EVIDENCE OF THE EXISTENCE OF AN OBJECTIVE MORAL LAW

Can we prove that morality is not just a human creation but that it has its own independent existence, like gravity, which exists independently of our thought life? Besides, if morality consists of objective moral laws to which we must conform to avoid the consequences, like we must to gravity, this fact provides more evidence of the existence of a moral law-Giver.

C.S. Lewis famously observed that our reactions acknowledge that objective moral laws are imprinted upon our conscience:

·       Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promises to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining, “It’s not fair.”

·       If we do not believe in decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule of Law pressing on us so—that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. (Mere Christianity)

These reactions are so universal that they seem to be part of our DNA. We also have the evidence presented by various child psychologists who have recognized that specific moral cognitions are programmed to appear in children at specific ages.

Through interviews that he had conducted with children at different developmental stages, Lawrence Kohlberg found that there are predictable stages of child development. At the “preconventional” stage, which he observed from age 2 or 3 to age 7 or 8, children do not take into account social conventions. Instead, children judge whether an action is good or bad according to the consequences that it will have for themselves and is focused upon their authority figures. From about age 7 to about age 15, “conventional morality” comes into play from the moment that a child realizes that there are conventions in society that must be followed.

If moral and awareness and judgments have been pre-programmed into our DNA, we need to ask what had performed this programming. Was it natural selection (NS) or intelligent design (ID)?  NS cannot account for the DNA code, which is a prerequisite for both life and any possibility of NS.

It can perhaps be argued that DNA, life, and NS precede the evolution of our inscribed moral law. However, this law is not a simple thing. Instead, it is so complex that it requires numerous pieces of DNA information. Why must this be? The moral response requires many integrated parts:

1.    Feeling guilty by doing evil.

2.    Trying to cope with the feelings of guilt by finding a way to justify our wrong.

3.    Accepting the fact that we acted wrongly.

4.    Apologizing and feeling some degree of relief.

5.    Receiving forgiveness and feeling further relief and gratitude.

This is only a simple analysis. Perhaps when we discover more about it, we will find that it is far more complex, entailing many intricate bio-electrical responses that account for feelings of guilt, threat, relief, and our internal perceptions of these states. In any event, what we see is more easily explained by ID, instead of the many mutations that would be required to construct and implant this network of responses.

How can morality be objective in light of the many moral differences we find, especially across culture? This is a common objection. However, such an observation cannot be used to argue against the existence of objective moral laws. Similarly, observations that gravity acts relatively upon different objects in different conditions cannot be used as evidence to deny the law of gravity. The fact that gravity makes some substances rise and others fall simply acknowledges that multiple forces or considerations are at play and not that there isn’t an objective law of gravity, which operates in concert with other factors.