The moral argument

Three of life’s most important questions deal with origin (how did we get here?), meaning (what is the purpose of life?) and destiny (where are we going?). Well, if you’re a Bajan, there is one more. How does one maintain their sanity (no, not on the roads), but in light of the fact that the cost of living is rising almost weekly, and one is being paid, very weakly. My main concern here though is that of origins, especially as it relates to morality.

There are roughly two views on origins. The first is that God created life and the cosmos, ex nihilo. The other view is a bit more complicated and requires more faith. It goes something like this. In the beginning there was space and matter and by a long series of chances, conditions suitable for life just occurred (nobody knows why) and living creatures developed into human beings (for no apparent reason), who have the ability to think. Again, nobody knows why.

Fair enough, but what are we to make of the moral law which people all over the world try so hard to obey? Is it an evolutionary by-product? Hardly. Adherence to a moral law only makes sense if it were given by a transcendent law giver to whom we are accountable. Many honest atheists and skeptics have observed that a godless world should entail an absence of objective moral values.

Kai Nelsen recognizes the intellectual bankruptcy of grounding objective morality from a purely naturalistic point of view. In the American Philosophical Quarterly, he writes, “ We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view of that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me … The point is this: pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.”

Jeffrey Dahmer’s father expressed his son’s rationale, “If it all happens naturalistically, what’s why need for a God? Can’t I set my own rules? Who owns me? I own myself (Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Within, A&E Biography, 1996).” Of course I am not suggesting anything so silly as – all naturalists are more prone to commit violent crimes. The point is this. Western society is experiencing a crisis concerning her ethical foundations. As John Rist correctly observed, “Without a return the God of the Jewish-Christian [Scriptures] as the “infinite and necessarily good” Source of all finite goods, the crisis will only be more pronounced.”