The existence of a universal moral law

The next section of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is important but not necessarily easy to grasp. The authors Norm Geisler and Frank Turek deal with the argument for God from morality. It can be summed up this way: every law has a lawgiver; there is a moral law; therefore, there is a moral lawgiver.

Of course, the key portion of that argument is the existence of a moral law. The authors start out by saying our Founding Fathers thought there was such a law. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "nature's law" is "self-evident." They claim Jefferson meant you don't use reason to discover it; you just know it. All people are impressed with the fundamental sense of right and wrong. For example, everyone knows that love is superior to hate and courage is better than cowardice.

They point out that this does not mean that every moral issue has easily recognizable answers or that some people don't deny that absolute morality exists. There are difficult problems in morality. In addition, they understand that people suppress and deny the moral law every day. But they say there are basic principles of right and wrong that everyone knows, whether they will admit them or not.

The authors claim there are eight reasons why the moral law exists. First, the moral law is undeniable logically. A person may say "there are no absolute values," but this person who denies all values actually values his right to deny them. In addition, he wants everyone to value him as a person, even while he denies that there are values for all persons. So, even those who deny all values nevertheless value their right to make that denial. That's inconsistent.

Secondly, we know there is a moral law by our reactions. The authors included a great story to prove their point. A professor at a major university in Indiana gave one of his relativistic students who did not believe in absolute moral values a lesson in this point. The professor, who was teaching a class in ethics, assigned a term paper to the students. One student, an atheist, wrote eloquently on the topic of moral relativism, arguing that all morals are relative and there is no absolute standard of justice or rightness. It was actually a good paper with good documentation. The professor read the paper and wrote on the front cover, "This is a good paper, but I'm going to give it an F because you put it in a blue folder." The student, of course, was enraged and said that it wasn't fair to give him a bad grade because of the folder. The professor acted puzzled, saying the student didn't believe in moral values, so why was he talking about something being fair. The light bulb went on the student's head. He realized that he really did believe in moral absolutes. The authors say that a good way to get moral relativists to admit that there are absolute morals is to treat them unfairly. Their reactions will reveal the moral law written on their hearts and minds.

There are more arguments for the existence of moral laws, but I will save those for future blog.