Here’s a challenge:Construct an authoritative moral system that is not based upon the Bible. No matter what system you come up with, you’ll find that without God there is not rational answer to the inevitable question, Says who?

For example, pretend that a law is passed under your system that legalizes sex on demand with anyone, regardless of their age, with or without their consent. Or a law that declares open season on your particular ethnic group. But the law is wrong! you scream as you are legally victimized by citizens who are merely enjoying their legal right to victimize you. Wrong? they ask. Says who?

See the point? You may not like the laws, but on what moral ground can you base an objection? None, because without the higher moral authority of God, absolute moral authority lies with the men and women who have the power to write and enforce the laws. You can only live in abject terror of the capricious power of man.

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Professor Gibson’s letter (Dec. 8) was dead on. The popular belief that there can be any rational basis for a moral standard outside of the word of God is a lie. Choose to believe it, and you’ve just stepped into an ethical fog where literally anything goes; where concepts of right and wrong are utter nonsense; where might really does make right, even when it is horribly misguided.

And don’t think man is incapable of such evil, because it’s already happened:Nazi Germany, 6 million dead. Russia’s purges, 20 million dead. The communist revolution in China, upwards of 50 million dead by some estimates.

When men have no fear of God before their eyes, men become worse than animals. The whole law of God is summed up in the two greatest commands of Jesus. You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, and, You must love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37, 39). Man has never devised a system of ethics that comes close to matching that.