Nobody has quite successfully escaped from the Divine law. In fact, it's impossible. We were created by a Being that is concerned with righteousness, justice and goodness. Some pride themselves in escaping the law but they will never escape their conscience. The experience of guilt, shame, remorse and regret are powerful indicators of moral failure. But how can an accidental, haphazard, and entirely purposeless universe instill such emotions and feelings within? The Bible tells us that these emotions and feelings are not accidental and meaningless epiphenomena. They are there because they are meant to be there.
The Bible tells us that the moral law was written in our hearts by our Creator
— Romans 2:15
Just as there are laws of nature, so there is a moral law within. In fact, this moral sense that we experience is inescapable because we cannot escape from our own nature. We cannot help but operate and express ourselves in a moral dimension. We feel guilt, conscience, shame, and remorse but why? Who or what put it there?
Einstein believed that there was a Spirit in the universe, the moral law within and the law-like nature of the natural world convinced him of this.
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man..."
— Einstein
The book of Galatians tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control
— Galatians 5: 22-23.
This is the same Spirit that wrote the moral law within. We are a creation and this moral force within points to a lawgiver. However, for the materialist, there is no Spirit in the universe, only nature, blind, pitiless and indifferent. A universe appearing accidentally and unintentionally for no purpose whatsoever. Moral intuitions are not properties of nature insofar as nature is indifferent to conscience and moral reasoning. Gravity imparts no conviction, and electromagnetism transmits no pangs of conscience. Without God there are no inalienable rights, endowed to us by our Creator — there is no transcendent dignity, value or sacredness to human existence. What rights? What values? In other words, this moral dimension is an accidental freak of nature. It's neither true nor false. There is nothing in physics or chemistry that is holding us accountable to a standard. Nature is indifferent, it neither knows nor cares. There is nothing in physics and chemistry obligating one to be a moral and good person. Nature imposes upon us no moral obligations. In the natural world, it's about the survival of the fittest, conflict and competition. It's about Alfred Tennyson's `nature red in tooth and claw'. Nature provides no moral narrative, no transcendent rule. There are no universal moral obligations binding upon all people. Without God, there are only man-made competing systems of moral fiction. We have the fact of nature and the fiction of our fabrications, and that's all we can ever have in an accidental and random universe. Nevertheless, and paradoxically, I see materialists act like there are universal moral standards in which they hold others accountable to, and judge others by. It may be a belief in the equality of all people. It may be a belief in tolerance, justice, or respect for other people’s viewpoints. However, none of these have any ultimate grounding in pitiless and indifferent nature. I’m always bemused when I hear atheists affirming the ultimate purposelessness of the universe, all the while insisting that others should be living, behaving and conducting themselves in a certain way. They act as though there was some universally binding moral standard, but in the absence of a Creator, there exists no such thing. We need to understand that for the atheistic position, nothing can go wrong in the universe because there is no right way that an accidental universe should go in the first place. Even a moral argument against the existence of God presupposes some moral standard to bring God into judgment. But in an accidental Godless universe, there is no moral standard that the atheist can invoke only impersonal forces and pitiless indifference.
by Paul Ross
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