Morality: Evidence for God

Can morality be used as evidence for God?

Yes, if we believe there is such a thing as a moral law, then there must be a moral law giver.

If murder is not evil because we have reasoned that it is evil but because it is inherently evil, then that is a moral law. It cannot be any other way. Murder is evil because the act of taking another human life contains within it an element that is immediately recognized as repulsive and demonic by the human conscience.

Let’s consider the alternative for a moment.

If murder is not inherently evil, but only evil because modern society has deemed it to be, then we can’t definitively say that murder is always an evil act. In other words, it can be argued that the Nazis weren’t evil for killing 6 million Jews, they simply disagreed with the rest of the world on the value of Jewish lives.

Of course, this is ridiculous. The Holocaust is one of the greatest atrocities of the 20^th century. No one in their right mind refutes this point. It is obvious. The horrors carried out upon the European Jews by Hitler and the Nazis is the closest Satan has ever come to physically walking among us.

Another example: if morality is subjective to human reasoning, then something as sinister as slavery isn’t really evil at all. It is simply a means of garnering a labor force that has fell out of fashion with modern man. And while it may not be popular in the 21^st century, there was nothing wrong with it as a system of labor in the 19^th century. Furthermore, should economic circumstances change, it may even come back into fashion once again.

Again, this is patently absurd. Slavery is now and has forever been an injustice put upon society’s weak by those in power.

So, back to the original point… if we agree that murder is inherently bad and cannot be any other way, then that is a moral law. And laws just don’t spring into being, they are decreed by a higher authority.

Speed limit signs don’t magically appear on the side of the road, they are put there by the State. A higher authority determines the proper speed for which the road can safely be travelled. If you exceed that speed limit, then you have broken the law.

Who decrees the moral laws?

If moral laws are not a result of our own reason but are decreed by a higher authority, who is that “higher authority”?

Put simply… God.

If moral laws transcend human reasoning, then the moral law “giver” must also transcend human reasoning.

We are created in God’s holy image. If God is – like St. Thomas Aquinas says he is – the “highest form of good”, then we recognize evil because it runs directly counter to the part of us that we intuitively recognize as good.

Our inherent sense of morality is a blessing from God, as is our ability to reason our way to understanding its source.

As children of such a good and righteous Creator, it is our duty then to “praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

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