Across the globe, human engagements involve relationships built on the patterns of moral values, each unique based on culture and environment¹. These patterns are outcomes of moral emotions which guide our actions and judgments in situational stimuli occurring through these engagements. With exclusion to psychopaths and those with prefrontal cortex damage, moral emotions occur in varied responses to actions throughout the entirety of conceptual, cognitive engagements, and thus, logic itself is not the sole determination of all decisions being made<sup2. This combination of logic and emotional response invokes how law and religion work together through emotional reasoning for moral judgments during the pre-, current-, and post-judgment phases. To subjugate people to standards of law and moral judgment, society must recognize a source of ultimate external authority for moral reasoning.

Foundation for American Law

The American Constitution is universally known for its unique qualities of personal freedom and equal protection of law built on general principles of liberty, equality, dignity, and justice^2,5,6. This constitutional document is an opinionated dissent of America’s founding fathers built on the importance of free conscience thought and influence through reason alone⁴. These foundations of conscious rights are said in the Constitution to be found self-evident in all people through their “Creator,” or “Almighty God,” in which Thomas Jefferson wrote in both the United States and Virginian Declaration of Independence (⁴,⁵). As self-evident, this Creator is external to every individual and is the standard on which justice, virtue, and moral greatness are established.

Abraham Lincoln also believed law and religion work together, as his declaration of independence was founded on the beleif in a just Creator and His creatures. Abraham believed in the whole race of mankind universally reflecting the divine image of such creator (the imago dei as said in the Latin Vulgate), endowed with dignity from such determined value (³,⁴). This unique identity (read more on the importance of individual identity) established by a Creator is the foundation of global citizenship founded on democratic and capitalistic economic prosperity.

American Supreme Court judges, such as Ronald Dworkin, believe law and religion work together, as he states moral principle is constitutional law, and this moral principle is the basis of ruling judgment². Judges throughout America rule to remove civil rights from convicts and determine ethical accountability in sentencing. Without an objective standard for judges to refer to, there can be no ruling of real liability for convictions, outside of popular opinion which changes with the wind. Although the Constitution is referred to as this guide of reason, the document itself is built on, and must be built on, a moral dignity endowed by a Creator⁴. By having a reference for objective reason, moral judgments are given validity, credibility, and accountability. In America’s judicial pursuit of liberty, equal concern, and justice, courts are required to apply moral reasoning in the examination of constitutional law as its foundation for these morals.

As Dr. Frank Turek commonly states, “all laws legislate morality,” and so the common demand for separation of church and state, which is NOT constitutionally written (watch below), is in actuality not a factor in creations of law, as all people, religious or not, legislate their view of morality and ethics.

Philisophy and Not Science: Rigidity by Divinity

Ethics must be grounded in philosophical anthropology, the theory of human nature, as Freud and Aristotle both agree; ethics cannot be formulated through scientific precision⁶. Godless morality, as Freud states, loses its unchanging nature and rigidity and its reliability on reason, thus having little effect against passionate impulses⁶. If morality is built by people who are as fallible as those who commit such fallacies and is changeable by means of other fallible individuals, what value does morality have in determining law or codes of ethics? As the state of mankind is ever-changing, especially in a world dominated by evolutionary ethics and science, subjective relativism, and an ever-expanding melting-pot of diversity, how can any individuals be required to follow such doctrines when they are subjective and relative to those in charge and in current popularity? Without an objective, inherent, and external standard of individual morality, understanding what is true and good for people and society cannot be ascertained⁷. This lack in eternal standard caused the murder of hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century alone (read more here).

An Atheistic Answer

For those who are atheists or materialist naturalists, the solution to the dilemma between is and ought, which cannot occur without an external moral standard derived from God, is to embrace nihilism, what is termed moral relativism¹. This moral relativism deductively reasons to the actual lack of the idea of good versus bad, as there is no standard or absolutes but instead contextually, situationally persuasive outcomes determining everything. There is a distinction of at least five universal categories of moral concerns in a materially-driven scientific worldview. At the individual and collective levels, these moral concerns are found to be universally used by all cultures. The individual level is proposed to have developed from a transition to group selection in which involves individual foundations of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity.

These are what would be considered expressions of sensitivity, empathy, and sympathy to the distribution of resources for the promotion of trust and reduction of intragroup conflict. The collective cohesion of groups involves binding foundations of ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. This cohesive group nature is said to have evolved from rare transitions of groups together with high levels of cooperation in which unitary organisms were developed. Famous atheistic naturalist-materialists, such as Michael Shermer and Sam Harris, propose the moral standard starts with the survival of sentient or conscious beings, individually¹. This belief assumes emotionally caring about moral norms provides the impression of objective right and wrong, a mere social convention. As well, others have stated the interchangeability of perspectives, what is coined the Golden Rule’s prime principle, as a more defined moral standard.

Why Materialistic, Naturalistic, and Atheistic Philosophy Falls Short

The direct deduction of ought from is has become known as the naturalistic fallacy, and thus, this nihilistic framework was developed to work around this logical inconsistency¹. A nihilistic worldview is believed to make social life possible through narcissistic living and the use of niceness for evolutionary advantage. With an evolutionary outlook on moral and value creation, the question is begged as to whether morals existed prior to these formulations as a foundation of which they were built, or if morals themselves are the by-product of evolution. In the current popular scientific framework, a naturalist, materialist philosophy of science is the lens by which findings are interpreted. To use this framework in analysis of the prior evolutionary explanation, it is sufficient to deduct the supernaturally influential prerequisite of an objective, external, and timeless cause of moral standards is not possible, nor allowable, and thus, moral values cannot be what is right or wrong. Instead, morals merely represent the current evolutionary process leading to human flourishing, not for all humans, but merely flourishing of those who depend on cooperation for protection and support, leaving out those lacking in such social skills.

The question arises as to how morality relates to people who naturally feel no need to have the protection, sustenance, and survival obtained through the collective dynamic. One logically concludes the acceptance of their acts against others as not immoral but preferentially unneeded for their personal survival. How can it be in actuality wrong for a moral infraction to occur if it is after all only an outcome of the current popular and dominant evolutionary selection? It would seem any other evolutionary outcome, such as one which could occur in the future, is worth pursuing in itself for the greater good of human flourishing.

Secular Morality

In the name of stronger genes and their secure passage through time, which is evolution’s main objective, it would be advantageous for immoral acts to occur by those believing the collective group conflict reduction was actually in some major way hindering current and future progression during optimal human flourishment and reproduction¹. In fact, morality has been found to be a neurobiological mechanism which is automated and emotive, instead of conscious and deliberate. Moral ambivalence—the nature of equal moral emotional ties to any two contrasting decisions—is evidence to nature’s lack in a single moral direction, the proof for why law and religion work together, it is not only natural but it is the sensible and logical outcome of life.

You may ask where we get an instance of law and religion working together in science. Science itself can describe the natural processes involved in influencing human decisions but it has no ability to say what one ought to do, as that realm of thought is saved for philosophy. If the “is” we observe in nature “ought” to have happened, one must go beyond nature to find this “ought, a role saved for those within the sects of metaphysics, philosophy, and religion. Watch Dr. William Lane Craig, expert Apologist and endowed Professor at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, refute famous atheist Sam Harris and his philosophy of secular morality based on “worst-possible-circumstances” and “maximized human utility,” the “well-being and flourishing of sentient creatures” as foundations for morality.

Diving Deeper

The character of law-giving requires objective standards for determination on court decisions of law-breakers². These standards are relied upon for moral reasoning, yet laws and documents of incorporation require external validity and proof of authority. Without such objective external standard of moral value, each individual’s subjective experience cannot be determined unacceptable or be held accountable, as this cognitive process is merely a natural experience from an evolutionary upbringing¹. Laws around the world are based on this external standard of right and wrong, including the United States of America².

Although subjective reasoning has been defended through a nihilistic worldview, it lacks the authority, rationality, and positive relational foundations in human nature of which is found throughout global societies. As well, the alternative view of human flourishing as the standard of moral behavior towards what is “good” lacks the substantiated requisite of assuming human flourishing as actually good. To subjugate people to standards of law and moral judgment, society must recognize a source of ultimate external authority for moral reasoning. With our society’s history of capitalistic and democratic advocacy, it only makes sense that law and religion work together to form the great country we have in America today and with other countries around the world.

References

¹ Navarick, D. J. (2018). Virtuous reality: Why right and wrong seem real: A critique of moral realism. Skeptic, 23(1), 44-48.

² Schwarzschild, M. (1998). Freedom’s law: The moral reading of the American Constitution. Ethics, (3), 597.

³ Szczucki, K. (2018). Ethical legitimacy of criminal law. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 53, 67-76.

⁴ Tingley, E. (2016). The freedom of divided people: Not rights to religious life or expression (or any of the formulations it will prove so easy to resist) but the most basic rights in the constitution. Issues L. & Med., 31, 171.

⁵ Reagan, R., McFadden, J. P., Koop, C. E., & Muggeridge, M. (1984). Abortion and the conscience of the nation. Nashville: T. Nelson.

⁶ Novak. D. (2016). On Freud’s theory of law and religion. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 48, 24–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2016.06.007

⁷ Hromei, A. S., & Voinea, M. M. (2013). Accounting between law, ethics and morality. SEA – Practical Application of Science, 2(2), 131-136.