If there is no God in the universe in which we live, then it must be true that anything goes! Right? Without God and his communication to man, morality is completely arbitrary, is it not? One need not be a believer in God to recognize that this is true. However, there are few, if any people who claim that there is no God who want it to be this way. After all the laws of morality that are extant in the land are the only things that keep them from being overwhelmed by those of superior strength or intellect. If there is no God, no person should either be sought or prosecuted for the murder of an atheist, or anyone else, because if there is no God there is no power on earth who can by any means, arbitrary or otherwise, say that it is wrong, that is, a crime for any person to have been murdered.

However, we have never seen a person whose religious belief is that there is no God who would agree to what we have just said. They all, for some strange reason, wish to take the position that there is a need for rules and regulations to govern the societies in which we live. But we must ask, "Why?" There is never a satisfactory answer given to the question except that it is necessary to have laws of morality in order for society to live in an orderly way. If, however, there is no God, why is there any need for any society to live in an orderly way? Someone will say that the need exists because it is good for all of us. But is it? How would we know that? Upon what basis or foundation would anyone say that napalming babies is evil, that starving the poor is wicked or that buying and selling one another into slavery is depraved? If there is no God, upon what basis would one say that such men as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Amin and Pol Pot were evil? My dear reader, there is none!

When we say that there is no basis for morality if the atheists, along with most relativists, are right in their faith that there is no God, we do not mean to imply that these people do not search for and seek out a basis that they think justifies the rules of morality by which most enlightened societies live. We intend to look into the so-called justifications for rules of morality that have been set forth by those whose faith claims that there is no God.

The first to which we give our attention is what is called the "naturalistic basis for ethics and morality." Put very simply this concept claims that along with the evolutionary development of mankind there has developed a sense of ethics for the good of mankind. This morality through biological adaptation has come about because men have learned that like hands, feet and teeth, certain rules and regulations are good for man. They claim that such maxims as "love thy neighbor as thyself," taught by our Lord, are nothing more than aids to survival, and if the time comes that we no longer need them for survival we can jettison them. The question comes to mind, "How would they know that?"

Let us look at this from the standpoint of monogamous marriages for the survival of the race. How would one know that it is better for the male and the female to enter into a monogamous relationship, propagate and rear offspring? Why could not the survival of the race be guaranteed by the coupling of human beings like animals at certain times of the year? It certainly seems to have worked in every kind of domestic animal known to man. It seems to work among the animals of the jungle; who is to say that it would not work among human beings. If there is nothing more than a naturalistic basis for our ethics, who is to say that the survival of the race could not be guaranteed by rape. (Not long ago two evolutionists used this very argument to explain why rape occurs.) But if there was a time in the so-called evolution of human beings when that worked, what ever made us think we could improve upon that through lifetime commitment of a couple to one another through the thing that we call marriage? Why did we rise above that stage and come to another if that one obviously worked, at least for a few million years? If it worked for a while it would work forever! No, friends, evolution does not explain morality anymore than it explains our existence. It simply does not get the job done!