Ghost in the Machine

Sobbing, shaking and knowing death was imminent, [Nancy Reagan] held her husband's hand about 1 p.m. Saturday as he inhaled deeply and opened his eyes for the first time in five days.

While most thought Alzheimer's disease had robbed former President Reagan of all his memory, the last look he gave his wife was one of deep acknowledgment, [his daughter Patty Davis] writes for People magazine.

"At the last moment when his breathing told us this was it, he opened his eyes and looked straight at my mother. Eyes that had not opened for days did, and they weren't chalky or vague," Davis recalls. "They were clear and blue and full of life. If a death can be lovely, his was."

Davis and her brother Ron were standing next to their father's bed when the astonishing interchange between their parents took place.

(Source. Other sources.)

After Ronald Reagan's death I watched a television interview where Ron Jr. recounted this story himself. He was very emotional as he spoke, and it was clear that he believed that something profound had transpired. His father had apparently burst forth through a broken body to bid farewell to his beloved wife. This kind of story is not unique in my experience, but what makes it interesting is whom it is that is telling it here and how it fits into his overall view of human nature.

Ron Reagan Jr. is a self-described atheist. Consistent with, and common to, atheism is the philosophy of materialism. Materialism is the idea that all things that exist can be explained in purely material terms, and there are no entities such as gods, angels, or human souls which exist beyond the boundaries of the physical universe. This means that the "mind" is simply an emergent property of the physical brain — without a brain, there is no mind. It also implies that a malfunctioning brain will yield a malfunctioning mind. Given a materialistic outlook, how does an atheist like Ron Reagan process his father's last moments of life?

Alzheimer's is a degenerative disease, which affects the brain cells and the connections between them. A brain at the fatal end of this illness is a devastated organ from which an identifiable "mind" should not hope to emerge. In the case of Ronald Reagan, he had not even opened his eyes in days, and had not been alert for years before this. From where, then, does a clear-eyed Reagan suddenly surface?

At the very moment when his body was so far gone as to yield to death, Ronald Reagan became animated — himself again. If a body is broken, why does it not naturally and successively proceed from almost dead to actually dead? If we flatten the tires on a car, drain its oil, and pull half it spark plugs, do we expect it to have one last burst of blazing performance before it finally sputters and dies?

Perhaps it is like the runner, who after exhausting all resources at the end of the race finds in himself one final burst of speed for the finish line. But this is not an accurate analogy, because the racer does indeed have something left to give. He is simply very low on carbohydrates and is inhibited by the pain of lactic acid buildup in his muscles, which makes him pace himself to the end. In that last burst, he is drawing on the remainder of his resources but could not hope to continue long in this. To be an accurate analogy, we would first have to sever some tendons and break some bones. No matter how brave or determined one is he cannot get far or fast on broken legs.

The other problem with this analogy is that a runner can will to briefly overcome his fatigue. But here we are speaking about the very thing from which something like a will is supposed to originate: the brain. In the materialist paradigm there could be no Ronald "in there" to triumph over his failing brain — a brain so destroyed that it could no longer even support life itself.

So what happened that night: one final power surge resulting in the shutdown of a fragile system, or a man rising from his broken body to say farewell before passing on? Ron Reagan Jr's heart is urging the latter. But how can he maintain this as an atheist? As most atheists I'm sure that he thinks of himself as an eminently rational creature. But to be consistent, I think he must either give up his materialism or give up his sentimental notion that something extraordinary happened that Saturday afternoon.

Sifting Worldviews

I was once engaged in dialog with a thoroughly postmodern fellow who was insistent on the idea that we could not know objective truth, even if it existed. After arguing the case that it was not a hopeless cause, and that, in reality, his entire life depended upon the assumption of its existence, he finally asked me how one could achieve any sort of confidence regarding worldviews and religious truth claims. Here are 7 basic points that I offered for his consideration.

1) Truth sides with the preponderance of facts. The more clear and indisputable the fact the more heavily it may weigh in our consideration. For example, if all discovered ancient manuscripts fundamentally agree with the Bible we have today, then it is more reasonable to believe that Scripture has been faithfully preserved than that (as some skeptics claim) it has been corrupted by countless copies, translations, and tamperings of the church.

2) Truth must be rational. Truth claims must be internally consistent and non-contradictory. Consistency does not establish truth, but its deficiency surely negates it. It may be fashionable to question the law of non-contradiction these days, but even the most anti-rational eastern mystic looks both ways before he crosses the street; for he knows that it is either him or the bus, but not both.

3) At least some aspect of the truth claim must be verifiable. It may not spring forth ex nihilo from the mind of man with no association to concrete reality. Since many claims of truth are falsifiable we may use negation as a tool to lead us to truth via a back door process of elimination. For example, the book of Mormon claims that the American Indians are the descendants of Israel, and if it can be demonstrated that they are actually of northeastern Asian descent, then the credibility of this book is impugned. (Note: this seems to have been done via DNA analysis.)

4) We may derive truth or truth indicators via credible authority. Credibility manifests itself through subject matter expertise, record of accomplishment, and character. For example, if a religion's founder were found to indulge in immoral¹ pursuits or made counter-factual claims, then it would be reasonable to suspect the religion itself.

5) Truth works. We must be able to use it effectively, build upon it, or live it out. If we must reach outside of a truth system for practical reasons, then it must be considered false or inadequate. For example, if the moral relativist is compelled to moralize then he has surrendered his position.

6) Truth is justified by its explanatory scope. The explanation that accounts for the greatest number of facts and observations is the most likely to be true. For example, with each new epicycle added, the Ptolemaic model of the universe decreased in credibility.

7) Truth has predictive power. A true proposition will not only have present corroborative evidences, but will successfully identify what may be found in its support in the future. For example, the Big Bang theory of cosmology is so compelling exactly because its many predictions have been proved out one by one, while the theory of evolution should be held in suspicion for quite opposite reasons.

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End notes:

1. I know it may be begging the question to call the founder immoral unless we take into account the standard by which he presumes us to judge morality.

Adventures in Missing the Point

I enjoy watching debates and listening to opposing parties mix it up on news programs. Unfortunately, it can be quite frustrating to watch sometimes, especially if the guy on my side of the issue doesn't think of that perfect response that would be raised "if I were him." The most aggravating thing is when my man allows himself to get bogged down in an argument raised against him (or her), but doesn't even notice that it is entirely beside the main point of the discussion or that it is based upon a flawed assumption. This is such a common thing in the world of debate and advocacy that examples abound. Perhaps discussing a few might give the reader a better sense of what I mean in addition to becoming better equipped to spot this polemical pothole in the future.

Anti-War Rhetoric

Without getting into the politics of whether or not I support the military presence in Iraq, let me just mention a common tactic I see in defense of the idea that we should pull our troops out. Images, stories, and statistics of the dead and injured are regularly employed to show us the horror of this thing. How awful; why would we do something that would cause such misery for ourselves and the civilians of another country? Worse, the occasional moral atrocities of our own people are indiscriminately publicized, as if to suggest that this is what we are all about and what such an occupation amounts to.
But this is not really an argument against this war. If casualties and regrettable abuses were a valid defeater for the idea of going to war, then we should not have joined battle against Nazi Germany, where such things happened in vastly greater numbers. Yet few are so shortsighted as to suggest that the losses were not justified in that conflict. The point is not to lament over the terrible effects of military action; the point is whether or not we should engage in this particular offensive. All outrage over the victims simply assumes that we should not and misses the real point of focus for the discussion.

Pro-Choice Tactics

"Every child should be a wanted child." "It's a private decision between me and my doctor." "It's a matter of conscience between me and my God." "Stop oppressing women." "Don't like abortion, then don't have one."

These are the kinds of statements that are often tossed out by "pro-choice" advocates. Some allow themselves to get caught up in a discussion provoked by such bumper sticker defenses, but they are really nothing so much as chaff from a fighter jet to distract from the real target. The primary point in this debate is whether or not the unborn is a valuable human person who should not be killed over matters of choice and convenience.

One of the ways to drive the point home is to substitute a toddler in place of the fetus. For example, we could revise and expand some of the statements as follows. "Every child should be a wanted child, so I should be free to dispose of my unwanted toddlers." Or, "Don't like killing toddlers, then don't kill yours." Or how about, "It's a private matter between me, my doctor, and my God. If we're okay with killing my toddler, then who are you to get involved?"

If this kind of thinking evokes horror in the mind of the "choice" advocate, then it is clear that he or she does not believe that the unborn is a human person. If the fetus is, then none of these kinds of slogans are justification for murder. But if the fetus is not a valuable human person, then no justification is necessary. The point of focus in this issue, then, is the nature of the unborn.

Gay Advocacy

The topic of same-sex marriage came up on a radio show the other day, and by way of support for it the host shared this observation: "I never even thought about it till my two friends got married. And then I thought, 'Wow, they seem so happy together. I should stay out of the way there.'"

The problem is that there are plenty of things that make people happy of which even most liberal thinkers disapprove. If you haven't already thought of some yourself, here are a few examples I could offer: smoking, alcohol abuse, drug use, dog fighting, pedophilia, rape, and (for our green friends) driving a gas guzzling SUV. The mere fact that someone might like to do these things does not in itself justify them. Support for the behavior must stand upon other grounds.

This roundabout defense is one in a series that includes appeals to consent, human rights, and genetics. But if a behavior turns out to be unacceptable, then no amount of consent is relevant, there are no rights to it, and even genetic predisposition does not apply. Simply replace same-sex relations with pedophilia to see the failure of each of these ploys. It doesn't matter how much happiness, consent, and biological predisposition is involved, it still won't fly (at least not at the time of this writing). There is something deeper at issue that is the point of concern with things like pedophilia and same-sex marriage that washes out the mere subjective defenses.

Christian Skepticism

This summer I had a conversation with a family friend who fancies himself a well-informed atheist. His objections were all of a kind, which included complaints about the crusades, questioning Constantine's motives, and psychoanalyzing believers. While these are all interesting topics that can be exhaustively explored they really miss the important point of whether or not the God of the Bible is real. Constantine could be a scoundrel, Christians could behave miserably in war, and people could be spiritually needy, yet the biblical authors could still have recorded actual events.

And somewhat related, I recently listened to a radio show caller ask the host how to handle a friend of his who refused to recognize his definition of the word "faith." It seems the Christian wanted to define it as trust in what you have good reason to believe, while his skeptical friend wanted to define it as belief in what you have no evidence for. Unfortunately, their bickering over definitions only reflected the really important point of difference between them. The problem is that the skeptic does not believe that there really is any good evidence for Christianity, and so faith must necessarily be blind. Even if this fellow could accept the Christian understanding of faith, for the sake of argument, the conversation would only be stuck on the "good reason to believe" part of the definition.

Intelligent Design Debate

I'm currently listening through an audio book on Intelligent Design (ID), which features various scholars on both sides of the debate. As one of the introductory questions, the host asked each evolution supporter what he thought about Intelligent Design. The answers were remarkable in their consistency, and included such comments as the following: Evolution is well established and silly to argue with. ID is just creationism with a pseudo-scientific façade. ID is not science. ID rejects natural explanations. ID is a religious movement.

But whether or not these charges are accurate is not really the point. So what if it were true that every ID advocate is a fundamentalist Christian? So what if ID ran afoul of the current definition of "science?" The really important question is, Are certain things in the biological world the product of Intelligent Design?

What I did not hear was any kind of substantive response to this bottom-line point, only fussing with semantics, motivations, and implications. No one responded by saying that complex protein systems do not actually resemble existing machinery of human design. No one responded that we actually know the chemical pathways to any molecular machinery. No one responded that mutational statistics have been applied to the problem of gene evolution and found to be within reasonable probabilities.

Conclusion

The point is the point. Learn to identify the crux of the matter and the hinge upon which any given issue turns. Be vigilant for the presuppositions and worldview assumptions underlying someone's arguments. And don't be diverted by non-productive and non-essential side issues. There are a million peripheral concerns to debate, but if the distractions are winnowed you may just be surprised at the fundamental simplicity of many issues. It may not get you any closer to agreement, but you'll at least be riding the point without swirling aimlessly in the wake of the debate.

Santa Claus Morality

"I think [heaven is] a bad concept to have because then everything you do, you want to do good things in order to get to Heaven. Then everything becomes a selfish act, and I hate that, it creates bad patterns in your mind. I like doing things not as a means to get into Heaven but for the sake of doing it themselves."
Natalie Portman, Actress, Inside the Actors Studio, Episode #11.7 (2004).

"The threat of damnation is designed to be an incentive to right action; but this is a phony morality. Humanists think we should do good for goodness' sake, not for the selfish prospect of reaping individual rewards or avoiding punishment."
Dan Barker, Atheist and Former Pastor, "For Goodness Sake", Freedom From Religion Foundation.

"I believe in goodness for goodness' sake, not because you're getting some reward in the afterlife. If you're being good for an award, then what sort of person are you anyway?"
Bill Maher, Political Satirist, "I'm spreading the anti-gospel", Chicago Sun Times (10/24/04).

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This common objection is meant to be a defeater for the concept of Christian morality, but it really does nothing so much as to demonstrate a deep intuitive knowledge about morality. Claiming that we ought to "be good for goodness' sake" assumes four very important things about the nature of morality.

Morality is Objectively Real

The first thing this claim demonstrates is the belief that good, and by extension, evil, are real things. Indeed, "good" is being held up as some ideal, perhaps even independent of God, which we should strive to pursue for its own pure ontological beauty. For this reason, a moral relativist is not well served by this objection. In his mind, morality is simply behavioral preferences and cultural conventions. Morality is not something "out there," apart from humanity and applicable to all times and places. There is, then, nothing other for the sake of which we might attempt to be good.

If there is no objectively real morality, then we can only be good for our own sakes, that is, for the sake of our own feelings about morality. We might be good for the personal benefits that are achieved by acting in certain ways, but we cannot be good for the sake of an abstract, transient concept. It is not something that we separate from ourselves and put upon a pedestal as though it had an existence apart from us, its maker. You might just as well say we should eat ice cream for the sake of The Favorite Flavor. No, we eat it for the sake of our enjoyment, whatever our favorite happens to be, assuming we even have one.

Even if "good" turns out to be a changing and subjective thing, then the very idea that we should take pains to follow it is itself an objective principle, which would in turn foil moral relativism. If morality is not a real thing with some purpose and value behind it, then what right or meaning is there in a relativist telling us we should bow to the idol of morality? And exactly whose idol should we bow to anyway?

Moral relativism makes it difficult to meaningfully speak in moral terms, but it is the legacy of those who do not allow a God that meddles in human affairs. Consequently, atheists, who employ this objection most often, are admitting far too much in even voicing it, since it requires morality to be tangible and particular to even make sense.

Morality is Personal

The second thing that this claim implies is an understanding that morality has a personal basis. We don't do things "for the sake of" inanimate objects. We do things for the sake of personal beings who we seek to honor, impress, love, protect, appease, etc. It makes sense to say that I should care about hygiene for the sake of my spouse and stay married for the sake of the kids, but it does not make sense to say that I should shower for the sake of the soap and stay married for the sake of the appliances.

To say that we should be good for the sake of goodness is to ascribe a personal nature to morality. But this cannot be done if morality is merely a human, subjective phenomenon. Yet even atheists have a deep sense that we ought to do certain things and that other things simply should not be done. But "should" and "ought" are the language of moral incumbency, which is born of law. And law implies a law giver.

The question is whether we humans are making up these laws ourselves as we go along, or whether the laws have been written for us by someone higher. If by ourselves, then we can only be good for the sake of our own self-interest. But if morality has another author, then we should be good for the sake of that One, not the inanimate thing derived from that One.

The Highest Morality is Selfless

The third thing that this claim demonstrates is the belief that self-serving morality is a parody of true virtue. To say that we should be good for the sake of goodness suggests that we should behave in a way that looks beyond the resulting personal benefits. You aren't thinking about morality in the traditional sense if doing the right thing requires you to first ask, "What's in it for me?"

But if morality is simply a creation of society, then it will surely reflect (at best) the shared self-interests of the individuals which compose that society. And if we are just creatures of nature, then evolution (our supposed creator) is the ultimate master of our moral urges. The problem with this is that evolution is selfish by definition. Its primary focus is the survival and competitive advantage of individual gene carriers. Advantages to broader communities are of concern only insofar as they benefit individual reproducers.

There is really nothing practical about the idea that we should expend our precious resources to care for, and allow reproductive rights to, the unproductive and genetically inferior members of society. The theory of evolution certainly doesn't give cause for such thinking. And there is no sense in the idea that a fit and fertile person should lay down his or her life to save the life of someone else who is weak and impaired. Yet one of the most egregious moral crimes in society is to abuse or neglect the helpless, and one of the noblest acts is to dedicate one's life to their aid. This is self-defeating sentimentalism in a purely material world, but makes perfect sense if there is something higher than self and the survival of the fittest.

Good Works do Not Earn God's Favor

The fourth thing that this claim reveals is the intuitive knowledge that works-based righteousness is a spiritually bankrupt idea. If the Christian God indeed exists, then it would be petty for us to only seek to do good in order to win His favor. The objector is right to see such self-interest as tarnish on all our good works, and just how good would we need to be for a God to whom we owe everything in the first place? Seventy-five percent good? Fifty percent good? Whatever the line, it would mean that both heaven and hell are home to many borderline cases. 'Tis an awfully wide gulf that could separate two souls by one four-letter word.

The irony is that Christianity does not even teach that we win heaven by virtue of our good works. In fact, it may be the only religion that explicitly rejects such an idea. For example, Islam actually teaches that our good deeds must outweigh our bad, and Eastern religions teach that we must work our way to enlightenment through various moral and spiritual practices. By contrast, Christianity teaches that we must put aside our futile thoughts of measuring up to God's perfect standard and throw ourselves upon the mercy of His court. We have but to accept, as spiritual beggars, the provision He has made to cover our sin and win our righteousness in Christ.

Good works come as a result of our love and gratitude toward our creator and redeemer; they are not the cause of our redemption. The Christian ideal is to be good for God's sake, not for the sake of what He can do for us. God is not to be confused with Santa Claus. To think otherwise is to make the mistake that Satan made regarding Job's motivation for righteous living (Job 1:9-11).

Conclusion

The claim that we should "be good for goodness' sake" is problematic at face value for the non-religious and does not even manage to apply to the Christian understanding of God and morality. It assumes a rather more substantial view of morality than atheism has a right to claim; it assumes a higher form of virtue than what evolution would be concerned to impose; and it assumes something about how God ought to view moral effort that Christians have been teaching all along.

Matthew 12:36 says that every idle word will be brought to account in the final judgment. The use of this complaint will surely come back to haunt those who have applied it against Christianity and have not availed themselves of God's mercy, do not think of themselves as being so bad as to deserve hell, and even go so far as to doubt the existence of an Author of morality. The objections of the skeptic often say far too much and contain the seeds of his own destruction.

Keep Your Mitts Off My Meaning

Though it is often disputed by atheists, it seems to most Christians a self-evident truth that if there is no God there is no meaning to life. There can only be a purpose if there is a planner — someone to establish that purpose and equip us and the creation to that end. Of course, you could always appeal to evolution as our maker, but then you are stuck with only a meaning that chance has wrought: to survive and breed. This is deficient both in its banality and in the nature of its ultimate origin. It is not the kind of answer people have in mind when they ask, "What is the meaning of life?" And if they ask the further question of what meaning there is to reproduction and survival they quickly fall into the pit of nihilism.

The thoughtful atheist's reply, having the all too common allergy to nihilism, is to admit the lack of meaning in any objective sense but to point out our resulting freedom to define life's "meaning" for ourselves. How very glorious! We get to dream up our own answer to the most foundational question of existence. Best of all, since there is no right answer, there is also no wrong answer. Who is to say to another, "No, you have picked the wrong meaning; you must choose some other"? There is no supposed objective standard in play to constrain one in crafting a personal meaning — no principle to demand that it must be according to, say, scientific truth. If there were, then that in itself would suggest some form of objective meaning to our existence.

Even though the atheist's meaning of choice is often some form of secular humanism and scientific triumphalism, it is not to say that this is the correct meaning for all mankind. It may seem preferable to live boldly according to the truth that there is no God and to soldier on for the glory and survival of the human race, but that attitude is not ultimately better than those who think that humanity is a blight on nature and we should permit ourselves to go extinct. We may not like some people's invented meaning, but it is theirs to make nonetheless. That is, if atheism is true.

The problem is that many atheists do not have a live and let live attitude about metaphysical beliefs (though I admit that some do). They feel that religious adherents are wrong, foolish, delusional, or even downright wicked in some cases. Of late, some rather high-profile atheists have even been so bold as to suggest that a war must be waged against religion. It is not enough for atheists to (understandably) seek to partition themselves from religion so that they can be free to follow their own values; they want to disabuse religionists of their wrongheaded metaphysical ideas. They want them to live according to the atheist's own idea of "truth" and how we ought to respond in the face of it. They want to preach it in the schools and from every media pulpit that they can command.

Ironically, it is the atheist's version of truth that entails, at the outset, that there is no truth regarding meaning and moral principles. It is the prerogative of humanity to identify value and meaning for itself, and there are many who are busily doing just that who do not happen to be atheists. At least the theist believes, rightly or wrongly, that his truth is a real Truth that matters for all parties. He may be deluded and bothersome, but he is at least logically consistent in his attempts to proselytize others.

The atheist is like the bully who tells his little sister, enjoying her tea party, that her bear and doll guests are just dumb, stuffed creatures and that she's a silly girl living in a fantasy world. If she does not run off sobbing to her bed she might at least abandon her game, the spell broken and the fun evaporated. You see, it is in the illusion that the fun is to be found. Likewise, it is in the belief that Christianity is actually true that the comfort and meaning lies.

The typical atheist means to purge the Christian of his religion if possible or at least the propositional truth of it. All this in the name of the "truth" as he sees it, cold and hard as it may be. He may just as well tell our little tea party princess that she is a chance byproduct of a meaningless natural process; the only reason her parents appear to love and care for her is because of biochemical mechanisms meant to insure the survival of their own DNA; and when she dies she will return to the nothingness from which she came and no one will remember her in 200 years or so. When she runs off sobbing to her bed he can feel justly satisfied that the truth has been served and that he's made a contribution toward insuring that she does not grow up to continue having juice and crackers with dolls or in memory of imaginary crucified deities.

The evangelizing atheist is a metaphysical bully who presses his own truth upon the religious for his personal amusement and self-interest. He is certainly not doing them any favors, since I am not sure that any atheist has ever gone to the grave with a smile and many have gone by their own hands. The sad dilemma for the atheist is that if he is right, then there is no right, from morality to meaning. He can lobby and vote and whine all he likes for his cause, but the last thing he can do is sell it as the truth to which all the world should submit. In doing so he only compounds his sin of actually being wrong about the existence of God. But that is another discussion.

Presuppositional Kung Fu

The late presuppositional apologist Greg Bahnsen used to teach that the best way to handle an attack was not to dodge the bullets, but to disarm the attackers. Applying this to dialog and debate with non-Christians, this meant that one was to force the opponent to live consistently with his own worldview and not allow him to reach beyond it for concepts to justify his attacks and objections — to remove the weapons to which he is not rationally entitled.

In the case of atheism, these weapons would include such things as fixed laws of logic, objective morality, timeless values, human dignity, and freewill. In order to level certain objections, an unbeliever is generally dependent upon ideas such as these to make sense of his objection. For this reason, the objection itself is secondary to the very assumptions upon which it depends, and it is first incumbent upon the objector to make sense of those assumptions before his case can be considered coherent.

I recently ran across a blog with a community of atheist contributors who spent much energy in voicing their opinions on certain moral issues, particularly things which they viewed as "evil" and "immoral" as practiced by Christians or as documented in the Bible. One post particularly caught my attention, since it expressed the strong moral conviction that slavery is wrong and that the Bible, in (allegedly) advocating the practice, is to be considered immoral by association.

The natural instinct of many Christians (and a couple of responders fell in to this) is to exegete and clarify the texts, or to launch in to an explanation of God's overall purposes for certain biblical events. But Bahnsen's advice would be to eschew the moral complaint and go straight after the moral presuppositions, one of which is that there is such a thing as objective morality by which we might judge slavery wrong or consider events in Scripture as immoral.

Here is my attempt to answer this atheist using Bahnsen's recommended approach. His replies are offset in blockquotes.

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Slavery is “obviously evil” and “definitely wrong.” The Bible is “notoriously immoral.”

These kinds of statements imply a belief in objective morality, i.e., that something like slavery is wrong for all time and in all cultures. Is there a moral standard that stands outside of time and place being appealed to here, or is this simply a matter of personal or cultural preference?

Well, I think some things like slavery are wrong no matter where or when they take place, so, according to your definition, I do have objective moral standards. They just happen to be inspired by reason and compassion, not religion.

Others have historically and geographically used their “reason” to come to other conclusions than you in this and many other matters. And they place their compassions elsewhere or have it not at all. Reason and compassion do no work without guiding principles and objectives. You may as well tell me you get to El Dorado “by horse.”

What are these transcendent principals of morality to which you appeal to say that all others are simply mistaken, and how is it that you have managed to discover them where many have failed? And I wonder what other moral truths are hidden within the treasury that you are robbing to pay this debt.

I am not trumpeting myself as some kind of master philosopher or guru, or saying that I have cornered the market on virtue. If this is the impression I have given, I sincerely apologize. I am convinced, however, that slavery has always been an affront to the timeless values of human dignity and freedom. If you wish a more detailed explanation of my reasoning in this or other issues, read my other posts, and then, by all means, please ask.

I’m not reading anything in to your comments here and in other posts (and the comments of the other non-theists here) other than that there is a very strong implication of moral objectivism being exercised. All your judgments, social positions, and moral outrages depend upon some ethical grounding. You don’t have to be a master philosopher to identify where this originates in your own case.

There either is an objective moral law that stands outside of time and culture, or morality is merely a product of the human mind. You seem to be inclined toward the former, in practice, though I’m sure you can see how problematic that is for atheism. On the other hand, grounding morality upon human convention removes the fixed nature of all moral positions. Humans change, cultures change, preferences change, and individuals are unique. Making morality a human invention boils down to a matter of personal and cultural “preference.” You may think that we are making progress in fine-tuning our cultural conventions (by way of “reason”), but that is merely another admission that there are true and right objective standards toward which we can make progress.

I know that certain moral positions are just so obvious to you that it seems academic to justify them, but the very question is why we should have these incorrigible moral intuitions, where they come from, and why we “ought” to bow to them. Many atheistic philosophers, in fact, reject moral objectivism because they understand the problems I raise here. Most people, however, are blind to this issue, borrow moral capital from the theistic worldview, and merrily condemn injustices and champion their moral causes. In practice, they are just as dogmatic as any religionist that they condemn for holding to moral values with which they disagree.

And you have similar problems with the ideas of “timeless values,” “human dignity,” and “freedom” from a purely materialistic perspective. Justifying such notions has been the confounding project of atheistic philosophy for many centuries, and it is why, intellectually bankrupted by the attempt, many have surrendered in this age to a postmodern relativism. You seem not yet to have arrived there, but I believe that it is the ultimate, rational conclusion of atheism, even though it is not a livable position.

For the record, I do assert that morality is a human invention and that it can and has changed over time, often for the better. The Bible describes, for example, how it was morally acceptable at one time to put to death homosexuals, adulterers, blasphemers, fortune tellers, women who were not virgins on their wedding day, and those who worked on the Sabbath. Any sane person living in the 21st century is horrified by such outright brutality and injustice. So how do many Christians reconcile this with their concept of a loving and righteous god who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow? They dismiss it by saying those rules no longer apply, that Jesus and the New Testament somehow nullify all that nasty business in the Old. It was a different time, a different place. Yet this is exactly the kind of relativism that you and many other believers seem to find so problematic when it comes to secular philosophies.

I am perfectly aware that morality, as any other human endeavor, is imperfect, filled with personal and cultural biases and preferences. This doesn’t make it any less profound or legitimate than the so-called objective standards promoted by religious prophets and sacred texts; in fact, I think that recognizing the fact that morality is to some degree fluid and subject to improvement has led to many of the rights and standards we value so highly today.

You admit that morality is a “human invention,” but you say that it can change for the “better,” is subject to “improvement,” and can be “imperfect.” Better and improved and less than perfect according to what standard? You cannot move toward, or run afoul of, a position unless that position first exists to be approached.

If morality is just a human invention, then morality is just whatever happens to be defined by the humans in any given place and time. There would be no higher morality than that, only different morality. You could only say that your 21st Century Western morality is better out of a sense of chronological snobbery.

To say that the Hebrews, Romans, or Huns had not arrived at the “rights and standards we value” is to say one of two things: Either it says that each living individual or culture is the standard by which history is measured, which means that you shall be found wanting by your descendents even if they are little barbarians; or it is to say that at the time of these societies there was a fixed standard that lay wholly outside of humanity — indeed, outside of time — to which these persons failed to measure up.

You are faced with either affirming a transcendent moral principle, thus negating pure materialism, or you must admit that your own moral standards and sensibilities distill to arbitrary ethical preferences that compete with the preferences of other cultural groups and are only different, not better in any real sense. Your moral intuitions that have you horrified by certain behaviors are either shadows of a true divine Form (to use Plato’s model), or they are nothing more than fashionable moral reactions (like my wife’s “horror” at seeing white shoes after Labor Day). The fact that you feel so strongly about your moral positions and think of them as being so “sane” and modern does absolutely no philosophical work toward raising them above mere subjectivism.

That being said, it is difficult to know how to take any of your moral assessments of the Bible or any other issue. If you are merely emoting, then there is nothing further to discuss unless I choose to volley with my own feelings. But to unpack the theological issues that you raise against the Bible would require us to first share some common ground of understanding regarding morality, not to mention the concept of a God who has dominion over, and purposes for, humanity. Such things are complex and nuanced (would you expect a God to be otherwise?), and so long as one has a misty and minimalistic view of ethics and God’s sovereignty then one will have no comprehension or sympathy for anything I have to say.

In any case, I would certainly not concede a relativistic view of God’s moral will, as you have either received or perceived from other Christians willing to entertain your complaints. Perhaps I can hint at the common limitations of thinking in this area by pointing out that we have different expectations for our children vs. other people’s children, our children at school vs. at home, and our children as youths vs. as adults, even while our overall values and objectives remain constant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The dialog continues, but as you might expect, this person is not moved by the argument; as he essentially refuses to recognize my point, or comment further upon it, and instead merely takes offense that I consider him too "morally and intellectually deficient" to respond to. He simply wants to sit in my tree and complain about my apples without need of acknowledgement that he must trespass to do so.

"Jesus was Wrong"

I watched a rather drab movie this weekend called Little Miss Sunshine. (Note to self: "acclaimed by the Academy" = "you won't like it.") The teenage boy in the movie was a disciple of Nietzsche and wore T-shirts throughout to reflect that fact. One of the T-shirts I found interesting because it expressed an idea that you just don't hear very often from critics of Christianity. It simply said, "Jesus was wrong."

While some on the radical fringe of skepticism opt for the denial of the existence of Jesus altogether, most people are quite friendly toward some historical perspective of Jesus. Of course, it is usually a desupernaturalized and purely human portrait that they prefer to see (though some of the alternate religions will take Him on a semi-divine basis). Jesus as a social reformer and moral teacher is an image that even hardened atheists can get behind. But the statement on this T-shirt is unique in that it denies all these historical reworkings of the Biblical Jesus.

To say that "Jesus was wrong" implies three things.

The first is that you don't like what He had to say. But if you are comfortable redacting the Biblical Jesus to fit your preconceptions of Him, then there is nothing with which to take issue. Is it mere coincidence that the liberal scholars often land on a portrait of "the real Jesus" to which they are partial or sympathetic? I don't believe that I've ever heard a skeptic argue for, say, a Hitleran Jesus whom the Romans did well to exterminate. This T-shirt slogan implies some curious objectivity.

Second, you think that He actually said the things which you find to be wrong. The unspoken assumption here is that what the Bible records is what Jesus actually said; and what Jesus said was just plain mistaken. What else could this statement mean? What sense would it be to say, "That which Jesus actually said, which we don't really have a proper record of anyway, is just plain wrong"? It is pretty clear that what the wearer of this T-shirt is so exercised about is the biblical portrait of Jesus. And why not be? If Jesus really made the claims that the Bible attributes to Him, and He was indeed wrong, then He was a teacher of extreme hubris. Imagine me telling you that I existed before Abraham, that no one can get to God except through me, and that I will be judging your sorry butt at the end of time! If the authors of Scripture documented Jesus' words accurately, and He actually was not God-in-the-flesh, then this boy's T-shirt is an understatement! The Jews would have been justifiably zealous to bring this heretical lunatic to trial.

Third, you think there is an objective truth about spiritual matters and that Jesus has shipwrecked Himself upon that truth. That may be a rational position for some, but this boy in the movie favored Nietzsche, who some have claimed to have lain the very groundwork for postmodern relativism. The biggest irony of all is that this boy had taken a vow of silence, and when asked why by one of his co-stars toward the beginning of the movie he merely pointed to a picture of Nietzsche. Initially, I took this to be an admirably principled stance based on the philosophy that life and all ideas are ultimately meaningless, thus it is vacuous to utter any statement at all. But then he went and negated his whole worldview by putting on that T-shirt. It would appear that the dogmatic denial of the historical Jesus trumps all need for rational coherence.

Coin Toss Morality

Awhile back I had a dialog with a cousin where we discussed the merits of different ethical systems. He is something of an agnostic, so I was keen for him to recognize morality as an objectively real concept that he must work into his thinking. To this end, I asked the leading question, "Why not just flip a coin for each moral decision?" Now, this may sound flippant (no pun intended), but I think it begins to expose one of the problems of ethical theory.

You could say, as my cousin did, that this simply removes reason from the equation and replaces it with chance. But what is it that reason can do that chance cannot? Flipping a coin certainly qualifies as an ethical system, but why is it a "bad" or "wrong" one? You can certainly use "reason" to lay down the options, manage the coin toss, and implement the resulting decision.

I think the real problem is that the outcome of a coin-toss moral decision can clearly lead to undesirable results. Think of the following situation: Your neighbor's toddler wanders over into your yard (you've left your gate open) and falls into your pool. Do you, heads, save her or, tails, wait for her parents to come retrieve the corpse? You know what to do and you don't need an ethical system to help you out. You know that the coin toss may lead to the wrong decision.

Ideally, you want your ethical system to act as a sort of formula for helping you to get to correct decisions, and it is most helpful when the situations are complex. But the entire system can come crashing down if it runs afoul of your moral intuitions. A well placed reductio ad absurdum can prove the shortcoming of the theory. For instance, you might at first hold to a utilitarian ethic that whatever promotes the happiness of the majority is what is "good," but then it could be pointed out that the torture for sport of a single human could give a large (depraved) viewing audience a large sum total of happiness. For most people, that would put an end to that moral theory (and for those who it wouldn't I haven't got much more to say here).

The point is that we seem to have preexisting moral intuitions, and we will never be satisfied with any ethical system that does not accommodate them. (Well, perhaps not entirely true, since we also have competing selfish desires that we often seek to rationalize.) I would argue that in our ethical theories we are simply trying to systematize our moral intuitions.

A chance ethical system cannot do the trick if it is true that there are right and wrong answers. If there are indeed objectively right answers to moral questions, then reason is certainly an ally, since it can help us to assess the conditions and marshal our intuitions, but it does not in itself make the answer right. Neither does an ethical system make right answers; it can only (if legitimate) help us to navigate through real passes with real reefs and currents. But you could never say that any ship of history had hit a reef unless you were first willing to admit that things such as ships and reefs actually existed. That's a very big pill to swallow for anyone committed to a purely material world, where truth and ethics extend no farther than the will and imagination of the biochemical flukes we call "humans."

Euthyphro's Dilemma and the Character of God

The dialog following my last post on the implied moral relativism of atheism eventually hit the topic of Euthyphro's Dilemma. This is commonly offered as a trump card by non-theists against the idea that God is a proper grounding for objective morality (i.e., Is the "good" just whatever God commands, or does God command things based on some preexisting standard of goodness).

I offered this article as a solution to this dilemma, which was summarily rejected by Dagoods. We then exchanged a round of dialog, to which I offer a more detailed response below.

Dagoods said: You are quite correct that the Euthyphro Dilemma does not eliminate the possibility of moral realism. However, it does bring into sharp focus the problems associated with it.

I don't see why. There could still be a God who merely decrees what is good and creates a universe accordingly (like Allah). Perhaps you would then take issue with the basis of that morality, but to what avail? It would still be real and binding upon you in spite of any of your philosophical reproaches.

Dagoods said: As we have no possible way to even verify why God does it, any claim as to that standard is pure speculation. We don’t know God, let alone a step further beyond God!

Well then, this debate must be unsolvable and at an end, unless, perhaps, we had some revelation from this God to constrain the discussion. But you deny that. Even so, you press on...

Dagoods said: If discussing the God of the Bible and his interactions with humanity, this possibility [of changing whims/morality] becomes probability. A creature that cannot change cannot have regrets. . . . If God’s [character] can change, it is no longer absolute. It becomes “good because God does it.” Scripture says God has regrets. Can a sentient being that is unchangeable have regrets?

If you want to exegete my Scriptures you will have to take it all into consideration — even that which speaks of God's immutable nature and demonstrates His regular use of anthropomorphic communication devices. Even so, this would not demonstrate that God has changed His moral character, only that He grieves at the results of what willful humans have managed to do. And what is it that they have managed to do? Violate His moral commands! (e.g., 1Sa 15:11)

Dagoods said: When I say “whim” with God, it is possible that God could make a moral mandate and it is the same for all time. It is still not absolute, because there is no reason God could not have chosen some other moral mandate, even the opposite. What God chose was based merely on his particular choice. He was not limited by any fashion.

This is a good point at which to address the root of the problem. The horn of the dilemma which would have goodness outside of and beyond God is certainly untenable. This may have been a solution for Plato, since he was seeking to defend "the gods," but it is not consistent with Judeo-Christian monotheism, or even our intuitive concept of what it means to be God. This means that morality is grounded in God, but there is still much opportunity for nuancing.

Perhaps the problem is that you would like to leave it at that. If it is from God in any way, you believe that the other horn of the dilemma is being maintained and any further defense is just so much double-talk. However, I believe the qualifications make a great deal of difference.

(First I must say that I hesitate to hang the veracity of theism on an answer to this question. It is one in which lurks some of the most difficult theological and philosophical questions, which are not apparent on the surface. I am not trained to speak in the kinds of categorical terms that would be required to unpack the hidden difficulties. I also believe that its complexity and the unknowns involved in speaking of something like a non-physical, atemporal, self-existent Being guarantees that important data fall through the cracks in the discussion. And deeply theoretical discussions of this kind can land us in seemingly sound states of reasoning while still being brilliantly mistaken. I'm thinking here of Zeno's Arrow, where it was suggested that motion was a fiction because an object must travel through an infinity of points in order to reach a given target. While the thought gives me pause, it has never stopped me from getting into my car in hopes of reaching my destination.

In any case, this topic is very interesting to me, and so I press on...)

If morality were merely based on God's "whim" or some arbitrary choice, then this would seem to qualify for the spirit of the second horn of this dilemma. That is to say, goodness would not be grounded, just invented; it could have been otherwise, and may be in the future. The solution that Greg is describing removes the "arbitrary" nature of the decrees of God and connects them to the character of God. God is creating and decreeing those things which are in harmony with His own nature. So, He would not, just as easily, have made some laws to be opposite of what they are.

I find this a very intuitive direction to take the solution. It is difficult to imagine God simply flipping coins when making moral imperatives. Surely He is doing things which are desirous and pleasing for Him to do — according to His own nature. I'm not sure that the Dilemma, as it is generally formulated, excludes such a solution. However, I think this "solution" may then press onward into other difficult ground, though I'm not sure where the scope of one dilemma ends and another picks up. When is Euthyphro's Dilemma resolved? Must we put all ontological conundrums under its umbrella?

Two areas of further concern I see arising are as follows: 1) Is God, then, bound by His nature (i.e., He's not "free" to do anything other than what His nature impels Him to do)? 2) How do we avoid tautologies and define attributes and essences in relation to God? It seems as though your issues (measured by volume of your text) fall more in the latter area, though I think once you concede the possibility of goodness being grounding in God's nature the former concern emerges as primary.

In any case, it is not clear to me why equating "goodness" with God's "character" is problematic. That truth may not give you a categorical listing of all that qualifies as good and bad, but I take it as a reasonable starting point for the concept of morality. It is sourced in the very nature of the Being who grounds every other thing that we might ponder, e.g., knowledge, consciousness, logic, being, will, etc. Such things I suspect you will not deny, but will you deny that a thing such as "consciousness" can be sourced in the self-conscious nature of the one who creates conscious creatures? Does Euthyphro's Dilemma extend to challenge this essential aspects of God as well? Do you also reject the possibility of a self-conscious deity? Perhaps you simply have problems with the idea that God could BE anything at all!

I said: In fact, it is not at all clear to me why anyone would suggest that God would create and decree things that were not according to His own character in the first place.

Dagoods said: Not clear to me, either. I would agree that they are one and the same. But that means that God is bound to do it by God. Which places us squarely on the horn that “it is good because God does it.”

So you agree that His decrees could be rooted in His own character, but you simply want to distill it to what "God does." If God's character is equivalent to His actions, then it is true that goodness is "what God does," but it is conversely true that goodness = God's character. In looking for a grounding for morality we have found the ground: it is an essential thing, not simply an arbitrary decree.

Perhaps you are then concerned with the question, "How do we know that God's character is actually good?" But this presupposes a standard for judging that must transcend an eternal, immutable author of all things that exist; it presupposes that the other horn of the dilemma is what must be true in any metaphysical system.

You may like to think of this solution as making morality arbitrary in some way, but I think it is a meaningless complaint. For instance, you may think it arbitrary because God's character could have been something else, but what else is there for it to have been? That is the nature of God: He defines and produces all things which exist. There is no external set of attributes from which He was randomly assembled, no other way He could have been.

Now you may complain that this is no definition of morality — goodness just happens to be whatever God is — but it's not clear what this complaint buys you. It is still the case that morality has been sourced; it is still the case that morality exists as something outside of the creation; and it is still the case that being moral is incumbent upon the creation. How is it that you will judge the goodness of the good? You have nothing with which to judge that has not been given to you by the creator of the intuitions by which you would seek to judge. You might just as well ask if logic is logical.

Dagoods said: By placing a smaller circle of “God’s character” within a “God” circle, we need to determine what is in that larger circle, but not in the smaller circle. (Why I like the Venn Diagram.) All you have done is provide even smaller circles within the “God’s Character” such as “knowledge, essence, being and power” and said, “See—these are not ‘the same’ as God’s character.” True, but that is not what we are looking for. . . . Using Venn diagrams, we can see how your example of yourself is incomplete. We draw a circle of “Paul.” We would draw a LARGER circle of “Father” around you. You are either a father (have child(ren)) or do not. There is nothing in you that is “not father” whereas other parts are. You may assume different roles, but even when talking with a customer on the phone, you still fit the descriptive term “father.”

It occurs to me that the solution lies between these two points. I am not at all inclined to advance the idea that God is simply a collection of properties, i.e., that you can make smaller circles within His being and say that He "has" these things. While it might make sense to say that I "have" goodness, it is only "some" goodness. It does not pervade my being and others have a measure of it as well.

On the other hand, the things that God "has" are pervasive and He has them in complete measure. For example, His knowledge is complete and it informs everything He does. So, if you were to draw circles labeled "knowledge," "power," and "goodness," these things might, perhaps, be a smaller circle within me, but they would not exist as a subset of God; they would more accurately fill God. And looking from the other angle, if you made a circle called "good" only God could go in it. But since He and only He is in it, then God and goodness are synonymous — just as if I were Adam, then the words "Adam," "man," and "husband" would all be redundant (for a time at least).

So, each circle that you choose to ascribe to God would find no boundary within His being. He both has those things completely and is those things simultaneously; even while you may say that they are not the same thing as each other. While His justice may be informed by His knowledge and express itself through His power, they are not identical things. For this reason you could say that God is justice, but it would be incomplete to say that justice is God. And all of the plurality of things which God is describe His nature — His moral character being but one of those things.

But even my circle analogy is not an accurate depiction, because it rests upon the idea that such attributes are things external to God which we might ascribe to Him when, in fact, God defines and grounds what these things are. So, when we talk about something like knowledge or power, we are really discussing those things which are parallels to what God manifests. Any circles we make in hopes of assigning them to another being are ultimately meaningless unless they are reflective of some divine "attribute."

For example, there is no knowledge beyond the mind of God, and humans can only hope to have some of that knowledge. Any belief that you have that does not line up with God's knowledge would be a fiction and would not hold true in any possible universe. And attempting to act according to that fictional belief would ultimately cause negative consequences in a world that proceeds from the author of truth and knowledge. Is that fair? Is that arbitrary? There is no external measure by which we might judge this fair, no other way that God's knowledge could have been, and no other possible realities in which one-ended sticks could exist.

Dagoods said: Are you saying that moral intuitions could be wrong? (Just like I say.) And that we must gauge those moral intuitions “correctness” by obtaining more knowledge? (Just like I say.) And upon learning more knowledge, use that knowledge to “trump” what our moral intuitions initially determine? (Just like I say.)

I don't think a straight yes or no answer can be given without qualification.

First, I will point out that it seems with humans that any right intuition, instinct, or commonsense notion may be violated at will. Even if our conscience were inerrant it would still be possible to "suppress the truth in unrighteousness" and to allow it to atrophy from disuse. Hunger is a proper instinct, but the anorexic feels it and handles it much differently from you and me.

Second, intuitions are complicated things which are not simply designed to work reflexively. Here I am undecided how best to characterize them. It could be that they are rudimentary building blocks that must be assembled to fit the circumstances, or it's possible that they are broader in scope and invested with nuance. So in my original example, regarding imprisoning someone, it will be the case that we need full knowledge of the situation to first apply our moral intuitions. We then might be doing one of two things: 1) We are pitting our intuition that humans ought not be subjugated and mistreated against our intuition that crime demands justice 2) We are simply employing an inherent qualifier that it is "innocent" people who deserve to be treated in certain ways.

In any case, it is reason that applies the facts to the intuitive principles. Knowledge is merely fuel for the moral engine. When you say that you believe that knowledge may "trump" or "correct" our moral intuitions I have to wonder what you think it is that knowledge is doing for you. Knowledge is neutral; you have to apply the knowledge in some way. Exactly what ethical principles are you using in order to apply your knowledge which are not informed by your moral sensibilities? When you see a man in a cage, and then come to know that he is a serial killer, what is the dispassionate methodology you use to silence your intuition that humans ought not be caged like animals? In reality, your moral intuitions pervade your reasoning from start to finish.

It strikes me that the entire history of ethical philosophy has been an exercise in mapping our moral intuitions to a systematic definition, and its failure has been largely due to the tendency toward skewing the results to grant latitude for individual passions.

Might one come to a morally wrong conclusion? There is no denying that, since people do come down on different sides of certain issues. Some situations are morally complex, knowledge is an undervalued commodity, and the will to defer to our intuitions is thin. However, this does nothing to abnegate the fact that those intuitions exist or that their Author will hold one accountable to yield to them as best as we are able.

Dagoods said: If moral intuition is not enough, and we need knowledge too, and God has not provided that knowledge (according to your concept) then we cannot determine what is good! This is my point on genocide. What knowledge has God provided that means your moral intuition has gone from “uninformed” to “informed” other than your presumption that God must have a moral reason for committing genocide?

You have no new information. Any other theistic belief that claims promulgation of its people through the use of genocide is “moral” you would deplore. But because it is your God, it becomes “good” because you suppose your God is good.

(Addition: 9/20/06 - Note that I use "Amorite," rightly or wrongly, as a general ethnic term to represent the people occupying the lands of Israel.)

I'll have to take exception with your premises. First, God has indeed provided us with knowledge to reinforce and supplement our intuitions. That is a major claim of the Christian: God has intervened in the creation to reveal Himself. But I think you specifically mean that He has not bothered to reveal His motives for the displacement of the Amorites. Again I must disagree. Scripture speaks in several places of the various reasons for the Amorites to be "driven out" (which it mentions more often than the extreme measures that you note). Several times it offers a litany of offenses — incest, adultery, child sacrifice, idolatry, homosexuality, bestiality — and even indicates that God withheld judgment until their iniquity had reached its full measure (Gen 15:16). The taking of the Promised Land was coincident with the judgment of God. It differed from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah in that it was executed by the agency of humans and not all suffered the penalty of death.

Another thing with which I must take issue is your characterization of this judgment as "genocide." Genocide looks more like the Nazi treatment of the Jews, where they are all ferreted out and executed merely upon racial grounds. For a parallel from God we would expect to find verses saying broad things like, "I despise the Amorites. Find them wherever they hide and destroy them. Let not one Amorite remain alive upon the face of the whole earth." Instead, we see variety in the treatment of the inhabitants of a fixed area of real estate according to their individual circumstances (some destroyed, some subjugated, some driven out, some left alone, sometimes spoils allowed, sometimes not, etc.) and no blanket license for hostilities. We can't derive a general moral or theological principle that transcends the context of these people, this place, this time, and this covenanted nation of Israel. So it would be unjustified to say that God "promulgates His people through the use of genocide," as though Jews or Christians should feel warranted to show aggression toward any heathen group they meet.

In reality, it was the practices of these people, not their race, nationality, or even their culture per-se that was at issue here. We know this to be true because God tells the incoming Israelites that if they take up the practices of those who they are driving out, then they will be dealt with likewise. And this is exactly their ultimate fate (Lev 18:24-30, 2Ki 17:7-23). There is no moral inequity here; though justice may sometimes be averted by way of mercy, which none are owed.

So, we at least know the broad rationale for the treatment of the Amorites, and there is further data to explain some of the specific treatment of the various subgroups. However, I must admit that at least I do not have an explanation for all the details. But must I know every justification to have assurance that there is some justification, especially if I have other grounds for arriving at such assurances? And if I am reconciled to the idea that God has a rightful claim to someone's life, even if not guilty, then His sometimes lethal treatment of a particularly barbaric people would find certain grounds for justification.

There is much "knowledge," which you would deny, to be applied to this situation that can inform our moral intuitions about what humans alone (all things being equal) should or should not do to each other as a regular course of action. Especially the idea that if there is a God, and He has eternal purposes in mind for His creatures, then the game as we see it may have higher stakes not to the liking of one who denies eternity and measures his life in the personal glories and idle pleasures of four score and ten years.

In the end, I think your objection actually works against you. That is because if you take the Bible to be an actual record of the God who grounds morality, then you must accept its premises and the knowledge it provides to augment your moral intuitions. But if, as you do, you reject any grounding for an objective morality, then your distaste for "genocide" cannot be a true moral intuition. It would be as much of a fiction as the God you reject; it would be a belief originating from personal preference and cultural convention, which might have been as different as the ethics of Nazi Germany.

It is only because your moral intuitions stand reasonably unmolested by something like a satanic Nazi ideology that you find this to be such a visceral grievance against the Biblical deity. I have no intention of humoring any claim that this is merely an academic exercise of finding internal inconsistencies in the Christian worldview. But if you wish to judge, you must first have not only a fixed moral standard by which to judge, but a fixed rational standard as well. Otherwise, you are saying nothing more than, "I do not like your Christianity." It is the dilemma of atheism.

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Plutonian Morality

Ever since its discovery in 1930 astronomers have debated over whether or not Pluto deserves to be classified as a planet. With the recent discovery of Xena, and other large Kuiper Belt objects, this question has taken on a new perspective. Well, in the news this week are stories that tell us that the International Astronomical Union, in a less than unanimous vote, has just stripped Pluto of its designation as a planet. It would seem that "planet" is in the eye of the beholder; it all depends on your criteria and astronomical perspective. It's not as cut-and-dried a thing as a star or black hole.

I seem to have the habit of making abstract connections, and this topic suggests the issue of moral relativism to me. You see, many persons in our modern culture have the view that morality — right and wrong, good and evil — is simply a matter of personal or cultural definition. For this reason, claiming that something is "good" merely implies that it conforms to some humanly constructed definition of what passes for good versus bad. And the criteria can change over time. So, just as the new definition of a planet no longer includes Pluto, so can moral standards change to include or exclude certain behaviors. Slavery can be acceptable in certain times and cultures, but repulsive in others. Homosexuality can once be considered deviant behavior, but then come to be celebrated.

This view of morality would seem to be the necessary one in a purely material world, i.e., one without God or any metaphysical structure that pervades our minds. Without the ability to appeal to the supernatural, moral sensibilities must simply emerge from the will, emotion, and reason of human creatures. And since humans are individuals and change over time (even "evolve" according to present naturalistic theory), then morality may be expected to change as well.

To theists, this seems a fairly obvious truth. To have an objective, unchanging standard you have to have a mind external to your own which can impose it upon you. And it is a meaningless imposition unless there is reason and consequence for compliance with that standard. However, it is common for atheists to object to this conclusion. They often do so in one of two ways.

1) They misunderstand us to be implying that they are immoral people. But this is not at all what we are saying. Since we believe that the moral law is incumbent upon every human, and is woven into the very fabric of our souls, we are not at all surprised to find even atheists dancing to its tune (to mix my metaphors). The fact that atheists very much want to be thought of as good people is only a tacit admission that they understand that there is such a thing as "good" and that it is good to be good. But if morality is merely a human convention, then the most that an atheist can be claiming is that they are morally fashionable.

2) They are quick to point out their own moral concerns and offer their own ethical systems, but these are simply not a response to the point. There is a difference between having moral sensibilities and grounding them as objective. If your moral ideas originate from your own mind or the consensus of your community, then you have not grounded them upon any fixed standard. And if there is no objective standard upon which to base morality, then you can never say that your system is closer to that standard than some other or that you have improved it from one generation to the next. All that you can say is that one ethical system is "different" from another, and that you happen to like your own. To say that your system is "better" than another is a tautology; you are simply saying that your moral expressions conform more closely to your own system than does theirs.

Not everyone in the International Astronomical Union was agreed to remove Pluto's planetary status. Are planets just celestial objects as defined in a particular way and these dissenting astronomers took issue with that particular definition, or are planets particular things and the astronomers were simply divided over the facts that would go into placing Pluto in one category or another? It is a question that mirrors our modern moral debate. But there is at least one way in which this analogy fails: These astronomers were involved in a debate over an understanding of real objects, which they all believed in and that do not go in or out of existence depending upon the results of a vote. The moral realist may not always order his steps well, but at least he is dancing with real angels and demons. The relativist, on the other hand, is simply dancing with his own shadow.

Worldview Contradictions

The hallmark of truth (I would contend) in one's values and worldview should be consistency. Here are some examples of ideas I've encountered in recent months that are not a good fit.

Being for euthanasia but against the death penalty. Euthanasia is founded upon the idea that there are lives that are not worth living, or it would be cruel to allow or prolong the suffering of some persons. Those who are candidates for the death penalty are the most heinous of criminals destined for a very miserable life of incarceration, at minimum. Using the moral litmus test that some applied to Terry Schiavo — "Would you want to live like that?" — I'm not sure on what grounds they would then be opposed to the death penalty.

Believing that there is no fundamental difference between the sexes yet belittling the opposite sex. Feminism (of the extreme variety) holds to the idea that gender distinctions are meaningless and the differences between the sexes are merely a product of the culture. Consequently, there is nothing that men or women are more intrinsically suited for or oriented toward. On the other hand, feminists make a habit of belittling men and pointing out their historical crimes and barbaric attributes. It seems to me that devaluing someone, if nothing else, is identifying them as different from yourself.

Being pro-choice for women but against the life choices that many women make. Feminists preach that women should be free to make their own destinies and pursue any careers they desire. But watch the sneers when a woman says that her dream is to be a nurse rather than a surgeon, or a teacher rather than an administrator, or, horror of horrors, a homemaker rather than anything else.

Being a moral relativist and a champion of moral causes Moral relativists believe that there are no "right" answers to ethical questions. There is nothing that is "good" or "evil" for all people in all places and times. The ironic thing is that some of those people most passionately engaged in protest and advocacy happen to be moral relativists. Some of the most common causes they will be found championing are animal rights, anti-war, abortion rights, homosexual rights, and freedom of "speech"; and they can regularly be heard arguing for the moral high ground and calling their opposition "evil."

Being a naturalist yet complaining about the abusive treatment of nature by humans. Metaphysical naturalists believe that we are merely the product of nature. Evolution is our creation story and we are simply another member of the animal kingdom. So, it is meaningless to say that something is "unnatural" since all is nature by definition. When lions kill their prey or spiders eat their mates it is not "wrong," it is just another instance of nature in action. However, in the minds of environmentalists and animal rights activists, when humans use other animals for their own benefit or avail themselves of certain natural resources, they have somehow managed to transcend nature and enter the realm of metaphysical categories — they are "wrong," "exploiters," and "selfish" — rather than human animals simply doing what humans naturally do.

Being an advocate of political correctness yet opposing Christianity. PC advocates regard tolerance as the ultimate (perhaps the only real) virtue. They reason that opposition to, and disapproval of, other beliefs and lifestyles is "hate speech," which leads to discrimination and persecution. It is ironic, then, that the leaders of the PC movement are some of the most verbally abusive critics of Christianity and openly support the discrimination of Christian ideas and values from the political, academic, and scientific arena.

Being a moral relativist and claiming that biblical morality is nothing new. Moral relativists often make their case by claiming that morality differs from culture to culture. You would then think that they would argue that the 10 commandments or the Golden Rule are no better than the diverse moral views of the rest of the world. It is interesting enough to see a relativist favoring these things, but it is self-defeating to hear them claim that they are nothing new and can be found in many religions and cultures around the world.

Being sexually liberal but being an over-protective parent. We are now into our second generation of those raised in the wake of the free love movement. The only principled constraint placed upon sex, if any, is that one should "love" the other person, and even that word is increasingly conflated with sex itself. It is a pitiful thing, then, when two children of the sexual liberation find themselves as parents of an attractive teenage daughter. Once they have educated her on the health risks involved in sex and trained her in the proper use of a condom, what reason will they give for their suspicion and anxiety over her gentlemen callers?

Being a Taoist and being in favor of homosexuality. The eastern religion of Taoism teaches that nature is expressed in a duality of forms. The Yin and Yang represent opposite, though equal, properties of the impersonal force that is the Tao, such as light/dark, north/south, soft/hard, and water/fire. One seeking to be attuned to the Tao would be in the habit of keeping these things in their proper "balance." As it turns out, female is also an example of Yin, while male is an instance of Yang. It then seems reasonable to conclude that homosexuality would bring (in the words of Yoda) an imbalance to the force.

Being a moral relativist but complaining about the problem of evil. Moral relativists believe that there is no objective standard of good and evil, it is a matter of personal preference or what society has deemed as beneficial or unacceptable. So, when a moral relativist launches his critique of the benevolent God of Christianity by pointing out all the "evil" in the world, he has either left his worldview or has refuted it himself.

Being a religious pluralist but rejecting Christianity. Religious pluralists believe that all religions are either the same at heart or are merely equally valid paths to the same God. However, they are almost unanimous in their rejection of the deity of Christ, His bodily resurrection, and the atonement for sin. So, when a pluralist complains about the essential doctrines of Christianity he is either suggesting that his pluralism merely includes the list of religions that he prefers or he is revealing something of his own religious dogma within which he is attempting to pigeonhole all other religions.

Being a nihilist but belittling Christianity. Nihilists believe that there is no purpose or meaning to life, which seems to be a natural conclusion for atheism. In virtue of this lack of objective meaning we are then freed for (or burdened with) the task of making our own. Now, from the perspective of atheism, Christianity might be thought of as a historical community of persons seeking to find meaning and comfort in life. How arrogant, then, for the nihilist to suggest Christianity as an invalid place for one to find his meaning!

And how about this hypothetical one:

Being pro-choice but against selective abortion. The foundational tenet of the "pro-choice" position is that the fetus is not a qualifying "person," and even if she were, the rights of the mother trump the rights of the unborn child. Under this reasoning, they have justified the abortion of babies on any grounds. What would a pro-choice lesbian have to say to a woman who chooses to abort her perfectly healthy child because it is not a boy or because it was discovered to have the (hypothetical) gay gene?

Can I Lie or What?

Something occurred to me recently that I had never thought of before: If you are a full-blown relativist, then you cannot affirm that there is such a thing as a lie. You see, "lying" is intentionally hiding or twisting the truth. But if there is no such thing as truth (as epistemological relativists believe), then the "lie" is just as valid as what some might consider the "truth." Truth must exist in order to say that someone is out of compliance with it.

Now, in my experience, very few relativists want to claim that truth does not exist across the board. They generally have no stomach to defend relativism for mundane truths, such as the shape of the earth or the make and model of their cars; they are much more interested in disputing the murky areas of religious and moral claims. And since you may say "all religions are true" or "there are no absolute rights and wrongs," and not suffer the consequences in the next breath (like denying on-coming traffic), you may imagine yourself to be wise.

However, if you insist on maintaining that there are no rights and wrongs — goods and evils — then even if you can define a "lie" as some particular state of affairs, you can't then claim that there is something "bad" about it.

For example, let us say that it is a "fact" that your money is in my pocket. If I then tell you, "I have your money," let us say that I have told a "toon." But if I say, "I don't have your money," let's say I've told a "slurm."

Now, if there is no such thing as evil, then that means that a toon and a slurm have equal moral standing. Indeed, they have no moral status at all, they are value-neutral. To say that a slurm is "bad" is to impose an external, objective concept upon it; it is to say that it does not measure up to some fixed and virtuous standard of behavior.

Of course, the relativist is certainly free to assign a private value or hold a preference regarding toons and slurms. She can say, "I don't like slurms" or, "being on the receiving end of slurms causes me inconvenience," but she can't call me "bad" if I enjoy telling her slurms. In fact, what if I said that I like to slurm relativists because they are all slurming slurmers? Would I be lying? Would I be wrong?

The moral objectivist (or moral realist) can say, "You betcha, even the relativist deserves our honesty and respect." But for the relativist there is no "wrong" answer here. Her conscience is freed to tell the truth or to lie as sentiment and circumstance warrants. Even if relativism were somehow "true," you can see why its broad acceptance would be cause for concern.

Reasonable Christianity

I found a rather interesting post on the Universist's message board. It was offered by one of their regulars, "Gnomon," in reply to a plea for help from "Naturalist," who had been engaging my readers and I in dialog here. Naturalist seemed to be surprised that I, a Christian, was using the language of logic and argumentation to make my points. Here are some excerpts from Gnomon's post along with my observations:

Many posters on this forum seem to believe that Atheists are rational and Christians are irrational. Therefore, they are flabbergasted when they run across a Christian who is just as rational as the best Atheists. I think those rational posters are deceiving themselves, perhaps to boost their feeling of superiority to those "stupid Xians".

This is a refreshing admission from a non-Christian and runs contrary to the attitudes of so many atheists who like to think of themselves as the "Brights," read books entitled From Faith to Reason, and collect quotes like "All thinking men are atheists" (Ernest Hemingway). This commenter is gracious enough to rebuke this misconception, although as you will see he simply adjusts the scope of where he believes our rational shortcomings lie.

I spend the better part of any dialog with atheists simply dispelling stereotypes about what Christianity is actually about and how the mind and rationality neatly fit into the Christian worldview. In fact, I've often been accused of being "too rational," but this is mostly by postmoderns, cultists, and "eastern" thinkers. I personally find atheists to be much more interesting dialog partners because of their strong (stated) allegiance to the principles of reason. This at least makes the dialog last a bit longer and avoids the personal offense, so often taken by new age types, when you point out flaws in their thinking. These people understand the concept of debate, whereas postmoderns and mystics see critique and disagreement as being ungracious or intolerant.

All this finger pointing and wagging is missing the point. In my experience, Christians in general are just as intelligent and just as rational as Atheists. What seems to define the difference between them is their degree of doubt. Christians can be very skeptical about the beliefs of other faiths. But they see no need to point the finger of doubt at their own beliefs.

In some areas, Christians and atheists can make common cause. When it comes to UFOs, psychics, and faith healing charlatans we are on friendly ground. But atheists lump Christianity into the same pile and they do not think Christians are willing to look their own myths and frauds squarely in the face. As an apologist, I will have to take exception with this. The objections and alleged problems are ever before my face. In fact, I expect that I could articulate most of the objections to Christianity better than most non-Christian can. It becomes quite tiresome to answer the same accusations for each unbeliever that I encounter, and it is quite frustrating to witness how pervasive these bad arguments are which are supposed to be the sensible reasons for rejecting Christianity.

But am I just rationalizing or dishonestly masking the weaknesses in my belief system? Am I just bailing a leaky boat? Well, I certainly have nothing to gain from all this if it is just a fantasy (and neither did the apostles and church fathers, who paid with their lives). I get none of the Sunday offerings, and I spend a great deal of my time and money that could be invested in more amusing pursuits. I have yet to uncover evidence of the supposed fraud or myth-building of the early church, and I have yet to find any sort of logical defeater for Christianity. Most objections amount to questions about why God would do something in a particular way, pointing out the un-Christian behavior of "Christians," or raising some conspiracy theory against the historical record. And at the very end of the trail I find that skeptics often just don't want to be constrained in their thinking and behavior by the kind of demanding and inflexible truth that the Christian God suggests. As atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel so candidly said, "I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope that there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that." This is hardly rational grounds for objection.

Atheists, and others who have lost faith, were not afraid to question—seriously question—the foundations of their own belief system. Why do you think preachers spend so much time extolling the virtues of faith? Because blind faith is not normal for adults, and it needs a lot of propping up, a lot of brainwashing.

This presumes that when you "seriously question" you discover that there are not serious answers, and so only those who do not question are safe from reason. No one is born a believer. Even those who are raised in the church at some point must grow up and take ownership of their faith, and not everyone who questions their heritage ends up turning from it. It seems a bit presumptuous to claim that only those who do are the ones who are "serious" or "not afraid." Here is the atheistic elitism rearing its head again, i.e., atheists are more earnest seekers after truth, bolder in their willingness to question, and smarter in winnowing the wheat from the chaff. With their superior mental skills I am surprised that "evolution" has not favored their kind, but, enigmatically, the vast majority of homosapiens are incorrigibly religious. But I digress.

In fact, there is something in what this fellow says about "blind faith," questions, and doubt. One of the very common reasons given for turning away from the "faith" (whether permanently or temporarily) is intellectual suffering, i.e., not getting your questions answered. Too many of our young people are indeed given no answer—even discouraged from the questions—when they come forward with their natural and childlike curiosity. Faith must not only have an object (something you have faith in), but it must also have a reason; else, why not just have faith in the Book of Mormon or the Qur'an?

Faith carried merely by the momentum of a trusted parent, pastor, or Sunday school teacher will only coast so far without the engine of reason. It is, in reality, impossible to truly believe in something "blindly," or without reason, even if you very much want to. To use Greg Koukl's example, do you think you could honestly muster up faith that there was a flying pink elephant over your head even if I offered you $100 to do so? At best, it will surely be a weak "faith" and certainly not one you'd dedicate your life to. Similarly, a Christian with little justification will be either no Christian at all (before long) or one who will be passionless in application and timid in witness. It is a shame and a detriment to the modern church that it seldom emphasizes apologetics and the life of the mind. It much prefers to build its house with the cement of emotion.

This is not to say that things like experience and intuition are invalid factors in the formation of beliefs. Not every convert comes by way of the teleological argument or a careful examination of the manuscript evidence for the reliability of Scripture. There are many saints better than I of very simple faith, yet even they have their reasons, even if they are not conscious of how to articulate them. The atheist will suggest that these reasons have to do with psychological need or fear of death, but as Nagel's above quote shows, psychoanalyzing motives can be even more damning for the unbeliever.

The reasons for faith may be only as sophisticated as the particular person or circumstances warrant. Not everyone is an academic or saddled with the same baggage of presuppositions to be overcome. And it would hardly be sporting of God to construct a path that only a genius or guru could discover. The "simple" in faith might appeal to the Gospel as having the ring of truth, or claiming that it resonates with their deepest intuitions about human nature and the world they encounter (my paraphrase). All this is in keeping with Scripture's claim that the Holy Spirit testifies to us of the truth of the Gospel. And since belief itself is, in the end, a subjective exercise, it is no surprise that the Spirit must offer us help to that end.

In the end, I would propose that the answers to almost every conceivable question are available for the asking to any who are earnest and persistent enough to seek them. For believers of simple faith, knowing the questions will win credibility with the seeker, and seeing them answered can only strengthen faith's conviction. But I think that willful unbelief is happily justified with its first "I don't know"; yet we should strive not to be that one who delivers it to them.