This week we look at how to judge between two sets of competing moral values?  Is there are third thing that helps us reach the right conclusion or is a consensus enough?  Thank goodness God loves us!

Definition – “To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or evil independently of whether any human being believes it to be so.”  William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984

“Many philosophers have argued that if God does not exist, then morality is ultimately subjective and non-binding.  We might act in precisely the same way that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God such actions would no longer count as good or evil, right or wrong, since in the absence of God, objective moral values and duties do not exist.”  William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984

“The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring both of them by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other.  But the standard that measures two things is something different from either.  You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.  Or put it this way.  If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something – some Real Morality – for them to be true about.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952  

“For example, to say that the Holocaust was objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought it was right, and it would still have been wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them so that it was believed that the Holocaust was right.”  William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984

“What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced?  If they had no notion of what we meant by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the color of their hair.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952  

Genesis 9, “5 Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. 6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982

Jeremiah 1, “4 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982

Psalm 139, “14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982

“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” –G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw In America, 1922

“ 1.    If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2.    Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3.    Therefore, God exists.”  William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1984