Objective Morality Makes Knowledge Possible

Not long ago someone wrote to the Tennessee Fellowship for Christian Apologetics after reading one of my blog articles. Among other things, he argued that I had simply chosen to follow God’s moral system, while others chose differently. Therefore, since we are all subjectively choosing, my morality was just as subjective as anyone else’s.

His three main points were

1) "Aaron Yost actually decides what's right for himself."

2) "Aaron Yost is incapable of providing me what "God's moral order" or "transcendent standard" consists of" 

3) "Aaron Yost is incapable of creating or citing an objective moral framework that is universal, invariant, immutable, and binding."

It was very important for him to correct my thinking so that I knew Christian morality wasn't superior in any way. In fact, he even said "Most importantly, It would certainly exclude any framework connected to the Christian God." 

He called himself a "critical thinker calling out [my] flawed and delusional claims".  He accused me of "Baseless assertions without support" and thought I should "honor [my] Lord and shut the mouth of the unbeliever!", as he put it. This is a common objection, and a fatal one, but not in the way he imagined. Because if morality really is subjective, then knowledge itself collapses, including the knowledge that morality is subjective.

The Self-Defeating Claim

His statement “everyone chooses morality subjectively” sounds self-evident until you think about it.The moment he sends the message, he’s assuming I will deal with him honestly. If he truly believed morality was subjective, he’d have no basis to expect truthfulness from me at all. Why say anything if he doesn’t expect honesty from me? And he reinforces that expectation when he urges me to be “honest” and act “for [my] own sake.” But those ideas only make sense if there’s a real obligation to deal fairly and truthfully. If morality were subjective, then I am free to choose whatever I want, including dishonesty, and he would have no grounds to complain.

You see, he knows honesty only matters if there really is an ought to tell the truth, and that ought must be binding, not optional. The moment he says I ought to be honest, he has abandoned subjectivity. He is implicitly claiming that honesty is good, that dishonesty is bad, and that both of us are accountable to that standard.

Yet his entire argument denies that such a standard exists. So within just a few sentences, he’s done the very thing his worldview cannot justify: he makes an objective moral demand while denying objective morality. He insists I conform to a universal “ought” while saying no such “ought” exists.

His correction refutes his claim.

Why We All Need the Same Starting Point

Once morality becomes subjective, truth itself becomes negotiable. If there’s no real sense in which we ought to value honesty or reason, then “truth” is reduced to preference—something people choose to honor when it benefits them. But if truth isn’t necessary, it can be discarded. And if there’s no universal expectation that truth matters, knowledge collapses with it. Anyone could lie to you at any moment, and it wouldn’t matter that they did—because “ought to tell the truth” would no longer exist.

This is extremely important. Knowledge isn’t just an abstract concept, it’s central to who we are. We were created to know God and, through knowing Him, to rightly understand the world He made. Every act of discovery, reasoning, and learning flows from that design. That’s why knowledge matters: it’s part of our created purpose. If knowledge loses its foundation, everything that makes human life meaningful goes with it. Truth becomes opinion, morality becomes preference, and reason becomes nothing more than brain chemistry. We don’t just lose information, we lose identity. Without a real and binding source of truth, we can’t know who we are, what’s right, or why anything matters at all.

So knowledge is of paramount importance, and it's tied to objective morality. But there is one more layer.

For knowledge to be meaningful, everyone must share the same epistemic starting point. If we don’t, then “truth” becomes trapped in personal experience and reduced to private opinion. If all we have is physical experience, how do we bridge the gap between minds? My sensations aren’t yours; my thoughts are locked in my head. You can describe what you see, but how do I know we mean the same thing? We can’t step outside ourselves to compare perceptions, and no amount of shared observation can escape that limitation.

Everyone begins life differently—with different parents, education, intelligence, and experience. So whatever our common starting point for knowledge is, it can’t be found in the physical world we bump into. Our senses, experiences, and cultures differ too much. If knowledge depended only on those things, it would be hopelessly subjective.

There has to be something deeper, something shared and unchanging, something transcendental, that allows us to talk about reality in the same world, using the same logic and the same morality, and trusting that our minds are actually tracking truth. Otherwise, communication, science, and even conversation itself become impossible. So the real foundation has to be transcendental: truths that are necessarily true for all people in all times, whether they acknowledge them or not. These truths aren’t learned through experience; they make experience possible. They’re what we already know—immediate knowledge we all

possess simply by being human.

The Transcendental Realities We All Know

Philosophers call these the preconditions of intelligibility. Scripture calls them the things God has made plain (Romans 1:19).

They include:

• The laws of logic – the principle of non-contradiction, identity, and consistency.

• Mathematical order – the regularity and quantifiable structure of creation.

• Causality and purpose – the understanding that events follow order and intention.

• Objective morality – the recognition that some things really are right and wrong.

• The knowledge of God – the ultimate ground of all the others.

Romans 1:20 says, “His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived… so that they are without excuse.” These truths are not opinions. They are actually real; necessarily true regardless of what we think. Even denying them requires borrowing from them.

Why Morality Belongs on That List

People sometimes treat morality as optional, as though logic and math are “real” but morality is cultural. But that separation is impossible.

Morality gives us the ought that binds all reasoning:

• We ought to use logic consistently.

• We ought to tell the truth.

• We ought to prefer truth over comfort.

• We ought to treat equal things equally.

Remove the moral “ought,” and reasoning becomes mere brain activity with no obligation to follow truth at all. Then logic, science, and even language lose meaning. Objective morality cannot be an add-on to knowledge, rather, it’s the moral backbone that makes all knowledge possible.

Why These Truths Must Be Objective

If these transcendental realities were subjective, they would depend on each person’s opinion. But opinions change. Contradictions would both be true. Two plus two could equal four for me and five for you. Lying could be virtuous for one person and evil in another, with no ultimate difference. Once that happens, the word truth ceases to mean anything. That’s why these realities must be necessarily, objectively true. They’re not “true for me.” They’re just true. Even to say “maybe they aren’t true” assumes the law of non-contradiction, logical inference, and the moral duty to reason honestly. Denial depends on what it denies.

How the Biblical Worldview Overcomes Subjectivity

Romans 1 puts us all on equal footing. It tells us that everyone already knows God because He has revealed Himself both internally and externally. Internally, through conscience and reason—the moral awareness and logical order built into every human mind (Rom. 2:14; Isa. 1:18). Externally, through creation—the visible world that constantly declares His power and nature (Rom. 1:19; Ps. 19:1). That means every human being already shares the same transcendental foundation for knowledge. We all know there is a Creator, that truth exists, that logic holds, and that morality is real. These are not things we learn by experience; they are the preconditions that make experience intelligible in the first place. No one begins as a blank slate. Conscience, reason, and creation all testify to the same God.

But some people, like the emailer, don’t believe in God, right?

Romans 1 addresses that: people deny what they innately know. “Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking.” (Rom. 1:21) This is key to avoiding the trap of subjectivity. We don’t start from ignorance; we start from suppression. The unbeliever doesn’t lack evidence; he rejects the Source that gives evidence meaning. This suppression isn’t an act of neutral reasoning—it’s moral rebellion against the very truth that makes reasoning possible.

So people start in rebellion against God, but simply choose to follow Him and adopt His moral system.

Not so fast. It’s impossible for a person to subjectively choose to follow God’s moral system. Romans 8:7 addresses this directly: “The mind set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” The unbeliever can’t love or submit to God’s law. He may build moral systems that resemble it in places—perverted reflections of the truth written on his heart—but those systems are merely variations of the same rebellion. They aren’t truly unique frameworks; they’re expressions of one shared desire: to rule himself instead of submitting to God. So the unbeliever’s perceived subjectivity isn’t an intellectual mistake; it’s the natural posture of a fallen heart. When someone says, “You chose God’s moral system,” they’re assuming a kind of freedom that doesn’t exist.

So then how can anyone come to love God’s law if it is impossible to choose it?

That's the good news. God doesn’t leave us trapped in that futility. Through Christ, He renews both heart and mind. Regeneration isn’t about gaining new information—it’s about being made new. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor. 5:17) God doesn’t merely offer moral advice; He performs heart surgery. “I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezek. 36:26) That new heart beats with new desires. The will follows the heart. What was once hostile to God now delights in His law. The mind that once twisted truth now rejoices in it. As Paul writes, “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” (Rom. 12:2)

In regeneration, God restores our relationship to the facts we already know. The same God who once said, “Let there be light,” now shines “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:6) Only then can we see reality as it truly is. Only then does objectivity make sense—not because we constructed it, but because we’ve been reconciled to the God who is Truth itself.

This is the key to escaping the self-defeating, knowledge-less trap of subjective morality. Humanity isn’t divided into people who know God and people who don’t know Him—or into those who chose right and those who chose wrong. It’s divided into those who are unregenerate (enemies of God) and those who are regenerate (children of God). The unregenerate mind cannot and will not follow God’s law. The regenerate mind delights in it and grieves when it fails (Ps. 119:97; Rom. 7:22). The unbeliever never wants to follow God’s law, and the believer only wants to follow God’s law. There’s no in-between. And only God can make us regenerate. We don’t “choose” God’s morality any more than we choose to be born.

The Unavoidable Conclusion

Every claim to knowledge rests on realities that are necessarily true, truths built by God into both creation and the human heart. Among those, objective morality is indispensable. It provides the “oughtness” that makes logic, honesty, and understanding possible. To deny objective morality is to deny knowledge. And to deny knowledge is to lose even the ability to know that you’ve denied it.

That’s why the claim that “everyone chooses morality subjectively” cannot be true for anyone. The very act of asserting it proves it false. Romans 1 gives us the coherent, logical framework that restores a shared starting point—removing subjectivity and giving us a foundation for objective morality, objective knowledge, and a true understanding of reality itself. It explains why rebellion blinds, but regeneration restores. And in that restoration, we stop suppressing what we’ve always known to be true and begin loving what is right in God’s eyes.

We don’t build truth; we awaken to it.

We don’t create morality; we’re confronted by it.

We don’t construct knowledge; we receive it.

When that happens, the whole picture of reality comes into focus—not because we made it that way, but because that’s the way it has always been.