Hello, Yaro. It doesn't surprise me that people have trouble arguing against this one. Although it is clearly and obviously a bad argument for God, the deeper points can be a bit subtle and care needs to be taken in arguing it.
--
If God exists, then God and God alone decides what is (truly) right and wrong.
I am going to basically repeat PaulK's point here. Why does God get to decide what is right or wrong? How does that make it objective?
Perhaps God gets to set the rules because he's the one who created everything -- but one should see that this is no more an "objective" reason than anything else. Afterall, how many children have created playdough people, only just maliciously destroy them in the end? Just because God is the creator doesn't mean that God is just. Well, except that you are then defining "justice" to be whatever God wants. But then God can decide to do
anything and order
anything at all, and this would be "good". I think that this would go against most Christians' ideas that "good" and "evil" go a bit deeper than this -- somehow, this argument seems to assume that God is by nature good, and so his commands and decisions are good. But then this implies that something is good not because God desires it -- God desires something because it is already good.
Related to this is the idea that we should obey God because he can punish and reward us. But this isn't morality or ethics -- it is the simple, practical matter of doing what a thug says just because he can hurt us. Again, morals and ethics are usually thought of as being a bit deeper than this, and the argument in the preceding paragraph apply here as well.
So this leaves the idea that "good" and "evil" are concepts that transcend even God himself. But then a belief in God, or even the acknowledgement of his existence is not necessary. Even if the rest of this argument is valid (it's not), then all that is necessary is to acknowledge the existence of this transcendental principle -- Lao Tzu's Tao, if you will.
--
So, if people assumed that God does not exist, then they would be doomed to a life without fixed moral standards.
This is false. One can believe that there are fixed moral standards without belief in God.
They would have no reasons to think that lying, stealing, or even murder are wrong.
Again, this is false. There are plenty of cultures that do not believe in gods, or at least not the Christian concept of a god who provides the law and enforces it, yet do not accept lying, stealing, or murder. If anything, they tend to belief in morality being an underlying law of nature that even the gods must acknowledge, like I have already mentioned.
At any rate, the theory of evolution provides a nice naturalistic explanation for the existence of altruism (the basic concept of any code of morality) -- this explanation goes all the way back to Darwin himself.
Of course, if the point is that there are no objective reasons for feeling that lying, stealing, and murder are wrong, then the person is correct, but so what? People just do feel that these are wrong.
According to this view, nonbelievers contribute to the corruption of themselves and the entire culture.
"Corruption of culture" usually refers to abandonment of old, outdated notions of morality in order to explore other ways of living and arranging society so that people are better able to live fullfilled, contented lives. This is actually a
good thing!
--
Given the above, it is necessary that God exists if society is to have stable standards of morality.
Now one has to be careful what the argument is. Is the claim that
existence of God is necessary for morality to exist, or is it that
belief in God is necessary? These are different claims, and the arguments against them are different. I have seen both claims before, and, more importantly, I have seen both claims get mixed up together in the same argument -- if you aren't aware of it, then your response might become confused. I advise people to be aware that these two are different claims, and to be aware if the opponent is mixing the two together -- insist that the opponent clarify which one is being argued, and compel her to stick with it.
At any rate, the above is
not given, so this concusion does not follow.
The claim that belief is essential has an additional argument against it -- just because the lack of belief might lead to some unpleasant consequences does not make the belief true. It may be just a fact of life that the universe is unpleasant. But we need to acknowledge this fact if we are to know how to deal with it. Trying to get people to believe in an untruth just because one is afraid of the consequences doesn't sound like good policy to me.
--
Everyone in society either obviously needs or already has stable standards of morality. Therefore, God exists.
So it does appear that the claim is that
existence of God is necessary for morality to exist.
Again, the above is not a given, so this conclusion is false.
Also, while it may be true (I will let someone else argue against this) that a society needs or has stable standards of morality, I will point out that these standards are very specific to the individual cultures. It is not a single standard of morality that leads to the stability of all cultures and societies. So are we to conclude that God has designated different morality for different cultures?
™ Version 4.2
