The truth about things we can’t not know
I have good news: Britain is finally doing something about the wave of immigrants who have been sexually assaulting women in the country. They’ve produced a small brochure that tells them rape is wrong.
No, I’m not making this up.
The BBC reported that a nine-page online booklet is now being put in the hands of “asylum seekers” that covers what constitutes respect in public, sex and consent, and gender equality, with guidance on how U.K. laws and customs may be different from their home countries.
In a short video recently posted on social media, Reform UK's home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf labeled the document “a disgrace,” saying: “I genuinely cannot believe what I have just read. The government has just published a handy guide for illegal migrants on how not to be a rapist, not to be a pedophile, how not to beat women and how to leave babies alone. That again may be really hard to believe, but that is exactly what they have just done.”
British political reporter Brendan O'Neill had the same reaction as Yusuf, saying, “I don’t feel reassured by these leaflets, but horrified. I am sickened that anyone coming into my country can be so at odds with our values that they must be told not to rape kids or mutilate girls. And I am disgusted that my government knows this. It is fully aware that morally stunted foreigners are storming our green and pleasant land — so much so that it’s producing leaflets essentially begging them: ‘Please don’t rape our women.’”
Yep, that’ll turn things around, I’m sure. Now, in fairness, the BBC article thankfully also discussed the deportation of such criminals. Definitely the right move there.
If the idea that people don’t know rape and other such violent crimes are wrong seems ridiculous to you, well, it’s not. At least, according to people like the boyfriend of actress Hayden Panettiere, who was recently found dead from a drug overdose.
In an interview where Hickerson was reacting to Panettiere’s book that revealed the abuse she suffered at his hands, he said: “Never in my life did I ever get taught what domestic violence was. Maybe if I did at an early age, maybe I wouldn't have done what I did.”
Sorry, that dog doesn’t hunt. The Bible and our own experiences tell us there are some moral things we know even when we claim not to know them.
The foundation of right and wrong
Of course, there are plenty of people who say nope to this. They object to the idea of some moral truths being so deeply embedded in our nature that we cannot escape knowing them — even when we try to suppress, rationalize, redefine or deny them (i.e., a natural law).
For example, philosopher John Locke argued that humans are born without innate ideas, and that all knowledge, concepts, and mental contents come from sensory experience and environmental interaction. Frederick Nietzsche didn’t believe in objective moral values and duties at all, saying: “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
Others argue that people raised in abuse don’t know any different, plus that parents have to constantly teach morals to their children to keep them in the right lane. Further, the Bible itself is a long list of moral dos and don’ts, with God having to lay down the Law to us in the Ten Commandments. Why all that if we innately know right from wrong?
It’s because moral knowledge and its accompanying education aren’t the same thing. We know, for example, that a child can possess a conscience and yet require instruction in how to understand, develop and consistently apply it.
But while moral education is necessary, that education does not create morality ex-nihilo.
It’s evident that we had inborn ethics before Sinai. We see that Cain was morally accountable for his brother’s death way before Moses came on the scene.
Scripture tells us about those “who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them” (Romans 2:14–15). Being made in the image of a moral God will do that to you.
Christian apologist Paul Copan sums up these points when he says: “We should not confuse our knowledge of ethical values (epistemology) with the basis for ethics (ontology).”
This is the argument professor and philosopher J. Budziszewski makes in his book What We Can’t Not Know. A former atheist and now Christian, Budziszewski says we may deny the innate moral values we have intellectually, suppress them psychologically, rationalize around them culturally, or violate them personally, but we cannot claim our lack of knowledge where they are concerned.
He writes,
How conscience tells us that we ought to be fair, nobody knows. This we can say: we don't know it just from being told, we don't know it from the five senses, and we don't know it by inference from prior knowledge. We just know it. The knowledge is "underived." Trying to understand man without recognizing him as imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving.
Budziszewski isn’t saying, “Everyone knows all moral truths,” but rather everyone does natively know foundational ethics while at the same time possibly being profoundly corrupted and deceived about their application. And just because you know something is wrong doesn’t mean you won’t commit that wrong.
On that point, Budziszewski says: “If anthropological data suggests something short of the ideal, that is not because nothing is universal, but because two universals are in conflict: universal moral knowledge and universal desire to evade it. The first one we owe to our creation. The second we owe to our fall.”
Agreed. Think of it like rape in Britain (and everywhere else) always being wrong.
But I’m betting you knew that already.
Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master's in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.
