In the secular world today, our society is taught there are no moral absolutes. This is to say, nothing is absolutely right or wrong and all of ethics are simply based upon man’s opinion. In this article I attempt to show how this position not only denies reason, but is also an issue that is undermining the very fabric of our society.

In the words of the well-known 19th century atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “You have your way, I have my way. As for the right way, it does not exist.” From this statement flows the underpinning of our modern secular thought on ethics. No person has the answer as to what is actually right and wrong, and everyone is entitled to have his or her own truth with no objective standard to look toward. 

Few people understand the implications of this philosophy of moral relativism of which Nietzsche spoke. Just think for a moment of the consequences of this belief. If moral relativism is true, then who can say it was wrong for Adolf Hitler to murder over nine million Jews in the Holocaust? Who can say it was wrong for slavery to have existed in this nation until 1865? Who can say any action a human being ever takes, whether it be murdering someone or feeding the homeless, is right or wrong? The answer from the atheistic worldview is it doesn’t matter one bit. If there are no moral absolutes, any behaviors — whether rape or giving to charity — aren’t inherently right or wrong. If Hitler’s society taught it was right to kill Jews, that’s what was right for him and his people, according to this atheistic philosophy. This philosophy conflicts with reason and sanity. 

In the face of this atheistic worldview that simply doesn’t believe right or wrong, we are left with the only logical conclusion that is big enough to explain what we already know. Every human being has written upon his or her  heart the knowledge there is absolute right and wrong behavior. The reason behind this is that a creator whose very being is goodness itself has made us in his image. This is the only foundation a society that values upon which ethics can rest. If God exists, then we can absolutely say moral absolutes do exist and return to sanity by reaffirming what we already inherently know to be true: murder, stealing, cheating, mischief, rape and all other wrong behaviors are absolutely wrong and not subject to man’s opinion. 

“As for the right way, it does not exist,” Nietzsche said. Based on his own logic, I would ask this: is the atheistic philosophy of no moral absolutes absolutely right? In the end, I believe this atheistic approach to ethics collapses upon itself. 

In the words of Fyodor Dostoevsky, “If there is no God, everything is permitted.” Unless we have society that understands moral absolutes of right and wrong do actually exist as a result of a God whose very nature is goodness, we have no grounds to ask any single person on the planet to behave in a particular way. Again, if all ethics are simply man’s opinion, there is nothing inherently wrong with the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition or any other atrocity in history. I firmly believe atheistic moral philosophy, which came to rise in the nineteenth century, gave rise to the bloody twentieth century. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin — who combined killed over 50 million people — were great admirers of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and Hitler even gave copies of Nietzsche works to his Italian ally Benito Mussolini. Atheism is a license to kill. The only approach that values the worth of human life, dignity and ethics and satisfies sanity is the belief in a creator God. One might ask: well where do we go from here? In the words of the great Catholic Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas “How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we’re all madly in love with the same God.”