Apologetics

Because You Just Can't

by Firdaus Salim Lim
12/26/17
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The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a cyborg assassin taking a human form, pulled out his gun. He was about to shoot some people who distracted him. John Connor, a ten-year old boy, quickly interfered.

Connor : You just can’t go around killing people.
The Terminator : Why?
Connor : What do you mean why? Because you can’t.
The Terminator : Why?
Connor : … Because you just can’t, OK?!

But... why is it that we cannot simply take other people’s lives?
Who made this regulation? Who gave such authority?
It is a great mystery that has haunted men for centuries. More than two thousand years ago, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle have wrestled with the nature of good and evil. They already tried to reason to find what it is behind one’s morality. Why do we know what is right or wrong? Why is there even such thing as right and wrong?

The fact that we universally know what we may or may not do implies that there are things such as objective moral values. There are moral values that apply to everyone on earth in an objective manner, regardless one’s individual subjectivity. Only as such, we can agree that killing people without reason is immoral. It is an evil, forbidden act. But… who made this regulation? How do we know that it is immoral? Even in a no man’s land without written law, or a land with no country, it does not change the fact that it is immoral.

The most probable explanation for the existence of objective moral values or moral laws is that there is a law giver. Every law must have a maker. Since moral law exists, therefore, it only follows that moral law has a maker. The law maker is that who we call God. God is the only possible source of moral laws and values, for without God, there is no source of morality. If God does not exist, morality will be subjective because that would mean that people in different culture and places are free to perceive what is right and wrong without any universality. For instance, why is it that genocide is wrong regardless of when, where, who did it and who the victims were? Without objective values, killing people for no reason cannot be universally wrong.

Plato (400 B.C.) - who knew nothing about the religions that we know today - argued that there is some thing out there called “Forms” which are the true nature of all things, the transcendent principle of all goodness. Plato wrote that the “Forms” is an idea of the Good which is the ultimate object of knowledge. Humans are therefore compelled to pursue the good. The “Forms” is aspatial and atemporal. It is not bound to places and time. Even without the knowledge of God, Plato tried to find the source from which good (and evil) came from.

Without God, the Terminator’s question on “Why? (you can’t just kill people)” cannot have a definitive answer. It becomes irrelevant. In the absence of God, and in a desperation to grasp for an answer, we can only reply in hollowness like John Connor, “Because you just can’t, OK?!”