The Monotheistic traditions maintain that the Moral law is given: the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and the prescriptions of the Quran and Torah. If the moral law is given we can infer the existence of a lawgiver. This concept has given rise to the Moral Argument for the Existence of God. Its logic is similar to that of the divine clockmaker; through the evidence of design we can infer a designer, similarly through the evidence of moral laws and the moral sense, we can infer the existence of a moral lawgiver.

More specifically, through the evidence of man’s altruism, sense of duty, sense of guilt, we can infer the existence of something to which we feel accountable.

Cardinal John Henry Newman proposed this when he spoke of the role that the Conscience plays in the process of ethical decision-making:

“If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear….If the cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the Object to which (the conscientious person’s) perception is directed must be Supernatural and Divine.”