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Quiz #3
Raeden Michelle
April 16, 2008
Liba 497


The moral argument of the existence of God is, to me, a very weak argument. The argument states that every person has a sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, a sense of obligation to do the ‘correct’ thing, a sense of obligation to follow natural laws by choice. Since every person feels this obligation, then it is necessary for there to be a lawgiver. This ‘lawgiver’ is called God.

The main issue I see with this argument is the statement of everyone feeling a moral obligation to do something. In our society, it is morally wrong to kill another person, most of us feel this ‘moral obligation’ or even guilt if we kill even an animal. Some people, whom society deems ill, don’t feel any sense of obligation or guilt after killing someone let alone an animal. What does this say about the moral obligation? The answer to that would most likely be that it is because that person who felt no moral obligation is ill, they have some sort of psychological disorder preventing them to react normally.

To that statement I bring in another branch of murder. In our society, it is wrong to kill someone. In the early Aztec culture it was part of a religious belief to kill people. They would sacrifice people to appease their diety. The Aztecs sacrificed for a number of occasions, anything from making sure the sun rose the next morning, to warfare. Sacrifice is still a form of killing.

If killing were wrong, why did this culture not feel a moral obligation against it? Why would God give only this law to a certain number of people and not others?

I could even bring in a Biblical reference of sacrifice. In Judges 11:29, Jephthah pleads to God to deliver the Ammonites to him and allow him to defeat them. Jephthah tells God that if he dies this favor for him, that he will sacrifice the first thing that comes out from his home to greet him. The first thing to come out to greet him was his only daughter, and as promised, Jephthah sacrifices her.

Of course, this brings another matter to hand, God’s mercy. God is supposed to be all-loving. If this is the case, why did he allow Jephthah to sacrifice his only daughter? Was it to simply show Jephthah the consequences of asking for a selfish favor to kill others? Jephthah felt no moral obligation to fight and kill the Ammonites, and when it came down to fulfilling his own side of the deal, he did so with a heavy heart.

Is murder, then, a contextual thing? Is murder sometimes not against the moral law? Even in our society there are circumstances that allow murder, and we feel no moral obligation against it! These instances include: self-defense, war, capitol punishment, and some forms of euthanasia (mercy killing/”pulling the plug”). Just going over this in my sociology course, many stated that humans do not have a moral right to decide another’s right to live or die, yet we make this decision everyday in our wars. We have decided that a certain group of people should die, even though this ‘lawgiver’ God, says it is wrong to do so.

So, is moral obligation consistent? Or is it contextual? If it is contextual, then God can not exist due to the fact that laws should never be bent or broken, so he would be contradicting himself. If moral obligation is consistent, then God can not exist because there are instances where law is not the same from society to society, and this, too, is contradictory.