God exists (His law is written in our hearts)

Every moral law has a moral lawgiver.


There is an objective moral law.


Therefore, there must be an objective Moral Lawgiver.



The first premise is self-evident. Laws have lawgivers, and prescriptions have prescribers. The burden of proof rests on the second premise. What is the evidence that there is an objective moral law, not just something subjective or created by humans? Strangely enough, atheists themselves have provided the evidence for the moral law- evidence so strong that it has converted many of them to belief in a Lawgiver (God).


As a former atheist, C.S. Lewis believed that the evil and injustices in the world eliminated God. But then he asked himself:


Just how 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...Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too- for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist- in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless- I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality- namely my idea of justice- was full of sense (C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity).


Lewis is not the only atheist to come this route. Former Nietzschean atheist J. Budziszewki came to God the same way. he reasoned,

What actually led me back was a growing intuition that my condition was objectively evil...Evil is deficiency in good; there is no such thing as an evil "substance," an evil-in-itself. So if my condition really was evil, there had to be some good of which my condition was the ruination. In short, we cannot know evil except on the backdrop of good. If evil is real, then there must be an objective standard by which we know that (J.B.; "Objections, Obstacles, Acceptance").


Former atheist (now head of the human genome project) Francis Collins was impressed with the moral argument on his way back to God. He later wrote,


After twenty-eight years as a believer, the Moral Law still stands out for me as the strongest signpost to God. More than that, it points to a God who cares about human beings, and a God who is infinitely good and holy (F. Collins; The Language of God).



There are many reasons that there must be an objective moral law:


1. We would not know there was injustice unless there were an objective standard of justice.

2. True progress is not possible unless we know an objective standard by which we measure that things are getting better or worse. we can't know better unless we know what is best.

3. Real moral disagreements are not possible without an objective moral standard. But there are real moral disagreements- for example, those about injustice, intolerance, and cruelty.

4. The same basic moral code is found in all cultures. It's wrong to kill innocent people. It's wrong to steal something that belongs to someone else. It's wrong to lie. We should respect our parents. Rape, racism, and child pornography are wrong. There's basically universal agreement on these things.


5. We sometimes choose duty (e.g., to save a drowning person) over instinct (not to risk our own life).


6.We did not invent the moral law anymore than we invented mathematical or physical laws. It is discovered, not created.


There was once a student who claimed he was a moral relativist in a well-researched, well-documented term paper until the professor marked it with these words: "F. I don't like blue folders!" The student sharply complained that it was unjust, unfair, and flat-out not right to give him an F simply because of the color of the folder.


Continued...