Let us introduce a theoretical objector. He is intelligent, articulate, morally outraged by evil, and firmly committed to a godless worldview. He insists that morality is real, that some acts are always wrong, and that God, if He exists, must answer to moral scrutiny. He is confident that his position is both humane and rational.
We will grant him the floor.
Law as Morality—Until It Isn’t
The theoretical objector begins by grounding morality in law.
“Murder,” he says, “is always wrong by definition. Society defines it. The state recognises it. That is sufficient.”
So far, so good. But then a problem arises.
Suppose a state redefines murder. Suppose a regime decides that a particular group is not fully human and therefore not protected by homicide statutes. The killings are legal. Systematic. Bureaucratically enforced.
The theoretical objector recoils. “That was evil,” he says. “Those killings were wrong, regardless of what the law said.”
At this point the difficulty is already fatal.
He has abandoned law as the ground of morality and appealed to a higher standard. A standard that transcends governments, cultures, and legal definitions. A standard that remains binding even when every institution denies it.
But his worldview does not contain such a standard.
If there is no transcendent, absolute, invariant moral law, then the state’s redefinition stands. If morality is reducible to social consensus, evolutionary conditioning, or legal convention, then changing the convention changes the morality. There is no error, only revision.
The theoretical objector wants law to ground morality when it suits him, and to be judged by morality when it does not. He wants an external court of appeal while denying the existence of any court above human opinion.
That is not an argument. It is special pleading.
Objectivity Without an Object
Pressed further, the theoretical objector concedes that morality is, in some sense, subjective.
“It comes from us,” he says. “From human values, empathy, shared experience.”
This admission is catastrophic.
If morality comes from the individual or the collective, then it has no authority beyond preference. One may dislike rape. Another may not. One may abhor genocide. Another may justify it. On this view, there is no wrong, only disagreement.
The theoretical objector still wants to say, “But some things are objectively wrong.”
By what standard?
Not by biology, which merely describes what is. Not by society, which demonstrably changes. Not by personal conscience, which conflicts. Not by reason alone, which can calculate means but never supply moral ends.
He continues to make universal moral claims while standing on a worldview that allows only private taste. He speaks the language of “ought” while inhabiting a universe that contains only “is”.
This is not moral realism. It is moral parasitism.
Judging God While Borrowing God’s Gavel
The theoretical objector then turns his moral outrage toward God.
“If God exists,” he says, “He is immoral. He permits suffering. He judges humanity. He commands violence.”
Yet the very act of judging God presupposes a moral standard that transcends both God and man. A standard to which God is accountable.
But where does that standard exist?
Not in nature. Not in human convention. Not in evolutionary utility. If God does not exist, there is nothing above God to judge Him by. And if God does exist as eternal, immutable, omniscient, and omnipresent, then whatever is grounded in His nature is, by definition, universal.
The theoretical objector is therefore trapped. He either denies God and loses all moral grounds for judgement, or he affirms a standard above God and introduces a deity more ultimate than the one he is criticising.
In practice, he does neither. He quietly borrows God’s moral framework while denying God Himself. He uses God’s ruler to strike God.
That is not critique. It is incoherence.
Murder, Killing, and the Borrowed Distinction
At one point the theoretical objector insists:
“Murder is always wrong. Killing is sometimes justified.”
This distinction is crucial. It separates moral categories from brute outcomes. It recognises intent, authority, and justice.
But this distinction does not arise from secular materialism. It arises from a moral framework in which life has intrinsic value, law has moral legitimacy, and justice is not reducible to power.
In other words, it arises from the very worldview the theoretical objector claims to reject.
He wants to keep the conclusions while discarding the premises. He wants the fruit without the root.
Evidence, Reason, and the Vanishing Ground
The same collapse occurs when the discussion shifts to evidence and reason.
The theoretical objector demands evidence for God. He wants to weigh facts, assess probabilities, and draw conclusions.
But evidence presupposes intelligibility. Reason presupposes invariant laws of logic. Knowledge presupposes truth that is not merely psychological or cultural.
A universe that is the product of blind, purposeless processes does not yield normative reason. It yields neurological events that feel convincing to the organisms experiencing them.
If thoughts are reducible to chemistry and survival advantage, then truth is an accident and falsehood is often useful. There is no reason to trust cognition, including the cognition that concludes atheism is true.
Once again, the theoretical objector stands on borrowed ground.
The Final Reduction
Strip the worldview to its core, and the reduction is unavoidable.
Moral claims become preferences.
Justice becomes power.
Evil becomes inconvenience.
Reason becomes conditioned response.
Truth becomes utility.
In such a framework, no one can ever be wrong. They can only be different.
And yet the theoretical objector refuses to live as though this were true. He continues to condemn, to accuse, to praise, to teach, to warn his children, to appeal to conscience.
In doing so, he testifies against himself.
Conclusion: God or Absurdity
The choice is not between God and morality, or God and reason, or God and justice. The choice is between God and absurdity.
The theoretical objector wants absolutes without an Absolute, norms without a Lawgiver, judgement without a Judge, and meaning without a source.
He cannot have them.
Either morality is grounded in an eternal, transcendent, personal God, or morality dissolves into taste and power. There is no third option.
The tragedy is not merely that the theoretical objector rejects God. It is that he does so while continuing to think, speak, and argue as though God were still there.
And that is the absurdity he cannot escape.
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