Everyone has morals, whether they realize it or not. Every person has a sense of what is right and what is wrong. This is morality. The question then becomes: where does morality come from? Does morality come from instinct in nature? Does morality come from God or something greater than humans? Understanding the origin of morality is beneficial to human experience, as right and wrong affect each person every day. Understanding the difference between right and wrong explains why a person does not run a red light, steal food from the grocery store, or harm someone that they find strongly annoying. Now, when these things do happen, most people would say something along the lines of “That is wrong” or “That goes against my morals.” The question of where morality comes from hinges on whether morality is subjective or objective. If morality is subjective, then an individual can determine for themselves what is good or bad. If a person wanted to rob someone at gunpoint, subjective morality would not stand in their way. Subjective morality states, “Whatever benefits you most, do that.” More importantly, if morality is objective, it could not have come from Man. It must come from a higher authority. If morality is objective, it has to come from something greater, which should be interpreted as God. Therefore, if objective morality exists, God exists. The fastest way to prove that objective morality exists is to point out something that everyone agrees is morally wrong. Saying something along the lines of torturing babies is immoral would be something everyone in their right mind can agree upon. Therefore, there are objective morals. “Our hearts, however, know that some things are evil, and some things are good. …our hearts know that there is something we can call good which is beyond us and beyond our choices. There is in our nature this moral ‘signal of transcendence’.”1 If objective morality did not exist, how would Man be any different than animals? Atheists would say right and wrong is an instinctual standard set by “survival of the fittest.” However, one could easily reply, well, if people involved in a tragedy did not survive, they obviously were not fit enough. This is where the “survival of the fittest” theory falls short. “If all morality is reducible to our biology, then what the Nazis did to the Jewish people is difficult to qualitatively differentiate from a shark eating a seal or a Venus flytrap liquidating a bug.”2 Yet all observe that this was wrong. Therefore, our morality does not come down to merely biology but an internal guidance system, which a Christian would say was created by God. Morality must come from somewhere, and the most reasonable explanation is not evolution, but a perfect creator who installed a sense of morality in each person.
Written by Shane Heard
Bibliography
Ortlund, Gavin. Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn’t: The Beauty of Christian Theism. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2021.
Atkinson, David. The Message of Genesis 1–11: The Dawn of Creation. Edited by J. A. Motyer and Derek Tidball. The Bible Speaks Today. England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1990. https://ref.ly/res/LLS:BST01GE1/2015-11-05T00:08:51Z/134766?len=160.