presume he's a materialist,

the only evidence that can be given for anything has got to be the evidence of the five senses. Although nobody's consistent with that because the atheist, I'm sure, considers himself reasonable and rational, which is why he's an atheist. But the laws of reason and rationality are not physical. They're not accessed by any of the five senses. So that difficulty aside, the way I put it, and I use this line all the time, and if anybody wants this tale of Frumley, not give me credit, they're welcome to it. There's something that everybody knows.

It doesn't matter where they live or when they lived. They know that something is wrong with the world. Okay, there it is. That is a characterization of the problem of evil. Everybody knows the world is broken. Okay. Now, it turns out how, the question is how, what is the nature of the brokenness

that they know is the case? Well, it's a moral brokenness, that's why they call it evil. Evil is a term describing some circumstance or some behavior that ought not be that way. And the ought is a moral ought, not a rational ought. If there is evil in the world, notice the way I put the phrase,

evil in the world, out there, that is mind independent, okay? That is to say, the fact that things are evil are not based on my ability to see it as evil or my definition of evil or my characterization of evil or my opinion about whether it's evil or not, it is evil in itself. That means it's not inside of me. It's not like, you know, I don't like Brussels sprouts, but that thing is wicked. If it's not internal, but external, if it's not subjective, it's objective. Therefore, morality must exist objectively to be broken to create the problem of evil that everyone complains about. So the evidence that I would offer, the rationale is the problem of evil, which undoubtedly this particular atheist he's

talking with has made reference to in the past, and this is what I would suggest in a conversation. Have you ever raised the problem of evil as evidence against God? And invariably, now invariably they're going to say yes, there could be some exceptions. But notice how I said, have you ever raised the problem of evil as evidence against God? Not, have you ever raised the problem of evil as an internal contradiction within the Christian worldview? Some people can do that to save a route for the atheist, but that isn't the way I've ever heard it. I've always heard it raised as evidence against God, evil in the world. Well, there can't be evil in the world if there is no objective good

that defines the evil. So it turns out the problem of evil is a severe defeater of moral relativism. That is the evidence. Okay. Now, I've done a number of debates, almost all my debates, not everyone, but all my debates on a college level, with a college audience and a protagonist, or antagonist as the case may be, we're almost always on the issue of relativism. And the reason I was very comfortable doing those debates with very smart people is because it was virtually impossible to defeat my view. Not because I was so clever, but because the existence of objective morality is so obvious that phrases and words on our

lips all the time bear testimony to that fact. All rights claims are moral claims in the objective sense. Every statement about wrongdoing, as opposed to wrong thinking, wrongdoing are statements based on morality in the objective sense. Every, actually in the relativism book I have seven fatal flaws, and all of these things, if you, if morals are relative you can never get better. You can't be a better person than you are. You can be a different person, but you can't be better because better requires that you have a standard by which you measure yourself and you're

getting closer to it. So if you're a bowler the best game, perfect game, is at 300 and you're getting better if you increase your pin count in 10 frames or actually, you know, basically with your extra balls. So the notion of moral improvement entails objective morality. I mean there's a whole bunch of these things that are ordinary common parts of our common sense notions about the world that are reflected in our speech every day that depend for their coherence on morality being objective and not subjective. So in a sense our, is it Todd? Levi.

Levi. In a sense, Levi, you are correct when you say something to the effect of we just don't, how does he put it there? We just know deep inside. Yes. But it's not a just. We know deep inside. Yes, but it's not a just. We know deep inside. It's not like, oh, too bad, that's the best we can do.

It is a powerful evidence of morality in the objective sense because we have direct access to it. It doesn't have to be, in a sense, taught to us, not the concept of moral objectivity. We have that inside. I'm thinking right now of the inside-out tactic and the book Tactics. It trades on this notion. It's built in. Just like our knowledge of rational concepts or rational relationship, if Bill is taller than Mary and Mary is

taller than Fred, we know that Bill is taller than Fred. That's the transitive relationship. And if you were actually to see it, you'd see it. Even if I you don't look at the people standing there, you can see it in your mind's eye, so to speak, the nature of the relationship. So it is justified by reflection. We might have to learn what does transit mean, whatever. But that doesn't mean we ultimately learn the justification for the concept. The justification is obvious when we have full grasp of the issue. Oh yeah, of course that's the case. So the same thing with morality. And it's not a just know it, it is a know it.

And that knowing informs our language about these other things, moral improvement, tolerance, human rights, wickedness, evil in the world so there is no God. All of that trades on our deep conviction that morality is objective and not merely subjective. In fact, I was just listening to someone talk about this and now I can't remember who it was, but the fact is there are moral statements that are more certain than questions of science.

Our understanding of science changes all the time. We discover new things, we discover how things work, of science changes all the time. We discover new things, we discover how things work, we find out we were wrong about things, people were wrong about how the universe works, they would refine their views, we're going to have to refine our views. But you can apprehend the truth that it's wrong to torture babies for fun. And that will never change. We are absolutely certain about that because we are apprehending a moral truth. And that's more certain than science, not less. And by the way, that's a great point. And if somebody were to even deny that, that particular moral truth, then that reflects there's something wrong with them, not something wrong with us.

Yes, we call them sociopaths. That's right, or psychopaths. I get them mixed up, but neither is good. Yeah. Right. It might have been J.P. Morland I heard saying this, so I'm going to give him credit for that. Okay, the second question comes from Todd.

Atheists often counter the moral argument for God by rejecting the necessity of objective morality. How do we counter that besides arguing, rightly of course, that it is illogical to think even the ability to have subjective morality arose without an intelligent designer or first cause? Well, I don't make the case based on necessity. I think that's going a bit further that may be difficult. I mean, I don't see that there is a necessity that human beings are moral creatures. All the rest of the creatures of the world lack that. As far as I could tell, human beings could have lacked it as well.

So we could be all these living sentient creatures that do not function in the arena of morality at all. So I wouldn't argue that it's necessary. Now one might argue that it's a necessary feature of God, okay, and Bill Craig would argue that way because God is perfection himself. That would include moral perfection. It would be a whole range of perfect attributes, okay? However, it doesn't mean that human beings have to be moral creatures. So I would stay away from the necessity argument and argue just simply from the actuality. As it turns out, this is a moral universe that human beings participate in.

We make moral statements, thinking they're coherent. We go through moral motions, a phrase from Francis Schaeffer. In other words, we're acting in ways that we think are morally appropriate, and we find fault with those who are acting in ways that are morally inappropriate. I mean, these are all part of the human condition, and what makes the best sense out of that is we're all reacting or living in a way that's consistent with something that's real in the universe, that is morality. So I would not argue from necessity, I would just say this is the way the universe is.

It could have been different, but it's so, you might argue it's accidentally so, simply meaning that it could have been different, but this is the way the universe is. It's thick with morality that reflects a standard of morality that can only find its grounding in a person who is the appropriate moral authority of the universe, and that's God. And it might be that Todd was stating this, maybe he meant something else. I'm trying to figure out, because his first sentence is, atheists often counter the moral argument for God by rejecting the necessity of objective morality. Maybe what he meant was the conclusion of objective morality. So maybe this is another, because I'm trying to think how the necessity of objective morality

would counter the moral argument. Unless somebody was saying that morality is a necessary feature of God, and since it's a feature of the world, it must be a result of God. I don't know. I never put the argument that way. That isn't the way the argument is formally produced. Generally the argument goes like this. It's modus tollens is the form, and it says,

if there is no God, there is no objective morality, but there is objective morality, therefore there is a God. Now that is a logically valid argument, and if the premises are true, then it's sound also. We know the second premise is true, that there is objective morality because of the problem of evil that secures that. And incidentally, I go in painstaking detail on this argument in the book Street Smarts under, I think the chapter is called Evil, Atheism's Fatal Flaw. So I go into a lot of detail there. And the following chapter, can we be good without God? And there I'm really trying to cash out this whole issue of the implications of morality in the world for our understanding of the nature of the world.

So let me ask you a question in case this was what he was getting at. If they reject objective morality, does that end the moral argument for God? Do you have to establish objective morality before you can use? Yeah, because that's one of the premises. If there is no God, there is no objective morality. There is objective morality. Therefore, there is a God. So the second premise is there is objective morality. Now, if a person rejects objective morality, okay, well then that argument

does not go through. It's valid but not sound because according to them the second premise is false. But that's a pretty big bullet to bite because the complaint about the problem of evil against the existence of God is an atheist favorite. But you cannot raise that complaint if morality is not objective. All you can say is things happen in the world that you don't like. That would be the subjectivist response. But again, you're pushing against this other notion, and this is not argumentum ad populum. I have more people on my side than you have on your side.

There's a reason that no matter where you live or when you live, everybody knows that the world is broken. There's a reason for that. It's because the world is broken and they all can see something that is plain to their awareness. And if one person can't see that, that's the problem with that person, as I mentioned earlier. It's not the problem with the gazillions of people that have come before him that have seen what's perfectly obvious that there is wickedness in the world.

And we have given some examples of how to help them to see that. I agree this is a big bullet to bite. If you're going to deny what we can see, obviously, like I said, certain things are even more obvious than the scientific things. If you're going to deny that to hold up your worldview, it's hard to know where to go with that. But maybe when that starts happening, you can always remember there are other people

watching and they're hearing what you say and sometimes— And how you say it. Yes, thank you. They're hearing what you say and they... And how you say it. Yes, thank you. They're hearing what you say and they're considering it. And even if the person denies it, they might be thinking about it later. So don't feel like it's totally... A lost cause. A lost cause.

Okay. You know, Greg, I have a couple more questions about morality, but I think I'm going to save those for the next one because one thing we talked about briefly here was the idea that you know it deep inside. So there's a question here. I don't know if it's exactly related to that. But it's kind of direct awareness is the way they describe that in epistemology. It's not mediated through anything.

Just like you know your own thoughts, you know those directly, immediately. Same thing with morality. It's just right there. So I'm not sure exactly how she's using this word, but here's a question for Barbara. What is intuition? Okay. It depends what area you're speaking of. Like a lot of words, they have different meanings in different contexts.

So they're not a univocal one voice, one sense, but they're equivocal. It could mean this or that. When I use this in the area of epistemology, okay, how we know what we know, an intuition is something that is a source of knowledge that we don't know how we know it. We just do. And in this particular case, it is not something we've gained from something else, somewhere else. We didn't learn it from somebody, we didn't apprehend it from the, from, you know, an empirical assessment of the world. It's something that is built in. And so things like the laws of logic, we know intuitively. Now of course, people who are not schooled in the laws of logic may not be aware how they function. They couldn't

say, well, this is the law of non-contradiction or this is the law of excluded middle or whatever. But when explained to them, so they might become aware of the particulars, then they see, there's the intuition, they see the truth of it. And even when they're not thinking about the law of excluded middle, they are using the concept in their daily lives all the time without being aware of it.

Now, the law of excluded middle says either A or not A. All right? Either A or not A. There's no middle ground there, okay? If you said either A or B, there might be a C middle ground, like when we talked about in a prior show about the Uthayphoros dilemma and splitting the alleged dilemma with a third option. But when you put it in this very precise way, either A or not A, then there is no middle ground. So either God exists or he doesn't.

If God exists, he's either personal or he's not personal. Okay? So those are ways of arguing there that employ the law of excluded middle because there's a very, very precise distinction between the two when you use negation on the opposite side, either A or not A. Okay? So these are things that we may learn details of in terms of vocabulary, etc., but we are functioning in these things in virtue of our intuitional understanding of that. And when it's explained to us, we can see either A or not A. Do you see that? Oh yeah, you get it because that's built in, all right? And then you go to an application of it and it becomes forceful. But if somebody says,

no, I think there's a third option between A and not A. What's the third option? I can't tell you, but I think there is one. Well, this is kind of silly because it's obvious that there is. It's obviously silly because it's obvious there's no third option, given the way it's specified. How do we know that it's silly? Because our rational intuition here is telling us. So this is something that is built in. It isn't a learned capability, but we may learn things that bring that capability to life. So JP Warner would say this is a faculty of the soul that becomes manifest as our brains develop and grow and we're able to manage more complex ideas. But the appeal regarding the truthfulness of it is an appeal to the intuition. I think there are rational intuitions, there are moral intuitions, there are aesthetic

intuitions as well. Do you want to address the other kind of intuition or should we just leave it there? Which one's there? Well, to somebody thinking maybe that's actually the one I wanted you to address, but in case she's asking, you know, what like having a… Oh, women's intuitions. Yeah, something like that. I couldn't think of how to describe it. Like having a – Oh, women's intuitions. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Something like that.

I couldn't think of how to describe it. Okay. Well, there – okay, now I know what you're talking about. There are other ways we use this word, and sometimes we use this word to identify a capability someone has gained over time. So when you have a really good – my brother's a real good carpenter. He's a contractor for 35 years, and he just has a sick sense about things. And my other brother's really clever too with making stuff, so they both have a cleverness I don't have. They look at it and say, I'm not a fix that.

Okay? It all comes together for them. But that is a learned capability, a lot of that. Okay? You have a person who's been in medicine for a long time. You have a doctor who's seen everything. Then you come to him with a set of symptoms and, oh, I know what's going on there. Here's what's going on. So we might refer to that as an intuition or an insight, but I think in those cases, these are insights that are a result of collective learning and you're able to pull things together. Female intuition, I don't know what to make of that. I mean, strictly speaking, like women have a natural insight regarding thus and so. I don't know, maybe, maybe not.

We see more details. We put things together. I think that's what's going on, probably. Yeah. I'm not sure if I want to call that an intuition, but if people call it that and that's what they're referring to, I'm fine with that. I don't want a bunch of gals to be mad at me. So we better stop it there. But if people call it that and that's what they're referring to I'm fine with that. I don't want a bunch of gals to be mad at me so

We better stop it there. No, but there is there is no question. I think that sometimes That there that women have different sensibilities about things and men than men do I? I was just talking about this yesterday to a brand new grandmother and I was thinking about Derek and I talking about when he had his first child, I think, and we're kind of laughing at the gal saying, oh, look at this, so cute, don't ever grow up.

You know, and that don't ever change, don't ever grow up. We just want you to keep this cute little kid. And Derek and I are saying like, hey, grow up and get interesting, you know, because you're not interesting now. Now, this just reflect totally different approaches and therefore other things are informed by that that might be referred to as male or female intuition. But men and women are different is what you're saying.

And Viva la Divergence in my view. So that gives us a little break from the philosophy, but we'll get back into the questions about objective morality in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kockel for Stand to Reason.