Part 6 of The Argument. We've looked at existence itself, the chain of dependency, and the fine-tuning of the universe. Now: the standard we all use to call something truly evil — and where that standard would have to come from.
Question Four: The Standard Nobody Chose
Think of the most evil act you can imagine. Not something mildly wrong. But something genuinely, deeply, unquestionably evil. The torture of an innocent child. The deliberate extermination of a people.
Now ask yourself: is that wrong?
Not "wrong for me." Not "wrong in my culture." But actually, objectively, universally wrong. Wrong in a way that would still be wrong even if every person on earth decided it was acceptable?
Almost every human being, when pressed honestly, answers yes.
That answer implies something. If some things are genuinely, objectively wrong, there must be a standard against which "wrong" is being measured, a standard that exists outside human opinion, outside cultural consensus. Where does that standard come from?
If morality is constructed by evolution, by culture, or by social contract, then the Holocaust was not objectively evil. It was a policy one nation agreed to, which other nations disagreed with. A clash of constructed standards. Horrifying to us, but not cosmically wrong. Just unpopular with the winning side of history.
Most people, including many who intellectually accept that morality is constructed, cannot actually live that conclusion. The philosopher C.S. Lewis noticed this too. Before he became a believer, he found himself arguing against God on the grounds that the world was unjust, then stopped because he realized that to call the world unjust, he had to be using a standard of justice that came from somewhere.
We cannot argue that something is wrong unless we already believe that wrong is real.
As with the other questions, we may still believe that "wrong" or "evil" may just be a social construct. But what we cannot do is argue that that claim requires no faith. Nor can we argue that it goes against all of our shared experience, across times, cultures, and contexts.
The only other option is to believe that wrong is real, and that it points to something beyond itself. A standard that exists outside human opinion, outside cultural consensus.
Next: the last of the five questions — the strange fact that language, causality, and love all run on something called "meaning," and what that fact implies about the universe as a whole.