I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (29 page)

The moral of the story is that there are absolute morals. And if you really want to get relativists to admit it, all you need to do is treat them unfairly. Their reactions will reveal the Moral Law written on their hearts and minds. Here, the student realized there is an objective standard of rightness by how he
reacted
to the professor’s treatment of him. In the same way, I may not think stealing is wrong when I steal from you. But watch how morally outraged I get when you steal from me.

Our reactions also indicate that relativism is ultimately unlivable. People may claim they are relativists, but they don’t want their spouses, for example, to live like sexual relativists. They don’t want their spouses to be only
relatively
faithful. Nearly every male relativist expects his wife to live as if adultery were
absolutely
wrong, and would
react
quite neg- atively if she lived out relativism by committing adultery. And even if there are a few relativists who wouldn’t object to adultery, do you think they would accept the morality of murder or rape if someone wanted to kill or rape them? Of course not. Relativism contradicts our reactions and our common sense.

Reactions even help us identify right and wrong as a nation. When Muslim terrorists flew
our
planes into
our
buildings with
our
innocent loved ones in them,
our
emotional reaction fit the immensity of the crime. Our reaction reinforced the truth that the act was absolutely wrong. Some may say, “But Bin Laden and his fellow criminals thought the act was morally right.” That’s partially because they were not on the receiving end of the crime. How do you think Bin Laden would have
reacted
if we had flown
his
planes into
his
buildings with
his
innocent loved ones in them? He would have known immediately that such an act was undeniably wrong.

So the Moral Law is not always apparent from our actions, as evidenced by the terrible things human beings do to one another. But it is brightly revealed in our
re
actions—what we do when we personally are treated unfairly. In other words,
the Moral Law is not always the standard
by which we treat others, but it is nearly always the standard by
which we expect others to treat us.
It does not describe how we
actually
behave, but rather it prescribes how we
ought
to behave.

3. Without the Moral Law, There Would Be No Human Rights—
The United States of America was established by the belief in the Moral Law and God-given human rights. Thomas Jefferson wrote, in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable
Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure
these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers
from the consent of the governed (emphasis added).

Notice the phrase, “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” In other words, the Founding Fathers believed that human rights are God-given, and, as such, they are universal and abso- lute—they are the rights of all people, in all places, at all times, regardless of their nationality or religion.

Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers recognized that there was a higher authority—the “Creator”—to whom they could appeal to establish objective moral grounds for their independence. Had they begun the Declaration with, “We hold these
opinions
as our own . . .” (rather than “self-evident” “truths”), they wouldn’t have expressed an objective moral justification for their Declaration of Independence. It simply would have been their opinion against that of King George. So the Founders appealed to the “Creator” because they believed his Moral Law was the ultimate standard of right and wrong that would justify their cause. And their cause was to end the rule of King George in the American colonies. They were convinced that George’s rule needed to be ended because he was violating the basic human rights of the colonists.

In a sense, the Founding Fathers were in the same position as were the Allied countries after World War II. When the Nazi war criminals were brought to trial in Nuremburg, they were convicted of violating basic human rights as defined by the Moral Law (which is manifested in international law). This is the law that all people inherently understand and to which all nations are subject. If there were no such international morality that transcended the laws of the secular German government, then the Allies would have had no grounds to condemn the Nazis. In other words, we couldn’t have said that the Nazis were absolutely wrong unless we knew what was absolutely right. But we do know they were absolutely wrong, so the Moral Law must exist.

4. Without the Moral Law, We Couldn’t Know Justice or Injustice—
Perhaps the most popular argument against the existence of God is the presence and persistence of evil in the world. If there really is a good and just God, then why does he allow bad things to happen to good people? Atheists have long asserted that it would be more logical to believe that this God doesn’t exist than to try and explain how evil and God can coexist.

C. S. Lewis was one such atheist. He believed that all of the injustice in the world confirmed his atheism. That is, until he thought about how he knew the world was unjust: He wrote, “[As an atheist] my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”
⁶
This realization led Lewis out of atheism and ultimately to Christianity.

Lewis, like you and me, can only detect
in
justice because there’s an unchanging standard of justice written on our hearts. Indeed, you can’t know what is evil unless you know what is good. And you can’t know what is good unless there is an unchanging standard of good outside yourself. Without that objective standard, any objection to evil is nothing but your personal opinion.

I (Norm) love debating Jewish atheists. Why? Because I’ve never met a Jewish person who believes that the Holocaust was just a matter of opinion. They all believe it was really wrong, regardless of what anyone thinks about it. During one such debate with a Jewish atheist, I asked my opponent, “On what grounds do you say the Holocaust was wrong?” He said, “By my own benign moral feeling.”

What else could he say? Unless he was going to admit that there was an objective Moral Law—but that would mean admitting God—he had no objective grounds to oppose the Holocaust. His opposition carried no more weight than his own personal opinion.

But we all know the moral status of the Holocaust is not just a matter of opinion. Your reaction to a comment on the Holocaust should give you a hint that there is something really wrong with murdering innocent people. After all, you don’t have the same reaction to someone who says “that meal was wonderful!” when he also says “the Holocaust was wonderful!” You intuitively know that someone’s taste for food is not the same as his taste for evil. There is a real moral difference between a meal and murder—one is a mere preference and the other is a true injustice. Your reactions to those comments help you realize that.

We’ll discuss more about the coexistence of evil and God in appendix 1. For now the main point is this: if there were no Moral Law, then we wouldn’t be able to detect evil or injustice of any kind. Without justice, injustice is meaningless. Likewise, unless there’s an unchanging standard of good, there is no such thing as objective evil. But since we all know that evil exists, then so does the Moral Law.

5. Without the Moral Law, There Would Be No Way to Measure
Moral Differences—
Consider the two maps of Scotland in figure 7.1. Which is the better map? How could you tell which is the better map? The only way to tell is to see what the real Scotland looks like. In other words, you would have to compare both maps to a real unchanging place called Scotland. If Scotland does not exist, then the maps are meaningless. But since it does, then we can see that Map A is the better map because it’s closer to the unchanging standard—the real Scotland.

This is exactly what we do when we evaluate the behavior of Mother Teresa against that of Hitler. We appeal to an absolute unchanging standard beyond both of them. That standard is the Moral Law.

C. S. Lewis put it this way:

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about.
⁷

If the Moral Law doesn’t exist, then there’s no moral difference between the behavior of Mother Teresa and that of Hitler. Likewise, statements like “Murder is evil,” “Racism is wrong,” or “You shouldn’t abuse children” have no objective meaning. They’re just someone’s opinion, on a par with “chocolate tastes better than vanilla.” In fact, without the Moral Law, simple value-laden terms such as “good,” “bad,” “better,” and “worse”would have no objective meaning when used in a moral sense. But we know they do have meaning. For example, when we say “society is getting better” or “society is getting worse,” we are comparing society to some moral standard beyond ourselves. That standard is the Moral Law that’s written on our hearts.

In short, to believe in moral relativism is to argue that there are no real moral differences between Mother Teresa and Hitler, freedom and slavery, equality and racism, care and abuse, love and hate, or life and murder. We all know that such conclusions are absurd. So moral relativism must be false. If moral relativism is false, then an objective Moral Law exists.

6. Without the Moral Law, You Couldn’t Know What Was Right
or Wrong—
When Alan Dershowitz, a self-described agnostic, debated Alan Keyes, who is Roman Catholic, in September 2000 on the subject of religion in the public square, Dershowitz was asked by an audience member, “What makes something right?”

Dershowitz praised the question and then said, “We know what evil is. We have seen it,” as he cited obvious examples of evil, such as the Holocaust and the Crusades. Then Dershowitz peered at the audience, raised his voice, and emphatically declared, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S RIGHT! I know what’s WRONG!”

He then began to almost scold the audience: “But I have something else to tell you, folks. YOU don’t know what’s right! The minute you think you know what’s right, the minute you think you have the answer to what’s right, you have lost a very precious aspect of growing and developing. I don’t expect ever to know precisely what’s right, but I expect to devote the rest of my life trying to find it out.”
⁸
With that, some in the audience applauded.

Keyes was not given the opportunity to respond to Dershowitz’s answer. If he had, he could have unleashed the Road Runner tactic to expose the self-defeating nature of Dershowitz’s argument—namely, by asking Dershowitz, “How do you know what’s wrong unless you know what’s right?” Indeed, you cannot know that 5 is the wrong answer to 2+2, unless you have some idea of what the right answer is! In the same way, Dershowitz can’t know what’s morally wrong unless he has some idea of what’s morally right.

During the debate, Dershowitz had no problem railing against things he thought were morally wrong (i.e., anti-sodomy laws, antiabortion laws, racism, slavery, the moral code of the Boy Scouts, mixing church and state, etc.). But in claiming certain things are wrong, he was, by default, affirming that certain things are right. Every negation implies an affirmation. To say that restricting abortion is wrong (the negation), Dershowitz must know that women have a moral right to abortion (the affirmation). But without the Moral Law, Dershowitz can’t justify that or any other moral position. It’s all just his own opinion.

It is also the height of error and arrogance to claim that no one in the audience knows what’s right. Christians are often criticized for stating that they “have the truth,” but here was Dershowitz stating that
he
has
the truth that no one has the truth.
In order to know that no one has the truth,
Dershowitz would have to know the truth himself.

Some relativists are famous for this kind self-defeating arrogance. They claim there is no truth, but then make truth claims of their own. They claim they don’t know what is right, but then claim their own political causes are right. They deny the Moral Law in one sentence and then assume it in the next.