Claim 4 of 9 · Case 09 · Atheism
People across cultures treat some acts as truly wrong, and this objective moral law points to a moral lawgiver.
One claim from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Most people, in most times and places, judge some acts, such as torturing a child for fun, as really wrong rather than merely disliked. We argue that objective moral values fit a universe made by a good God better than a universe of blind matter, on the principle that a real law implies a lawgiver. Honest limits: two questions must be kept apart. First, whether objective moral values exist. This is a respectable and common position. In the 2020 PhilPapers survey about 62 percent of philosophers accepted or leaned toward moral realism, though only around 37 percent flatly accepted it, so it is a strong leaning, not a settled consensus. Second, whether those values require God. This is genuinely contested, and serious philosophers argue that objective morality can stand without God. So the first half of the claim is strong and the second half is a live debate, and we say so plainly.
Backed by 3 pieces of evidence
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God,” and the 2020 PhilPapers Survey
This establishes the starting point the whole argument needs: that objective moral values are a widely shared and philosophically respectable commitment, without yet assuming God.
Evolutionary accounts of morality
This states the evolutionary rival fairly, then answers it by separating the cause of a moral belief from its truth: an evolutionary story about moral feelings doesn’t by itself account for genuine, binding wrongness.
Erik Wielenberg, Robust Ethics
This is the honest hard case for the second half of the claim, presented in full strength. Even conceding that the theist’s response is contested, the moral argument’s real force lies more in the reality of moral values than in any decisive proof that they must come from God.