This is, experience shows, one swell way to get comments. Just put “atheism” in the title. Someone will be trolling for the word/tag and fire off a comment pronto telling me what a fundamentalist whacko I am. Hmm.
The Triablogue posted concerning an article in the Times of London that was written by an atheist concerning the debacle that the Roman Polanski affair has become (they also posted on Polanski last week [explicit court testimony within] and hit the nail on the head there, as well). We will 
leave the Triablogue’s take on Hell speak for itself and instead address the comments by the atheist.
The article, which is well worth reading, addresses issues of “justice,” “crimes against humanity,” “guilt” and the like. It is interesting to read the level of indignation the author has against those who would commit such “crimes.” One question that arises immediately is “Upon what basis is an action deemed to be ‘criminal?’” Do we vote on it? Do we count scholarly noses? Do we act upon what our gut tells us? The author mentions “crimes” such as “Rape, murder, child abuse, genocide and crimes against humanity.” In a truly consistent atheistic worldview, upon what standards are these made “criminal?” Can an atheist declare these to be universally “wrong?” Is there any basis for the atheist to make a “moral judgment?” If we are all just cosmic accidents of nature, what difference does it make?
The author cites “crimes’ committed by the Nazis during WWII as “atrocities.” What, in the atheist’s world, makes these acts “atrocious?” To the Nazis – in their worldview, a decidedly non-theistic one, to be sure – their actions were nothing more than consistent with their inward motivations and desires. How can one atheist tell another atheist that what he or she does is “wrong” or “criminal” or “atrocious?” What makes pedophilia or pederasty or any particular sexual act “deviant” or “criminal” in an atheistic world? Murder? Theft? We could go on ad infinitum. Has every society always deemed these actions “criminal?” No. We can look at Rome and Greece in the past for how they thought of these sexual acts and numerous societies that have seen nothing wrong with murder and so on.
Our atheist friend should indeed be indignant at Mr. Polanski’s actions. Romans 2 says that the works of the law (what the law requires) are written on men’s hearts and Scripture says our conscience testifies to ourselves that we know the difference between right and wrong. There is a standard that is universal and is timeless and applies to all of mankind – it’s the law of God and even though Mr. Grayling has suppressed that truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1), it applies to him, to Mr. Polanski and to you and me. If only Mr. Grayling were to come to a realization that the law of God does give us the means to be indignant about the things he describes as “atrocious” and “crimes against humanity.” If he were to do so and do so in bowing the knee to the living God, he would see the loveliness and beauty of God’s truth and the goodness of God and how He is truly just and righteous. We can only pray someone communicates that truth to him in love.
Let’s say I grant you that the atheist worldview cannot account for absolute objective morality. There is no solid ground for me to say rape, murder, stealing are bad.
What makes God a better explanation? The God of the bible does some terrible things and commands other people to do terrible things. So you need a morality that is separate from the bible in order to overlook such things.
In order for you to cherry pick the verses that make you feel all warm and cuddly you need to be able to dismiss the ones you think are bad. Where does this morality separate from God and the bible come from?
In the end the “you can’t explain it therefore God did it” argument does not solve anything.
Thanks for the comment.
Before I respond, I have to ask you this – upon what basis, in your worldview, is what God does in certain places in the Bible “terrible?” Do you have some grounds for saying that what God does is “terrible” other than your own personal sense of outrage or what a particular society or group of people has decided is “terrible?” If you say it’s your own conscience, for instance, you are borrowing from the Scripture itself and its teachings on the testimony of conscience, but if the Scripture is not true, as I again have to assume you believe, you need some other foundation that transcends me and you for your outrage for God’s actions to be defined as “terrible.” In addition, we should probably start by defining “terrible,” right?
Without knowing for sure, I would assume you are referring to passages in the Bible such as God’s command to wipe out the Amalekites – men, women and children. Perhaps the Passover with the killing of firstborns. Or the fallout from David’s census where 70,000 people were killed? Or perhaps His decree of sinful acts of wicked men such as those in Isaiah 10 or even the crucifixion of Christ?
God is perfectly within His “rights” as Creator to decree these events because of His dominion over Creation. He does these things without violating His perfect holiness, justice, righteousness and goodness. We as mere creatures have no “right” to challenge God on these issues, being those whom He created (see Romans 9) – we are not allowed to blaspheme Him by saying “That’s not fair!”
Thanks again.
Special pleading. It’s all that is.
OK. Just trying to find out where your starting point is. I’ve told you mine – the Bible being the Word of God. You have one as well. Thanks.
It’s not about “starting points”. A bad answer is not better than no answer.
The reason why morality does not come from the bible is because when you read through it you are consciously aware of the things that don’t look too good (massacres, genocide, slavery etc.)
Even by acknowledging that these things might seem objectionable to other people indicates that there is a morality outside of God. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have noticed those things in the bible as any bit objectionable.
Genocide would be the same as God telling you to love your neighbour. But, the fact is that you feel uneasy when you read about those things. It’s not immediately, “God did it so it must be righteous”.
We all look through our innate morality (apart from God) when reading the bible.
What if your “innate morality” is different from mine? Let’s say I’m a person of hair color “A” and my “innate morality” says anyone of a particular ethnicity, such as hair color “B” does not deserve to live because they are ugly (or some other reason) and their ugliness offends me and I can’t stand it and I fell the earth should be eradicated of all with hair color “B.” Who is to say that my “innate morality” is troubling in any way if it’s truly “innate?”
We can look at men throughout history deciding other men don’t deserve to live – the Hitlers and the like. Hitler’s “innate morality” – a morality apart from God – dictated that he do what he did, right? If our morality exists apart from a transcendent, eternal, timeless standard, then who is to say your “innate morality” is wrong, where my own is then right?
The massacres, genocides, slavery (forced, unwilling – not the voluntary sort described in the Bible) deny man’s inherent equality – a quality that is established by God’s creating man in His own image – that quality then does not give any of us the “right” to say a particular person/group does not deserve to live based upon any inherent characteristics of man such as race or gender.
We all see certain things as “objectionable” (from our human perspective) because we all do indeed have an innate morality – a morality given to us by God in our creation and that standard is what bothers us when we see injustice.
If our morality is innate – apart from God – how do we decide which inner morality is objectionable – yours, mine or Hitler’s?
Thanks again.
That’s it. I’m not saying one person’s morality can be said to be absolutely wrong compared to anybody else’s. That’s not the point. That is just an argument from consequence.
The point is you can’t say that God is the sole seat of morality, and then acknowledge another morality separate from God.
Also you still haven’t addressed how we can criticize the bible without having a moral point of view separate from the bible to criticize it.
Perhaps you didn’t say that “one person’s morality can be said to be absolutely wrong compared to anybody else’s,” but
could
you say that? Or could you say that one person’s morality may be
relatively
wrong compared to anyone else’s? If you could say either, how? If not, then nothing is wrong, is it?
There is indeed, no morality separate from God. When we are “offended” by something we read, say, the slaughter of the Amalekites, we are only offended because we have not submitted to the Bible as the Word of God. Yes, even many Christians don’t do that.
Many “Christians” do indeed criticize the Bible based upon anointing themselves with authority they do not have – see the Roman Catholic Church sitting in judgment as to the Scriptures and their placing the institutional church on the same level with the inscripturated Word of God. The Scriptures are self-authenticating and we as mere men have no place in sitting in judgment upon them. Man can criticize the Bible – and many do, within and outside of the church – but that is done so only by committing blasphemy.
With a more real example, please allow me to speak of my encounters with certain prisoners. For example, the man who sexually molested his one-month old son and beat him savagely, then the child died a year and half later. At the time of his “crime” (better defined as ‘sin’), he had no problem, given his own inner morality, in seeing that what he was doing was not “wrong.” Later, upon a work of God, he did see it. There is no guarantee, though, that any man would ever necessarily come to see his own actions as being “wrong.” Now, we may say that “Only a sociopath or a psychopath would never see anything wrong with murdering a child or raping a baby.” One could say that, and the problem is that we then are letting the perpetrator “off the hook” by attributing his actions to “mental illness.” The statement arises in discussion that “No one in his/her right mind would do such-and-such.” Some say that no one in his right mind would rape a baby. If so, then baby raping is nothing more than guilty by reason of insanity and we could not hold the perpetrator accountable – if we remove a transcendent moral foundation upon which our laws are based. The rapist’s inner morality sees nothing wrong with rape. He may say so, but his actions ultimately dictate otherwise. If he took his own inner morality – as you seem to define it – seriously, he wouldn’t rape. I have made many friends in prisons over the years – men who do not acknowledge their sins and are very much at home their own inner morality – an inner morality that is wicked, but only if we can define “wicked” – a definition that existed before you or I existed.
If you are typing a response to me to tell me I am wrong (and doing so, say in the hockey rink waiting for the game to start – you are Canadian, right? Just don’t say you’re a Toronto fan….) and someone walks up, bashes you in the head and swipes your Netbook because their own inner morality says, “Nice computer. I want it,” and walks away with a) your computer and b) you sprawled on the ground, bleeding and unconscious, what makes your assailant’s actions “theft?” He is doing nothing more than what his inner morality REQUIRES him to do and none of us can do anything other than that which our nature requires us to do. That is why we need a new nature – not one based upon my own desire to be autonomous, but a nature based upon universal, timeless, transcendent truth.
I note from your profile you find problems with Christianity’s influence on Western society. One would be careful in then implying that we’d all be better off in a Godless society. The quote falsely attributed to Dostoevsky, “If there is no God, anything is permissible,” may indeed by apocryphal, but I wish he would have said it, because it is true. The Scripture, in Judges, says, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (ch. 21, v. 25). I think one would find, in a truly consistent non-theistic society, that freedom does not exist and that liberty is only imagined.
Thanks again.
I’m not saying that this innate morality makes a person always good. People are not always good. But, this innate morality can give them feelings that something is bad as my reading about terrible things example illustrates.
The Christian way of thinking about morality is that it only comes from god. Only good morality can come from God.
Once you acknowledge that there is an innate morality separate from God that is capable of even a little good you have just contradicted yourself.
Again, from my reading about terrible things example. When you read about genocide, slavery, sexism and you have a bad feeling from your innate morality, this demonstrates that there is some goodness apart from God’s bible sort of morality. If you read about those things and you thought it was all fine and dandy, then there would be something wrong with you.
Furthermore, I think it is just silly to say that God is a perfect influence and atheists are capable of anything. People who think they have absolute knowledge about anything are capable of anything. It’s not the other way around. Crusaders, terrorists, abortion clinic bombers believed that they were doing God’s work, under God’s commands.
Not believing in God does not motivate anybody to do anything. Instead it makes people realize that their one life on earth is valuable. And this belief is extrapolated to other human lives. It is much harder to kill someone thinking that you’ve ended their one life in contrast to if you think they have an infinite life in heaven.
I’m still wondering where I said there’s an innate morality separate from God….God is the only source of morality – He sets the standard and gives us a conscince that is subject to His morality.
I’m still, personally, wondering how you define “genocide” and the other actions as “bad.”
There is no person with perfect knowledge – theist or non-theist. Only God has perfect knowledge. Crusaders, terrorists and abortion clinic bombers are not being obedient to God’s law when they commit their actions. God is the ultimate source behind all these actions, yes, but He means them for good. Contradiction? No. Mystery? Yes. Those people are not acting under God’s preceptive commands – they have chosen to try to decipher God’s secret decrees, which none us has the right to do.
The ability to assign meaning to my life is not a right you or I have – the atheistic view assigns meaning to not only the atheist’s life, but to all others. The atheist is perfectly within his moral framework in deciding a Serb doesn’t deserve to live just because he’s a Serb. You may feel that statement is “wrong,” (without basis, of course) but another atheist may disagree with you and there is nothing to show he is ‘wrong,’ either. An atheist can kill another without fear of “wrong” because he believes there is no eternal consequence for the killing, so if he kills, so what? Maybe it bothers him while on earth, maybe not.
Allow me to quote a young atheist I’m corresponding with: “One should be able to live as he/she pleases without having to fear a rulebook. Obviously i’m not referring to laws in society, as those are in place for obvious reasons. But trying to define morals is trying to define the undefinable. It just doesn’t make sense. Morals or “reality” are a personal foundation on which you chose to live, not a foundation that someone sets for you…” He’s correct in the sense that the atheistic view says we should be able to define how we live without any influence other than ourselves. He also, though, doesn’t grasp that any laws for society are based upon morals and someone has to define those because any society’s laws (or lack thereof) are based upon the moral foundation of those making the laws.