Argument from morality
The argument from morality is one of several arguments for the existence of God. These arguments fall under the larger category of philosophy of religion.
The argument
It is God, and God alone, that decides what is right and wrong. Without God there could be no sense of right and wrong. God's commands are the only and ultimate standard of morality. So, if one supposes that God does not exist, then one is doomed to a life without moral standards. One will have no reasons to think that lying, stealing, or even murder are wrong. That means that, as a nonbeliever, one contributes to the corruption of oneself, others, and the entire culture. There is a famous quote associated with Dostoevsky, "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." In other words, if we no longer believe that God exists, then we will think we are morally permitted to do anything. To have stable standards of morality, we must believe that God exists. We obviously have or need stable standards of morality, therefore, God exists.
That is the basis of theological ethics, or alternatively, the divine command theory. The argument is valid if and only if the following assumptions are correct:
- God exists.
- We are able to know God's commands and our sources of knowledge regarding these commands are infallible.
- Something is right just in case God commands it; something is wrong just in case God forbids it; and something is morally permissible just in case God neither commands nor forbids it.
- God's standards are stable; God's commands hold as much for us today as they did when the infallible sources of information were created.
- There is no alternative source of moral and ethical ideas and action.
- Stable standards of morality are required for the universe's existence.
Contrary evidence
One would predict from the theological hypothesis regarding morality that atheists would be imprisoned for secular crimes, divorced, etc., at higher rates than their percentage of the general population, while religious fundamentalists would rate high on empirical measures of morality. This prediction has been tested in the United States and the prediction failed. The 1999 poll by the Barna Research Group showed exactly the opposite for divorce rates. If prison statistics are reliable, religious people are imprisoned by at least 40 times the rate of atheists; that is unlikely, but there is no evidence of atheistic criminality. Statistics for other measures of morality provide similar results. This might be explained by adjusting for education levels, but that would merely emphasize that religion is not the answer.
Evidence of evolutionary origins of morality from sociobiology and evolutionary psychology should be added here.
