If the Biblical God exists, then an argument of exceptional force for Him MUST also exist! Everyone must be able to achieve certainties about God’s laws in order to be fairly judged on His Judgment Day. Where is this argument?

I believe the "Argument from Human Behavior" is the strongest argument yet. However, I am inviting you to examine this argument and to make your own judgment about how strong it is.

On social media, atheists  whine when they read this argument. Some whine about human immorality, some whine about God and evil, while others just whine gibberish. They make no attempt to answer this question: Why do YOU take at least part of your hard-to-live-by sense of “wrong” seriously, as if it were authored by God and enforced by God?! This is the most important question that atheists need to be asked. Can you answer it?

As Dostoevsky, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Locke all suggested, "If God does not exist, there is nothing "wrong" with lying, cheating or breaking promises." These thinkers all realized that God is essential for the existence of human morality!

Anyone who examines this argument and thinks it through will not be disappointed. -Tom K Lee, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy (retired)

Abstract:

The moral law in our minds against breaking promises would be an absurdity if God did not exist to enforce it!

If God did not exist, there would be no moral lawgiver, no author of the moral laws in our minds and no enforcer of our moral laws. Consequently, we could only consider the directives of our sense of “wrong” (our sense of everyone’s moral obligations) unenforced absurdities if we did not have some sort of perception of God’s existence in our minds. Do you really think there is any possibility at all, that your sense of “wrong” is an absurdity? It would be exactly that, if God does not exist to enforce it. Think it over. Keep on thinking!

THE CONDENSED ARGUMENT

The Argument from Human Behavior is the new strongest argument for God because its in depth analysis of human behavior and its understanding that God’s existence can never be an objective fact. It establishes that we (including martyrs) are able to achieve the “certainty unto death” that God exists through faith in our sense of “wrong!” 

Without God, our sense of “wrong” would be constantly evolving and unenforced. Consequently, without God, our hard-to-live-by sense of “wrong” would be an absurdity, never qualified to be taken seriously!

This argument does not contend that morality comes from God. It does not even contend that God objectively exists! This argument does insist that we all have perceptions of God’s existence in our minds just as the Biblical God promises in Hebrews 10:16—This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds will I write them.

Further, Hebrews 8:11 seems to prophecy that an argument of exceptional force will be discovered: "And they shall not teach every man his neighbor saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest." How else could everyone on earth come to know God, unless the certainty of knowing God had been verbalized in an argument?

The template for the Argument from Human Behavior:

Premise 1: If we take any part of our sense of “wrong” seriously, we have perceptions of God’s existence in our minds.

Premise 2: We all take at least part of our sense of “wrong” seriously.

Conclusion: Therefore, we all have perceptions of God’s existence in our minds.

Corollary: Either an outlandish quirk of evolution put God’s existence into everyone’s mind or God Himself did it.

Explanations:

Premise 2: Everyone behaves as if some type of lying or some type of cheating is seriously “wrong.”

Premise 1: No one, besides God, has the authority to decree anything “wrong.” And no one besides God has the power to enforce every “wrong” action. We would consider the rightness and wrongness everyone attaches to human actions nonsense if we did not assume, at least subconsciously, that God authored and enforced these normative valuations. Thus, in order not to esteem our sense of “wrong” an absurdity fabricated by evolution, we would need to have perceptions of God’s existence in our minds!

Nonetheless, we are free to deny that God actually exists because of the possibility that evolution (or something else) put God’s existence into everyone’s mind. Even so, everyone who takes any part of his or her sense of “wrong” seriously behaves as if God exists.

Socrates is credited with saying, “I know that I know nothing.” In spite of that, we can “know” things by achieving certainties from our experiences. Everything we “know” comes from achieving certainties through faith—faith in our eyes and our other senses: naïve realism. Although we automatically believe our eyes and other senses, we still need faith in them because it is not a logical necessity that our senses are telling us the truth.

We also need to take a step of faith when we discover scientific facts! We need to take this step of faith because of the problem of induction, which is: No matter how many times a scientific experiment gives the same result, it is not a logical necessity that the next result will be the same. How do we “know,” for example, the next slice of bread will nourish us, when it is not a logical necessity for it to do so? We just have faith that the next result will be the same. Therefore, every scientific fact we have obtained through previous experiences depends on at least one step of faith!

We all take hundreds of steps of faith every day when we trust our eyes, other senses and inductive reasoning to accurately reveal reality. Accordingly, it would be highly unreasonable not to take a step of faith and trust that our sense of “wrong” accurately reveals what actually exists—a God who demands morality.

The Rational Certainty God Exists

Millions of people “know” God exists because they have achieved that certainty by adding these facts, usually subconsciously, to their mind’s picture of reality: First, they have added the fact that they have taken a step of faith to believe in naïve realism. That is, they trust that the perceptions in their mind taken from their senses accurately reveal what actually exists. Second, they have added the fact that they have taken a step of faith to believe in inductive reasoning. That is, they have faith that a certain collection of previous experiences will predict future experiences. Third, they have added the fact that these steps of faith produce what is universally accepted as “true knowledge.” Fourth, they have added the fact that their seriously taken perceptions of “wrong” give them perceptions of God’s existence. And fifth, they have taken the step of faith to accept that their perceptions of God’s existence are “true knowledge” also!

In other words, these believers know God exists because their perceptions of God’s existence give them the same degree of certainty as they have when they “know” they see a tree. Second, they know God exists because their perceptions of God’s existence give them the same degree of certainty as they have when they “know” eating a slice of bread will nourish them.

Because of these facts, the step from having perceptions of God’s existence in our minds to discovering that God exists is not a big step at all. We would be completely inconsistent with every aspect of our existence if we did not take this reasonable step of faith and accept that the God who has been written into our minds does indeed exist.

Moreover, you and I, and even little children have always known God exists; and now reason supports that certainty. Of course, the God who directs us into morality, the God who wrote the Law of Love in our minds and hearts does indeed exist. And now He unmistakably declares He exists! Praise Him for that!

This essay is taken from the book, The Argument from Human Behavior: The New Strongest Argument! by Eric Demaree. (It is available at all major online bookstores.)