Last Wednesday, five Supreme Court justices decided that the Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits the execution of those who rape children. Justification for the 5-4 decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana was provided by Justice Anthony Kennedy, known as the court’s most important swing vote.

Details of the heinous crime make the ruling even more incomprehensible. The victim of the rape was the 8-year-old stepdaughter of miscreant Patrick Kennedy. On March 2, 1998, police discovered the frightened girl huddled on her bed in her home between 9:20 and 9:30 a.m. Kennedy had dialed 9-1-1 at 9:18 a.m. Wearing only a T-shirt, the child was wrapped in a bloody blanket, bleeding profusely. An expert in pediatric forensic medicine testified that the child’s injuries to her genitals—so horrific as to be nauseating—were the most severe he had ever seen.

Patrick Kennedy had raped her 3½ hours earlier, at 6:00 in the morning.

The heart sinks. My eyes well. More innocence stolen. Another life ruined.

But the rapist cannot be put to death. Says who? The United States Supreme Court. Why? Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. summed it up best in his dissenting opinion (emphasis mine throughout):

The court provides two reasons for this sweeping conclusion: First, the court claims to have identified “a national consensus” that the death penalty is never acceptable for the rape of a child; second, the court concludes, based on its “independent judgment,” that imposing the death penalty for child rape is inconsistent with “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”

The heart pulsates. My blood boils. Five extraordinarily smart, wildly influential U.S. Supreme Court justices have made a landmark decision based upon “evolving standards of decency”!

According to the “independent judgment” of these five men, the evolving state of American morality is reason enough to rule against putting child rapists to death. “Evolving standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the person [the criminal], and the punishment of criminals must conform to that rule,” wrote Kennedy. It doesn’t matter that the actions of this criminal robbed, in this case raped, the victim of dignity, innocence and a mentally and sexually unscarred life.

America’s collective standards of decency have and are evolving beyond the traditional, absolute sense of morality, argues Kennedy. Americans today have progressed beyond the supposedly barbaric urge to take a man who heinously raped an 8-year-old girl and put him to death. A new sense of morality prevails! Our highly evolved morality dictates “compassion,” “tolerance,” “acceptance” and “respect,” even for unrepentant child rapists.

According to the “independent judgment” of these five justices, this “moral evolution” is the mark of societal progression and maturation. It therefore forms a justifiable foundation for forming opinions and making decisions.

What causes five smart judges to make a decision—affecting millions of people and setting precedent for American law—that goes against every physical, mental, moral and spiritual sense of what is right? What driving human quality is potent enough to spawn such an incredible decision? The answer: supreme, unmitigated, intoxicating self-righteousness.

Kennedy and his peers were driven by a belief that self is right, that self knows better than millions of people, that self knows better than every code of morality and decency, and, most importantly, that self knows better than God!

The result: No matter how young the child, no matter how many times the boy or girl is raped, no matter how many children the pervert rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much the physical hemorrhaging or psychological trauma destroys lives, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s criminal record may be—no child rapist will be put to death.

The mind boggles. Where to begin.

First, when it comes to child rape, I’m unconvinced that most Americans are so morally “advanced” that their consensus dictates that a convicted perpetrator should never be put to death. In fact, before Patrick Kennedy’s case went to federal court, he had been handed the death sentence by a Louisiana district court, an appeals court, and the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Second, and most importantly, I agree that America’s standards of decency are evolving, though devolving is the more appropriate word. But isn’t the evolving state of American morality a sure sign that it ought not be used as the foundation on which opinions are reached and decisions made?

It’s impossible to form accurate opinions and make correct, absolute decisions using evolutionary evidence! But that’s exactly what the majority of judges did in Kennedy vs. Louisiana.

And, as columnist Ben Shapiro noted recently, it wasn’t the first time “evolving” evidence has underpinned a major Supreme Court decision: “It is interesting to note that evolving standards of decency have now justified, according to the Supreme Court, approval of homosexuality, the outlaw of the death penalty for certain classes of murderers, and the right to abortion.”

For anyone to perceive America’s drift into moral lassitude as a mark of national progression and maturity is lunacy. Such thinking blazes the path for the justification of every vile impulse of human nature!

Decisions, opinions and laws based on evolving evidence face perpetual risk of being changed or trounced. Effective decision-making, on the other hand—be it on an individual, family or national level—is based as much as possible on absolutes: absolute facts, absolute evidence, absolute laws and absolute morality.

Making decisions based on vagaries, fleeting emotions and evolving evidence is a trademark of ignorant, misguided minds. Yet these five justices are intellectual giants sitting in stately black robes in America’s highest, most influential judicial body!

Equal justice under the law: That’s the motto of the U.S. Supreme Court, etched in stone above the entrance of the grand building in the nation’s capital. No one explains this motto better than the Supreme Court itself: “As the final arbiter of the law, the court is charged with ensuring the American people the promise of equal justice under law and thereby, also functions as guardian and interpreter of the Constitution.”

The fundamental purpose of the Supreme Court is to uphold the Constitution of the United States, a revolutionary legal charter created by men who valued religion, law and morality. The strength of the Constitution originates in its mooring to absolute laws and absolute morals.

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization,” said James Madison, “not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future … upon the capacity of each and every one of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves,according to the Ten Commandments of God.” The American Constitution was not only founded on absolute laws and morals, it was created for a people that highly valued absolute law and absolute morality!

Today, barely a wisp of the “private morality” that our ancestors possessed and valued exists in America. Carnal vices once considered indecent at least, heinous at worst—pornography, adultery, divorce, homosexuality—are now accepted and considered normal. Law is passé, morality is evolving.

According to Justice Kennedy, these evolving standards absolve the Supreme Court from upholding the American Constitution.

He’s wrong!

America’s grimy trek into immorality and lawlessness ought to infuse every honorable judge in America with a newfound urgency to uphold and protect the Constitution—and that means basing decisions on absolute laws and morals.

But to perceive America’s seismic shifts toward immorality, moral relativity and lawlessness as a mark of progression—and then form opinions and make key decisions based on that premise—is the height of human arrogance!

It is also one of mankind’s oldest flaws.

Nearly 6,000 years ago, mother Eve rejected absolute instruction and relied on private interpretation and evolving evidence when she made the fateful decision to eat the forbidden fruit. Study this history for yourself in Genesis 2 and 3. After creating Adam, God gave him specific and absolute instructions not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17). God specifically warned that eating from the wrong tree would result in death. Eve received the instruction too.

After manifesting himself as a snake, the devil convinced Eve that the absolute instruction from God was wrong. Then he presented her with new, evolving information about the tree of death. Instead of relying on absolute knowledge provided by her Creator, Eve allowed the new knowledge provided by the devil to inform her decision to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam then decided he too would eat from the tree of death. That decision sealed their fate, as well as the fate of human civilization! (To learn more, requestMystery of the Ages.)

Adam and Eve relied on human intellect and their own capacity to gain knowledge and determine right from wrong. As a result, they, and mankind after them, were cut off from the tree of life. Their rejection of revelation and trust in themselves became the foundational pattern of knowledge acquirement and decision-making for mankind!

At the same time, Adam and Eve proved unequivocally something that few men have ever known: that human beings cannot tell right from wrong by themselves! We need God to define it and reveal it to us!

Essentially, the Supreme Court employed the same form of reasoning as mother Eve.

Why does mankind have this inherent capacity to reject divine knowledge and absolute law? The answer is simple. Because to embrace absolute law and absolute morality, human beings would have to recognize that there is an absolute Lawgiver!

Until mankind finally learns to submit to this Lawgiver and Judge, judicial debauchery like Kennedy v. Louisiana will persist.