True to atheist style, you break every rule in the book. No full name provided here, as my rules stipulate. And a regular contributor to unbelief.com, making you hardly a casual inquirer, but an atheist on a mission, pushing a loaded agenda. And then more rhetoric and accusation instead of reasoned argument and evidence.

Throwing out seeping statements about something happening in the Middle Ages means what exactly?

As with Antony Flew, whom you now undoubtedly despise and consider an apostate, the question of God comes not as a prior commitment, but as a result of examining the evidence. Flew was an honest atheist, willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads. But most atheists have their minds already made up, and no amount of evidence will convince them otherwise.

And my question about Hitler, was just that, an honest question, which neither of you are evidently able or capable of answering. All so typical of the militant atheists.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

It would be great to think these atheists (and theists, for that matter, indeed all of us) would follow your lead and stick to good logic and sound reasoning, but alas, so many seem so unable to see the fallacies and illogicalities of their presuppositions.

I have been reminded very clearly and forcefully this last week of my own “heart’s” ability to deny the truth of a thing, and the need for courage to confront the truth of our lives without fear. Sometimes this means admitting that some of the most important presuppositions and values are, indeed, not based in sound reasoning and “resonableness” but on fallacy, lies, superstition, and whatever it is we have convinced ourselves makes us feel safe, comfortable and justified in our ongoing “sin”.

It takes courage, in other words, to confront the “lies” behind our own worldview and value system, but it is a courage we must pursue. I, for one, do not want to be a person who, with “unexamined” heart and mind, lives a life of perpetual internal and relational “torment”, all because I have been unable to find the courage to pursue truth, root out lies and make painful changes.

Thank you, then, for being there to constantly press home with wonderful clarity and grace, the issues of truth and beauty. And it is my testimony, that as the truth has been revealed to me, I have seen its stunning beauty, because the truth is a person with a name: the Lord Jesus Christ.

Alister Cameron, Melbourne

You’re absolutely right Bill, though there seems to be a blind spot in your knowledge of history. I seem to recall the murder, rape and plundering sometime in the dark-middle ages that were not only done in the name of your god, but were sanctioned by the Church.

On the other hand, one cannot assert that any of the figures you mentioned did any of the things they did because they were Atheists or secularists (which Hitler was arguably neither). Unless of course you want to argue from the a priori assumption that God indeed exists and claim that they had no moral compass due to godlessness. But then that would fly in the face of your other assertion that we are all made in the image of God and hence have innate moral compasses.

Since you love pontificating about logical fallacies, I am sure you haven’t missed asking Sammy what right she has to criticise Hitler under her moral system, which is a nice fat double-whammy of an appeal to pity and a loaded question.

M Mayes

As I mention in my blogging rules, those with their own websites are free to push their agendas there. Yet since your comment is a good example of the illogic and fuzzy thinking that is so often found among atheists these days, I will allow it to go through.

Indeed, your basic lapses in elementary logical thinking are quite alarming. The fact that there may be disagreements among people on certain moral questions does not of course logically entail that there are no moral absolutes. One might as well attempt to argue that since throughout history people have differed on a whole range of scientific issues and questions, there must be no objective scientific truths.

And your picture of morality is a classic case of the logical fallacy known as the false dilemma. Plato of course presented this scenario 2,400 years ago. It is called the Euthyphro Dilemma. Euthyphro argued that what is right is either: a) based merely on God’s decree, making morality arbitrary; or b) something which God himself appeals to, making morality something external to him and something he is subservient to. But the Biblical position had always rejected these two options, and posited a third, namely that morality is based on the very nature and character of God. Falsehood is wrong because God is always truthful. Hatred is wrong because God is always loving. God’s very character is the basis of morality.

And there are plenty of people who evidently can’t determine that rape, murder and theft are wrong. Consider especially atheists such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao, who committed many these crimes and then some on a mass scale. They felt what they were doing was fully justifiable and right, and they did so in the name of godless secularism.

And quite oddly, you begin by bewailing the fact that people disagree strongly on morality (you of course do this to push your claim of moral relativism), but then here you try to argue that everyone agrees on some core moral principles. Which is it Sammy? Is morality objective and universal, or is it simply cultural and relative? If the latter, then that is exactly what you would expect to see coming from Hitler, et. al. They were doing what they thought was right. For example Hitler was quite convinced of the rightness of his cause, and most Germans agreed. If morality is all culturally relative, what right do you have to criticise Hitler? Unless there is a transcendent universal morality that is beyond mere cultural or personal whim, we have no basis to judge or compare moralities. We are just stuck with competing ethical claims, and that is the end of it.

Once again, my worldview has no problem at all with condemning murder, rape and so on, because there exist objective moral laws, which in turn exist because there is an objective moral law giver. Your worldview cannot coherently argue for any moral position. As already noted, Dawkins is at least consistent here when he admits that in a naturalistic worldview, “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”.

Plenty of other atheists are also consistent here. As E. O. Wilson can confess (because of his materialist worldview), ethics “is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate”. Would that you were as logically consistent here as some of your fellow atheists.

I am afraid the old clichés of atheism are starting to wear a bit thin. They were logically fallacious and intellectual dubious when first uttered, and they still are.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Bill, throwing around terms like ‘goo-to-you’ or asserting that atheists claim we are all ‘just rearranged pond scum’ will not change our minds about evolution. You may not like it, but the fact remains that humans (like all organisms in the animal kingdom) are the descendants of simpler organisms. Your crass descriptions of evolution will not embarrass us into accepting the preposterous idea that humans were beamed down to earth in their current state a few thousand years ago.

You have a conscience because there exists universal objective morality. And that comes from an objective moral law giver. Being made in God’s image, you have that sense of right and wrong, that moral conscience.

What is this “universal objective morality”? Can you define it? The truth of the matter is that religious people disagree, sometimes vehemently, over what is moral or immoral, so their holy texts offer us little in deciding right and wrong. If this god of yours made a set of moral laws the first thing you should ask yourself is “Why did this god deign action X to be moral?” Either your god decided X is moral for a reason, in which case why not cut out the middle man and appeal to reason directly, or your god declared X to be moral on an arbitrary whim. In this case you should ask “Why should I adhere to this law if there is no reasoning behind it?”

Whether you like it or not, people engage in secular moral reasoning every day. We don’t need to check with some guy in the sky about what’s right and what’s wrong, we’re perfectly capable of working this out amongst ourselves. If one can’t determine that murder, rape and theft are wrong unless ‘God says so’ it’s a cause for great concern.

Sammy Jankis, London

Marius says
“Totally incorrect, Mark. I have a conscience like yourself and I could never justify to myself an act of murder. I would have to live with it for the rest of my life. Besides even Christians have murdered and justified it by saying “God told me to do it” ”

Hi Marius, I will respectfully have to disagree with you about that. I’m not charging you with moral ambivalence to murder, just a lack of consistency. I contend that if you want to be consistent with an atheistic worldview, of course you can justify killing easily, since its logical conclusion is the total meaninglessness of our existence. Murder matters donut.

It seems to me that you effectively want to have a foot in both camps but you don’t want to admit it. Of course like most members of our society you want to condemn killing as wrong, but you have to borrow from the Judeo-Christian ethic in order to do it. Your atheism doesn’t help you – in truth it says, do whatever you feel like, it doesn’t really matter. And as Bill pointed out, highlighting the existence of your conscience doesn’t make sense either given your worldview. Given random and selfish chemical origins, a conscience is a conundrum, not a logical outcome. For example, selfish chemicals will never say “I would have to live with it for the rest of my life.” They shouldn’t care one way or the other! They are selfish! So why are you saying that?

And as far as Christians justifying murder, I answered that in my previous post.

Mark Rabich

I appreciate your comments. Let me address a few points you raise. You say you were raised in a society which has a framework of right and wrong, and therefore God is not required. But I ask you to consider just how is it that the society you live in has developed a sense of right and wrong in the first place.

Assuming you live in the West, I would argue it is exactly because God exists, that your society has a moral climate. That is, the West is directly a product of the Judeo-Christian worldview. The West is good (to an extent) because of its Christian heritage. Morality did not just arise out of nowhere.

And no, you are not an evil person because of your atheism. The truth is, we are all evil because of our sin and selfishness. That is why God became man to set us free from sin and evil, and help us to become like him. We are all sinners, but some admit their sin and seek help from without. Others deny their sinfulness and refuse offers of help.

And you say you have a conscience. I again ask you Marius, where did this conscience come from? As an atheist you presumably accept the goo-to-you evolutionary paradigm. I fail to see how personal, objective morality can arise out of nothing but a collection of selfish genes, as Dawkins describes it. Indeed, he is at least an honest atheist here, given his naturalistic presuppositions. He admits that there is no such thing as morality. There can’t be, in a merely materialistic world.

As he says in River out of Eden, “if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies… are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in 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.”

As a theist and a Christian, I can fully understand your remarks about conscience – they are fully explicable in terms of my worldview, but not yours. You do have a conscience, a sense of right and wrong. That is because you are an image bearer of a moral God.

You have a conscience because there exists universal objective morality. And that comes from an objective moral law giver. Being made in God’s image, you have that sense of right and wrong, that moral conscience. The problem is, since sin entered the world, all of our consciences have been dulled and blunted.

It’s like all of us losing the ability to see colour: we can still see, but seeing only in black and white really distorts reality and limits our perception. In the same way, sin has clouded and distorted our perceptions of everything: of right and wrong, of truth, of reality, of God. Thus we need help from outside of ourselves to make things right. And that is the Biblical story. God has entered the human race in the person of Jesus Christ to show us the way out of our (colour) blindness.

It is up to us what we do with that offer of a fully restored sight. We can remain in our limited world, or we can become all we were intended to be by our creator.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch