Existentialism is a philosophical theory that people are free agents who have control over their own choices and actions. Albert Camus, an existentialist, admitted that the death of God meant the loss of purpose, joy and everything that makes life worth living. There is no attempt to explain the origin of morality – did that evolve to? John Haught said, “The new soft-core atheists assume that, by dint of Darwinism, we can just drop God like Santa Clause without having to witness the complete collapse of Western culture –Including our sense of what is rational and moral. At least the hard-core atheists understood that if we are truly sincere in our atheism the whole web of meanings and values that had clustered around the idea of God in Western culture has to go down the drain along with its organizing centre.” God and the New Atheism, p.28. So, who decides what is right and wrong? Does evil exist, or do bad things just happen?

This is Richard Dawkins comment on that idea, “In the universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt and other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.”

Several years ago, a married couple were handed lengthy jail terms after being convicted of manslaughter for starting a house fire which killed six of their children.

Mick Philpott, 56, was jailed for life, while his 32-year-old wife, Mairead was jailed for 17 years. These kinds of stories are not uncommon. Judge Kathryn Thirlwall said Mick Philpott was a “disturbingly dangerous man”. “You have no moral compass,” she told him. When we don’t believe in a higher power then can be no moral compass.

It is common to hear people say, “No one should impose their moral views on others, because everyone has the right to find truth inside themselves.” This, however, poses a series of uncomfortable questions. Aren’t there people in the world who are doing things in the world that you think are wrong? Did anyone disagree that Mick Philpott was evil and wrong? Do we think that some people should stop doing what they are doing because we think it is wrong, even though they may think their behaviour is OK? If you believe this, then you must believe that there is some kind of moral standard that people should abide by regardless of their individual convictions. Nearly all of us have a pervasive, powerful and unavoidable belief in moral values and moral obligations, we call it conscience. The judge called it a moral compass. Moral standards are something that exist outside us and by which our moral feelings are evaluated.