Fourth argument: why are there good and evil?

What is a moral act, anyway?

To talk about morality, it is worth first understanding what it is. A person who invests in the stock market is not doing a moral act, and not an immoral act either. A person who donates to a hospital so that his name will hang on the wall has done a useful act, but not a moral one. A moral act is an act done because it is the right thing, and not for gain. That does not mean one may not enjoy it. The satisfaction that accompanies a good deed does not spoil it, as long as it is not the reason for the deed.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant formulated it this way: an act is judged by its intention, and not by its results. And he added a rule: do only what you would want to become a law for everyone. And there is something surprising in this. It is precisely the person who does not calculate results, but does what is right, who brings about the best results. Think of tax evasion: for each person on his own, evading pays, because his sum makes no difference to the treasury. But if everyone thinks that way, the treasury will empty. Only someone who asks “and what if everyone did that?” preserves society.

Taste or fact?

If one person likes spinach and another does not, there is no argument between them. That is taste. But if someone says “slavery is fine,” we do not say “he has different taste.” We say: he is wrong. We are even prepared to go to war against evil. In other words, deep down we treat morality like a fact, not like a taste.

There is a simple test that shows this. A child says: “How lucky that I don’t like spinach, because if I liked it, I would eat it, and spinach is yuck.” That is funny, because if he liked spinach, he would not think it was yuck. His aversion is a matter of taste, and depends on him. Now another sentence: “How lucky that I don’t live in the 18th century, because then I would believe that time is absolute, and I would not know about the theory of relativity.” That is not funny, because it concerns a fact, which does not depend on what people thought. And now the test: “How lucky that I don’t live in the 18th century, because then I would think slavery is moral, and I might have kept slaves.” That is not funny either. A sign that we treat morality like a fact, and not like a taste.

But if morality is a “fact,” it is a fact of a very special kind, and it is worth understanding in what way. An ordinary fact describes what is: “the table is brown,” “most people think it is forbidden to murder.” Such a fact demands nothing of me. Even if the whole world thinks murder is forbidden, I can answer: “So what? How does that obligate me?” By contrast, “it is forbidden to murder” does not describe what is. It says what ought to be. And whoever truly understands it cannot answer “so what?” He feels at once that it obligates him. Moral facts are facts that contain a demand. And such facts do not exist in a world of matter alone. In such a world there is only what is, and no “ought.” And there is something else that does not exist in a world of matter alone: choice. A stone that falls on someone is not “guilty.” It only obeyed the laws of physics. If a human being is only matter obeying laws, then the murderer too only “fell” on his victim. He had no choice, so there is no guilt, and no one to blame. Without choice, the words “good” and “evil” lose their meaning.

Who decides what is good?

If morality is a fact, who determines it? Society? No. After the Second World War, the Nazi leaders were put on trial in the city of Nuremberg, in Germany, for the crimes they had committed. They said: “We acted according to the law of the state.” The claim was rejected. In other words, the state and the law are themselves judged by morality, and so they cannot be its source. Perhaps all of humanity? That is an invention. When and where did humanity decide anything? And what if all human beings agreed that murder is permitted?

Perhaps each person for himself? The writer Ari Elon wrote about the “sovereign Jew,” who determines his own values for himself. But whoever is his own ruler has no ruler. Freedom of choice is a condition of morality, not its source.

And perhaps evolution? It can explain why we tend to behave well, because it helps survival. But three problems. It explains behavior, not conscience and not judgment. It explains a tendency, and a tendency is not an obligation. The tendency to eat is natural too. And “this is how we evolved” does not mean “this is how it ought to be.” From a fact one cannot infer a duty.

Some also say: “Morality is an instinct.” But instinctive behavior is not morality. A sheep does not harm other sheep, and no one calls it “moral.” A robot that issues a “verdict” is not a judge. Instinct, conscience, has its place as a guide. But the decision belongs to reason. And incidentally, not every feeling is morality. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt showed that there are things that arouse disgust in us, and we think they are “immoral,” even when no one is harmed. It is worth distinguishing disgust from morality.

Two common objections

The first: “But there are very moral atheists!” True, and that is not what the argument is about. An atheist can be a very good person. The question is different: according to his worldview, what makes the good good? If there is no source above us, he has no way to say that the murderer is wrong, only that he does not like what the murderer does. In a certain sense, a moral atheist is a believer without knowing it.

There are also serious atheist philosophers, like David Enoch, who accept that morality is objective and try to ground it without God: there simply are “moral facts” that exist on their own, like the laws of mathematics. But this position has two difficulties. The first: facts that float in the air, with no source, do not explain why they obligate me. The second: how do we even have access to such facts? If our brain was formed by a blind process, and there is no connection between the moral facts and that process, it is a wondrous coincidence that we identify them correctly. Without a God who created both the good and our ability to see it, this remains a wonder without an explanation.

The second: “Every society has a different morality.” It is true that there are disagreements. But on questions of fact too there are disagreements, and that does not mean there is no truth. It means that some of the sides are simply wrong.

Only two possibilities

And so only two possibilities remain. The first: there is no real good and evil, everything is personal taste. But then one cannot say that a murderer is wicked. One can only say “he likes different things than I do.” Very few people are willing to really live that way. The second: there are real good and evil. But in a world in which there is only matter and blind laws of nature, they have no place. They can come only from the one who stands above the world, God, who created the laws of nature and created good and evil too, and gave us the ability to recognize them.

Interestingly, even Kant, regarded as the father of secular morality, himself wrote that morality obliges us to assume that God exists. And in Jewish thought this idea is ancient. The Gemara says that whoever practices idolatry (bowing to an idol) out of love for the person who asked it, or out of fear, and not because he truly accepts the idol as a god, is not considered an idolater. In other words, the true service of God too is a response to the commandment out of recognition of the one who commands, and not out of feeling or interest. Exactly like the moral act.

An ancient question

There is an ancient question here, worth answering. Is something good because God commanded it? If so, the good is arbitrary: had he commanded murder, murder would be good. Or did God command it because it is good? If so, the good exists even without God. The answer is that God chose to create a particular world, with human beings who can suffer, love and choose. In such a world it is self-evident that harming an innocent person is evil. God did not “decide” this separately. It follows from the world he chose to create. Thus the good is not arbitrary, and yet its source is in God. Morality depends on God’s will, on his choice to create precisely such a world, and not on a separate command.

This argument too goes in the second direction. It addresses whoever feels that there are real good and evil, and shows him that this feeling of his already commits him to belief in God.

And what about meaning?

The argument from morality has a little brother: the argument from meaning. Almost every person feels that his life has meaning, or at least seeks it. A Jewish psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl, built an entire method of therapy on this feeling. But what is meaning, anyway? Meaning is always a measurement against something that lies outside us. A meaning that we “invent” for ourselves does not really help, because one cannot lie to oneself. Meaning is sought, not invented. And therefore whoever feels that his life has real meaning assumes, without noticing, that it has a source above him.