"5 Reasons: Why I Still Believe in God" - DAY 36

Day 36 – Point Four: justice must come from God

Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural.  –LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

The fourth and final point of the Argument from Fairness is that justice and morality must come from God. The best way to look at this is to consider the whole matter of rules. If you think about it, rules are always separate and transcendent. Take, for example, the rules of Monopoly. They are separate from the game board and players, in a sense above and beyond them. The rules of football are the same. Sanctioned by the league officials, embraced by the players and coaches, and upheld by the referees, they must by their very nature transcend the component parts of the game. It is this way in music as well. The notes on the staff are the rules. But these notes are separate from the keyboard and from the pianist, who must follow them if music is to be played. 

To summarize, the keyboard and pianist cannot be a part of the musical score; the latter transcends the former. The playing field and quarterback cannot be a part of the rules of football. These, too, must be separate and transcending. In similar fashion, the rules of Monopoly must be distinct from the game board and players.

Now nature is the “field” upon which the "game of life" is played, and we are the “players” of the game. Since there are moral rules that govern life, then these rules—for the reasons just stated—must be transcendent. These rules must be separate and distinct from nature (the “field”) and must be separate and distinct from humanity (the “players”). Right and wrong, therefore, cannot be attributed (as atheists are prone to say) to natural instincts or human opinion. These moral rules must transcend both nature and us. They must, by the process of elimination, be supernatural in origin. In other words, the Moral Law must come from God. Fairness and justice (which include right and wrong and the rules that govern them) must arise from a source that is transcendent, above and beyond nature and man. Its source must be God Himself.¹  

The conclusion here is that justice, if it exists at all, must come from God. The only question that remains is whether or not justice exists, and we have already proven how silly the atheist looks when he or she says it doesn't.

Daily Quotation

"Wittgenstein's Lectures on Ethics," Philosophical Review, 1965, 47:7.

¹The bulk of this argument is a recounting of C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1943), Book I.