INTRODUCTION

If the Biblical God exists, no person should be able to protest to Him, “You should not punish me for breaking Your laws because it was impossible for me to achieve the certainty[i] Your laws even existed.” Everyone must be able to achieve certainties about God’s laws in order to be fairly judged on His Judgment Day. Thus, an explanation of exceptional force for the existence of God’s laws must be discoverable by everyone in order for the Biblical God to be a righteous judge. If we thoroughly investigate everyone’s behavior about their seriously-taken sense of “wrong,” we will be able to achieve the certainty that this explanation is indeed discoverable by everyone.

The unprecedented force of our moral obligations is far superior to the forces of every one of our social obligations. Financial, professional, and legal obligations, for example, all acquiesce to moral obligations. A banker could enforce financial obligations. An employer could enforce professional obligations. And the police could enforce legal obligations. Further, the degree of force of our social obligations correlates with the degree of enforcement of each social obligation. If a speed limit, for example, were enforced with a thousand dollar fine, the social obligation to that speed limit would have a much greater force, in our minds, than a social obligation to a speed limit enforced with a ten dollar fine.

How then would it be possible, in our minds, that a completely unenforced obligation that would have invaded the minds of everyone, from out of nowhere, have a far greater force, with every person on the face of the earth, than every one of our enforced social obligations?! If our moral obligations evolved completely unenforced, they should be hugely inferior in force to our enforced social obligations, instead of being hugely superior in force!

Thus, the unprecedented moral force we experience in our moral obligations is not attainable unless we have in our subconscious mind some sort of perception of the existence of an enforcer of our moral obligations.

This argument is not primarily a moral argument. This is more of a psychological argument. It is based on the human reaction to the normative value of “wrong” (our sense of everyone’s moral obligations). It asks, why do all humans have this same reaction of heartfelt seriousness (great moral force) to something that, without God, would have inexplicably invaded their minds from a completely unknown source? It is this heartfelt serious behavior that is analyzed here.

This argument does not contend that this heartfelt serious behavior comes from perceptions of God. It contends that this behavior comes from our perceptions of God’s existence! A perception of God’s existence is to a perception of God, as a perception of a fossilized dinosaur footprint is to a perception of a dinosaur. If we see a fossilized dinosaur footprint, we are able to achieve a high degree of certainty that a dinosaur existed.

This argument does not contend that God exists! It does contend, however, that God’s existence has been written into everyone’s mind, just as the Biblical God said He would do in Hebrews 10:16: “This is the covenant I will make with them: I will write my laws into their minds and hearts.” The Biblical God claims that He is the legislator of the objective directives in our minds, which are discovered and understood using the process of reason. This argument contends that we all have a “fossilized footprint,” if you will, of God in our minds. Additionally, Hebrews 10:16 reveals that the Divine Command Theory is Biblically correct theory.

At present, Richard Swinburne has advanced the leading-edge contention about God. He writes: “There is no great probability moral awareness will occur in a Godless universe.”[ii] C. S. Lewis, David Baggett, Jerry L. Walls and others have also theorized extensively about moral awareness and objective morality. Unfortunately, they all stopped short of asking why we all take at least part of this moral awareness seriously.

Alvin Plantinga proposes that because of our experiences, we are able to have a “warranted belief,” in God outside of reasoned knowledge. He makes an important argument that moral experiences are sufficient for trusting that God exists. However, his approach reveals that he probably does not believe that an argument of exceptional force for God exists.[iii]

In the following argument, I will use the phrase “seriously-taken sense of “wrong,” instead of the phrase “obligations of great moral force.” Incorporating the word “serious” is more psychologically descriptive.

THE ARGUMENT FROM HUMAN BEHAVIOR

The “Argument from Human Behavior” establishes that everyone behaves as if God exists. It does this by asking the question: Why do we all take at least part of our hard-to-live-by sense of “wrong,” seriously? Further, it answers that if we take any part of our sense of “wrong” seriously, we need to have, in our minds, the concept that our sense of “wrong” is enforced. The behavior, moral seriousness, is not attainable without, at least, a true or false subconscious perception of God’s existence.

The template for the Argument from Human Behavior:

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

Premise 2: Everyone takes at least part of their 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 perceptions of God’s existence into everyone’s mind or God Himself did it.

Explanations—Everyone takes at least part of their sense of “wrong” seriously. Everyone behaves as if at least one action is “wrong” and behaves as if this “wrong” should be taken seriously. Everyone, for example, behaves as if some type of lying or some type of murder is seriously wrong.

We cannot take any part of our sense of “wrong” seriously unless we have perceptions of God’s existence in our minds. We would consider the “wrongness” people attach to certain human actions nonsense if we did not assume, subconsciously, that God authored and enforced these normative valuations. No one else has the authority to decree what is morally “wrong.” Further, no one else has the power to enforce what is morally “wrong.” Every seriously-taken valuation of “wrong” presupposes a God who enforces it. Only perceptions of God’s existence could give our sense of “wrong” legitimacy because any law, man-made or moral, that is not enforced is an absurdity, even if it were enacted to help order humanity. A speed limit, for example, could be enacted to help order humanity. Nevertheless, if that speed limit were completely unenforced, it would be a complete absurdity! In the same manner, if evolution created our moral laws to help order humanity, these moral laws would, by virtue of being unenforced, would also be absurdities. Thus, if we subconsciously assumed that our sense of “wrong” did not come from God, we would not take it seriously because we would esteem our sense of “wrong” to be an ever-changing and unenforced absurdity.

Therefore, we all have perceptions of God’s existence in our minds. We all behave as if God exists because we all take seriously at least one of our perceptions of “wrong.” Seriously taken perceptions of “wrong” cannot exist unless they are subconsciously believed to be enforced. Thus, a true or even a false perception of God’s existence, in our minds, is a prerequisite in order for us to take our sense of “wrong” seriously.

Either an outlandish quirk of evolution put God’s existence into everyone’s mind or God Himself did it. Our seriously taken perceptions of “wrong,” and therefore God’s existence, are just as strong as our other perceptions. We have complete faith in the other 99% of our perceptions to accurately reveal reality. As a result, it would be unreasonable not to have complete faith in our perceptions of “wrong” to reveal reality.

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.

Discovering God will always demand the step of faith to trust that our sense of “wrong” accurately reveals what actually exists. Taking this step of faith is reasonable since it is indistinguishable from the steps of faith we take automatically, hundreds of times every day, when we trust our other senses.

Nonetheless, people are still free to deny that God actually exists because of the unreasonable possibility that evolution put our seriously taken sense of “wrong,” and therefore perceptions of God’s existence, into everyone’s mind.

If the moral laws in your mind are not enforced by God, then they are completely absurd as a completely unenforced speed limit would be completely absurd. If God does not exist, then your sense of “wrong” is an absurdity. Do you think there is any possibility, at all, that your sense of everyone’s moral obligations could be an absurdity!? Think it over. KNOW THYSELF, atheist. The only people who do not know God are those who do not know themselves!

[i] Rand, Ayn, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 40-54. Using some of Rand’s ideas, I define a true certainty as a fact discovered through deductive reasoning and faith.

[ii] Swinburne, R., 2004, The Existence of God. (2^ndedition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.)

[iii] Plantinga, A., 2000, Warranted Christian Belief, New York: Oxford University Press.