Do Universal Morals Reflect a Universal Moral Lawgiver?
C.S. Lewis, a former atheist, plainly says, ‘If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents-the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts-i.e. of materialism and astronomy-are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.’
The “Moral Argument” for C. S. Lewis is as follows:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values & duties do not exist.
2.) Objective moral values & duties do exist.
3.) Therefore, God exists.
Now this is a logical reason, since 3 follows necessarily if premises 1 and 2 are true. Premise 2 seems intuitively obvious to most people. Mass murdering is unequivocally, objectively wrong. Killing innocent children, torturing animals are all objectively wrong to most people. This is a universal moral. These morals exist universally, worldwide. So if anyone denies premise 2, they don’t need an argument, they need help.
The evolutionary explanation strips morality from humans and reduces it to mere descriptions of animal behavior or conduct, a simple physiochemical reaction of the brain’s cognitive functions. Darwinists can only explain past conduct…past behavior. It cannot inform or predict a human’s future behavior. It only serves to reduce morality to mere descriptions of behavior, which involve both motive and intent. Both of these behaviors are nonphysical elements that cannot, even in principle, evolve in a Darwinian sense. So where do morals come from? Why do they seem to apply only to human beings? Are they the product of chance? What world view makes sense out of morality? Why are babies born with what developmental psychologists call an intrinsic compassion (one baby cry’s in the nursery, and the others join in).
Lady Justice (Justitia, the Roman Goddess of Justice) is equivalent to the Greek Goddess Dike, & is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems. So even the court systems are based upon a moral force that is believed to be already established and embedded within human societies.
Moral laws suggest a moral Lawgiver; one who communicates through higher, moral principles and laws. For example, most people would not murder someone. They deem this to be morally wrong. Most people expect imperatives to be obeyed or certain consequences occur. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard pointed out that a person could not have anything on his conscience if God did not exist. Kierkegaard cites Genesis, where Abraham is commanded by God to kill his son Isaac. Although God must be obeyed, murder is immoral (it is not technically against the Mosaic Law since it had not yet been delivered-but no matter, it is against our conscience). The ethical is thus suspended for a higher goal (telos). [2]
Morality is grounded in our hunger for justice. We desire for a day when all wrongs are made right, when innocent suffering is finally redeemed, and when those who miscarriage justice, are found guilty and finally punished. Young children best exhibit this when they say, “That’s not fair!” I’m telling! This tendency is from an internal locus of control that already knows right from wrong. This also explains our own personal sense of dread when we feel guilty over something that we now regret, as do most people. The person may feel the need to take the initiative and go make it right by apologizing.
Robert Wright offers no empirical evidence whatsoever for his thesis. He seems to assume, as do most evolutionists, that moral qualities are in the genes; otherwise this paradigm will not work. But these are the same evolutionists that are telling us that there isn’t any “intelligence” in the DNA information. So now we are to believe that random physiochemical processes now include a conscience of morality? As written earlier, information assumes intelligence.
Take Mr. Wright’s comment as an example: “Human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse”. [3] Mr. Wright reflects on the moral equipment randomly given to us by nature, and then bemoans our immoral use of it with words like “tragic,” “pathetic,” and “misuse.”
If you ask evolutionists about the origins of life, they simply don’t know what to say except that maybe life emerged on planet earth as a result of extraterrestrials, or life-ingredients came to earth from space. But this just pushes the question back to, “Then where did that life come from”? You have to keep going back to the origination of life, sometime.
One notable challenge to the transcendent nature of morality for biological evolutionists is what is called the new science of evolutionary psychology. Its adherents advance a simple premise: The mind, just like every part of the physical body, is a product of evolution. Everything about human personality, marital relationships, parental love, friendships, dynamics among siblings, social climbing, even office politics, and can all be explained by the forces of neo-Darwinian evolution. But then how is anyone responsible for anything?
Even the moral threads that make up the fabric of society are said to be the product of natural selection. Morality can be reduced to chemical relationships in the genes chosen by different evolutionary needs in the physical environment. Love and hate; feelings of guilt and remorse; gratitude and envy; even the virtues of kindness, faithfulness, and self-control can all be explained mechanistically through the cause and effect of chance genetic mutations and natural selection.
They have reached so broad of a conclusion now that they (almost arrogantly) say that all of the moral universals held in the world (including a conscience, morals, etc.) are the result of simple, physiochemical reactions. But if these are simply chemical reactions, then taking a human life is just part of the natural, evolutionary order of things isn’t it!? It’s not the brain’s fault. It’s a chemical-thing. One wonder’s if a High School students chemistry lab results are conscience about anything that the students are doing to them; particularly since chemical mixtures might be able to produce certain “universals”.
With more humans now dying by abortion than in all of the world’s wars, it is okay: It is only “chemistry”. To compare life’s infinite value to just a simple mixture of chemical compounds, and being at the right place and at the right time, it would be harder to hold a serial killer responsible wouldn’t it? Society already defines, legally, when something is called “life” and when it is expedient to dispense with. It is through no fault of his or hers. They are a victim of their brain chemistry or a bad childhood with his parent’s bad chemistry.
Evolutional theory states that it’s all about survival of the fittest, making decisions based solely on self, and the human species benefiting from any given situation, even at the expense of other “carbon units”. However, moral universals point to a Creator; to a Moral Lawgiver. You do not have unless you receive, and universal morals require an original impartation. Humans are born with universal morals and values that are intrinsic at birth. Moral, values and character seem more than just a random chemical reaction in the brain; they seem to suggest a Great Moral Lawgiver.
1.) C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Business of Heaven, Fount Paperbacks, United Kingdom. 1984. (p. 97).
2. D. Anthony Storm’s Commentary on Kierkegaard Second Period: Indirect Communication (1843-46) Fear and Trembling. ©Copyright 1996-2009, D. Anthony Storm Supplemental source: http://www.sorenkierkegaard.org/kw6a.htm
3. Robert Wright, The Moral Animal; Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. 1994. New York: Pantheon Books. (p. 23).1. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Business of Heaven, Fount Paperbacks, United Kingdom. 1984. (p. 97).
Excerpt from the book Blind Chance or Intelligent Design: Empirical Methodologies and the Bible.
