Atheists and Honesty

“Tell me why i should believe something that makes no sense to me, has no evidence,”

“Why would I believe in God when there is no evidence for His existence.”

These are pretty typical comments from atheists. In fact I had a fine, respectful person ask just a couple days ago, “If it is someday proven that life actually CAN arise from non life, and if it is someday proven that everything actually CAN come from nothing, by nothing, would that be enough for you to quit believing in God?”
I thought about it (not long enough obviously), and said something like, “Yes, that would pretty well wrap it up for me. Although there are a number of issues regarding Jesus that would also need to be cleared up.”

I say now that I didn’t think about it long enough because I would also need to have someone help me believe that ~ seven billion people including myself are mentally ill in the truest meaning of the term. AND I would need to explain away the objective moral standard that we all know exists. I would also need to understand why it is that only Christianity has a workable explanation for the objective moral standard we all recognise. Of course atheists HAVE an explanation for our sense of morality, but it’s as incoherent and convoluted as all the rest of their explanations. I’ll talk about the atheist’s understanding of morality in a bit, but first, here is the Christian argument for the existence of Creator God via the proofs of objective morality.

. If God does not exist, then objective morals, values and obligations do not exist

. We know from our interactions with other people that objective morals, values and obligations DO exist. We know, and we know absolutely when someone does “wrong” to us.

. Because the above premises are true and coherent, the following conclusion is also true: Creator God exists.

Before you get all excited, roll your eyes and wave your arms in the air, just listen. We know at a fundamental level that objective morality exists. Just as physical laws are fully realised in the physical world, objective moral laws are fully realised in Jesus and Father God. As I stated above, our daily interactions with others shows we BELIEVE WITHOUT DOUBT that objective moral order is as real and independent of our recognition as is the natural order of things. Our perceptions of natural and moral laws are givens of our experience.

When confronting Christianity’s arguments for objective morality: Atheists claim that God acts in a capricious and arbitrary manner. That is not true.

. Objective moral Goodness and Obligation are based on God’s character. Therefore, God’s commands are not ARBITRARY, for they are simply the inescapable expression of His Just and Loving nature.

When confronting Christianity’s arguments for objective morality: Atheists claim that objective morality exists independent of God. That is not true.

. There has never been a law without a Law Giver. And since our moral obligations are grounded in the Divine commands, moral values and duties do not exist INDEPENDENT of God.

. What God commands is good.

. What God forbids is wrong, bad, evil, self-destructive.

This is what it means for morality to be objective versus subjective, selective or relative to the situation. Objective Morality is not based on the individual’s character or personality or level of empathy, or that person’s likes or dislikes, sanity or insanity.

- If they want to be honest with themselves, atheists must ask:
. If only the material and the natural exists, what are we to make of the laws of logic and mathematics? Those laws clearly exist regardless of whether we know about them or understand them. However, the Laws of Logic and Mathematics:

Can’t be measured.

Can’t be weighed.

Can’t be observed.

Yet, we are so certain of their existence that we fly to other planets with them. We solve mysteries of the universe with them. We develop an understanding of ourselves with them. These laws are transcendent to us so obviously they did not evolve with us. Yet they exist. How can that be? Unless, those laws were created by a Law Giver, they would not exist. It is no different for the Objective Moral Law. As with the Laws of Logic and Mathematics, Objective Moral Laws are not created, they are discovered.

- If they want to be honest with themselves, another question atheists must ask is, how can objective morality be an evolved instinct when it’s something other than instinct that causes us to choose one of two conflicting “moral” choices, or instincts?

Picture this. You’re walking down the sidewalk and up ahead you observe a young man who has just knocked down an elderly woman. He’s attempting to tear the purse from her arm but she’s hanging on tightly. You have the option to engage one of two instincts or moral choices. You can get out of the road and pretend you didn’t see anything (self-preservation), or you can help the woman by driving off her attacker hopefully before he wrests loose her purse. (altruism).

Neither of these instincts or choices ARE the moral law / obligation. Rather, the thing that helps you to choose which action to take IS the moral law / obligation. C. S. Lewis speaks to this when he says, “You will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this THING that judges between two choices, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be EITHER of the instincts [choices]. You might as well say the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.”

- If they want to be honest with themselves, atheists must ask, “How can we say that morals have evolved into cooperative needs, when that implies survival as an end and cooperation as a means? Darwinism by definition has no end because it is a non intelligent process. And even if survival of our genes is an end, how then do we explain things like the killing of our offspring by the millions, suicide and other high risk behaviours like unprotected sex? Even if we don’t choose the “right” thing to do, even if we convince ourselves - to the degree that we are able to do that - that right and wrong don’t exist, we do “know” right from wrong behaviours and we know them at a fundamental level of awareness. We know that right and wrong exist external to ourselves, i.e., they did not evolve.

- If they want to be honest with themselves, atheists must acknowledge that in order to adhere to things like utilitarian ethical systems they have to abduct meaning from Objective Morality to say that this or that action is “good” or “better” and therefore worth working towards. For without Objective Morality upon which to judge “good” or “better” no such choice can be made.

From the atheist perspective, defining a moral good is the prerogative of the individual. Hitler was working toward a good that he believed in (no I’m not saying Hitler was an atheist - He was a Darwinist). Missionaries are also working toward a perceived good when they set up schools and hospitals. No atheist, naturalist, materialist, Darwinist can logically make any judgements as to the right or wrongness of what other people do. They can only judge whether their own actions are helpful to that individual phenotype.

- If they want to be honest with themselves, atheists must admit that even if we come to know our moral ideas because of genetic or social factors, that doesn’t mean that the Objective Moral Law doesn’t exist outside of and transcendent to ourselves just like the Laws of Logic and Mathematics.

- Finally, if they want to be honest with themselves, atheist need to ask, “Can I think of even one behaviour that is objectively, absolutely wrong or right for all people, in all places and at all times?” If I can, then I must also admit that there is a Moral Law Giver and if I admit that, then I am no longer an atheist.

To be an atheist, you must believe:

That everything came from nothing by nothing

That life can arise spontaneously from non life

That Real Objective Moral Principles arose from nothing.

REMEMBER:
Our “knowing” moral laws is not at all the same as “inventing” moral laws.

Our knowing moral laws does not create the “existence” of moral laws.

Objective Morality exists independently of how we come to know morality.

The existence of Objective Morality is evidence for the existence of an Objective Moral Law Giver.