Tag Archives: Francis Beckwith

Mormonism

What Doctrines Are We Asking Mormons to Reconsider?

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The editors of the excellent book, New Mormon Challenge, provide a nice summary of what doctrines Christians are asking Mormons to reconsider. There are many areas of commonality between Mormons and Christians, but there are also numerous, important areas of difference. Francis Beckwith, Carl Mosser, and Paul Owen ask for Mormons to focus on some key issues that divide them from Christians at the end of the New Mormon Challenge.

What, precisely, are we asking the LDS community to consider afresh? Here we can only sketch some of the areas where we believe traditional Mormon theology needs to change in order to better conform to Scripture and reason:

(1) We believe the doctrine of the eternality of matter is fundamentally incompatible with biblical religion. Ideally, we would like to see the LDS Church embrace the traditional doctrine of creation ex nihilo. At the very least, we would encourage the LDS Church to consider the possibility that the world was created out of preexisting but not eternal matter.

(2) We believe that the doctrine of monotheism is essential for any true and religiously valid knowledge of God. We would encourage the LDS Church to reject the notion of an infinite regress of gods as it has been traditionally articulated and to reconsider doctrines that necessitate a form of theological finitism. The monarchotheistic Mormon view is a step in the right direction, but it must be combined with the belief in the contingent nature of the universe. God must be recognized as ontologically unique, not merely as superior in status over all other reality.

(3) We believe that the doctrine of the literal eternality of human persons is inimical to Christian faith, for central to a biblical worldview is the idea that we are created beings whose existence is contingent on the creative and loving will of our God. If the preexistence of spirits cannot be given up entirely, then we would encourage the LDS Church to consider a weakened form of this notion, in which the human spirit is viewed as preexistent but not as ontologically eternal (except perhaps in the ideal sense of eternal existence in God’s mind).

Beckwith, Mosser, and Owen continue:

There are other areas where we would like to see Mormon theology change: the doctrine of the materiality of spirit, the doctrine of divine embodiment, and the LDS form of the doctrine of the Trinity. But the three issues outlined above are absolutely fundamental and nonnegotiable.

We do not feel that the status of Mormonism in relation to Christianity can ever change unless there is a willingness within the structures of the LDS Church to reconsider those issues. In short, we want our Mormon friends to reconsider the nonnegotiable beliefs of historic Christianity.

Christians in general—not just evangelicals—confess that there is but one eternal God, who created all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. This One God is revealed in the One Lord Jesus Christ, who became incarnate for our salvation and whose presence is shed abroad among the people of God in the person of the Holy Spirit. It is this Triune God who is the only fitting object of religious devotion. He alone is the Living God, and it is to the praise of his glorious grace that the humble efforts of this book are adoringly offered.

One could argue whether additional areas should be added to the list, but there is no doubt that the 3 doctrines listed by the editors are certainly bedrock. For Mormons to move in the direction of the historic Christian faith, those 3 areas must be dealt with. I, personally, hope to see this happen.

Creation, Science and God

Why Is the Doctrine of Creation Ex Nihilo So Important?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Creation ex nihilo is the Christian doctrine that God created the universe and everything in it out of nothing. He spoke all that exists, besides himself, into existence. Why does this doctrine matter?

Francis Beckwith, Carl Mosser, and Paul Owen, editors of the The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement, write:

At the heart of every world-view is its understanding of God and the universe. From this understanding flow most of the other key components of a worldview. For nearly two millennia Christians have confessed in all their creeds that God is the “Maker of heaven and earth.” The Nicene Creed specifies that this includes “all things visible and invisible.”

At the heart of the Christian worldview is the idea that God is the creator of all other reality; there is a fundamental distinction between Creator and creation. . . .  The creedal affirmations of Christians are but reaffirmations of the first verse of the Bible, which majestically proclaims: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

The relationship of God to the universe that humans inhabit is a foundational truth claim of every worldview. They continue:

Thomas V. Morris points out that the biblical doctrine of creation is the key to a distinctively theistic perspective on reality. He writes, “This one statement captures the heart of a theistic world-view. We live in a created universe. For centuries, theists have held that the single most important truth about our world is that it is a created world. And it is no exaggeration to add that it is one of the most important truths about God that he is the creator of this world.”

Creation ex nihilo distinguishes theism from other worldviews that dominated the ancient world.

It was, in fact, the doctrine of creation out of nothing (ex nihilo) that most fundamentally distinguished the Judeo-Christian view of God and the world from the various religions of the ancient Near East and philosophical systems of Classical Greece—all of which assumed that the world had been formed out of eternally preexisting chaotic matter.

This doctrine has profound implications for the world we live in.

According to Christian teaching, it is God’s absolute creation and continuing conservation of the universe that accounts for its existence, order, rationality, goodness, and beauty. It is because God created the universe ex nihilo and proclaimed it good that we can be assured that evil is not somehow part of the fabric of the universe but a parasite that will one day be overcome.

And finally, the scientific method, which has given us the technology that has improved our lives so much, owes its genesis to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

Furthermore, according to many historians of science, the Christian doctrine of creation played a significant role in the rise and development of modern science by providing many of its basic presuppositions. It has been shown that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was one of the reasons the scientific revolution occurred in Christian Western Europe rather than in the ancient world or some other culture. It could even be argued that, apart from the presuppositions supplied by the Christian doctrine of creation, modern science (realistically understood) would be impossible and that divorcing science from the ground of these presuppositions makes it irrational.

Parenthood

Why Should I Care What Your Kids Are Watching?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The conventional wisdom these days is that what you do in your home is your business.  If you have children, and you let them watch inappropriate TV shows or movies, then who am I to judge?  After all, what you allow your kids to consume doesn’t affect me.  Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “If you don’t like that movie or TV show, then don’t watch it.  Change the channel.”  You have your life and I have mine.

In the real world, however, everything you do in your home, and especially everything you let your kids do in your home, does affect me and my family.  None of us lives on an island by ourselves.  We are all interacting with other individuals in our community every day.  The media that your kids consume influence how they think, talk, and otherwise behave.

Since my kids go to school with your kids, then how your kids behave is going to directly impact my kids every day of the school week.  When your kids speak on the phone to my kids, they are influencing them.  When your kids play with my kids on sports teams, they are influencing them.

All of us impact the people with whom we interact.  C. S. Lewis uses the metaphor of ships in a fleet.  As the ships sail in a tight formation toward their destination, it is imperative that each ship be in proper working order.  If one ship is damaged and loses its steering mechanism, then it can accidentally run into other ships, causing them damage, and negatively affecting the entire fleet.

In the same way, each person is a ship in the fleet of our community.  As we damage ourselves, we will end up damaging others around us.  Living in a community gives me a reason to care about what your kids are watching.  Ethicist Francis Beckwith elaborates on this point:

These [inappropriate TV] programs convey messages and create a moral climate that will affect others, especially children, in a way that is adverse to the public good. Hence, what troubles [concerned] citizens is that you and your children will not change the channel. Furthermore, it concerns these people that there is probably somewhere in America an unsupervised ten-year-old who is, on a consistent basis, watching late night HBO or listening to radio shock-jock Howard Stern. Most of these people fear that their ten-year-olds, who are not watching or listening to such programs, may have to interact socially with the unsupervised ten-year-old. Others, who may not have young children, are concerned for the declining moral health of their communities, which is sometimes manifested in an increasing level of rudeness, disrespect, incivility, crime, or verbal and physical violence.

Let me be the first to say that our household is not perfect; there is much we could do to improve our media consumption.  My point is not to cast my family as completely innocent victims.  My point is to make a case for why we should be concerned about how people in our community are raising their children.  I am trying to raise awareness of the concept of the public good.  We are all sailing in a fleet together.

If you aren’t concerned about the media’s effect on your children, then think about my children and change the channel.

Atheism, Evolution, Morality, Philosophy

Does Evolution Explain Morality? Part 7

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In the previous post, we found significant problems with survival ethics, the ethical theory which claims that “morality is easily explained by evolution and the tendency for biological life to survive and reproduce.”  But there are more problems.

Survival ethics are merely descriptive, not prescriptive.  They describe the behaviors of the past that led to survival of the human species.  I may be thankful that people followed these rules in the past, but how am I to decide whether I ought to follow these rules in the future? 

As Francis Beckwith explains, “After all, some people in the past raped, stole, and murdered. And I know of many people today who have feelings to rape, steal, and murder. Perhaps these behaviors are just as important for my existence and the preservation of the species as the ‘good’ behaviors.”  Unless there is an objective moral law that is over and above survival ethics, there is absolutely no possible way to determine which behaviors that have been produced by evolution are the good ones and which are the bad ones.

One response available to evolutionists is that those societies that have allowed atrocities, such as Nazi Germany, have not survived, and so evolution did indeed cull them out.  This response fails for two reasons.  First, brutal and tyrannical regimes have existed since the dawn of mankind and they continue to exist today.  People of the nineteenth century were basking in the afterglow of the Enlightenment and were confident that mankind’s scientific discoveries and progress were leading them to a golden age.  Yet within the first half of the twentieth century two world wars were fought when brutal regimes rose to power.  To argue that we are now reaching some sort of evolutionary nirvana where corrupt governments can no longer arise seems incredibly naïve, to say the least.  History is replete with dictators and despots and there is no end in sight, unless you are a Christian theist who knows that Christ himself will usher in the end of times. 

Second, if the evolutionist uses the failure of brutal regimes as evidence they are morally wrong, then this indicates that any brutal regimes that do survive are proved morally right.  In other words, only survival is a criterion for rightness, but this lands the survival ethicist right back in social Darwinism, which survival ethicists decry.

A second possible response to the point that evolution has produced those who rape, murder, and steal is to say that we should only rationally obey moral feelings that the majority of people hold.  A few bad apples are not to be heeded.  Here again, there are numerous counter examples that can be given. 

The majority of Europe was under Nazi rule during World War II, so by this criterion Europeans should have adopted the majority view of German nationalism. 

During the heyday of the Soviet Union, millions lived under its brutal hegemony, so it would have been impossible for anyone in that nation to hold the view that their government was behaving immorally. 

Slave ownership was an almost worldwide phenomenon just a few hundred years ago, so how could a person living during that time claim that owning slaves was morally abhorrent?  They could not unless there was an objective and universal moral law that was true for all people at all times; survival ethicists deny this view, however. 

More examples could be given, but neither moral truth nor any other truth is determined by a vote.  If everyone in the world believed that two plus two equals five, then everyone in the world would be wrong.  No philosophical theory can overcome the laws of mathematics or our intuitive knowledge of right and wrong, so we should always be cautious when we are told that whatever the majority says must be right.

Conclusion

Evolutionary ethical systems suffer from numerous problems that are not easily resolvable.  In stark contrast stands the ethics of Christian theism.  Christian theism holds that the universe was created to glorify God, that history has a purpose and that it is moving toward a climax where good will defeat evil once and for all. 

God created human beings to have intimate relationships with him.  Out of God’s perfect moral nature flow his ethical commands to love him and to love one another.  He is the transmitter of moral laws; he has the authority, as the ultimate standard of good, to demand obedience; he has placed an innate knowledge of morality in us; our conscience seers us when we disobey his laws; he knows our motives and intent even when other humans do not; he is spirit and has created immaterial souls and values for his creatures.  Every single moral intuition we have is explained logically by God’s existence.  In fact, if there is even one objective and absolute moral law, God must exist.

The nineteenth century German atheist Frederick Nietzsche pronounced that God is dead and he predicted that the twentieth century would be the bloodiest on record.  He understood that any ethic without God as its source would lead to moral chaos.  Fyodor Dostoevsky, the famous Russian novelist, has said that if God does not exist, then all things are permissible.  It was obvious to these men that without God, ethics have no foundation.  A house with no foundation collapses into rubble and morality is no different.  How can a perfectly holy, just, and righteous God be replaced with a mindless, irrational process such as evolution without devastating consequences?

The contemporary western world is unaware of the danger of evolutionary ethics because it is living on the borrowed foundation and capital of Christian theism.  Evolutionary ethicists maintain a following only because  their theories cloak themselves with a veneer of Judeo-Christian morality.  Take away that veneer and their ethical systems collpase.  Our only hope is to hold tight to the one who made us, the Alpha and the Omega, the Creator of all things, the Lord Jesus Christ.

[quotation references can be provided on request]

Atheism, Evolution, Morality, Philosophy

Does Evolution Explain Morality? Part 6

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Have you ever heard someone say the following?  “Morality is easily explained by evolution and the tendency for biological life to survive and reproduce.”  If so, read on because this post will evaluate this position to see whether it can really explain morality.  If you would like to understand a little more about the theory before reading the critique below, read the previous post first.

There are several objections that can be leveled against the theory.  First, we have an intuitive moral duty to help the weak, the elderly, and the disabled.  This would seem odd since weaker individuals would tend to be eliminated by evolution.   If anything, evolution should have caused feelings of hatred or contempt for those who are biologically unfit.  Moral feelings which cause us to help these people are exactly the opposite of what we expect to find. 

When confronted with this challenge, some evolutionists offer that helping the weak must somehow be worthwhile and that our ancestors found value in it.  In other words, our ancestors decided that evolution did not provide adequate answers for morality and so their rational minds began to work out morality at an individual and societal level.  It seems, however, that at this point human beings discovered an objective moral law – it is morally virtuous to help the weak and disabled – but this moral law is now referring to something universal and absolute that exists outside of survival ethics.  They are referring to a transcendent moral law that has no ground, which is an admission that survival ethics is inadequate. 

The other common answer to the challenge is that helping the disabled must somehow help us to survive, but we just do not know how it helps yet.  This view at least attempts to salvage survival ethics, but it is a circular argument.  We are asking how certain behaviors evolved, so to assume that a behavior did evolve when answering the question is circular reasoning.  

There is another serious problem with this explanation.  Francis Beckwith asks:

Because it is clear that not every human being has a moral sense that he or she has a duty and incumbency to help those less fortunate, on what grounds could the evolutionist say that these human beings are mistaken in their moral viewpoint?  After all, people who lack this moral sense have existed all over the globe for generations, and if they too are the products of evolution, perhaps having such people in our population is necessary for the preservation of the species.

The only escape for the survival ethicist is to claim that those who feel no compulsion to help the weak are morally unfit.  But again, a morality outside of evolution is being invoked which demonstrates that survival ethics does not have adequate explanatory power.

More to come on survival ethics tomorrow.

[quotation references can be provided on request]

Evolution, General Apologetics, Morality, Philosophy

What Is Wrong With Social Darwinism? Part 2

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Continuing from yesterday’s post on What Is Wrong With Social Darwinism?  Part 1:

Fourth, morality is characterized by an “oughtness” that weighs upon us before we act.  It is prescriptive, not descriptive.  Ethics derived from evolution, however, are only descriptive.   Ethicist Francis Beckwith offers the insight that evolutionary ethics only tells us “what behaviors in the past may have been conducive to the survival of the species and why I may have on occasion moral feelings to act consistently with those behaviors.”  Beckwith continues, “But evolution cannot tell me whether I ought to act on those feelings in the present and in the future.”  

If ethicists grant that feelings of morality stem from a natural process of evolution, they are still left with the question of why anyone should follow those feelings.  After all, people choose every day to act on some feelings and to suppress others.  Perhaps one could argue that humans possess moral instincts that are hard-wired and based upon evolution; these moral instincts force behavior.  This line of argument, however, does not adequately explain the evidence at hand.  C.S. Lewis elaborates:

Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger.  You will probably feel two desires – one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation).  But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away.  Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them.  You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you . . . to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard.

Fifth, morality is characterized by feelings of guilt and conscience.  Is there any robust support for conscience on a theory of evolutionary ethics?  It is perplexing to see exactly what that support would be.  If nature produced our moral instincts because they would ensure our survival, then why would it produce an opposing force that would pass negative judgment on those instincts?  It seems very odd that a non-material process would have developed feelings of guilt.  Feelings of guilt, like moral intuition, are only discovered through introspection, not by empirical methods using our five senses. 

I know that I have guilty feelings because I examine my conscious states and realize that I am experiencing the state of guilt.  Since there is no ontological status for anything like a mind or consciousness on the evolutionary (naturalistic) worldview, the evolutionist must explain feelings of guilt by purely physical means.  Philosopher J. P. Moreland points out that this simply will not work because the behavior or physical condition that results from a conscious state is not the same as the conscious state itself.  They are altogether different.

Sixth, morality is characterized by motive and intent.  The evolutionary explanation for morality only explains behaviors and actions taken by individuals in the struggle for survival.  As pre-humans evolved there were certain types of behavior that enabled their survival and there were certain types of behavior that hindered their survival.  If behavior A was beneficial, then those animals that acted out A would survive to reproduce more offspring and pass on the genetic traits that forced the animal to behave that way.  If behavior B caused an animal to die at an early age, before it could reproduce successfully, then its genetic traits would not be passed on. 

This explanation is interesting, but where do motive and intent enter the picture?  Motive and intent make morality quite a bit more complicated and evolution does not have the ontological tools to cope with them.  We’ve already seen that true mental states do not exist in a naturalistic world and it would appear that motive and intent are completely ad hoc and unnecessary on an evolutionary explanation of ethics.  Francis Beckwith summarizes that “since evolution, at best, can only describe what behaviors are conducive to the preservation of the species and does not address the role of motive and intent in evaluating those behaviors, evolution is an inadequate explanation for the existence of moral norms.”

In summary, social Darwinism, as an ethical system, fails to account for all seven aspects of morality that we know from our innate moral intuition.  It cannot account for the objectivity of moral norms or the immateriality of moral norms.  It fails to account for the facts that moral norms are a form of communication and that they are prescriptive, and not just descriptive.  Social Darwinism cannot explain why behaving badly affects our conscience, nor does it have the tools to deal with motive or intent.

[quotation references can be provided on request]

Evolution, General Apologetics, Morality, Philosophy

What Is Wrong With Social Darwinism? Part 1

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As we saw in the previous post describing social Darwinism, it was a disastrous experiment for mankind in the twentieth century, but need it have been?  Certainly some dastardly individuals justified their tyrannical reigns with it, but we must take a sober look at the theory and evaluate its ability to explain the moral truths that were discussed earlier.

The ethics of social Darwinism are largely relativistic and subjective.  Any society could develop an ethical justification for its moral actions by claiming that their goal was the advancement of humankind.  This is a seemingly noble goal, but the definition of the “advancement of mankind” is hardly universal.  Under social Darwinism, each society ultimately chooses its own definition and then forges ahead with its own effectual policies. 

A totally relativistic system such as social Darwinism, however, runs afoul of our innate sense of moral right and wrong.  For example, we intuitively know that murdering innocent people is morally abhorrent.  We know that murdering millions of innocent people is especially horrendous.  Certainly a supporter of social Darwinism could argue that the goal of producing a superior race of humans justifies the means (murdering innocents) of reaching that goal.  This utilitarian view, however, does not escape the basic moral intuition that mass extermination of human life is morally wrong.  The end cannot possibly justify the means and so social Darwinism violates our intuitive knowledge of right and wrong.

Second, moral rules are non-physical entities, but strict adherents to social Darwinism believe mankind evolved by completely natural and material processes.  To a Darwinist there is only time, space, and matter, and therefore everything in the universe must be explained by those three things.  Since our moral intuition is not discovered by our five senses, but by self-reflection, then there must be an immaterial or “soulish” aspect to a human person.  Any ethical theory that denies the existence of non-physical objects seems to contradict our innate ability to know objective, moral truth. 

Third, moral norms are a form of communication between two intelligent agents.  Who are the two agents in social Darwinism?  The ultimate source of morality for the social Darwinist is a random, natural, and unguided process (i.e., Darwinian evolution).   In other words, the transmitter is not an intelligent agent and does not possess any sort of rational faculties.  Therefore, there is clearly no communication happening at all, so again the theory violates our moral common sense criteria.

Much more can be said about social Darwinism and we will continue this analysis in a future post!

Morality, Philosophy

What Do We Know About Morality? Part 3

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According to ethicist Francis Beckwith there are at least seven aspects of morality that appear to be true, based on mankind’s common moral experience.  In the previous post, we discussed the first four.  In this post, we will discuss the final three.

The fifth aspect of morality is that when we break a clear moral rule, our conscience bothers us.  Francis Beckwith explains that “when we break a significant and clear moral rule, it is usually accompanied by feelings of painful guilt and sometimes shame, for we are cognizant of our moral failure and realize we deserve to be punished.  Only sociopaths succeed in overcoming their conscience completely.”

Sixth, morality is characterized not just by an action or outward behavior, but by motive.   If a young man were to shove an elderly woman to the ground, we could not judge the morality of his action without knowing his motive.  If he were shoving her in order to steal her money, then his act is clearly immoral.  However, if his motive was to save her life because she was about to step in front of a bus, then we would judge his act to be morally righteous.  Motive, then, is a necessary component of any ethical system.

There is a seventh element that must also be part of any moral calculus, and that is intent.  There is a well-known parable within the bioethics community where two men separately intend to kill a young boy to get his inheritance.  One man sneaks into the bathroom and drowns the boy while he is bathing.  In the case of the other man, he sneaks into the bathroom with the intent to kill the boy, but the boy had accidentally hit his head and drowned just before the second man arrived.   It should be apparent that even though the second man did not actually murder the boy, his intention to do so makes his act morally reprehensible.  We would not say that the second man did nothing wrong, because his intent to kill, although not acted upon, is still evil.  Intention, then, is the seventh necessary component of morality.

If you put the two previous posts on morality together with this one, we have made a case for the following: 

  1. moral norms can be objectively known
  2. moral norms are immaterial
  3. moral norms are a form of communication
  4. moral norms are prescriptive
  5. moral norms affect our conscience
  6. moral norms include motive
  7. moral norms include intent

Now, armed with this basic understanding of the nature of morality, we can now evaluate ethical systems by judging whether they adequately account for the seven aspects of morality.  If they do not, then we have good reason to reject those accounts of morality.

In future posts, we will indeed put to the test various ethical systems that derive from naturalism and Darwinian evolution.

[quotation references can be provided on request]

Morality, Philosophy

What Do We Know About Morality? Part 2

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According to ethicist Francis Beckwith there are at least seven aspects of morality that appear to be true, based on mankind’s common moral experience.  

First, objective moral standards are known.  Any form of total moral skepticism (a view that would deny the concrete knowledge of any moral truth) cannot be true because this view would deny the obvious fact that we do indeed know some unambiguous moral truths.

Second, moral norms are not physical, but immaterial.  We do not know moral norms by using our five senses (see, hear, touch, taste, or smell) or by empirical science.  We know them by intuition, or moral common sense.  This fact counts strongly against any philosophical worldview of naturalism or materialism which denies the existence of all non-material entities.  The epistemology of naturalism (naturalism’s theory of how we know things) dictates that knowledge can only be gained through the five senses, so if we have indeed discovered knowledge (moral norms) without the use of the five senses, we have dealt a serious blow to naturalism.

Third, moral rules are a form of communication and communication can only exist between two minds.  Moral judgments are found in commands, imperatives, and descriptions.   It is nonsensical to think of communication from an irrational or unintelligent agent to an intelligent and rational agent.  Both the transmitter and receiver of communication must be rational, intelligent agents.

Fourth, there is an “oughtness” to morality.  Moral rules make claims on us before we ever act and we feel their force before we make a moral decision.  Morality is prescriptive, not descriptive; it does not tell us only the present state of affairs, but it also tells us how we ought to act in the future.   Philosopher Norman Geisler notes that “a purely descriptive ethic is no ethic at all.  Describing human behavior is sociology.  But prescribing human behavior is the province of morality.”

There are three more aspects of morality that appear to be true, and we will discuss them in the next post.  After we establish these seven aspects of morality, we will use them to evaluate systems of ethics derived from evolutionary theory.

Hang in there!

[quotation references can be provided on request]

Morality, Philosophy

What Do We Know About Morality? Part 1

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First, when one reflects on morality, there are certain objective moral facts that seem to be obvious; these facts can be known by intuition.  According to ethicist Greg Koukl, “Philosophers call this kind of knowing a priori knowledge (literally, ‘from what is prior’), that which one knows prior to sense experience.”   There are clear-cut actions that we know are wrong, such as murder, the torture of babies for fun, and rape. 

The great apologist, C. S. Lewis, argued forcefully that all men are aware of basic moral facts and that these moral facts do not vary from civilization to civilization or from time to time.  To prove his point he asked the reader to think of a “country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all of the people who had been kindest to him.  You might as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.”  

Philosopher William Lane Craig has argued that people who can not see clear-cut cases of moral truth are morally handicapped and can be safely ignored when debating ethics.   Greg Koukl summarizes by claiming “all moral reasoning must start with foundational concepts that can only be known by intuition, which is why one doesn’t carry the burden of proof in clear-cut examples of moral truth.”

Clear-cut moral cases are then seen to be objectively true by intuition, by a priori knowledge.  A person may want to reject the existence of objective moral truth by arguing that people often vehemently disagree about particular difficult moral situations, and that this fact, therefore, demonstrates that morality cannot be objectively known.  Christian apologists Norman Geisler and Frank Turek respond to this argument by stating that “the fact that there are difficult problems in morality doesn’t disprove the existence of objective natural laws.  Scientists don’t deny that an objective world exists when they encounter a difficult problem in the natural world (i.e., when they have trouble knowing the answer).”  

In other words, the fact that there are disagreements over complex moral issues fails to prove that objective moral truth cannot be discerned by moral intuition.  The point to be understood is that there are straightforward instances of moral judgments – killing innocent humans is wrong, acting unselfishly is a virtue, and so on – that can be known by virtually all people.

Given the existence of objective moral laws, there are other attributes of morality that can be grasped upon further reflection.  According to ethicist Francis Beckwith there are at least seven aspects of morality that appear to be true, based on mankind’s common moral experience.  

We will review these seven aspects of morality in future posts, so stay tuned.

[quotation references can be provided on request]