Before you ask an ethical question, you must establish the foundation of your ethics: before you can say with conviction that anything is wrong, you must first ask why anything is wrong. If you cannot answer that simplest of questions, how can you answer an ethical one? It is essential to establish a foundation for ethics.
But then, where does one find the foundation of ethics? Considering the "scientific" perspective is irrelevant, because science makes no comment on whether something is right or wrong: science is a method of acquiring knowledge, but makes no claim on what we do with it. It is science that created the nuclear bomb, and science that makes water filters for third world countries. The only thing that we might get from science is natural selection, which has no ethics at all: only victory and defeat.
In fact, the only way a real ethical standard can exist is if there is a universal law; if there is not a universal law, then how can anyone judge if something is right? Without a universal law, there can be no ethics. If your only answer can be subjective opinion (with no law, that’s all that is left), then no one has the right to judge something right or wrong.
Thus, Atheism also must necessarily have no ethics: If there is no one to create a universal law, then how can there be one? Without a universal law, everything is relative, and the only factor is the consequences. It no longer becomes a question of right and wrong, but instead a question of practical or impractical. The only ethics one might then speak of are whether something causes harm (and the only reason to follow them, self-preservation). Now, I do not say that Atheists themselves have no ethics. Only that Atheism cannot support ethics. The Atheist may argue that he is ethical, but how can he really explain why without admitting the existence of a higher law? (As G.K. Chesterton wrote, the modern skeptic “is always engaged in undermining his own mines.”)
Then, there is the Christian perspective: that there is a divine law, and that breaking it is always wrong. The Christian perspective provides an absolutely concrete foundation for ethics: it is based on the existence of a totally just and good God, who has ordained a law, which defines good and evil.
I think my point on ethics relates to something G.K. Chesterton writes in the opening chapters of Orthodoxy: that the man who goes insane is the man who is left with nothing but his reason. If one is to say that something is wrong, then he must be able to say why. Religion is very clear on the why. But if you discount the spiritual, you are left with only the rational. And if you actually follow pure rationality (something which no one does, except a few madmen), then you cannot rationally justify any one side of an ethical question. If you ask the Christian why something is wrong, he can tell you immediately the root reason: God's law. It's concrete. But if you ask the atheist why something is wrong, he must resort to balancing it on a scale where he decides how much everything weighs. He can only say, "it is wrong because this or that might happen." Well, why does that make it wrong? You can keep following the question, "Why?" backwards until eventually (infuriating as that line of questioning would inevitably be) you must conclude that there is no objective reason behind it: one person could conclude one thing, and another completely the opposite, and both would have equally legitimate claims to being in the right.
The Atheist might perhaps argue that human compassion and cultural norms provide a foundation for ethics. We all seem to recognize that human compassion is the right thing. But why? The Christian answer is that God told us to be compassionate. The atheist cannot answer: he has no way to know. To doubt God must, if you really take it seriously (few do), mean that you then doubt everything else. I argue that ethics is impossible without God, because God created right and wrong. It is His standard, nearly universally agreed on but very selectively understood. If a man is murdered, then obviously the murderer did wrong. But then, why? Why was what he did wrong? The Christian answer is that God said "do not commit murder." The atheist answer, “because it is wrong,” which is about as good as saying that a rock is a rock because it is a rock. The Atheist can never answer the question, because he has already rejected the answer. Ethics requires a foundation. The only thing that can provide that foundation is a law, ordained by a higher power, such as the Christian God.
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