Monday, July 16, 2012

Conscience and Morality are proofs that God exists

Ray Comfort's book, How to Know God Exists, argues persuasively for the existence of God. Perhaps his best proof that there is a God is because of conscience and morality. Why are we the only species to have a clear sense of justice? No animal does anything like this. Why does a lie detector (polygraph) work so well to detect lies? The human conscience tells us lying is wrong and we react physically.

How to Know God Exists, by Ray Comfort (selections from book review by Reagan Schrock).

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the book review published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 48, Number 4, Spring 2012)

If we are simply highly evolved animals, why and how do we know right from wrong? What makes us decide, for example, that murder is wrong? "The problem with atheism, is that it has a shifting morality. There are no moral absolutes. How can there be, when [according to atheism] morality is thought to come through human consensus, rather than divine mandate" (p. 87)? If humans are just biological machines composed of random chemicals that formed over millions of years, there is no reason to believe in moral absolutes.

This is one of the clearest differences between humans and animals. If humans are just animals that are more highly evolved than the rest, why are we the only species to have a clear sense of justice? Why do we punish wrongdoers? No animal does anything like this. If someone is wronged, most of us naturally want to make it right.

"We know right from wrong because the conscience is an impartial judge in the courtroom of the mind. It speaks to us irrespective of our will" (p. 87). This is why a lie detector (polygraph) works so well to detect lies. Our conscience tells us lying is wrong and we react physically. For example, a person's blood pressure and heart rate will spike when he lies and the polygraph picks up the changes. If there were no absolutes, the polygraph would not work because we would not have a conscience to tell us when we err.

Written for the layman and designed to equip believers with answers raised against Christianity, the book is a good evangelistic tool. An atheist who reads this book will have a difficult time holding on to his disbelief.

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