I have argued before that there are reasonable scientific explanations for the apparent existence of the universal morality perceived by Lewis. In brief, while he may indeed be able to establish that there are what we might identify as universal moral laws, he rejects the notion that they are generated and impressed upon us through our genetic inheritance.seventil wrote:
In Mere Christianity, Lewis wrote:
1. There is a universal moral law.
2. If there is a universal moral law, then there must be a universal moral lawgiver.
Therefore,
3. There must be God.
That was his basic proposal and spent a good deal of time trying to prove this.
Now, I won't do the man justice here (I suggest reading through it, he explains it much better than I can) but I'll try to summarize:
(taken from http://apologetics.johndepoe.com/morality.html)
There is a Universal Moral Law
The first step in Lewis's moral argument is to establish that there is a universal moral law. One reason to accept this premise is that without it, all moral disagreements would make no sense. Lewis points out that we appeal to a universal moral standard all the time. If someone cuts in line at an amusement park, we say, "that's not fair." When a psychotic murderer tortures, rapes, and brutally kills his victims, we say, "that's evil." Whenever we appeal to these standards, Lewis notes that we do not have to explain why these things are considered morally bad or evil. They are morally wrong, and everyone knows it. If a complete stranger walked into your house and picked up your television and started walking out, more than likely you will get up and say something like, "Hey, stop that! That is my tv." What you are doing in that scenario is appealing to a universal moral law. You assume it is an understood standard for all people to follow a principle of not taking things that are not theirs. If this person responded by saying, "So what?", you would probably think that person was very strange or perhaps crazy. When people do not understand certain moral values (for example, sociopaths who feel there is nothing morally wrong with any actions, including killing innocent people for no reason), we think there is something is seriously wrong with them. Lewis believes that this is best explained because we (correctly) assume there is a universal moral law.
Another reason Lewis explains for why there must be a universal moral law is that all moral judgments would be meaningless. For example, when we say, "The Nazis were wrong to murder the Jews," what do we mean? Does it mean it is just my personal opinion that the Nazis were wrong? If that is so, it does not seem to make much difference what the Nazis do. It would be on par with my difference of opinion regarding chocolate or vanilla ice cream. Or consider the claims against countries who repress women or mistreat women. If there is no universal moral law, on what grounds can we judge these countries to be committing a moral evil? Without a universal moral law, all of these claims amount to mere differences of opinion, but there cannot be a right or wrong view. In other words, without a universal moral law, the Nazis happen to prefer Nazi morality, and you happen to prefer anti-Nazi morality, but there is no real standard by which we can judge which of the two views is correct. Without a universal moral law, this judgment is a matter of opinion. However, it seems clear that the moral status of certain actions (e.g., the Nazis) is not a matter of subjective opinion, and this is because we presume there is a universal moral law.
So, C. S. Lewis, if he is right thus far, has established that there is a universal moral law. At this point he hasn't appealed to God or made claims that even most atheists would find contentious. In fact, Lewis believes that the moral law is something that all humans are bound to follow, no matter how hard they try to escape from it. So, Lewis believes that this first premise is well-founded.
If There is a Universal Moral Law, then There is a Universal Moral Law Giver
After establishing the existence of a universal moral law, Lewis wonders at the explanation of the existence of this universal moral law. Lewis arrives at the conclusion that a universal moral law implies a moral law Giver. Moral laws, unlike physical laws, are obligations or rules that one is responsible to follow. Without a person who makes these laws, it seems utterly inexplicable that they should exist. We can imagine a molecule by molecule physical duplication of our universe existing without any moral rules, so it seems that moral laws are not entailed by any physical, natural features of the universe. If the universal moral law is not entailed by the natural, physical aspects of the universe, how do we explain the universal moral law? Lewis believes that the best answer to this question maintains that the universal moral law implies that there is a universal moral law Giver. This law Giver could not be any arbitrary being. The kind of being to which the universal moral law points would be supremely powerful (in order to create the universal moral law), perfectly good (in order to be the objective standard for the moral law), and a being who is interested in our behavior (in order to explain why he makes us subject to the moral law). In other words, the moral law Giver would have to be like the personal God of the Christian tradition.
Even though this second premise is much more controversial than the first one, Lewis has put forward a plausible explanation for the moral law. Moreover, since better explanations do not seem forthcoming, it seems that Lewis has given a substantial defense of the second premise.
Therefore, God Must Exist
If one accepts the first two premises, then the conclusion follows logically. So, to resist Lewis's argument, one must show that one of the two premises is false. Below I will consider some of the most often cited ways to deny one of the two premises.
Is the Moral Law "Herd Instinct?"
One way to deny the second premise of Lewis's argument suggests that the universal moral law can be explained by herd instinct. By "herd instinct," I mean something developed by our physical nature like evolution or survival of the fittest. This means that we find ourselves obligated to follow our strongest impulse, which can be explained by naturalistic processes. The problem with this rejoinder is that our our strongest impulse is not always the right thing to do. For example, there are times when self-sacrifice is the right thing to do, yet it is not something that could be explained by herd instinct. Furthermore, this tries to get something more from something less. We would expect to be able to explain features of our physical features by appealing to physical processes, but we've seen that the universal moral law is not the sort of thing that would be entailed by any combination of physical material and laws.
Is the Moral Law Just a Social Convention?
Another way to resist Lewis's argument suggests that the moral law is merely a learned social convention. (This could be seen as a way to challenge the first premise by denying that the moral law is universal, or it might be a way to deny the second premise by offering an alternative explanation for the universal moral law.) Even though we often learn morality through social conventions, that does not prove that morality is reducible to social conventions. We also learn things like mathematics and logic through social institutions, but we know that math and logic are not reducible to society. This objection confuses how we learn moral laws with the nature of moral laws.
It is also worth noting that, on this view, we can accept groups of people as the source of morality but not individuals. But it is not clear why this distinction should be made. Of course, if we acknowledged that morality is completely subjective (i.e., up to each individual to decide for himself) this would also lead to obvious problems. So, the alleged solution is to hold that morality is determined by societies or other social conventions. But this suggestion also leads to obvious problems. For example, how could we ever say a society has morally improved, if the moral standard is set by that society? This would also lead to the absurd conclusion that advocates of social change, like Martin Luther King Jr., are morally evil, since they oppose what is established according to their societies conventions. Moreover, this would make any social convention that establishes moral laws infallible, but we know that these societies can be judged as to whether they are meeting objective moral standards (e.g., the Nazis; any society that violates human rights). Clearly, morality cannot come from social convention.
Is the Moral Law My Will Itself?
Some suppose that the moral law is something we must impose upon ourself. Many believe Immanuel Kant proposed morality in this function. Yet, this too cannot fully account for the nature of morality. This would make the one being held responsible to the rules as the same person giving the rules. It seems rather pointless to have morality on one's own terms. Why even bother with morality at all? Even if one puts tough restrictions on oneself, one can change them as it becomes convenient. It is like a jailor who locks himself in a cell, but keeps the key. The appearance of being confined to his jail cell is illusive. He is not really bound to his cell because at any time he can unlock it and leave. Therefore, our own will cannot account for the moral law.
Could There Be No Moral Law?
Another way to reject Lewis's argument is to deny the first premise. If there is no universal moral law, then there is nothing that needs to be explained. Perhaps, the critic might claim, we have these moral intuitions, but they are all false illusions of a law that doesn't really exist. In other words, there is no moral law. The problem with this view is that the moral law is not a mere description of human behavior but a prescription for human behavior. If the moral law were something we could cast off and live without, this could be a plausible solution, but living without the moral law is simply impossible. Since we did not create it, we cannot cast it off. We cannot escape the moral law because it is impressed upon us. We cannot escape the moral law any more than we can escape the laws of logic or mathematics. Denying the universal moral law would ultimately lapse into moral relativism leaving all moral statements and actions meaningless, thus making Adolf Hitler and Mother Theresa equally good and evil. Such a view of morality is not only impossible to live in practice, but obviously wrong when comparing saints and villains (like Hitler and Mother Theresa).
The case sketched above summarizes C. S. Lewis's moral argument for the existence of God. Lewis's argument contains some features that are common to most versions of the moral argument for the existence of God, but there are some subtle differences in some of the other arguments that are worth exploring.
The question for debate is then as follows: are the objections stated under the heading Is the Moral Law "Herd Instinct?" an effective dismissal of the notion that morality could be innate behaviour conditioned by our evolution?
