Paul Copan's Main Point's

I thought in this post I would draw out Paul Copan’s main points from his long essay. It is easy to get lost in a long essay. Copan is challenging Atheist Philosopher Michael Martin’s claim that we can have objective morality without God, a kind of moral realism.
Moral realism is the view that Moral values are some how objective properties of the universe independent of people views and opinions.

“Martin points to two Oxonians, Richard Swinburne and J. L. Mackie, to reinforce his emphasis that an atheistic ethic need not be subjective. Martin claims that a case can be made for an objective morality that is independent of what particular human beings happen to believe or practice with regard to morals. Positively, Martin approvingly cites Swinburne's argument: "Genocide and torturing children are wrong and would remain so whatever commands any person issued." Martin adds: "[Swinburne] assumes that it is possible to objectively settle moral disputes concerning this topic if God did not exist." General moral principles are necessarily true given their allegedly analytic nature, he argues. Thus there is no possible world in which such moral truths cannot be coherently conceived.”

“Let us assume for the moment that the Biblical position on rape is clear: God condemns rape. But why? One possibility is that He condemns rape because it is wrong . Why is it wrong? It might be supposed that God has various reasons for thinking rape is wrong: it violates the victim's rights, it traumatizes the victim, it undermines the fabric of society, and so on. All of these are bad making properties. However, if these reasons provide objective grounds for God thinking that rape is wrong, then they provide objective grounds for others as well. Moreover, these reasons would hold even if God did not exist. For example, rape would still traumatize the victim and rape would still undermine the fabric of society [even if God did not exist].”

Thus on this assumption, Martin claims, in this case, atheists could provide objective grounds for condemning rape? The same grounds used by God. Elsewhere Martin makes a similar statement about cruelty: "If I criticize Jones for being cruel, the criticism might well be correct even if God does not exist. The problem with Martins case is that he thinks that even if God did not exist rape would still be wrong because it victimizes the victim. In one sense this is true that victims would be abused, but this in itself does not establish an objective morality. Having knowledge of the “good”, does not give us a foundation for the existence of moral properties that exist independent of people in a godless universe. Also the idea of acts being wrong in a godless universe seems irrational as well, as nature just “is’.

“ Let me reiterate. Martin's working assumption seems to be this: If a nontheist can simply recognize or know that objective moral values?and thus universal moral obligations?exist, the job of justification is complete. We can be good without God! But this does not go far enough. The theist does not dispute that nontheists can know moral truths or principles. Whether atheists, Confucians, or Theravada Buddhists, nontheists can properly affirm that the Holocaust or Stalin's purges were immoral.
However, Martin does not tell us why such moral knowledge is possible. At the epistemological level, Martin and Swinburne are correct: One need not appeal to God to know whether or not cruelty, rape, genocide, or torturing children is wrong.
But if Martin thinks his task is completed, this is where he makes his major mistake. He gives no ontological foundation at all for his reasons to oppose child molestation, torture, or rape . It is unquestionable that rape is wrong because it violates the victim's rights and traumatizes the victim.”

Paul Copan is making the point that Michael Martin needs an ontological foundation for his claim for objective morality. The word “ontological” means what is it’s nature of being, what is the nature of this morality that exist independent of people. It is one thing to have a knowledge of a good moral subjective theory, but to state it is objective independent of people assumes that it exists somewhere out there and this is the question we need answered, “Where is this standard located”? If it is not part of objective reality then it is just an invention. Can Martin’s worldview gives us a foundation for these claims, I think not. Morality exists in moral beings, not impersonal parts of matter or atoms.

“So does Martin justify his vantage point? Hardly. The sort of "justification" Martin offers is to claim that "there have been many secular moralities." "There have been various attempts to construct a naturalistic foundation of ethics that is both objective and absolute." Certain ethical philosophers "have given objective accounts of morality that are compatible with atheism."
Notice that Martin's position simply presupposes the dignity of human beings, universal human rights, some objective purpose (e.g., that life has meaning if lived in a particular way), moral accountability, and the like. When Martin speaks of "bad making properties," he simply assumes that human beings possess an intrinsic worth which snails and sea urchins do not. But on what naturalistic or materialistic basis can human dignity or human rights be affirmed? What is it within Martin's worldview that furnishes us with such an ontology or metaphysic of personhood as being of intrinsic value or worth? Nothing, so far as I can see."

While moral truths can be known and moral judgments made in both systems, these systems still presume upon ?without justification?the foundation human dignity, human rights, and obligations. But why suppose that human persons have moral worth?
Throughout his writings, Martin offers no reasons. He simply states that it is so, but the theist can give a rational reason for the foundation of objective morality independent of human beings and is not just an invention. If the truth was that there was no God then we should live that truth, that no opinion is better or worse than another, we only frustrate each others desires but none are wrong. But this is not the case,

“Here the theist offers just such a foundation: Human beings possess intrinsic or inherent worth because they are made in the image of God. They share the moral likeness of a personal God in their very nature or being, and, by virtue of their personhood, they are moral agents. As Keith Yandell puts it: "nothing which is not a person is a moral agent. Morality concerns only persons." Their personhood derives from the personhood of God. Their having basic moral intuitions about justice, goodness, and kindness reflect this moral connection. Thus we ought to be moral because we have been made as moral beings in the likeness of a good God. We have been made to know God personally, and when we are in right relationship with God, all other goods find their proper place; that is, we function the way we were designed to function. Thus, when human beings experience guilt (for murder, adultery, theft), it is not because they have simply violated societal laws, a social contract, or some set of Neoplatonic laws that are somehow part of the furniture of the universe. They have violated the character of the ultimate personal Being.”