Morality from Molecules?
by Terry Wane Benton
Atheists have a sense of right and wrong; as skewed as it is, it is an issue they cannot explain. Where did this sense of ought, moral right and wrong, come from? Do men get to make it up from within their own molecules? If so, then who gets the final say? A pedophile thinks his molecules are just arranged to make him what he is, and it is just a preference, not a matter of right or wrong. If morality is just preference, then no one should be punished for anything. Nothing can really be right, and nothing can be wrong. It is all a matter of how your molecules arrange your mind. Nothing can actually be your fault. But morality isn't made of molecules.
You certainly cannot scientifically test it. It has no weight. It has no visible substance. When you believe that man is the highest or smartest of the evolving creatures, and you deny that God created man in His own image, you must rely on morality being only what each man desires it to be. However, no man can assert that his standard must be imposed on another unless you are willing to assert that what Hitler did was not morally wrong since he thought the fittest would survive and he was only proving his own superior fitness. If there was no standard of absolutes higher than Hitler, then who can claim that murder is wrong and that millions didn't die simply because they were too weak to be a survivor?
We could not judge right and wrong except for a more authoritative standard than our own opinions and desires. Molecules cannot account for all of us using such words as "should, should not, ought, and ought not." We all feel that we should do better and should not have said and done things. What molecular ingredients create instinct in animals but a moral sense of duty, ought, and conscience in man? The atheist squirms to come up with an answer. But his premise means that he cannot assert that anything is right or wrong, good or evil. He must try to deny it, but he can't.
There is something built into us that gives us that sense of ought. But mere molecules did not build it into us. God built it into us. Moral ought is in us from the Higher Moral Being Who made us. To deny that moral standard means that you have as much right as anyone to make it as you want.
To be honest about the standard means you think you ought to be honest. Where does the idea of "honesty" come from? Who said we need to be honest? Who said anyone ought to be honest? The answer is that morality is not something that evolved but came from our connection to a Holy God. Our Creator is absolute in goodness and opposition to evil. We ought to quit fooling ourselves and seek God. He can be found in Jesus, the creation, and the revelation of 66 books of the Bible. You ought to do better than you have done, not because I said so, but because God says so, and He built a conscience into you that makes you regret not doing better and want to do better.
Have you thought about where your conscience came from? Have you thought about what it should be allowed to do in you?
