"I Don't Believe in Speed Bumps": A Moral Argument for God
Years ago a friend was giving me a ride home. As we entered my neighborhood going about 40 mph, I called her attention to the speed bump just ahead. Acting as if she didn't hear me, she maintained her 40-mph speed over the speed bump, causing the car to bottom out and scrape against the concrete, and causing me to hit my head. "What the heck?! Didn't you hear me?" I protested. "I heard you", she said, "but I don't believe in speed bumps."
Awestruck by the irrationality of this statement, I found myself stunned into silence. But I did wonder if she started to believe in speed bumps when she realized the cost to repair her vehicle. I know if I had had any doubts, the pounding headache and mild concussion that I had to endure were enough to cause me to believe in speed bumps.
Just as our sensory experiences convince (most of) us that the physical world is objectively real, our moral experiences convince us that moral values are objectively real. Every time we declare that something was unjust, that what someone did was wrong, or that something is evil, we affirm our belief in the existence of objective morals. After all, if there is no objective morality, then there is no objective evil and we can never say that something is morally wrong. We can say we personally don't like racism, we wish rape didn't exist, and we think torturing babies just for fun is distasteful to us. But we can never say that these things are wrong.
However, if objective moral values do exist, they must come from outside ourselves. They must be grounded in some external, objective source of good. They must come from God. Otherwise, they are mere opinion, personal preferences, subjective likes and dislikes. To put this succinctly:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
So next time someone objects that God cannot exist because of all the evil in the world, you might ask, "So you believe in objective evil then? What makes something evil in the first place?"
