A few years ago I was taking part in a discussion of C.S. Lewis’s classic work, Mere Christianity. The specific question that day was over the source of the Law of Human Nature, an internal moral legislator which, according to Lewis, we all find “pressing in on us.” As Lewis argues, there are really only two live options for explaining the existence of that Law within all of us which seems to compel certain virtuous behaviors and subsequently condemn us for moral failings. Either the Moral Law, like all else that exists, is “just there” as some evolutionary by-product, as the atheist might argue, or perhaps there is Something (Someone?) behind the Law that is more like a mind. Since blind chance and intentionality are mutually exclusive, either the materialist or the “religious” explanation of the Moral Law must be the better of the two.
Continue Reading