The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 96 - Without God There Can Be No Objective Morality

00:00:00.000 So anytime I get into a subject like this, I'm always reminded by folks in the comments section that I'm not a theologian, I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a scientist, and thus I'm not qualified to discuss these sorts of matters.

00:00:14.380 And it's true that I am none of those things. However, I do reject the idea that you have to be a specialist in order to think about and talk about the deeper questions in life.

00:00:27.180 I think that's a very sad way to view life and to go about life, to view it as something that can only be discussed by highly qualified academics, and the rest of us just have to sort of walk about our merry way and never think about these things.

00:00:42.320 That's not how I see it. I think that even normal people like myself and you can and should have these discussions. So here goes.

00:00:53.220 I've always thought that two of the best arguments for the existence of God are these, the argument from consciousness and the argument from morality.

00:01:04.860 Now, I don't know if they are the best. To me, they're the best. They are, to me, the most compelling.

00:01:11.580 So they're so compelling that even if every other argument for God was disproven, which wouldn't happen, but even if it did happen, I would still think that a belief in God is the most rational thing based on these two arguments.

00:01:25.180 Now, I'm not going to get into the whole argument from consciousness thing. I think it's familiar enough to most people who've thought about these matters.

00:01:34.840 In essence, you know, if God does not exist, then only physical matter and physical processes exist. Only the physical world exists.

00:01:44.880 But if that's the case, how could matter, by chance, without design, without intention, assemble itself in such a way as to create consciousness?

00:01:55.940 How do you get love from dust? Even even with you start with dust, even if you add billions and billions of years on top of it, how does it ever become love?

00:02:10.020 What about what about anger, happiness, empathy and so on?

00:02:14.380 How does a material thing derived from material and nothing more develop abstract ideas?

00:02:22.500 No other animal can do this. Nothing else on Earth can have abstract ideas.

00:02:27.760 Dolphins are very intelligent aquatic animals, but even the most intelligent dolphin cannot think about the idea of, say, freedom.

00:02:39.020 Much less can a dolphin desire freedom.

00:02:42.240 You know, much less can the dolphin look at itself and say, I'm a dolphin.

00:02:48.820 I am me. But I wish I were more than me.

00:02:53.220 You know, a dolphin can't do that.

00:02:55.060 But if there is no God, then this is kind of the entire story of mankind.

00:02:59.720 A man desiring to be free from himself, to be more than what he is, more than material.

00:03:06.640 Right. That is a very sad, terrible story.

00:03:09.520 If there is no God, you have these biological creatures, which are ourselves, that have developed somehow this desire to be more than us.

00:03:20.360 But how could material develop a desire to be more than material?

00:03:28.160 And again, why hasn't any other material developed that desire?

00:03:32.680 Why hasn't any other material developed that capacity?

00:03:35.020 Most of all, how could a totally physical thing originating from stardust become aware of itself?

00:03:45.080 That's the trickiest thing for atheists, I think.

00:03:47.200 They might say that, well, the brain is a computer, and so all the things I mentioned, love, empathy, anger, sadness, so on, are just functions of the fancy computer system that we got in our heads.

00:03:58.120 But, of course, there's already a problem with that argument, because computers are designed, designed, we should say, by humans who have the capacity to design things like computers because of their consciousness.

00:04:11.960 So an atheist who discounts God by saying, well, the brain is just a computer, might as well discount God by saying, well, the human body is just like a sculpture.

00:04:20.200 Yeah, and find me a sculpture that sculpted itself.

00:04:23.600 Find me a computer that built itself.

00:04:25.620 But even more to the point, we are aware of ourselves.

00:04:29.560 So it's not just awareness that the atheists have to explain, but self-awareness.

00:04:35.240 How could a clump of dust, however evolved, ever come to know itself as a clump of dust?

00:04:43.000 And why is it that no other form of matter or assemblage of matter has ever developed this ability?

00:04:50.820 And why isn't there any computer, even the most advanced computer in the world, does not know itself as a computer?

00:05:01.200 So if this is a function of a computer system in our heads, then why can't other computers demonstrate the same ability outside of science fiction novels?

00:05:11.220 So that's one argument.

00:05:15.260 I just said, I'm not going to get into it, and then I did.

00:05:17.500 The other argument is the argument from morality.

00:05:20.900 And as that argument goes, we know that objective morality exists, and objective morality cannot exist without a transcendent source.

00:05:31.740 There can be no transcendent source for morality without God, who is that source, thus God exists.

00:05:37.820 Now, I think that's a compelling argument, personally.

00:05:43.360 An atheist can go two general directions with that argument.

00:05:48.080 Maybe there are other directions.

00:05:49.340 This is all based on what I've encountered from atheists. 0.99

00:05:53.800 It seems to me that an atheist will generally go two directions with that argument.

00:05:57.800 He can argue that objective morality does not exist.

00:06:01.100 Morality is subjective, it's relative, so that's moral relativism, of course.

00:06:07.380 Or he can argue that objective morality does exist, but it has some other source that isn't God.

00:06:14.300 Now, here's the interesting thing I've noticed.

00:06:17.200 It seems that modern atheists and secular people are not as likely to be avowed relativists.

00:06:24.640 That is, explicit, pronounced moral relativists.

00:06:29.420 That seems to be kind of not as fashionable among atheists and secular people as it used to be.

00:06:34.680 It's not like it was in the 19th century.

00:06:38.260 What is more common now, what's most common, I think, is a kind of secular objective morality that often expresses itself as a half-baked relativism.

00:06:49.520 It's very confused, you know, so the average person in our culture is very fond of saying things like,

00:06:56.500 this is my truth, or don't impose your morality on me, your morality,

00:07:03.600 talking about morality as if it's a thing that you can own and you have your very own version of it.

00:07:08.660 Or they'll say, just do what makes you happy, you know, those kinds of things.

00:07:11.580 And they'll say this especially when their own actions are challenged or when something that they personally find acceptable is criticized.

00:07:21.380 But often, these very same people will condemn things like racism, rape, slavery, pollution,

00:07:30.760 and do so by appealing very forcefully to some objective standard,

00:07:36.720 condemning the wrongdoer for breaking some kind of moral code that apparently we're all supposed to abide by.

00:07:44.060 So, in practice, I would say the average secular person is really neither a moral absolutist nor a relativist,

00:07:55.040 but kind of a mix, which by definition makes them a relativist.

00:07:58.280 Yet, few people seem to want to embrace moral relativism the way that Richard Dawkins does.

00:08:06.080 Dawkins, who famously said that a bit of, quote, mild pedophilia isn't so bad if it happened a long time ago

00:08:13.040 because the moral standards were different back then,

00:08:16.480 which is a consistent morally relativistic position to hold, even though it's also horrifying.

00:08:24.000 Most secular people, it seems, don't go that far.

00:08:26.620 But they try to maintain the appearances, at least, of an objective morality,

00:08:32.160 even if they abandon the objective, you know, that argument whenever it suits them to abandon it.

00:08:38.800 Now, when an atheist, and I keep saying atheist or secular person, by the way,

00:08:45.340 so understand that I mean avowed atheists, as well as the average person in society

00:08:50.100 who isn't necessarily settled on the God question, but lives and operates as if there isn't a God,

00:08:55.420 so it's kind of a de facto atheist.

00:08:57.160 I'm calling them all atheists for the sake of this discussion. 1.00

00:08:59.640 So anyway, when an atheist tries to argue for objective morality,

00:09:04.520 it seems the argument hinges almost always on utilitarian grounds.

00:09:10.180 That's almost always what it seems to come down to.

00:09:13.080 Now, there is another theory.

00:09:14.860 There's kind of a platonic theory of morality as an objective thing that exists in the abstract,

00:09:22.280 just kind of floating out there in the ether.

00:09:24.560 And I think that's theory is basically unintelligible, so I'm not going to focus on it.

00:09:29.640 And then a third option, of course, is the Darwinian idea of morality as a product of evolution.

00:09:35.260 Humans evolved a moral sense because it helps us live together as people in a cohesive society.

00:09:42.200 But this is still moral relativism.

00:09:44.340 It's not really objective morality.

00:09:46.040 Because in this view, morality is no more significant than opposable thumbs.

00:09:50.140 It's just a thing that developed biologically to make our lives easier.

00:09:57.060 So we have opposable thumbs, and opposable thumbs are helpful.

00:10:00.840 But nobody would say that we have some kind of obligation to use our thumbs.

00:10:05.260 Nobody would say that.

00:10:06.480 They say, you have your thumbs, it's great, you have them.

00:10:08.200 Nobody says, you must use your thumbs.

00:10:10.200 You have to use them.

00:10:11.680 Yet morality is all about obligation.

00:10:14.200 It's all about ought.

00:10:15.740 You know, you ought to do such and such.

00:10:17.440 You ought not do such and such.

00:10:18.660 That's what morality is all about.

00:10:21.100 So an evolved morality might partly explain how we got to this point without completely

00:10:27.720 annihilating ourselves, only partially annihilating ourselves.

00:10:32.220 But it doesn't explain why in the world I should actually act according to it now.

00:10:40.660 That's what it doesn't explain.

00:10:43.000 So evolved morality explains how we got here.

00:10:45.220 But now that we're here, it doesn't explain why I should actually abide by this thing any

00:10:50.640 more than explains why I would have some sort of obligation to use my thumbs throughout the

00:10:54.820 day.

00:10:55.040 What if I don't want to use them?

00:10:56.180 I won't use them.

00:10:58.040 So that leaves us with the third option for atheists. 0.76

00:11:00.420 Something like what Sam Harris argues for, he says that morality is basically that which

00:11:11.400 brings about human flourishing.

00:11:14.140 A morally right action is an action that brings the greatest good, you know, to the greatest

00:11:20.360 number of people.

00:11:21.240 Um, I was also, I was listening to a debate with a moral philosopher, teaches philosophy

00:11:28.280 at Yale, I believe, Shelley Kagan.

00:11:32.260 Um, and he defined morality very simply as, as this, he said, morally wrong action is action

00:11:40.220 that, that hurts someone or fails to help them.

00:11:43.420 And morally right action is action that helps someone or refrains from hurting them.

00:11:50.840 Now, I think this definition works pretty well with Sam Harris's definition.

00:11:54.360 And I think they both fail to provide any basis at all for objective morality.

00:11:59.060 And here's why.

00:12:00.020 First of all, to Kagan's point, it's true that it hurts someone when I steal their car.

00:12:05.320 But the question is not whether a thing hurts someone.

00:12:10.920 The question is, why should I care that I hurt someone?

00:12:14.880 Why shouldn't I hurt someone?

00:12:17.280 So you haven't gotten to the ought, but you have to get to the ought because that's the

00:12:22.180 whole point.

00:12:24.000 Second to Harris's point, it's true that slavery does not lead to the human flourishing of slaves.

00:12:31.620 But why should I care about the slaves?

00:12:33.700 And who says that slaves are supposed to flourish? 0.99

00:12:37.780 And take the United States in the early 19th century.

00:12:40.460 Most citizens of the country weren't slaves.

00:12:43.660 What if it could have been argued that slavery helped the greatest number in that environment

00:12:48.860 flourish?

00:12:50.160 Wouldn't that make it morally right by this standard?

00:12:53.480 On the atheistic view, why in the world should the greatest number sacrifice their own comfort

00:13:00.820 for the sake of the minority?

00:13:02.640 But so often in practice, that is what morality requires.

00:13:09.600 That's often when morality comes into focus and comes most into play, is when a person in

00:13:19.820 a position of power has to make a sacrifice for someone who doesn't have power, or when

00:13:24.580 the majority has to sacrifice for the minority.

00:13:26.780 That's really when you get to, you know, that's when moral claims are the most relevant.

00:13:32.560 But it seems like on the atheistic view, there's just no scenario where that should ever happen.

00:13:39.520 Third, it seems that in order to establish an objective moral standard for human beings,

00:13:45.300 you have to first establish that human beings themselves possess some kind of moral worth

00:13:53.200 or moral value themselves.

00:13:55.480 So the only way to argue that I shouldn't steal, kill, enslave, etc., is to first argue that the people

00:14:02.380 who would be hurt by such actions have themselves moral worth.

00:14:06.700 And unless you're a radical vegan or environmentalist, you have to argue that they have more moral worth

00:14:14.480 than, say, a squirrel or a cockroach.

00:14:17.040 If we can agree that it's a greater evil to kill a child than a cockroach, you have to explain what

00:14:22.860 actually makes the child more valuable objectively.

00:14:25.940 Not just what makes him more valuable to me, but what makes him objectively more valuable.

00:14:33.200 So that even if I didn't recognize his moral worth, he would still have it.

00:14:38.680 So you have to explain what makes him more valuable, what makes life in general valuable,

00:14:42.760 and then what creates this kind of hierarchy.

00:14:45.320 It seems that atheist arguments for morality, all of them sort of start by assuming the moral value 0.99

00:14:53.640 of human beings, without explaining how they arrived at that assumption.

00:14:59.720 It seems to me that if human beings are only a random assemblage of matter, then they have no claim,

00:15:06.880 no objective claim, to being any more important than any other kind of matter.

00:15:11.840 In the atheistic view, we are all tiny little clumps of stuff wandering around on a tiny speck called

00:15:19.220 Earth, which itself is hurtling through the endless abyss of space, and soon in the blink

00:15:24.000 of an eye, from the cosmic view, we're going to fade back into the nothingness from whence we came.

00:15:31.020 So, if that's the case, you would have a hard time convincing me that my own life matters.

00:15:37.200 But someone else's?

00:15:39.280 Why?

00:15:41.580 Just like that, they're going to be gone anyway.

00:15:43.380 And if I could zoom out and see the Earth, you know, from another solar system, none of

00:15:49.520 us would matter at all.

00:15:50.520 We're all just little ants.

00:15:52.560 We're all just little ants on this little ball that's spinning around in space.

00:15:57.000 Who cares?

00:15:59.500 Why should I care about them?

00:16:03.160 And again, from the cosmic standpoint, soon enough, the entire Earth itself will be destroyed.

00:16:10.280 So, why does it matter?

00:16:11.300 Now, you can point out that I do care about other people's lives, even though I'm saying

00:16:18.340 all of this.

00:16:18.860 You can point out that life is easier for all of us, most of the time, if we act like we

00:16:24.180 care about other people's lives.

00:16:27.200 But you haven't explained why I have some sort of objective duty to care about other people.

00:16:34.620 Because a duty, by definition, is something given to us, assigned to us, right?

00:16:43.460 That's what a duty is.

00:16:45.080 Which is why anytime anyone says to you, do this, or don't do that, you always have the

00:16:53.080 instinct to respond, says who?

00:16:55.680 Anytime someone tells you not to do something or to do something, you always want to know

00:17:02.000 by what authority are they telling you that?

00:17:07.340 So, the question to atheists, again, when it comes to morality is, says who?

00:17:11.420 Fourth point, Kagan, in that same debate, he grapples with this question.

00:17:20.600 He says that, well, if every commandment needs a commander, if every requirement needs a

00:17:25.840 requirer, then the commander and the requirer would be us, society.

00:17:32.300 It's wrong to kill, rape, steal, et cetera, because we all say so.

00:17:37.700 That's what makes it wrong.

00:17:39.000 It is the consensus of a civilized society.

00:17:43.400 But there's an obvious and very significant problem here.

00:17:47.580 If morality is decided by democratic consensus, on what basis can we condemn historical slavery?

00:17:56.020 Considering that almost everyone in the world for thousands of years thought that slavery

00:18:00.400 was fine.

00:18:02.300 In fact, how can the minority, I go back to this point again, how can the minority ever 0.97

00:18:07.360 make a moral criticism of the majority if morality is decided by majority consensus?

00:18:17.640 How can a person ever claim that something most people do or most people support is wrong? 0.87

00:18:25.740 How could you go to a fundamentalist Muslim country and say that it's wrong to execute homosexuals 0.82

00:18:31.140 when everyone there thinks it's right? 0.95

00:18:34.960 Fifth point.

00:18:36.700 Every atheistic system of morality that I've ever encountered seems to completely ignore

00:18:42.060 the moral implications of our private actions and our private thoughts.

00:18:48.780 And this isn't a point that I hear, even Christians when they're arguing this, you know, about objective 0.97

00:18:55.020 morality and everything.

00:18:56.440 I don't often hear them bring this point up.

00:19:02.080 I mean, everything I've said so far, you know, you could William Lane Craig or someone

00:19:05.460 like that has already made these points way better than I've made them.

00:19:07.920 So it's like, you don't even need to listen to anything I've just said.

00:19:10.820 Just listen to him.

00:19:12.440 But now this next part, I don't, unless I missed it, I don't often hear this point brought up.

00:19:17.380 So maybe it's a bad argument that I'm about to make.

00:19:19.520 But to me, it's just something I think about.

00:19:22.660 And I haven't heard atheists really address it.

00:19:25.720 So I'm going to go with it.

00:19:26.820 So you have the issue of private actions and private thoughts, okay?

00:19:34.460 If morality is only what helps people and immorality is only what hurts people,

00:19:43.280 well, again, you haven't explained why I should care about hurting or helping people

00:19:47.800 or why people are worth helping or why they're so valuable that I shouldn't hurt them.

00:19:52.700 But even putting all that aside, what about the private and interior lives of people?

00:20:01.360 What about everything that goes on inside me?

00:20:04.620 Is all of that outside of the moral framework entirely?

00:20:09.280 Is it completely morally irrelevant?

00:20:13.000 What I think?

00:20:15.760 Now, you may say that it is.

00:20:18.260 Okay, well, let's take some extreme examples.

00:20:20.060 Extreme, though, not at all, though, not at all, you know, fantastical. 0.81

00:20:27.500 So take, for instance, a person who indulges in rape fantasies in his head. 0.94

00:20:37.140 A person who doesn't just have a thought pop into his head about raping someone, 0.95

00:20:43.060 but actually indulges the thought and enjoys thinking about it. 0.97

00:20:47.100 Or take a man who indulges in pedophilic fantasies. 0.93

00:20:51.640 Take even a man who watches child pornography. 0.78

00:20:54.740 And I know there you might argue that watching child pornography is wrong

00:20:57.620 because you are in some way supporting the child porn industry, which is true.

00:21:01.820 So fine.

00:21:02.940 But let's just say, hypothetically, you got a man who stumbles across a DVD 0.97

00:21:07.740 lying on the street filled with child porn. 0.67

00:21:10.620 He stumbles across a laptop that's got a bunch of child porn downloaded on it. 0.98

00:21:17.080 And so he watches it.

00:21:19.540 Now, you would probably, even as an atheist, I think you would instinctively say

00:21:22.940 that he's wrong for watching it.

00:21:25.780 But why?

00:21:27.480 It's not hurting anybody.

00:21:29.160 People were hurt in the production of that pornography, but that's already happened.

00:21:32.960 And he isn't lending any material support to it whatsoever.

00:21:36.960 He isn't practically adding to the misery of the victims.

00:21:42.160 So why is it wrong?

00:21:43.360 And what about the pedophilic fantasies which he engages with in his mind? 0.87

00:21:46.980 Or the man with the rape fantasies?

00:21:48.640 Or a woman who sits around all day dreaming of all the violent things she'd like to do 1.00

00:21:53.440 to the people that she hates?

00:21:55.320 Again, I think instinctively, you'd say that these thoughts are wrong.

00:21:59.780 And it's wrong to indulge those thoughts.

00:22:03.200 But on what basis?

00:22:05.760 It's not hurting anyone.

00:22:07.840 And atheistic morality seems always, I mean, there's a million versions of it, but it always

00:22:12.100 basically comes down to don't hurt people.

00:22:17.500 Sixth point.

00:22:19.440 You might try to argue that it isn't wrong to indulge in hateful thoughts or violent thoughts

00:22:23.960 or pedophilic thoughts or whatever.

00:22:26.000 If you're an atheist, then I guess you'd have to say that, even if you don't fully believe

00:22:29.820 it yourself.

00:22:30.260 I think instinctively, you know that these thoughts are wrong.

00:22:39.480 But if you're forced to engage with this argument, I assume you'll probably say, well, you know,

00:22:43.080 it's not really wrong.

00:22:43.760 But then there's another problem.

00:22:51.300 Why would a person feel guilty for those thoughts?

00:22:55.960 Where does the guilt come from?

00:22:57.320 Now, if you've ever had a very hateful thought about someone, if you've ever had someone that

00:23:03.780 you really hate, and you had a thought where you wish harm to fall upon them, right?

00:23:11.780 If you've ever had that thought in your head, then you've probably felt guilty for that thought.

00:23:17.960 But why?

00:23:21.240 It seems that guilt in such a circumstance is a biological anomaly, in the atheistic view

00:23:27.040 anyway.

00:23:27.920 Because you didn't hurt anyone with your thoughts.

00:23:30.520 You didn't do anything to society.

00:23:33.860 Nobody knows about it.

00:23:34.820 Nobody's affected by it at all.

00:23:36.760 It's just you and your thoughts.

00:23:38.340 And according to atheists, that's it.

00:23:40.800 I mean, you're completely alone with your thoughts.

00:23:42.420 Nobody else knows.

00:23:44.180 It has no effect on anybody.

00:23:46.880 So why would guilt ever come into play?

00:23:50.480 Now, you might say that it's a biological response, but a biological response to what?

00:23:56.000 If morality is all about evolution, or all about what society says, or all about what hurts

00:24:02.380 people, or any other atheist definition of the term, then how in the world and why in

00:24:08.460 the world did guilt for thoughts ever arise?

00:24:13.380 Doesn't hurt anyone.

00:24:14.580 Doesn't affect society.

00:24:16.700 So why is the guilt there?

00:24:20.180 I think that's an interesting question for atheists, because not only do you have to explain

00:24:25.180 to go to the first thing I mentioned, you have to explain where do these abstract concepts

00:24:29.220 come up?

00:24:29.780 You know, like an abstract idea, where did that, how did we develop that ability?

00:24:36.560 But then we have a guilt for an abstract idea, and where did that come from?

00:24:43.800 Here's the point, I think.

00:24:48.180 Atheists will say that, I think when it comes down to it, most atheists, the average atheists,

00:24:57.660 if they're being honest, and if they're just, you know, speaking from their heart, I think

00:25:03.800 that they will instinctively, as I said, they will instinctively say that the person who

00:25:07.980 indulges in hateful thoughts is doing something wrong, just as they will call the man with

00:25:13.580 the child porn immoral.

00:25:14.860 They'll say that he's doing something immoral, right?

00:25:16.540 Just as they'll condemn slavery, even when the slavery benefits most people in society.

00:25:22.100 Just as they'll call homophobia wrong, even when most people in a society have agreed that it's

00:25:26.640 right.

00:25:27.440 Just as they'll probably condemn the Aztecs, who engaged in human sacrifice on an unprecedented 0.65

00:25:33.280 scale, and most people were not sacrificed, and the non-sacrificed people considered the

00:25:38.680 sacrifices to be something that helped them flourish.

00:25:40.980 Yet I think atheists would probably condemn that, just as they'll certainly condemn the 1.00

00:25:46.500 Nazis, even though only a minority were herded into camps, and everyone else could have lived 0.62

00:25:51.860 prosperously under Nazi rule if it weren't for Hitler's world domination goals. 0.89

00:25:56.040 If he hadn't done all that, then things probably would have worked out okay for the rest of the

00:26:01.600 Germans.

00:26:02.100 Yet atheists would condemn that as wrong.

00:26:03.780 Just as most of them presumably would condemn the systematic extermination of the mentally ill and 0.91

00:26:11.260 criminals, even though the existence of those types of people in some ways detracts from the

00:26:17.760 pleasure and well-being of everyone else, and also the lives of those people, by the atheistic

00:26:24.800 view, could not possibly have as much value as the life of a healthy and law-abiding person.

00:26:31.040 Yet, that's the stance that most atheist people seem to take.

00:26:42.020 Why?

00:26:45.520 Why won't these atheists and these secular people just embrace moral relativism and admit that

00:26:52.420 nothing is objectively immoral?

00:26:54.400 There are things that, for collective convenience, we should outlaw, but that doesn't mean that

00:26:59.500 they're actually wrong in some objective way.

00:27:04.200 Why won't most of them take that view?

00:27:07.420 I think it's because the objective nature of morality is clearly apparent to everyone.

00:27:13.820 Even Richard Dawkins, the avowed relativist.

00:27:18.220 Now, keep in mind the qualifier that he put on his statement about, well, pedophilia was okay

00:27:25.420 back when everyone thought it was okay.

00:27:27.800 That's moral relativism.

00:27:29.020 But even then, he says, mild pedophilia.

00:27:31.900 He puts that really weird qualifier on it.

00:27:35.720 Well, mild pedophilia was okay.

00:27:38.400 But beyond that, that wasn't okay.

00:27:41.760 So he felt the need to stipulate mild.

00:27:44.520 Even as he tears down the moral law, he can't bring himself to tear it all the way down.

00:27:50.040 So it's clear to me that everyone, whether they admit it or not, looks at the moral code

00:27:58.880 as a thing that exists, as a real objective thing, as a thing we ought to follow, as a thing

00:28:06.980 that we live under, as a thing that we should live according to, as a thing that would still

00:28:12.740 be there intact, even if nobody in the world recognized it, as a thing that says that slavery

00:28:19.540 is wrong, and so slavery will always be wrong, even if tomorrow everyone in the world thinks

00:28:24.320 it's okay, it's still wrong.

00:28:28.780 It seems like basically everyone views morality in that light.

00:28:33.100 They view it, in a word, as a transcendent thing.

00:28:36.780 But there is nothing transcendent in a purely material world, which to me tells us that we

00:28:45.980 are not living in a purely material world.

00:28:52.400 So that's why I think objective morality is pretty good evidence for the existence of God.

00:29:02.960 All right, I got that in exactly 30 minutes.

00:29:07.000 I feel pretty good about that as well.

00:29:09.460 Thanks for watching, everybody.

00:29:10.460 Thanks for listening.

00:29:11.740 Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - September 04, 2018

Ep. 96 - Without God There Can Be No Objective Morality

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript