The first signpost looks out at the stars. The second signpost looks inside the human heart. We all know that things like racism, child abuse, and murder are objectively wrong. But where does that knowledge come from? If we are just random collections of atoms, atoms don’t have morals.
KEY FINDING
The very fact that you are outraged by injustice proves that you have a standard of justice written on your heart. You didn’t put it there. Society didn’t put it there. God put it there.
There is an objective moral law — a universal sense of right and wrong that transcends culture, time, and personal opinion. This moral law cannot be the product of a random, purposeless universe. An objective moral law requires an objective moral Lawgiver. That Lawgiver is God.
The Universality of Moral Law: No culture in history has ever celebrated cowardice, selfishness, or betrayal. The fundamental tenets of morality are remarkably consistent across civilizations.
The Nuremberg Precedent: Nazi war criminals were tried for ‘crimes against humanity’ even though they were following the laws of their own country — implying a higher moral law that transcends national legislation.
The Problem of Evil Reversed: The very concept of evil presupposes a standard of good. Without God, there is no objective basis for calling anything evil. Evil is actually evidence FOR God, not against Him.
Mere Christianity
Builds his entire case on the ‘Law of Human Nature’ — the universal moral law that everyone knows but no one perfectly follows, pointing to a moral Lawgiver.
"Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are."
The Story of Reality
Argues that neither materialism nor pantheism can account for the reality of evil. Only the Christian story explains a world that is broken but being redeemed.
"Does it seem like the world is just as it should be, all the time? Or does it seem like something has gone terribly wrong, and the world — and the people in the world, you and I — are terribly broken in some profound way?"
Lectures on the Problem of Evil
Uses a logical chain: evil presupposes good, good presupposes a moral law, a moral law presupposes a moral Lawgiver — therefore, God exists.
"When you say there’s too much evil in this world you assume there’s good. When you assume there’s good, you assume there’s such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil."
The Moral Argument isn’t just a philosophical abstraction. It has been tested in courtrooms, documented across civilizations, and felt in the gut of every human being who has ever said, ‘That’s not fair.’
When Nazi war criminals stood trial at Nuremberg in 1945–46, they argued they had simply followed the laws of their own country. The prosecutors faced a profound dilemma: on what basis could they condemn actions that were legal under German law? Their answer was revolutionary — they appealed to a ‘higher law,’ a moral standard that transcends national legislation. If morality is merely a cultural construct, the Nuremberg prosecutors had no grounds to condemn the Nazis. The very fact that the world agreed these acts were evil — regardless of what German law said — is powerful evidence that an objective moral law exists above all human governments.
SOURCE: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, International Military Tribunal, 1945–46
C.S. Lewis documented this phenomenon in the appendix of The Abolition of Man, compiling moral codes from ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Hindu, Chinese, Greek, Norse, and Aboriginal cultures. Despite having no contact with each other, these civilizations all prohibited murder, theft, and lying, and all valued honesty, courage, and fidelity. No culture in recorded history has ever celebrated cowardice, betrayal, or ingratitude as virtues. This universal moral consensus points to something deeper than social convention.
SOURCE: C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, Appendix: Illustrations of the Tao