Part 1 here.
Laws of Nature and Nature’s God
All law is a theological claim.
Again, inflammatory. Let me explain this as well, then, and forgive the philosophy.
Laws require a basis. This is either positive law or natural law. Laws are either an arbitrary creation of political will or manifestations of an immutable, eternal moral code that applies in all times and in all places. If arbitrary, then the law is only the law because of whim, and not because of any real meaning behind it. Murder might be wrong now, but it could be legalized tomorrow and nothing important would have changed besides power’s preference. Laws imposed arbitrarily can be changed arbitrarily, and even if some might call for caution and prudence, those, too, are only preferences and can be discarded for any reason. In order to defend even positive laws as something that ought to last more than a few seconds for stability’s sake, there must be a standard that exists outside of the whims of power, and which they have to obey.
As mentioned earlier, liberalism is no different from any other regime in this respect. It tries to ground its theory of law and morality, what is allowed and abandoned, promoted and punished, in a particular account of nature and reality. As mentioned earlier, Lockean classical liberals say that a rational and empirical examination of man and nature will reveal principles, one of which is the principle of secular neutrality. Progressive liberals are more likely to argue that “nature” and “reality” are internal constructs of the individual, and that neutrality is necessary to avoid enforcing personal dogmas or identities on others that may not hold them.
To be fair, pointing out liberalism’s appeal to nature and reality doesn’t by itself prove liberalism wrong. I am, however, pointing out that it does ultimately ground itself in an account of nature. This is important.
We can assert nature is whatever we please, however, it’s rarely convincing unless we provide an account of how it came to be that way. It’s one thing to say “murder is wrong,” it’s quite another to say that’s what nature tells us when every creature on earth is engaged in a bloody struggle for survival. Any argument about the nature of, well, nature, requires an argument about its origins.
This is where we part ways with atheism and materialism. Atheism and materialism are core components of secularism, and are incoherent with the concept of morality. I will explain further.
There are only two options when discussing the nature of reality: it is either materialist, and came about through random chance, or it was created, and necessarily has a supernatural creator. Some might claim that humans were created, but not by any supernatural being/beings; this only pushes the random chance of evolution back a step to the origin of these material creators. Where did they come from? Some might also point to theistic evolution, but this is still a form of supernatural creation. A deity is still required to steer evolutionary mutations.
If nature is materialist, and the product of random chance, there can be no genuine morality. Everything in a materialist world is the product of chance reactions of chemicals and electricity according to immutable laws of physics like gravity, boiling points, fission/fusion, and the like. Is it theft when baking soda takes a proton from vinegar after mixing the two? Is it murder to turn water into steam?
Obviously, no one in their right mind would say yes to either of these. There is no moral judgement in a chemical reaction; it simply does what it has always done and could not, under these circumstances, avoid doing.
The common response is that man is obviously different from all other creatures, let alone mere chemical substances. Man can choose to follow his instincts or not; he isn’t restricted by his nature like animals or chemicals. All this proves, however, is that he is more complex. We may not fully understand how all of his material substances work together, but that doesn’t prove he isn’t reducible to the same chemical reactions and electrical impulses as any other natural phenomenon.
Boil down everything in the universe to its smallest particle and you will not find a single truth atom, beauty quark, or goodness particle. Abstractions are immaterial concepts; reducing reality to the material means they do not exist except as hallucinations of particular chemical and electrical impulses. On this metric the most crazed illegal immigrant murdering his way through the nation is only doing what his circumstances and the laws of physics demand. He is not doing anything immoral.
Obviously this is not a sustainable theory of reality, let alone morality. We are left with only one choice: there must be a supernatural element to existence that provides a standard. This supernatural standard must be either internal or external to man. If internal, then all men possess it (or at least those with internal monologues do), and they dictate the laws of morality from within themselves. This drives us right back into the arms of relativism and self-created truth. What if there is a disagreement? What standard can judge between two competing supernatural internal standards? How do we tell if someone even has an internal monologue? None of these can be answered by self-report, and yet we have no way of judging them except self-report. The standard, therefore, cannot be internal to men, even a subset of men. As long as there are two people on earth, there will be disagreement about something. We are not a hivemind.
The standard must be eternal and unchanging, because if we assume an evolving morality that shifts with the material world we run back to relativism. There is no foundation for civil law to last if the morality it is based on doesn’t last. It cannot simply appear in the “Big Bang” because then there would be a time when it was not. Aside from having to then define its origin in a purely physical phenomenon, you would still end up with a standard that is not actually eternal and unchanging. The standard cannot be immutable, floating in an abstract void until the physical universe exploded into existence. This would only create an unattached abstract standard with no connection to reality.
Only a personal, equally supernatural, eternal, and immutable creator with the authority and intent to place the standard within nature can connect the two. Neither materialism nor an impersonal and vague spiritualism has a coherent way to accomplish this. For there to be a moral law of any kind, up to and including something as simple as only relying on prudence, there must be a supernatural, immutable, and eternal creator that creates the natural law.
Some might ask how, if the creator is the source of the standard, can the standard be eternal? If it’s created, then there was a beginning, and surely that falls under the same problem mentioned with the “Big Bang.” To solve this, the creator must be the unmoved mover not just of the physical, but of the moral realm. The standard originates in him and he places it within his creation.
This brings the problem into stark relief. If we want civil law, we must have natural law. If we want a natural law, we must make a claim about what nature is, and therefore must have an account of why it is like that. In order to have a natural law, we must have a creator, who imbues creation with an eternal order found in his nature. Therefore, in order to have a civil law that is anything more than the whims of whoever holds power, you must always make a corresponding theological claim (including whether a deity even exists) to base your law in. As a result, any and every government is legislating in favor of their preferred worldview/religion/ideology. Even secularism does this. It is impossible to do anything else.
Part 3 here.