CS Lewis: Without a Bible we can deduce a couple things, 1- that although God is a great artist, He is no friend of man since the universe is a very dangerous place. 2- that God put morality on our mind. Just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than looking at the house he built, we find out more about God from the moral law than from the universe. In conclusion, the Being behind the universe cares about right conduct, fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty, etc.
Animals kill and forcibly mate with other animals, but we don’t call those things murder or rape. But if natural facts are the only types of facts on the table, then the same holds true of people.
When moral arguments take place, each party attempts to appeal to an unstated higher standard. This standard is the Moral Law. What is being debated is whether one action or another is a closer approximation to the demands of that law. Those accused of having fallen short, such as the husband who is insufficiently cordial to his wife’s friend, usually respond with a variety of excuses why they should be let off the hook. Virtually never does the respondent say, "To hell with your concept of right behavior."
Dr. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker: "I began to realize that the implications of my atheism were incompatible with almost every value I held dear … One Sunday, shortly before my 28th birthday, I walked into a church for the first time as someone earnestly seeking God. Before long I found myself overwhelmed. At last, I was fully known and seen and, I realized, unconditionally loved – perhaps I had a sense of relief from no longer running from God."
The moral argument is an argument that is pretty difficult to get away from. You either have to, 1- bite the bullet (like Mackie, Ruse, Dawkins, Rosenberg...) and just accept the crazy and counter-intuitive notion that there just are no moral facts at all, no matter how obvious that seems to all of us. 2- believe that valueless, meaningless processes produce beings with intrinsic moral value. Or 3- make the move that Collins, Libresco and Irving-Stonebraker (and myriads of others) did and dump your worldview in exchange for one that can provide more robust resources for why human beings have worth and duties towards one another.
