In chapter 15, The Moral Argument for God, Groothuis offers a moral argument for the existence of God by establishing the existence of objective moral reality and showing that a personal and moral God is the best explanation for the existence and knowledge of objective moral reality.
He opens this chapter with the true story that shocked philosopher Phillip Hallie. He had written a book on cruelty, which investigated the manifold evils of the Nazi Holocaust, including Nazis’ “medical experimentation” on defenseless children. German doctors experimented and killed Jewish children. Hallie became bitter and angry. But then he discovered a book on the little-known story of the small Protestant village Le Chambon in southeastern France. A Huguenot pastor refused to turn in Jews to the Nazis and many villagers also courageously hid Jews. The town had only 3,500 people who managed to save 6000 mostly Jewish children by smuggling them into Geneva, Switzerland. Groothuis asks, Did the Huguenots have an objective morality that drove them to do good and appose evil?
The moral argument has nothing to do with how people typically use or define moral terms: instead it addresses the justification of moral claims.
Ethical relativism is the belief that morality is merely human. It comes in two forms: cultural relativism (we should follow the moral principles of our culture) and individualism relativism (moral judgments are based entirely on an individual’s personal preference).
Relativists support their view by means of the dependency thesis and the diversity thesis. A person is dependent on culture for his/her morals. Because cultures are diverse, so is morality diverse. These arguments are weak. According to Romans 2:14-15, God has placed in man his moral law in the form of conscience that indict man of right and wrong. This inward manifestation of the Law of God is seen in the variations of the Golden rule that can be found throughout history and amid various religious and ethical systems.
Culture cannot be the basis for morality because cultural is often wrong as Gandhi, the suffragists, and Martin Luther King, Jr. proved.
Cultural relativism claims that the belief in objective morals makes people intolerant. But cultural relativists are usually intolerant of those whom they deem intolerant i.e., have a different morality than they do.
The argument from damnation proves there are objective moral standards. When the two highjacked airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers people cried out, “Damn them.” The argument from damnation centers on the fact that extreme evils cry out for supernatural justice.
Nihilism denies objective values of any kind. Max Stirner (1806-1856) said, “I decide whether it is the right thing in me; there is no right outside me…But I am entitled by myself to murder if I myself do not forbid it to myself…. You alone are the truth, or rather, you are more than the truth, which is nothing before you.” (Groothuis asks, I wonder if Stirner expected his readers to take his statement as truth for them.)
Hinduism believes in pantheism. The deity of pantheism is not only impersonal and amoral but also unknowable in cognitive terms. Pantheism denies objective moral values. But objective moral values exist as seen in the argument from damnation prove.
Atheist deny objective morals. Most atheists deny the existence of any nonmaterial form of reality. The universe lacks purpose or meaning, and yet human have “ideals” in the face of it all. The atheistic evolutionist would argue that morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth.
Murder is always wrong is true in all possible worlds. How can an atheist say, “murder is wrong” if all there is the material universe? Who says, murder is wrong? The moral value is not a material thing. It is immaterial. So where did it come from? Can we be obligated to a mere idea? But it is true in all possible worlds precisely because this statement is a thought in the mind of an omniscient and all-good being.