It means a lot, which is possibly a reason why so many people avoid or only have an ill-informed belief about moral authority. Hence, you may be surprised what this all means to you at this point in reading the blog series: (1) you are better educated than so many others on this topic, (2) objective morality can only exist if God exists, as well as other things you likely believe and want to be true, and (3) you have the opportunity to add real benefit to your life.

First, whatever motivated your reading this book, curiosity, recognition of significance, or whatever, you are now better educated on one of the biggest questions in life than so many others, who, for whatever reason, would not be able to provide a valid reason supporting their belief on morality, and therefore have an equally unreliable foundation for their choices and ultimate results in life.

Second, objective morality, a universal and absolute standard of right and wrong exists, and you will be accountable to the Authority establishing it. The God described in the Bible not only precisely fits all the requirements for such an Authority, but is singularly unique in all belief systems by being beyond all space, time, and nature, meaning capable of truly free thinking, not being controlled by natural laws, and further, has unmatched evidence to support the valid grounding and ultimate operation of morality. This is also the only ground from which the fruits of inherent human value, rights, and social justice can grow.

Third, this means if you already trust and follow this authority, then you have another demonstrable reason (the moral argument) to verify this trust, and when hard times and choices wash over you, you can have confidence in your reliance on the only foundation established evidentially beyond any other.

On the other hand, if not currently following this authority, then you have vastly greater opportunity to benefit your life. While moving off an inaccurate and unreliable foundation to the accurate and reliable one will bring struggle and cost, doing so will protect you from inevitable and more serious cost, and provide you with a reliable foundation to carry you to the overall best results you seek in diverse areas of life, and potentially a never-ending existence beyond this life. Because morality is really a secondary question, which is entirely dependent on the primary question of whether a personal Creator exists and has a purpose for relationship with us, or not.

The Moral Argument

Premise 1: If God does not exist, objective moral values & duties do not exist.

Premise 2: Objective moral values & duties do exist

Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

As noted previously, this is a logical syllogism, meaning if the first two premises are true, then the conclusion is inescapable. Or, if the first two premises combined only have a 51% probability of being true, then the likelihood of the conclusion being reality is 51%. Scholars, in every applicable field of study and regardless of worldview belief, have recognized and established premise one. If you think you have a way to ground morality without God, what is your theory and supportive evidence? And to be a reasonable option your reasons have to be equal to or greater than the evidence convincing the scholars of the veracity of premise one.

Premise two is intuitive and also supported with evidence. If you do not believe in premise two, then you cannot believe in true right and wrong, justice, or that slavery or rape or anything is wrong for all people, places, and times – and if you are a person who is authentic with their beliefs – there are special and confined rooms for people like you.

Therefore, God exists.

There are some ideas or beliefs comparable to the introductory story of the caterpillar of the large blue butterfly. A comfortable benefit provided by the belief prompts us to bring the belief into our life, and once inside, the insidious and predatory nature of the false belief comes out to devour aspects of our future. Consider again what you must believe, and what this means for thoughts, beliefs, choices and hope.

Each of us will have a belief about morality and corresponding belief about God in our life, this isn’t a choice, it just comes with life on Earth. And the greatest possible harm or benefit will come to our thoughts, choices, responses, priorities, goals, direction in life, and potentially, ultimate destination beyond this life, depending entirely on whether we allow a false or accurate worldview belief into our life.

The warning signs are ubiquitous. For example, watch for critics of Christianity claiming something about God, or Christians, or anyone or anything is “wrong” or “evil”. This should be a warning sign because claiming righteous anger has stepped onto theist ground to make the claim. They must assume there’s a “good” or “right”. When you assume there is a “good”, there must be a moral law (a standard) to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume there is a moral law, you must have a Moral Law Giver, and only God fits the requirements.

If one does not believe in God, they are irrational to claim anything is wrong or evil. They can only say they (as an individual or as a group) have feelings against it, and no one is wrong or evil if they feel differently. Is this what most people are claiming?

Another warning sign, ask what premise a person thinks is inaccurate in the moral argument. And make sure in the answer they explain why they believe this?

Look again at what one must believe and guide their thoughts, choices and goals in life upon. Look again at how one must answer the interesting questions in part 4. Then look how often these same people, maybe yourself, thinks or acts as though there is objective morality, inherent human value, human rights, true right and wrong, and a standard to make possible moral or social progress.

And just as we wonder how the ants in the introduction fail to recognize what is happening with the caterpillar, and dispose of the voracious caterpillar, it is easy to wonder why people who do not accept the existence of God do not see the warning signs and dispose of an inaccurate and destructive worldview.

[1] Gilbert JA, Neufeld JD. Life in a World without Microbes. PLoS Biol. 2014 Dec 16;12(12):e1002020. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002020. PMID: 25513890; PMCID: PMC4267716.

“In summary, most global biogeochemical cycling would grind to a halt in a world without Bacteria and Archaea; humans would need to fix and distribute nitrogen for maintaining crop production. Fungal decomposition would become the critical link between organismal death and decay and the return of decomposed nutrients to the bottom of the eukaryotic food chain. Most species on Earth would become extinct, and population sizes would be reduced greatly for the species that endured.

How long would it take for humans to notice what had happened? Surprisingly, humans would fail to see many signs of this global change for a few days or weeks. We could still digest our food, as do gnotobiotic animals, assimilating most of what we consumed. We would still battle viral, fungal, and parasitic infections. Even though our dairy industries, cattle farmers, biotechnology companies, food producers, hospitals, and wastewater treatment systems would begin making headlines within a day or two, it would take us nearly a week to realize what had happened. We predict complete societal collapse only within a year or so, linked to catastrophic failure of the food supply chain. Annihilation of most humans and nonmicroscopic life on the planet would follow a prolonged period of starvation, disease, unrest, civil war, anarchy, and global biogeochemical asphyxiation.”