Oh morality, how beautiful a creation you are.

Where does Morality come from? This is an important question.

Without a higher power, or a higher standard that transcends humans...the only guiding force we have is Nature.

If nature is all we have, our decisions are arguably completely under the umbrella of the philosophical concept of 'determinism' (basically everything is a consequence of the past, we have no free will).

If nature is all that exist, our sense of right and wrong are products of evolution, genetics, social convention, survival etc.

So we lose the ability to say in any concrete way what is good and what is evil. We can only say I "feel" like that is right or wrong, or my 'preference' is this or that.

Without a transcendent moral standard, a man killing a child (while we may not understand it) is guided by the same force of nature as a snake killing a rabbit. Some people I know would agree with this. They are not stupid or ignorant, I think they are just intellectual and analytical to the point of forgetting that as humans, we 'know' and we 'feel' different. And while 'knowing' and 'feelings' are not scientific qualifications...they are still a reality.

Basically, if you think something is truly wrong or right, good or evil (for all cultures and humans who ever existed), if you think a man should be guided by a moral standard above his own choosing, if you think we humans have something above our mere animal instincts...it all cries out that a higher moral standard really exist.

And where does that higher moral standard come from? It must be a moral law giver. No human, but someone or something that holds all humans accountable to it.

I heard a story about a Nazi official who was being charged for war crimes. One of the defenses that his lawyers pushed was that according to the law in his own country of Germany, his slaughtering of thousands of Jews and others was truly no different in his culture and current legal systems than killing diseased livestock to prevent the spread of infection. It was argued that by enforcing the 'world courts' standards of him and not those of his own country...the 'world courts' were being prejudiced and using power and might to enforce their own sense of right and wrong.

Is he right?

Thankfully, someone else in the courtroom after hearing him yelled out something to the tune of "Sir, do we not all have a Law above the law of the land?"

I think if you look closely at what makes us human, you will see that there is a deeper reason why it is "Wrong" for a man to forcefully separate a mother from her infant children to serve his own personal needs. The atheist can answer "Well sir, her children need milk to grow and survive, and really that behavior does not benefit society as a whole...it is not natural" and the man could retort "well sir, I need the woman to fulfill my own natural needs, and perhaps to continue my own genetic information, which is superior to that of the last man" and the atheist can reply "it's simply wrong!" "but it is right for me" says the man.

And carry on the conversation indefinitely and if neither changes their mind we have two options I can think of...the atheist in this story can gather a bunch of other like minded men and over power the one (which is majority rules and dominates the minority). Or else he can appeal to the higher moral law, that I think we all have and use, but that not all of us recognize yet. You knbow it in your heart, somethings are JUST WRONG.

Why in this world do we have to justify every action we do with endless debate and banter!? I think we are being tricked into trading away our common moral standard, for the pleasures and deceptions of a world in which each man or woman is her own god, free to choose and he or she pleases. It sounds good in a sense doesn't it? But with terrible, terrible consequences.

Another thing all we humans have in common...our great capacity for selfishness and evil.

Do you really think you are so different from the gangsters in Africa who rape and kill to fulfill their natural instincts to reproduce and survive. Put in their situation, with all the comforts and luxuries we have stripped away...how long before you act in the same way? how long before you could justify it to yourself?

Even if I lost every other reason I have to believe in God, I would choose to stay with him for this reason of morality alone. I am honest enough, and insightful enough to realize without him and left to my own devices in a clearly sick and hurting world...I could justify and rationalize any sick and depraved act. Revenge, stealing, killing, hating...what isn't up for grabs in a world ruled not by God, but by nature alone?