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     In the previous three articles we considered the results when individuals, societies, and governments set their own standards of morality.  There is no appeal to a higher standard than man himself – he is his own authority.  When one man or select group of men are allowed to be absolute rulers (accountable to no one) and whose guide is pragmatic atheism, there will be no regard for human life nor individuals.  The classic 20th century examples of pragmatic atheist rulers are Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler.  (Note: Hitler, reared in Catholicism, was possibly a theist or deist, but his morals and methods are synonymous with one who does not believe there is God, the supreme being. He was a pragmatist who acknowledgedGod but railed against Christianity.)

     Joseph Stalin, who was schooled in a Russian Orthodox parochial school and theological seminary, became an atheist and communist who murdered an estimated 10 million people in his 1932-1937 purges.  Additionally the1930's famine resulting from his forced collectivization killed between 6-7 million in Ukraine alone.  We hardly need to be reminded of Hitler’s genocidal cleansing of Germany of millions of Jews during the 1930s - 40s.  Those who saw “The Killing Fields” have an image of the Communist Pol Pot regime in Cambodia which exterminated 21% (1.7 million) of its population between 1975-79.

     Following WWII, the Nazis’ defense at the Nuremberg trials was essentially:  (1) Germany had its own needs and desires,  (2) Germany made its laws based upon these needs and desires,  (3) Germany commanded us to exterminate the Jews,  (4) It would have been wrong for us to disobey these commands,  (5) The Nuremberg prosecutors are condemning us with law from an alien society, whose values that have nothing to do with Nazism.  In other words, the Nazis led by Hitler were their own law.  They were the law which was based on their own self concocted standard – their whims and desires.

     In the closing address of the trial, justice R.H. Jackson stated that the prosecution appealed to a higher law that “rises above the provincial [JM – geographical area, e.g. Germany] and the transient [JM – time, e.g. the Nazi era].”  Justice Jackson was saying that Nazi Germany could not make a law that was supposedly good for themselves, but not good for another society or people (e.g. Jews), because there is a higher law to which all people are accountable.

     What is certain is when atheism (no supreme God, implicitly no absolute law) is allowed to rule, the corruption of power is inhumane, resulting in unthinkable atrocities.  If dictators, presidents, congresses, parliments, and nations can’t make laws simply to suit their own whims, nor can individuals simply live as they desire, without accountability to a higher authority, we must ask “Why not?”  Why can’t they exterminate a people in a genocide?

     The Nuremberg Trials meted out punishment based on a higher law, one which respects and demands an accounting for those who were exterminated like cockroaches.  What is this higher law?  How do we know it is the absolute law to which we are all accountable?  Where does it come from?  By what authority is it given?

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