George Pell on The moral argument
Pell argued that without God, morality collapses into relativism and that the Christian tradition provides the only secure foundation for ethics.
Cardinal George Pell defended the moral argument in his public debates, most notably his 2012 encounter with Richard Dawkins on ABC's Q&A. Pell argued that without a transcendent source of moral authority, ethical claims reduce to matters of opinion — culturally conditioned preferences with no binding force.
Pell's version of the argument was less philosophically sophisticated than Craig's but more pastorally direct. He appealed to the moral intuitions of ordinary people: most of us believe that some things are genuinely wrong, not merely unpopular. This belief, Pell argued, only makes sense if there is a moral lawgiver whose authority transcends human convention.
His debate performances were controversial, and critics argued that Pell's personal moral authority was undermined by his handling of sexual abuse cases within the Church. Nevertheless, his articulation of the moral argument represented the mainstream Catholic position: morality requires God, and attempts to ground it elsewhere inevitably fail.
“Without God, there is no foundation for objective morality. You are left with the law of the jungle — the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”