Head of Public Policy Tim Dieppe reflects on his public debate with the Durham Union about whether there can be morality without God
I participated in a debate at the Durham Union last week, on the motion: ‘This house believes without God, all is permissible.’ It was an exciting event to be involved in as we debated an important motion in front of a packed audience of Durham University students.
Proposing the motion were: Dr Peter Vardy – author and theologian, Fr Andrew Downie – Catholic Chaplain to Durham University, Jerry Li – former president of the Durham Union Society, and myself.
Opposing the motion were: Professor Richard Norman –philosopher and patron of Humanists UK, Professor Daphne Hampson – post-Christian theologian, Alex O’Connor – founder of the Cosmic Skeptic YouTube channel, and Joseph Folley – founder of the Unsolicited Advice social media business.
Amongst the students, Alex O’Connor is very well known as a YouTube celebrity atheist. He debates against Christian apologists and is a highly articulate defender of atheism. I decided to accept this invitation to debate against him on a motion I thought he would struggle to defend.
The debate was very well attended with the venue packed, including in the gallery. Unfortunately, the recording system did not work, so there is no recording of the debate. Each speaker had just eight minutes to defend their position before some short contributions from students, then questions and answers from the floor.
I decided to major on the free will argument. I was an atheist myself in my younger years, and I concluded that free will was an illusion. I argue that consistent atheists should reject belief in free will – as I knew Alex O’Connor and Joseph Folley do. But without free will, there is no moral responsibility, and therefore no morality. You just do what you feel like. Therefore, without God, all is permissible. I also discussed the moral argument for the existence of God – arguing that the existence of transcendent moral laws points to the existence of a transcendent moral law giver. A transcript of my talk is reproduced below.
Most of the opposing speakers spent time in their opening statements criticising Christian morality. Professor Norman, in particular, argued that with God, all is permissible – in that ‘God’ is used to justify all sorts of immorality. I pointed out that this was not the motion we were discussing.
Most of the questions in the Q&A were directed to Alex O’Connor because he is very popular with the students. During Q&A he was forced to concede that he doesn’t believe in free will and is not a moral realist, lending support to the weight of my arguments.
After the debate, the students got to vote for or against the motion. I am delighted to report that we won! The vote was 162 for vs. 130 against. This victory came as a surprise to one of my fellow debaters who confidently predicted beforehand that we would lose by 80%! I disagreed, predicting that we would win on the strength of our arguments, and also because of increasing evidence that Gen Z are becoming more interested in Christianity and spirituality more generally. The win in this debate provides further evidence for this shift away from radical scepticism amongst students.
The students were very engaged in the debate and there were lots of interesting conversations over drinks following. I hope that the debate encouraged Christians to have confidence in their faith and to know that God is required for belief in objective morality.
Alex O’Connor is becoming the new popular face of atheism. He is polite, articulate, bright, and has a formidable debating style. It was very good to demonstrate the lack of foundation for morality under atheism to these students against him. He has said that he now respects Christianity more than he used to. We should pray for him to recognise that Christianity provides far and away the best explanation for objective moral values, and many other things besides. I would certainly be up for debating against him again on a related topic. It is my firm belief that atheism just won’t stand up to rational scrutiny.
I hope readers of this article will also be encouraged to argue with your friends for the necessity of belief in God for objective morality. In my view, the moral argument is the most powerful argument for the existence of God. It is sadly true that without God, all is permissible.
Tim Dieppe speech transcript
It’s lovely to be with you tonight, and such a great audience and wonderful attendance for such an important question today.
Without God, is it the case that all is permissible?
By the way, the question is not ‘With God, is all permissible?’
You can believe that and still vote for the motion today.
The question is whether without God, is all permissible?
Ladies and gentlemen, I was an atheist in my younger years, a very convinced atheist, like some of the members of the opposition today, and I thought about it quite hard.
I decided that if I was really going to be an atheist, I should not believe in free will anymore, because surely all of the molecules and atoms and neurons and all the things in my brain are actually determining what I think, what I say, what I do, all the choices I make.
So, I decided that free will is an illusion under atheism.
Quantum physics didn’t help me because that’s just indeterminate. That doesn’t help you enable free will.
So, I decided to be a consistent atheist, really, you should disbelieve in free will.
I’m not the only one to conclude this, of course.
Atheist philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, said: “Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills.”
Professor Stephen Hawking said: “So it seems to me we’re just biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.”
Richard Dawkins said: “There’s no such thing as free will.”
Sam Harris said: “Free will is an illusion.”
And some of the esteemed members of the opposition today are also consistent atheists.
They’ve chosen to believe . . . that they don’t choose what they believe!
Setting aside that that is surely contrary to every conscious experience you have, where even at this moment you’re choosing what to pay attention to and all the choices you make about what to say, what to study, what to eat, what to write, all these things are obvious choices.
You could choose to smile at me today now to encourage me as well!
Thank you!
Some of you, I noticed, some of you didn’t smile today!
Obviously, you do have free will.
It’s got to be the most counter intuitive thing that you can possibly believe to say ‘I don’t have free will’, and surely it’s somewhat absurd to come and say: ‘Let me come persuade you that you can’t really be persuaded of something because you don’t really have choices about it!’
Let’s agree that under atheism there is not free will.
If you’re a consistent atheist, the problem you then have is that ‘Ought implies can’, or at least that you couldn’t, or something.
Without choice, you have no responsibility, and without responsibility there is no morality.
That is the conclusion I reached.
There is no morality without responsibility.
Obviously, that is the case, and so you’re left on an atheist view without any morality.
You’re like a computer. You’re like a robot, you’re like a puppet. You’re just controlled.
Sometimes I’m tempted to get angry with my computer, particularly when it messes up, corrupts some file I spent hours working on, and I want to tell it off from I think you stupid, naughty computer!
But it’s not responsible. It’s just following an algorithm.
And under atheism, the same applies towards you! You’re not responsible either. You’re just following your biochemistry.
That’s it. No morality left for you.
Michael Ruse and E.O. Wilson put it this way: “Ethics, as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes in order to get us to cooperate.”
I submit that without God there’s no free will. Without free will there’s no responsibility, and without responsibility there’s no morality.
Therefore, without God, all is permissible.
The problem of raised by this is that most of us do recognise though that there are moral absolutes, as has been referred to already today.
I once had a conversation with Bob Geldof.
He said to me: “There are no moral absolutes!”
I said, “Oh OK, when do you think it’s OK to rape someone?”
Then after a pause, he said: “No, I don’t think it is ever OK to rape someone.”
Well, there’s one more absolute right there!
And most of us would agree with things like rape, torture, murder, child abuse, . . .
They’re wrong in every circumstance, in every situation, every culture.
They’re absolutely wrong.
They’re moral laws.
Transcendental moral laws, ladies and gentlemen.
Transcendental laws point to a transcendental moral lawgiver.
How else can you explain them?
Obviously, that is the only explanation for transcendental laws.
Humans can’t make them up because they’re transcendental.
If you’re a cultural relativist today, or moral relativist where you say all cultures morality is equal, we can’t criticise another culture, you’ve got a problem of a moral reformers dilemma.
Some people have criticised the morality that they live in, people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Junior, William Wilberforce, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, . . .
Under moral relativism they’re the most evil people in the world because they disobeyed their culture’s morality!
No, they’re not! They’re the most moral people in the world.
Why?
Because they pointed to a transcendental moral law.
That’s the only way you can criticise your culture.
That’s the only way you can have moral reformers – if there are transcendental laws coming from a transcendental moral law giver.
So, the atheist has to answer these questions.
If there are transcendental moral laws, where do they come from?
If there are transcendental moral laws, how do we discover them?
If there are transcendental moral laws, how are we responsible to obey them – if we don’t have free will, and how are we accountable to them?
Atheist Nietzsche said this: “There are altogether no moral facts.” Morality, he said, “has truth only if God is the truth. It stands or falls with faith in God.”
Atheist Jean Paul Sartre said: “Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist.”
Exactly in line with the opposition today with the motion today, ladies and gentlemen.
Richard Dawkins said this: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is that bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
That’s what atheism has to offer to you today, ladies and gentlemen.
No evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I beg to differ, as do many other people today.
The fact is that there is evil, and there is good, because there is God!
Ladies and gentlemen, I am urging you today to vote in favour of this motion today because I know that you do have free will, whether you believe it or not!
I know that you do have moral responsibility, whether you accept that or not.
I know that you will be held morally accountable, whether you like it or not.
You need God for moral laws.
You need God for moral responsibility.
And you need God for moral accountability.
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, I urge you to use your God-given free will – which you all know you have – to vote in favour of the motion!
“Without God, all is permissible.”
Thank you very much.
