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EasterJoy
Guest
No, the concept of natural law can obviously be seen by the fact that human societies that have no deities or have many deities still have a moral compass. The exact degree to which a moral law written from a natural understanding will agree with the knowledge of the truth that comes from the knowledge of God may vary, but there is almost always a moral law that prohibits murder. A society that allows indiscriminate murder is one that other human societies would universally recognize as seriously disordered, whether the society is religious or not.
When someone of moral fiber refers to others as having “no” moral compass, they rarely mean that those others are sociopaths, that they have no conscience whatsoever or that they believe the whole concept of morality is artificial or absurd. They usually mean that the conscience of the barely moral resides solely or almost solely in the emotions or they mean the conscience lacks authority in the will. The guiding conscience has a weak role in the governance of the will, while the passions have the central role. If the passions and animal cunning alone guide the will, though, then that person is a sociopath or a psychopath. (Actually, using the term “animal” for these persons is unfair to a lot of animals. “Reptilian cunning” is more like it.)
Look at it this way: The Christian has both the hardware (the intellect and emotional conscience from which humans choose to make their social choices) and the software (moral law from God) by which to guide their actions. The natural person has only the hardware, but even the hardware we come loaded with will normally guide us to refrain from murder. The natural person lacks some sense of where the boundaries are between right and wrong, but they do naturally want to do right and avoid doing wrong. The sociopath or psychopath lack some or all of the emotional hardware in which the natural concept of right and wrong normally puts some brakes on the will. You are right: moral law is complete nonsense to such a person. Most people, however, are not sociopaths or psychopaths. Most people can understand moral law even from the limited viewpoint of their natural appreciation of right and wrong. With them, the main issue is convincing them when life does in fact begin and under what circumstances humans deserve to be allowed to live. Once those concepts are agreed upon, the natural person can of course agree that abortion is wrong and ought to be prevented at all costs. With many of the ancients, a widespread understanding was that children did not become persons until well after birth, which shows that the exact placement of the boundary between human and not human is a learned thing, even for the natural person.
