We have all stated things such as “how would you like it if anyone did the same thing to you?”, “That’s my seat, I was there first”, “Leave him alone, he didn’t do anything to you”, “Come on, you promised.”

What is interesting about this is that the person saying them is not merely saying there is something inconvenient about the act or it does not happen to please them. They are appealing to some standard of behavior which he expects the other person to know about. They are appealing to a sense of fairness.  The other person is not apt to reply, forget your standard. Rather they will seek to justify their actions with some reason or excuse. They will try and come up with some reason as to why this particular instance is an exception to the norm and why they are justified in their action. It appears that both persons acknowledge the existence of this standard of behavior. The very fact that we will attempt to justify our actions proves our belief in an acceptable standard of behavior. We use the very same standard of behavior to defend our exception to it in certain cases. The mere fact alone that we debate in such instances shows that we acknowledge the existence of this standard of behavior. Debating is an attempt to prove that you are right and the other is wrong, and vice-versa. There can be no right and wrong if there is no standard of what is right.

In older days this was called the law of nature. It has more recently become known as the law of human nature or the moral law. In modern times we tend to identify the law of nature with such things as gravity, or if you mix certain chemicals they will produce certain things, or like will beget like, etc. Those of older times recognized that man’s existence was governed by the moral law just as he was governed by the law of gravity. I will discuss the differences and similarities of these laws more fully in a future article.

One of the objections to the Law of Nature being an absolute in mankind is the differences in what is right and wrong from age to age, civilization to civilization, and various cultures. If you actually examine these different ages, civilizations and cultures what you will see is there are actually far more similarities than differences. For example, selfishness has never been admired. Men may have disagreed whether a man may have one wife or three, but they have always said you cannot have whatever woman you want. A soldier who runs from the battlefield has always been looked upon as cowardly.

Some will argue against the presence of an absolute moral law by stating that as man evolves he simply evolves to a ‘better’ or more civilized creature. First, in doing so he undermines his own argument. For what is he measuring against to determine that man’s actions are ‘better’ or more civilized at one time or another. In order to do a comparative he must have a standard to measure against as an absolute. Secondly, quite often the ‘better’ or more civilized notion comes merely from an understanding of fact rather than an improved morality. For example someone may say mankind burned witches at the stake years ago as an illustration of how we have evolved. The reality is that the reason we do not put witches to death today is because we do not believe witches exist (at least as thought of in days past). We have not ceased putting to death witches based on a new or improved moral understanding but rather because we do not believe there are witches. Certainly if we did believe there were witches who used their powers to kill or drive others mad or other similar things many would feel that if anyone should be put to death, they should. This does not stand as an argument against a moral law and in favor of the evolution of man’s thought but rather it actually again argues in favor of an accepted standard of behavior – for how would we determine that it was wrong to burn these people at the stake and we should no longer do so?