CRI » Mere Christianity

Atheists and the Quest for Objective Morality

Christian Research Institute — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:17:00 +0000

In a recent documentary entitled Collision, leading atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian theologian and pastor Douglas Wilson go on the road to discuss and debate this question: “Is Christianity good for the world?” It is a fascinating discourse covering a host of issues, but one theme continues to emerge throughout the narrative: whether atheism can provide a justification for morality. Atheists often make the claim that they can live good moral lives without believing in God.

SYNOPSIS

Atheists often argue that they can make moral claims and live good moral lives without believing in God. Many theists agree, but the real issue is whether atheism can provide a justification for morality. A number of leading atheists currently writing on this issue are opposed to moral relativism, given its obvious and horrific ramifications, and have attempted to provide a justification for a nonrelative morality. Three such attempts are discussed in this article: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s position that objective morality simply “is”; Richard Dawkins’s position that morality is based on the selfish gene; and Michael Ruse and Edward Wilson’s position that morality is an evolutionary illusion. Each of these positions, it turns out, is problematic. Sinnott-Armstrong affirms an objective morality, but affirming something and justifying it are two very different matters. Dawkins spells out his selfish gene approach by including four fundamental criteria, but his approach has virtually nothing to do with morality—with real right and wrong, good and evil. Finally, Ruse and Wilson disagree with Dawkins and maintain that belief in morality is just an adaptation put in place by evolution to further our reproductive ends. On their view, morality is simply an illusion foisted on us by our genes to get us to cooperate and to advance the species. But have they considered the ramifications of such a view? Each of these positions fails to provide the justification necessary for a universal, objective morality—the kind of morality in which good and evil are clearly understood and delineated.

Hitchens brings this challenge to believers: “Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.”¹ Another atheist, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, offers a list of “pretty good” atheists—including, he says, Thomas Edison, George Orwell, Marie Curie, and Mark Twain—and notes that they “led exemplary lives of service,” contributed greatly to the social good,” and were “kind, considerate, altruistic, and caring.” He argues that “surely someone on this long list of atheists passes muster. That is enough to refute the claim that all atheists are immoral.”² Daniel Dennett adds that “I have uncovered no evidence to support the claim that people, religious or not, who don’t believe in reward in heaven and/or punishment in hell are more likely to kill, rape, rob, or break their promises than people who do.”³

What’s fascinating about these claims is that they miss the real issue at hand. Many theists believe that atheists can utter profound ethical statements and live good moral lives. The apostle Paul explains one reason why this is so: “When the Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires…they show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them” (Rom. 2:14–15 NRSV).

When a person, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, or what have you, is functioning properly and not repressing or ignoring his conscience—especially while dwelling in a cultural milieu that reflects the moral truths of God—he basically knows right from wrong, good from evil. However, to know or believe that something is right or wrong is very different from justifying that thing’s being right or wrong. For example, one could know that flipping the light switch in the kitchen causes the light to go on and have absolutely no understanding of why this occurs or justification for how it really does so. By arguing for a belief in or knowledge of morality without providing a justification for morality, atheists confuse moral epistemology (moral knowledge) with moral ontology (foundational existence of morality). The real question at hand is this: What grounds the atheists’ moral positions? What makes their moral views more than mere hunches, inklings, or subjective opinions?⁴

We can get to the heart of the atheist’s dilemma with a graphic but true example. Some years ago serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to over thirty murders, was interviewed about his gruesome activities. Consider the frightening words to his victim as he describes them:

Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either “right” or “wrong”….I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable “value judgment” that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these “others”? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as “moral” or “good” and others as “immoral” or “bad”? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me—after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.⁵

While I am in no way accusing atheists in general of being Ted Bundy-like, the question I have for the atheist is simply this: On what moral grounds can you provide a response to Bundy? The atheistic options are limited. If morality has nothing to do with God, as atheists suppose, what does it have to do with? One response the atheist could offer is moral relativism, either personal or cultural. The personal moral relativist affirms that morality is an individual matter; you decide for yourself what is morally right and wrong. But on this view, what could one say to Bundy? Not much, other than “I don’t like what you believe; it offends me how you brutalize women.” For the personal relativist, however, who really cares (other than you) that you are offended by someone else’s actions? On this view we each decide our own morality, and when my morality clashes with yours, there is no final arbiter other than perhaps that the stronger of us forces the other to agree. But this kind of Nietzschean “might makes right” ethic has horrific consequences, and one need only be reminded of the Nazi reign of terror to see it in full bloom. This is one reason why thoughtful atheists, such as Christopher Hitchens, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and others don’t go there.⁶

But what about cultural moral relativism—the view that moral claims are the inventions of a given culture? Most thoughtful atheists don’t tread here either, and this is one reason why: If right and wrong are cultural inventions, then it would always be wrong for someone within that culture to speak out against them. If culture defines right and wrong, then who are you to challenge it? For example, to speak out against slavery in Great Britain in the seventeenth century would have been morally wrong, for it was culturally acceptable. But surely it was a morally good thing for William Wilberforce and others to strive against the prevailing currents of their time and place to abolish the slave trade. For the cultural moral relativist, all moral reformers—Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, Jr., even Jesus and Gandhi, to name a few—would be in the wrong. But who would agree with this conclusion? Thankfully, most leading atheists agree that moral relativism is doomed.⁷

So what do they affirm? Here are three accounts that recent atheists have defended: (1) objective morality simply “is,” (2) morality is based on the selfish gene, and (3) morality is an evolutionary illusion.⁸ Let’s take a brief look at each of them.

OBJECTIVE MORALITY SIMPLY “IS”

One approach some atheists have taken is to affirm that there are objective moral values. After all, couldn’t a person both believe that there are objective moral values and believe that God does not exist? Is the God/morality connection a necessary one? While there are some atheists,such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Michael Ruse, J. L. Mackie, and others, who do hold that morality cannot be objective without the existence of a God, there are others who disagree. One such person is atheist philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. He puts the point concisely: “In fact, many atheists are happy to embrace objective moral values. I agree with them. Rape is morally wrong. So is discrimination against gays and lesbians. Even if somebody or some group thinks that these acts are not morally wrong, they stillare morally wrong.…[Agreeing that some acts are objectively morally wrong] implies nothing about God, unless objective values depend on God. Why should we believe that they do?”⁹

But again the question arises: What grounds moral values? Sinnott-Armstrong answers this way: “What makes rape immoral is that rape harms the victim in terrible ways…It simply is [immoral].”¹⁰As already noted, being moral and having a reasonable foundation or justification for being moral are two very different issues. To use the example mentioned above, I can wholeheartedly believe that the lights in the room will turn on after I flip the light switch without any understanding of electricity. I can still function well in society, going from place to place, flipping light switches and never even entertaining the idea that electricity is involved in the process of causing the lights to turn on (at least until the light switch breaks). If, however, someone asked me to provide a justification for the lights going on when the switch is flipped, and my reply was simply, “They just do,” this is no answer at all. The fact is, the flow of an electric charge (among other factors) grounds our explanation for the lights going on when the switch is turned on. This is what gives us an ontological basis for being “light-switch flippers.” The same applies to morality and God. One may well be able to deny God’s existence and still live a moral life, but there would be no fundamental basis, no objective moral grounding, for such a life. There would be no answer for Bundy.

MORALITY IS BASED ON THE SELFISH GENE

A second approach some atheists have taken is to attempt to ground morality in biological evolution. This is the approach Richard Dawkins takes. In his book, The Selfish Gene, he argues that “we are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”¹¹ On his view, our moral aspirations and beliefs are predetermined posits of our genetic machinery, selfishly programmed to advance the gene pool. He grants that selfishness does not at first glance seem to be a good foundation for a moral theory, and in his later book, The God Delusion, he expounds on his position. He agrees that “the most obvious way in which genes ensure their own ‘selfish’ survival relative to other genes is by programming individual organisms to be selfish.”¹² Nevertheless, he argues, sometimes selfish genes “ensure their own selfish survival by influencing organisms to behave altruistically” or morally.¹³ This happens especially with an organism’s kin—brothers, sisters, and children. For “a gene that programs individual organisms to favour their genetic kin is statistically likely to benefit copies of itself.”¹⁴ But it also happens through another means, he argues: reciprocal altruism. This is the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” idea, and it takes place not just with one’s close relatives, but also between various members of the species and even among members of different species.

Dawkins adds two further elements to his moral account: reputation for generosity (that is, one acts altruistically so others will form the belief that he is generous), and buying authentic advertising (that is, one acts morally in order to prove that he has more than another—that he is dominant and superior—and so can afford to be altruistic and moral).

So Dawkins provides four components of an attempt to provide justification for acting morally:¹⁵

1. genetic kinship (helping one’s family members even at one’s own expense);

2. reciprocation (beyond one’s kin, the repayment of favors given where both sides benefit from the transaction);

3. acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness (convincing others one is a moral altruist);

4. buying authentic advertising (strutting one’s good deeds before others to impress them and infer one’s superiority).

In essence, this is what Dawkins seems to be saying: our genes are preprogrammed selfishly to replicate themselves. Even so, individuals don’t always act selfishly because our genes—working at the level of the organism—sometimes act in altruistic and moral ways, as this offers better gene propagation over the long haul.

Now, an obvious and glaring problem with this view is that it has virtually nothing to do with what we generally understand to be morality—with real right and wrong, good and evil.

On Dawkins’s account, a person is kind to his neighbor because he’s been preprogrammed by his genes to do so (at least some individuals have been so preprogrammed; others perhaps not), and he’s been so programmed because acting this way confers evolutionary advantage. There is no objective right and wrong on this view. We simply call something “morally good” because our genes have, through eons of evolutionary struggle and survival, gotten us to believe that it is so.

But do Dawkins and other atheists who affirm this view really believe that rape, murder, and the like are not truly and universally evil, but are merely socially taboo for purposes of evolutionary advantage? Are good and evil just illusions conjured up by our genes to get us to behave in certain ways? This leads to the third view.

MORALITY AS AN EVOLUTIONARY ILLUSION

A third approach to an atheistic account of morality has been put forth by evolutionary ethicist and atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse and his colleague Edward Wilson. Here is how they describe it:

Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will—or in the metaphorical roots of evolution or any other part of the framework of the Universe. In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Ethics is produced by evolution but is not justified by it because, like Macbeth’s dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without existing in substance.…Unlike Macbeth’s dagger, ethics is a shared illusion of the human race.¹⁶

Morality, on this view, is something most of us believe in, follow, and practice, even though it doesn’t exist in reality; it’s just an illusion foisted on us via evolution so that we don’t kill ourselves off as a species.

Such a view has dire consequences. Indeed the Edinburgh Review, one of the most respected British magazines of the nineteenth century, observed that if Darwin’s evolutionary account of morality turns out to be right, “most earnest-minded men will be compelled to give up these motives by which they have attempted to live noble and virtuous lives, as founded on a mistake; our moral sense will turn out to be a mere developed instinct….If these views be true, a revolution in thought is imminent, which will shake society to its very foundations by destroying the sanctity of conscience and the religious sense.”¹⁷

In order to have a consistent and reasonable objective moral stance—a moral view in which you can substantiate a claim that this is right and that is wrong, this is good and that is evil—you need to have an objective moral basis. As C. S. Lewis argued so well, there must be a universal moral law, or else moral disagreements would make no sense. But a universal moral law requires a universal Moral Law Giver—an objective grounding for that moral law.¹⁸ None of these atheistic accounts provides us with one. No atheistic account has ever provided one. We can put the atheist’s problem concisely:

1. If moral notions such as good and evil exist objectively, then there must be an objective foundation for their existence.

2. Atheism offers no objective basis for the existence of moral notions such as good and evil.

3. Therefore, for the atheist, moral notions such as good and evil must not objectively exist.

While it is good that Ruse and Wilson acknowledge this conclusion and don’t try to smuggle in an objective morality in their atheistic worldview, I wonder if they have contemplated the moral ramifications of their position. On their worldview, we are merely evolved brutes whose very existence is derived from the naturalistic laws of evolution, including random mutation and survival of the fittest in which the strong survive and the weak die off (and sometimes the strong kill off the weak in their struggle for survival). We are simply the byproducts of a “nature red in tooth and claw,” to quote the poet Tennyson. Is it any wonder that the atheistic regimes of Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Pol Pot—devoid as they were of any significant Christian influence—were responsible for the mass murder of over 100 million people in their quest for dominance, more lives destroyed than in all of the religious wars in the history of the human race? These regimes were not discordant with an atheistic basis of morality; they were consistent with it.

Christopher Hitchens and his ilk are wrong: Christian morality, rooted as it is in a transcendent, personal, omni-benevolent God, has truly been good for the world. Heaven help us if an atheistic morality, rooted in evolutionary theory or otherwise, should ever become the guiding moral force on a global scale.

Chad Meister, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy at Bethel College and author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Building Belief (Baker, 2006) and the Christianity Today 2010 Book of the Year in Evangelism and Apologetics, God Is Great, God Is Good (IVP, 2009).

notes

1 Christopher Hitchens, “An Atheist Responds,” www.washingtonpost.com, Saturday, July 14, 2007, A17.

2 Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Morality without God? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 22–23.

3 Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking, 2006), 279.

4 For more on this, see Paul Copan, “The Moral Argument,” in Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues, ed. Paul Copan and Chad Meister (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 127–41.

5 A statement by Ted Bundy, paraphrased and rewritten by Harry V. Jaffa, Homosexuality and the National Law (Claremont Institute of the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, 1990), 3–4.

6 For more on the New Atheists’ views of morality, see my essay, “God, Evil, and Morality,” in God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible, ed. William Lane Craig and Chad Meister (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 107–18.

7 Sam Harris, for example, recognizes the inherent dangers of moral relativism and speaks out against it in his book, The End of Faith (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 170–71. Unfortunately, he doesn’t tell us what his moral theory is.

8 Utilitarianism is another approach that an atheist could take, but this is not commonly done—especially by the new atheists.

9 William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 33.

10 Ibid., 34.

11 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), preface to 1976 edition, v.

12 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 216.

13 Ibid., 216.

14 Ibid.

15 Dawkins summarizes these components himself in ibid., 219–20.

16 Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, “The Evolution of Ethics,” in Philosophy of Biology, ed. Michael Ruse (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 316. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, when Macbeth is about to kill King Duncan, he has a hallucination of a dagger floating in the air.

17 As quoted in Robert Wright, The Moral Animal (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 327–28.

18 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1953), chaps. 1–5.

Can Morality Be Based in Our “Selfish” Evolutionary Past?

Christian Research Institute — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:58:00 +0000

Christians argue that the existence of universal and objective morality is evidence for the existence of God. C. S. Lewis provides a classic example of this argument in Mere Christianity.¹ In The God Delusion, however, Richard Dawkins of Oxford University claims that morality is grounded in evolution and that a person can be moral without God or religion.

Dawkins acknowledges that on the surface Darwinism seems to be inadequate to explain goodness and morality. After all, what is the survival value of such sentiments? He nonetheless attempts to explain morality through his “selfish gene” theory by which genes ensure their own survival by encouraging altruistic behavior, such as through reciprocal altruism or aiding one’s genetic kin.²

Dawkins also argues that if our morality is grounded in our “Darwinian past” then we can expect to find universal morals that transcend cultural and religious boundaries. He cites studies that allegedly demonstrate that religious people do not differ from atheists in their morals.³ He concludes that “we do not need God in order to be good—or evil.”⁴

Considering his atheistic assumptions, it makes sense that Dawkins would attempt to base morality on evolution. However, his argument does not do justice to the true nature of morality: (1) he does not adequately explain how natural selection can produce moral obligation; (2) he confuses the relationship between morality and either God or religion; and (3) he does not adequately explain why being moral is important.

PROBLEM ONE: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN WHAT IS AND WHAT SHOULD BE

Dawkins’s theory addresses whether actions either promote or hinder the survival of genes. This is merely a pragmatic criterion, but morality deals with concepts of right and wrong, not useful and not useful. No one consistently lives as if morals are merely based on survival value. People do regard some actions as genuinely right or wrong. Dawkins does not explain how the survival value of an action translates into the moral status of that action. As Dawkins admits elsewhere, “science has no methods for deciding what is ethical. That is a matter for individuals and for society.”⁵

Dawkins theorizes in terms of pragmatic survival value, but he misses this problem when he criticizes religion in terms of actual right and wrong:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.6

These considerations fill me with despair. They seem to show the immense power of religion, and especially the religious upbringing of children, to divide people and foster historic enmities and hereditary vendettas.7

Joshua’s action was a deed of barbaric genocide.8

A More Pessimistic Perspective

Dawkins demonstrates a very different attitude in River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (published eleven years before The God Delusion). He explains how a female digger wasp lays eggs inside a caterpillar so that her larvae can eat it. She paralyzes the caterpillar but does not kill it so that the body remains fresh. Dawkins speculates that if the wasp’s venom included an anesthetic, then the caterpillar would not suffer while being eaten, but “nature is not cruel, only piteously indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”⁹

In The God Delusion, Dawkins advocates seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people,¹⁰ but in River out of Eden he explains that natural selection does not promote such behavior. He draws from the economic concept of utility functions (in other words, whatever a given system maximizes) and explains that natural selection maximizes the survival of DNA. He then proposes the concept of “God’s Utility Function.” He says that we can imagine that creatures were created by a Divine Engineer and then we can reverse engineer what he was trying to maximize.¹¹ He applies this to what he considers to be the instability of cooperative effort:

Humans have a rather endearing tendency to assume that welfare means group welfare, that “good” means the good of society, the future well-being of the species or even of the ecosystem. God’s Utility Function, as derived from a contemplation of the nuts and bolts of natural selection, turns out to be sadly at odds with such a utopian vision. To be sure, there are occasions when genes may maximize their selfish welfare at their level, by programming unselfish cooperation, or even self-sacrifice, by the organism at its level. But group welfare is always a fortuitous consequence, not a primary drive. This is the meaning of the “selfish gene.”¹²

Dawkins returns to his example of the wasp and caterpillar and says that “Nature is neither kind nor unkind. She is neither against suffering nor for it. Nature is not interested one way or the other in suffering, unless it affects the survival of DNA.”¹³ He describes the crash of a school bus and quotes a writer who argues that the horror of such tragedies confirms that we live in a world of values, because if the world were just electrons, then there would be no problem of evil. Dawkins responds:

On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A. E. Housman put it:

For Nature, heartless, witless Nature Will neither know nor care.

DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.¹⁴

How can natural selection be the basis of morality (The God Delusion) if it is completely unconcerned with kindness and suffering (River out of Eden)? Dawkins shows some intellectual honesty (considering his atheistic assumptions) regarding morality in River out of Eden, but he appears to abandon it in The God Delusion. The reason for this change is unclear.

Morals Need a Solid Foundation

Paul Copan argues that evolutionary naturalism can describe how people behave, but it cannot prescribe how people should behave.¹⁵ In order to say that an action is good or evil, one needs an objective and universal moral standard that transcends individual people and individual societies. It must also be personal in nature. Moral standards deal with right and wrong, what should and should not be done. That implies a choice that requires personality and consciousness. A transcendent moral standard would therefore need to be grounded in a conscious, personal, and transcendent reality. Christians find this in God—the only place where such a standard can be found.¹⁶

If God does not exist, then as Francis Schaeffer explains, ethics merely explain what is rather than what should be. There is then no objective difference between kindness and cruelty because there is no standard.¹⁷ The very terms “kind” and “cruel” would be meaningless. As Norman Geisler and Frank Turek argue, atheists rule out a transcendent Lawgiver in advance:18 This creates a problem: “While they may believe in an objective right and wrong, they have no way to justify such a belief (unless they admit a Moral Law Giver, at which point they cease to be atheists)” (emphasis in original).¹⁹

PROBLEM TWO: CONFUSING GOD AND RELIGION

In some places in The God Delusion Dawkins argues that God does not need to exist in order for people to be moral, and in other places he argues that people do not need religion or belief in God in order to be moral. He appears to use these two conditions interchangeably:

As we shall see, the way people respond to these moral tests, and their inability to articulate their reasons, seems largely independent of their religious beliefs or lack of them.²⁰

The main conclusion of Hauser and Singer’s study was that there is no statistically significant difference between atheists and religious believers in making these judgments. This seems compatible with the view, which I and many others hold, that we do not need God in order to be good—or evil.²¹

You have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good. I suspect quite a lot of religious people do think religion is what motivates them to be good.²²

Whatever its cause, the manifest phenomenon of Zeitgeist progression is more than enough to undermine the claim that we need God in order to be good, or to decide what is good.²³

The distinction between these two conditions is significant. As explained above, objective morality requires a transcendent foundation in God. This is true regardless of a person’s specific religious beliefs, or lack thereof, and despite differing cultural standards. In the Christian worldview (to which Dawkins responds more than to any other religious worldview), God created mankind, and He has revealed Himself not only through the written revelation in the Bible and the incarnation of Jesus, but also through nature and mankind’s moral conscience. For example, the apostle Paul explains in Romans 2:13–16 that the Gentiles who do not have the written law are nonetheless inwardly aware of God’s moral law.

If God exists and has given mankind a moral conscience, then people will be aware of His moral law, despite differing cultural and religious standards. Human morality has a divine foundation, not only for Christians, Jews, and Muslims, but also for atheists. As Paul Copan explains, atheists can discern an objective difference between right and wrong without reference to special revelation (such as written scripture), but they lack “a proper metaphysical context” for such an affirmation, a context that is provided in the biblical affirmation that God exists and has created mankind in His image.²⁴ Someone may be aware of morals without religion but not without God.²⁵

PROBLEM THREE: WHY EVEN BOTHER BEING MORAL?

Most atheists are not guilty of the immoral deeds perpetrated by atheistic regimes, but beyond evolutionary pragmatism and public pressure, what prevents a person from being immoral if atheism is true? Dawkins admits that evolution does not produce such virtues as generosity and universal love,²⁶ but he argues that we have evolved to the point where we can rebel against our DNA and teach such values.²⁷ However, he does not indicate why we should rebel and move beyond our evolutionary heritage.

If nature does not care about suffering, then why not be cruel if it is beneficial for the individual person or society? History provides numerous examples of cruelty and oppression by perpetrators who saw personal or societal benefit in their actions (such as Hitler’s “Final Solution”). Alister McGrath notes that “one of the greatest ironies of the twentieth century is that many of the most deplorable acts of murder, intolerance, and repression of that century were carried out by those who thought that religion was murderous, intolerant, and repressive—and thus sought to remove it from the face of the planet as a humanitarian act.”28 Dawkins argues that humans have progressed morally since the times of Genghis Khan and Hitler and will continue to progress,²⁹ but he needs a standard by which to judge between moral systems. C. S. Lewis explains:

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.³⁰

Dawkins does not provide a clear standard. He supports a utilitarian ethic by which one should seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people, but he does not explain how to judge which consequences are good and which are bad.³¹ Lewis argues that a moral standard exists beyond human convention: “It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior, and yet quite definitely real—a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.”³²

Dawkins also does not have a rational basis for moral values if people are the products of impersonal, random, evolutionary processes. He attempts to argue that natural selection is the very opposite of a chance process.³³ Granted, if natural selection determines which genes survive based on their survival value, then it does not operate according to pure chance, but there are two problems. First, chance mutations will determine whether or not a gene arises as a candidate at all, even if natural selection itself is not a chance process. Second, Dawkins appeals to chance to explain how the first hereditary molecule arose and why one universe is favorable to life while another is not. He argues that chance (he also calls it “luck”) in the origin of life is not a significant problem because it only needs to happen once, while natural selection is a continuing process.³⁴ This may reduce the role of chance, but it does not escape the reality of chance and the problem that it creates for objective morality. Life is still the product of chance.

In Dawkins’s model, morals are byproducts of evolution, which means that they are mere conventions. Nothing is genuinely right or wrong. An action is merely pragmatic or not pragmatic, desirable or not desirable (but pragmatic or desirable for whom? Who decides?). People are merely accidents of evolution, and there is nothing wrong with a stronger (more “fit”) accident oppressing a weaker (less “fit”) accident in order to move ahead. In fact, that would be natural selection at work.³⁵

THE REALITY OF MORALS

Every person is aware that there is a genuine difference between right and wrong. As Paul Copan explains, “an ethic rooted in nature appears to leave us with arbitrary morality. Theism, on the other hand, begins with value; so bridging the is-ought gulf is a nonissue” (emphasis in original).³⁶ God did not arbitrarily declare a standard of right and wrong, and He did not discover that standard. Instead, the standard that He has revealed is an expression of His eternally holy, just, and loving nature. Greg Bahnsen states that “as Christians we have an absolute, unchanging, holy God who has revealed an absolute, unchanging, holy law to provide an absolute, unchanging, holy foundation for our ethical outlook and our moral conduct.”³⁷

Christians have an absolute, unshakable, and unchanging standard of morality. The atheist does not have such a basis. Gary Habermas argues:

One may have a strong, personal disgust for eating eggplant, but such an act is far from being immoral. Similarly, what we commonly view as evil in the world on an atheistic ethical system amounts to personal distaste, not to an objective problem for theism. Atheists have lost their favorite argument against theism.

To summarize briefly, we cannot have it both ways: we can accept absolute morality and face the strong possibility of the theistic universe, or we can deny it and acknowledge that we cannot lay evil at God’s feet, for there would be no such thing as objectively recognized wickedness. Either way, atheism receives a serious blow.³⁸

It is true that some people have committed atrocities in the name of Christ, but they acted contrary to the teachings of Christ. This illustrates the depravity inherent in the heart of every person and the need for Christians to continually strive to serve Christ more fully. Atheism does not account for mankind’s fallen nature,³⁹ and it does not provide an adequate basis for morality or for the concepts of good and evil. As Joel McDurmon notes, “The atheist has no Golden Rule because he has no Golden Ruler.”⁴⁰ When morality is divorced from its foundation in God, mankind ultimately has no stable foundation on which to judge the good and the bad. The Christian does have such a standard.

Henry W. Middleton, Ph.D., is a researcher and advisor for TrueLife.org. He also writes a Christian apologetics blog at http://thoughtsonapologetics.blogspot.com.

notes

1 See C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: MacMillan Books, 1952), 17–39.

2 See Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 214–20. Dawkins says in a radio interview that altruism towards individuals who cannot reciprocate is a “mistaken byproduct” but a mistake of which he approves. Terry Gross, Fresh Air (March 28, 2007), 50 min, MPEG-4, http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewAudiobook?id=251744842&s=143441.

3 See Dawkins, The God Delusion, 222, 225.

4 Ibid., 226.

5 Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science and Love (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 34. See also Gregory Koukl, “Monkey Morality: Can Evolution Explain Ethics?” Christian Research Journal, April–June 1998, http://www.equip.org/articles/evolution-and-ethics.

6 Dawkins, The God Delusion, 31. For a response to such charges, see Paul Copan, “Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics,” Philosophia Christi 10, 1 (2008): 7–37; also available from the Evangelical Philosophical Society, http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=45.

7 Dawkins, The God Delusion, 257.

8 Ibid. Dawkins is referring to the attack on Jericho in Joshua 6.

9 Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, The Science Masters Series (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 95–96.

10 See Dawkins, The God Delusion, 232–33.

11 See Dawkins, River out of Eden, 103–5.

12 Ibid., 121–22. Also Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 30th anniversary ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 2–4.

13 Dawkins, River out of Eden, 131.

14 Ibid., 132–33.

15 See Paul Copan, “A Summary Critique: Why Science Can’t Explain Morality,” Christian Research Journal 29, 6 (2006): 44.

16 Paul Copan makes a similar argument in “God, Naturalism, and the Foundations of Morality,” in The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue, ed. Robert B. Stewart (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), 147–48. Also available at PaulCopan.com, http://paulcopan.com/articles/pdf/God-naturalism-morality.pdf. See also J. M. Njoroge, “The New Atheism and Morality,” Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, at http://www.rzim.org/USA/USFV/tabid/436/ArticleID/10020/CBModuleId/881/Default.aspx.

17 See Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, in The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy: Three Essential Books in One Volume (Wheaton, IL.: Crossway Books, 1990), 291–301.

18 See Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, IL.: Crossway Books, 2004), 191.

19 Ibid., 193.

20 Dawkins, The God Delusion, 223.

21 Ibid., 226.

22 Ibid., 227.

23 Ibid., 272.

24 See Copan, “Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?” 35–36. Also Copan, “God, Naturalism, and the Foundations of Morality,” 145–57.

25 Dawkins’s appeal to studies regarding behavior among religious and nonreligious people does not prove that God is unnecessary in order for a person to be moral. At most such studies demonstrate that a moral distinction between right and wrong is universal among mankind, which is part of Paul’s argument in Romans 2:13–16.

26 See Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, ix, 2–3.

27 See ibid., xiv, 3, 139, 200–201, 267–68.

28 Alister McGrath, “Has Science Eliminated God? Richard Dawkins and the Meaning of Life,” Science and Christian Belief 17, 2 (October 2005): 132. For examples of actions committed under atheistic communism, consult Stéphane Courtois, Nicholas Werth, Jean-Luc Panné, et. al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

29 See Dawkins, The God Delusion, 265–72.

30 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 25.

31 See Dawkins, The God Delusion, 232–33. See also Dawkins, River out of Eden, 104.

32 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 30.

33 See Dawkins, The God Delusion, 113–14.

34 See ibid., 137–40, 158.

35 Dawkins describes slavery among ants (The Selfish Gene, 177–79), but he opposes slavery among humans (The God Delusion, 169, 265, 271).

36 Copan, “God, Naturalism, and the Foundations of Morality,” 152.

37 Greg L. Bahnsen, Pushing the Antithesis: The Apologetic Methodology of Greg L. Bahnsen, ed. Gary Demar (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2007), 182.

38 Gary Habermas, “The Plight of the New Atheism: A Critique,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 51, no. 4 (Dec. 2008): 823.

39 See Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live without God? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 189.

40 Joel McDurmon, The Return of the Village Atheist (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2007), 28.

Good Philosophy Must Exist

Christian Research Institute — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:10:00 +0000

Not long after the advent of World War II, C. S. Lewis delivered a message wherein he said, “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”¹ But was C. S. Lewis, the popular writer of works such as Mere Christianity and the Narnia series, a philosopher? Not professionally, as Lewis specialized in medieval and Renaissance literature. In the sense that Lewis loved wisdom, and thought and wrote about philosophical issues, however, he was indeed a philosopher. In fact, many of his writings, both fiction and nonfiction, address three key areas of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

Consequently, the editors of C. S. Lewis as Philosopher have brought together fifteen essays by several contributors, emphasizing the philosophy of Lewis in relation to truth, goodness, and beauty. The result is a rich and varied tapestry of writing that provides distinctly philosophical insights on The Abolition of Man, Miracles, The Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, the Chronicles of Narnia, and many other works by Lewis.

In particular, Victor Reppert revisits Lewis’s argument from reason in an essay titled, “Defending the Dangerous Idea,” while David Horner updates an earlier paper, “Aut Deus Aut Malus Homo” (Either God or a Bad Man), which evaluates Lewis’s popular argument from Christ with specific responses to Lewis critic John Beversluis. In “To Reign in Hell or to Serve in Heaven,” Matthew Lee addresses Lewis’s perspective on hell as set forth in The Problem of Pain. Russell W. Howell explores “Lewis’s Miracles and Mathematical Elegance,” and Gregory Bassham addresses Narnia and other relevant works by Lewis in an essay on “Lewis and Tolkien on the Power of Imagination.” Many other essays round out this ambitious volume.

Several years ago this reviewer served as teaching assistant to Dr. Vernon Grounds, chancellor of Denver Seminary, for a graduate course on “The Philosophy of C. S. Lewis.” By the end of the semester, one thing was clear—the writings of C. S. Lewis proved a wonderful source of philosophical insight, but from a distinctly Christian worldview. As Tom Morris writes in the foreword, “Lewis brought a philosophical cast of mind to everything he did” (p. 10).

Lewis is often marginalized academically in relation to philosophy and his ideas dismissed off hand, as though he were a mere gnat circling the ivory towers of great philosophers. But as the contributors to C. S. Lewis as Philosopher demonstrate, Lewis has much to offer philosophy. As such, the book is a great addition to a growing body of literature about the intellectual and often philosophical pursuits of a “mere” Christian willing to use his mind for the glory of God.

—Robert Velarde

Robert Velarde is author of Conversations with C. S. Lewis (InterVarsity Press), The Heart of Narnia (NavPress), and Inside The Screwtape Letters (Baker). He studied philosophy of religion at Denver Seminary and is pursuing graduate studies in philosophy at Southern Evangelical Seminary.

1 C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Orlando, FL: Macmillan, 1980, rev. and exp. ed.), 28.

Atheists and the Quest for Objective Morality

Christian Research Institute — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:21:00 +0000

This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume33, number 2(2010). For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to: http://journal.equip.org.

SYNOPSIS

Atheists often argue that they can make moral claims and live good moral lives without believing in God. Many theists agree, but the real issue is whether atheism can provide a justification for morality. A number of leading atheists currently writing on this issue are opposed to moral relativism, given its obvious and horrific ramifications, and have attempted to provide a justification for a nonrelative morality. Three such attempts are discussed in this article: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s position that objective morality simply “is”; Richard Dawkins’s position that morality is based on the selfish gene; and Michael Ruse and Edward Wilson’s position that morality is an evolutionary illusion. Each of these positions, it turns out, is problematic. Sinnott-Armstrong affirms an objective morality, but affirming something and justifying it are two very different matters. Dawkins spells out his selfish gene approach by including four fundamental criteria, but his approach has virtually nothing to do with morality—with real right and wrong, good and evil. Finally, Ruse and Wilson disagree with Dawkins and maintain that belief in morality is just an adaptation put in place by evolution to further our reproductive ends. On their view, morality is simply an illusion foisted on us by our genes to get us to cooperate and to advance the species. But have they considered the ramifications of such a view? Each of these positions fails to provide the justification necessary for a universal, objective morality— the kind of morality in which good and evil are clearly understood and delineated.

Hitchens brings this challenge to believers: “Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.”¹ Another atheist, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, offers a list of “pretty good” atheists—including, he says, Thomas Edison, George Orwell, Marie Curie, and Mark Twain—and notes that they “led exemplary lives of service,” “contributed greatly to the social good,” and were “kind, considerate, altruistic, and caring.” He argues that “surely someone on this long list of atheists passes muster. That is enough to refute the claim that all atheists are immoral.”² Daniel Dennett adds that “I have uncovered no evidence to support the claim that people, religious or not, who don’t believe in reward in heaven and/or punishment in hell are more likely to kill, rape, rob, or break their promises than people who do.”³

OBJECTIVE MORALITY SIMPLY “IS”

One approach some atheists have taken is to affirm that there are objective moral values. After all, couldn’t a person both believe that there are objective moral values and believe that God does not exist? Is the God/morality connection a necessary one? While there are some atheists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Michael Ruse, J. L. Mackie, and others, who do hold that morality cannot be objective without the existence of a God, there are others who disagree. One such person is atheist philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. He puts the point concisely: “In fact, many atheists are happy to embrace objective moral values. I agree with them. Rape is morally wrong. So is discrimination against gays and lesbians. Even if somebody or some group thinks that these acts are not morally wrong, they still are morally wrong.…[Agreeing that some acts are objectively morally wrong] implies nothing about God, unless objective values depend on God. Why should we believe that they do?”⁹

But again the question arises: What grounds moral values? Sinnott-Armstrong answers this way: “What makes rape immoral is that rape harms the victim in terrible ways… It simply is [immoral].”¹⁰ As already noted, being moral and having a reasonable foundation or justification for being moral are two very different issues. To use the example mentioned above, I can wholeheartedly believe that the lights in the room will turn on after I flip the light switch without any understanding of electricity. I can still function well in society, going from place to place, flipping light switches and never even entertaining the idea that electricity is involved in the process of causing the lights to turn on (at least until the light switch breaks). If, however, someone asked me to provide a justification for the lights going on when the switch is flipped, and my reply was simply, “They just do,” this is no answer at all. The fact is, the flow of an electric charge (among other factors) grounds our explanation for the lights going on when the switch is turned on. This is what gives us an ontological basis for being “light-switch flippers.” The same applies to morality and God. One may well be able to deny God’s existence and still live a moral life, but there would be no fundamental basis, no objective moral grounding, for such a life. There would be no answer for Bundy.

MORALITY IS BASED ON THE SELFISH GENE

A second approach some atheists have taken is to attempt to ground morality in biological evolution. This is the approach Richard Dawkins takes. In his book, The Selfish Gene, he argues that “we are survival machines— robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”¹¹ On his view, our moral aspirations and beliefs are predetermined posits of our genetic machinery, selfishly programmed to advance the gene pool. He grants that selfishness does not at first glance seem to be a good foundation for a moral theory, and in his later book, The God Delusion, he expounds on his position. He agrees that “the most obvious way in which genes ensure their own ‘selfish’ survival relative to other genes is by programming individual organisms to be selfish.”¹² Nevertheless, he argues, sometimes selfish genes “ensure their own selfish survival by influencing organisms to behave altruistically” or morally.¹³ This happens especially with an organism’s kin—brothers, sisters, and children. For “a gene that programs individual organisms to favour their genetic kin is statistically likely to benefit copies of itself.”¹⁴ But it also happens through another means, he argues: reciprocal altruism. This is the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” idea, and it takes place not just with one’s close relatives, but also between various members of the species and even among members of different species.

Dawkins adds two further elements to his moral account: reputation for generosity (that is, one acts altruistically so others will form the belief that he is generous), and buying authentic advertising (that is, one acts morally in order to prove that he has more than another—that he is dominant and superior—and so can afford to be altruistic and moral).

So Dawkins provides four components of an attempt to provide justification for acting morally:¹⁵

1. genetic kinship (helping one’s family members even at one’s own expense);

2. reciprocation (beyond one’s kin, the repayment of favors given where both sides benefit from the transaction);

3. acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness (convincing others one is a moral altruist);

4. buying authentic advertising (strutting one’s good deeds before others to impress them and infer one’s superiority).

In essence, this is what Dawkins seems to be saying: our genes are preprogrammed selfishly to replicate themselves. Even so, individuals don’t always act selfishly because our genes— working at the level of the organism—sometimes act in altruistic and moral ways, as this offers better gene propagation over the long haul.

Now, an obvious and glaring problem with this view is that it has virtually nothing to do with what we generally understand to be morality—with real right and wrong, good and evil.

MORALITY AS AN EVOLUTIONARY ILLUSION

In order to have a consistent and reasonable objective moral stance—a moral view in which you can substantiate a claim that this is right and that is wrong, this is good and that is evil—you need to have an objective moral basis. As C. S. Lewis argued so well, there must be a universal moral law, or else moral disagreements would make no sense. But a universal moral law requires a universal Moral Law Giver— an objective grounding for that moral law.¹⁸ None of these atheistic accounts provides us with one. No atheistic account has ever provided one. We can put the atheist’s problem concisely:

1. If moral notions such as good and evil exist objectively, then there must be an objective foundation for their existence.

2. Atheism offers no objective basis for the existence of moral notions such as good and evil.

3. Therefore, for the atheist, moral notions such as good and evil must not objectively exist.

While it is good that Ruse and Wilson acknowledge this conclusion and don’t try to smuggle in an objective morality in their atheistic worldview, I wonder if they have contemplated the moral ramifications of their position. On their worldview, we are merely evolved brutes whose very existence is derived from the naturalistic laws of evolution, including random mutation and survival of the fittest in which the strong survive and the weak die off (and sometimes the strong kill off the weak in their struggle for survival). We are simply the byproducts of a “nature red in tooth and claw,” to quote the poet Tennyson. Is it any wonder that the atheistic regimes of Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Pol Pot— devoid as they were of any significant Christian influence— were responsible for the mass murder of over 100 million people in their quest for dominance, more lives destroyed than in all of the religious wars in the history of the human race? These regimes were not discordant with an atheistic basis of morality; they were consistent with it.

Christopher Hitchens and his ilk are wrong: Christian morality, rooted as it is in a transcendent, personal, omni benevolent God, has truly been good for the world. Heaven help us if an atheistic morality, rooted in evolutionary theory or otherwise, should ever become the guiding moral force on a global scale.

Chad Meister, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy at Bethel College and author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Building Belief (Baker, 2006) and the Christianity Today 2010 Book of the Year in Evangelism and Apologetics, God Is Great, God Is Good (IVP, 2009).

notes

1 Christopher Hitchens, “An Atheist Responds,” www.washingtonpost.com, Saturday, July 14, 2007, A17.

2 Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Morality without God? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 22–23.

3 Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking, 2006), 279.

4 For more on this, see Paul Copan, “The Moral Argument,” in Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues, ed. Paul Copan and Chad Meister (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 127–41.

5 A statement by Ted Bundy, paraphrased and rewritten by Harry V. Jaffa, Homosexuality and the National Law (Claremont Institute of the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, 1990), 3–4.

8 Utilitarianism is another approach that an atheist could take, but this is not commonly done—especially by the new atheists.

9 William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 33.

10 Ibid., 34.

11 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), preface to 1976 edition, v.

12 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 216.

13 Ibid., 216.

14Ibid.

15 Dawkins summarizes these components himself in ibid., 219–20.

16 Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, “The Evolution of Ethics,” in Philosophy of Biology, ed. Michael Ruse (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 316. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, when Macbeth is about to kill King Duncan, he has a hallucination of a dagger floating in the air.

17 As quoted in Robert Wright, The Moral Animal (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 327–28. 18 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1953), chaps. 1–5.

Finding Faith through Fiction

Christian Research Institute — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:07:00 +0000

The mixing of philosophy or theology with fictional literature is certainly not a novel idea. British thinker C. S. Lewis used this technique with flair. While he showed his deep thinking with Mere Christianity, Lewis also penned The Chronicles of Narnia, the children’s series that introduced many to the story of Christ’s redemption.

In a similar manner, Craig Hazen—the director of Biola University’s graduate program in apologetics—uses fiction to show how Christianity’s solutions to life’s questions make more sense than anything else offered by alternative religions.

Hazen’s story centers on Dr. Michael Jernigan, an older Christian professor who is continually pulling cigarettes out of his tweed coat pocket to feed his nicotine habit. He agrees to substitute-teach a friend’s public community college religions course for the final weeks so she can begin her maternity leave. Professor Willa Lightner’s postmodern bent on truth is revealed during her last class session when she says, “Religion is not about ‘truth’ or ‘best.’ Religions are not like football games or American Idol competitions, where someone wins a trophy or a record deal….All religions are mysteries. Sure, we can know about them—their rituals, their teachings, art, history—but we can never know if their core spiritual claims are universally true. At that point it’s all about personal belief. You either have faith, or you don’t” (p. 18).

The substitute’s teaching stint is interrupted when a terrorist cell’s plot to detonate a radioactive device in Los Angeles is exposed, causing panic in the community. “Why do they want to kill us?” one student asks. The professor, Michael (as he is referred to throughout the book), decides to develop the class’s critical thinking skills by utilizing principles called the “Five Crossings” that he learned from the Cardamom people in Cambodia during his days as an American soldier in the Vietnam War. Michael begins to build a relationship with his students and engages them without cramming Christianity down their throats.

When one student asks how these principles from a foreign culture could relate to Americans, Michael replies that they “are supposed to be universal principles, necessary steps for anyone to achieve a true balance in mind and spirit….If these principles hold, they’ll stand up to our questions, our life experiences, and our probing from our time and place” (63).

As a high school teacher and college professor myself, I must say that the dialogues Michael has with his students are quite realistic. Hazen obviously uses his many years of teaching experience to recreate scenarios that are not contrived. What’s refreshing is that Michael does not merely feed answers to the inquiring students. Instead, the students become junior detectives on their philosophical field trips while they explore both the roses as well as the thorns in ancient and modern thinking.

Consider “The First Crossing,” for instance, which reads, “Spiritual knowledge springs from within and from without. Where one is absent the other is void.” Imagine the head scratching that takes place when the students are asked for its meaning. Using the story of how Jesus forgave the paralytic’s sins in Mark 2, Michael diverges from the previous professor when he says, “True spiritual balance is impossible if all of our religious views are derived from untestable, subjective, inner claims to knowledge. We must have some grounding in what can be known in an objective, public way” (7).

While Michael appears to be sympathetic to Eastern ways of thinking, he points out the flaws in pantheistic philosophy. The problem of evil becomes the topic of discussion during the Third Crossing. As Michael explains, some philosophies attempt to sweep this problem under the carpet because they are “too weak to handle this weighty issue. It doesn’t match the way the world really is” (110). Truth matters, Michael states in another lecture, because otherwise “we’ll end up not knowing whether we are feeding our babies strained peas or transmission fluid. The stakes truly are very high” (126).

Although a terrorist plot in Los Angeles that involves a radiation bomb is realistic for the twenty-first century, the story’s ending is far-fetched. In fact, the reader may wonder if Professor Michael Jernigan’s nickname is “Indiana” based on his heroic fight against the terrorists’ plot. All in all, though, it must be said that Hazen has delivered a literary piece that might actually be read and understood by those who would never touch a philosophy text on their own.

—Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson teaches high school and college classes in El Cajon, California. He coauthored Mormonism 101 (Baker, 2000) with Bill McKeever.

Addressing the Problem of Evil

Christian Research Institute — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:21:00 +0000

This article first appeared in the Effective Evangelism column of the Christian Research Journal, volume32, number4 (2009).

One of the toughest challenges to the rationality of the Christian worldview is the existence of so much evil. We struggle to explain and cope with evils due to human agency (theft, rape, murder, racism) and evils due to natural causes (floods, famines, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, illnesses). Why does God allow it? The philosophical problem of evil is stated in these terms.

1.In the Bible, God is understood to be all-good and all-powerful.

2.If God were all-good, God would desire no evil.

3.If God were all-powerful, God would be able to prohibit evil.

4.There is evil.

5.Therefore, God either is (a) all-powerful, but not all-good, (b) all-good, but not all-powerful, or (c) does not exist.

Some philosophers have used this argument to claim that it is impossible that God exists, since God would definitely want to keep evil out of the universe and would have the power to do so. However, in the last few decades, most philosophers have abandoned this heavy-handed strategy, since all that the theist needs to claim is that God has a sufficient reason to allow this evil to occur.¹ If the idea that God has a good reason for evil is even possible, then there is no contradiction in claiming that God exists and that evil exists.

Yet unbelieving philosophers have shifted the strategy to argue that, while it is not impossible that God exists given all the evil in the world, it is unlikely that God exists. This is because many evils (for example, the suffering of children) seem to serve no justifiable purpose. Therefore, these kinds of evils count against the existence of God. These evils are called gratuitous (or pointless) evils.

1.If God exists, there would be no gratuitous evils.2.Gratuitous evils likely exist.3.Therefore, it is likely or probable that God does not exist.

This type of argument is called the inductive or probabilistic problem of evil, and it commands the most attention among philosophers, pro and con. It is also a problem that troubles many laypeople as well, both Christians and non-Christians. We can conceive of how some evils might serve greater goods and be necessary for their achievement, yet many evils—whether great (tsunamis) or smaller (the premature death of a loved one)—appear unredeemable. How can we address this anguishing problem?

Some believers simply claim that God must have His reasons, although we are now clueless and left with a leap of faith. We can only hope that we may know the reasons for these evils in the afterlife. However, we need some apologetic arguments so that we might have a reason for this hope when people ask us why we believe in a good and all-powerful God in the face of horrendous evils (1 Pet. 3:15–16).

No book raises the problem of evil more grippingly than the Bible itself. Particularly in the Psalms, the writers cry out to God, asking why their enemies have triumphed, why God has not acted to deliver them when He had the power to do so. Although the biblical writers groan under the force of evil, they find reasonable hope and meaning because of their belief that God has revealed enough about Himself to be deemed trustworthy, even when all the pieces do not fit together neatly and nicely (Deut. 29:29).

Inadequate Attempts to Resolve the Problem. Let us first consider two influential worldviews that cannot deal with the problem of evil. The Bible, unlike eastern religions, does not relegate evil to the realm of illusion or unreality. We cannot transcend the appearance of evil by achieving a supposedly higher state of consciousness, as advocated by contemporary pantheistic writers such as Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle. That stance is both unrealistic and cruel. We must suffer with those who hurt in a broken world, not tell them to get over their attachment to maya (the illusion of evil). Moreover, in these worldviews the illusion of evil itself becomes an evil, sinceit keeps people in ignorance (a bad thing). Therefore, there is evil after all! The supposed solution to the problem of evil is, therefore, both nonsensical (because we sense real evil) and illogical (because we cannot deny the existence of evil if the illusion of evil turns out to be evil itself).

Atheists, on the other hand, often invoke the problem of evil to support their atheism. Their worldview, however, cannot explain the existence of evil or give any hope for its resolution. According to many atheists, all that exists is the impersonal and unfeeling universe, controlled by “the empire of chance,” as Bertrand Russell put it.² The cosmos was not designed; all is a matter of chance and necessity. There is no Moral Law-Giver or Source of objective moral truth, since moral ideas are only the result of chemical reactions in the brain of an evolved animal. Humans experience pain, but this is just what the impersonal and uncaring universe does to them—without reason and without recourse to any higher purpose. According to this worldview, the very categories of objective good and evil dissipate. As existentialists such as Camus and Sartre have argued, the world is absurd in itself. Good and evil are merely human constructs, destined to die with those who absurdly assert them in an absurd world. Therefore, good and evil lose their meaning, and there is no hope that good will somehow triumph over evil in the end.³

Another atheist view claims that objective good and evil exist as bare, brute, immaterial features of an impersonal and otherwise material universe. These are set forth as moral truths. This view is called atheistic moral realism; it is a strange hybrid of atheism and theism. It captures the idea of objective moral values from theism (where such values reside in the character of a personal-infinite God), detaches them from God, and projects them as floating values in an otherwise meaningless, materialistic world.

This position is ungrounded, however, because morality requires a strong claim of obligation or “oughtness.” Consider the statement, “You ought to treat humans with respect.” This is an objective moral law. Moral law differs from scientific law because it compels reflective agents to act and live in certain ways; it is not merely descriptive in the indicative sense (what is), as are scientific laws. Moral law enjoins or commands us to conform to it. Therefore, the idea of a moral law that exists apart from a Law-giver makes less sense than the idea of a moral law that issues from the commands of a personal and moral being. This is God Himself, who as the Creator knows just how humans ought to live.⁴

A Christian Answer to the Problem. Having argued briefly against pantheism and atheism as adequate accounts of the existence of reality and the problem of evil, here is a Christian answer in a few broad strokes.⁵ God, a personal and infinite being, is the source of the moral law, of moral obligation, and of the virtues and goals necessary to morality.⁶ However, humans, heeding the evil lie of Satan (Gen. 3:1–5; Rev. 12:9) have rebelled against God (original sin) and have brought evil into God’s good world.⁷ While God is Lord of history, He is not the author of evil. Rather, humans brought evil into the world by warping and twisting God’s good gifts. Evil, then, is good gone wrong.⁸

Evil opposes the moral will of God. Yet evil is not without final or ultimate purpose in God’s providence, since God is both perfectly good and sovereign over His universe. Given the character of God as revealed in Scripture, as well as the overall apologetic case for Christianity, we have sufficient reason to believe that whatever evils occur are not random or meaningless.⁹ They play a part in God’s present and future plan for the universe. As Joseph said to his brothers who sold him into slavery, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20 TNIV).

While the reason for many particular evils may be opaque or unknowable to us, these evils are not gratuitous or pointless. On the contrary, they are employed by God to bring about good outcomes that would not otherwise be possible. For example, a world fraught with risk makes courage and heroism possible. A world beset by sin makes redemption through the love of God, shown in Christ, possible. In fact, the work of Jesus Christ in history demonstrated God’s love and concern for His creation more than anything else.¹⁰ While some evils may baffle and depress us, we can trust God that they are not without justification in the story of the universe, since God is that story’s Author. Thus, some evils may be inscrutable to us, but they are not inconsistent with the Christian worldview.¹¹

—Douglas Groothuis

Douglas Groothuis is professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary.

1 Alvin Plantinga has advanced this strategy, which is known as a “defense.” Instead of saying how God might use evil to bring about goods not otherwise possible (classically called a “theodicy”), this approach deflects the charge that it is not possible for both God and evil to exist. See Ronald Nash, Faith and Reason (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), chap. 13.

2 Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” in Why I Am Not a Christian, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 104–16.

3 On existentialism, see James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door, 4th ed. (Downers Grove, IL:InterVarsity Press, 2004), chap. 5.

4 See C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (many editions), Book One.

5 See D. A. Carson, How Long, Oh Lord? (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1991).

6 See Francis Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001;orig. pub., 1972), chap. 2.

7 Satan and some of the angels sinned before humans did (Jude 6), but Paul credits “one man” asthe cause of human sin (Rom. 5:12).

8 See Winfried Corduan, No Doubt about It (Nashville: Broadman, Holman, 1994), 131–33.

9 See William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL:Crossway Books, 2008).

10 See Millard Erickson, The Word Became Flesh: An Incarnational Christology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1991).

11 See Nash, chap. 15.

Philosophical Problems With Moral Relativism

Christian Research Institute — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Summary In moral debate in the United States today, many people resort to moral relativism. They argue that there are no objective moral values which help us to determine what is right or wrong. They claim “everything is relative.” In order to defend this position, the relativist puts forth two arguments: (1) Since people and cultures disagree about morality, there are no objective moral values; (2) Moral relativism leads to tolerance of practices we may find different or odd. These two arguments are seriously flawed. In addition, the moral relativist has a difficult time explaining moral progress, moral reformation, and clear-cut cases of moral saints and moral devils.

Ethical, moral, and social issues are beginning to dominate the headlines of major newspapers and the front covers of leading magazines. Unfortunately many today seem to assume that rationality and logic have no place in discussions of moral issues, and that there is no way such questions can be answered. Many assume that we are simply stuck with our opinions, and that all opinions are relative — having no basis in any objective or unchanging moral values. Should all values and opinions be accorded equal moral weight? The purpose of this article is to critically address the problem of moral relativism, which I believe impedes our ability as a people to critically and rationally discuss issues of great moral and ethical importance.

MORAL RELATIVISM

In his influential work, The Closing of the American Mind, Professor Allan Bloom makes the observation that “there is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative…The students, of course, cannot defend their opinion. It is something with which they have been indoctrinated.”¹ By dogmatically asserting that there is no truth, people have become close-minded to the possibility of knowing truth, if in fact it does exist. Consequently, lurking behind most of the moral rhetoric in America today is moral relativism, the belief that there are no objective moral values that transcend culture or the individual. This is why many people begin or end their moral judgments with qualifying phrases such as, “It is only my personal opinion,” “Of course I am not judging anyone’s behavior,” or “If you think it is all right, that is okay, but I’m personally against it.” Although such assertions have their place, we often use them inappropriately. Let us consider a few examples of how moral relativism affects the way many people approach public moral issues.

The Abortion Debate

Some abortion-rights advocates, in response to pro-life arguments, emote such bumper-sticker slogans as: “Pro-choice, but personally opposed,” “Don’t like abortion, don’t have one,” or “Abortion is against my beliefs, but I would never dream of imposing my beliefs on others.” These slogans attempt to articulate in a simple way a common avenue taken by politicians and others who want to avoid the slings and arrows that naturally follow a firm position on abortion. It is an attempt to find “a compromise” or “a middle ground”; it’s a way to avoid being labeled “an extremist” of either camp. During the 1984 presidential campaign — when questions of Geraldine Ferraro’s Catholicism and its apparent conflict with her abortion-rights stance were prominent in the media — New York Governor Mario Cuomo, in a lecture delivered at the University of Notre Dame, attempted to give this “middle ground” intellectual respectability. He tried to provide a philosophical foundation for his friend’s position, but failed miserably. For one cannot appeal to the fact that we live in a pluralistic society (characterized by moral pluralism/relativism) when the very question of who is part of that society (that is, whether it includes unborn children) is itself the point under dispute. Cuomo begged the question and lost the argument. The pro-abortionist’s unargued assumption of moral relativism to solve the abortion debate reveals a tremendous ignorance of the pro-life position. For the fact is that if one believes that the unborn are fully human (persons), then the unborn carried in the wombs of pro-choice women are just as human as those carried in the wombs of pro-life women. For the pro-lifer, an unborn child is no less a human person simply because the child happens to be living inside Whoopi Goldberg or Cybil Shepherd. Ideology does not change identity. Pro-choicers ought to put at least some effort into understanding the pro-life position. When they tell pro-lifers (as they often do) that they have a right to believe what they want to believe, they are unwittingly promoting the radical tactics of Operation Rescue (OR). Think about it. If you believed that a class of persons were being murdered by methods that include dismemberment, suffocation, and burning — resulting in excruciating pain in many cases — wouldn’t you be perplexed if someone tried to ease your outrage by telling you that you didn’t have to participate in the murders if you didn’t want to? That is exactly what pro-lifers hear when abortion-rights supporters tell them, “Don’t like abortion, don’t have one,” or “I’m pro-choice, but personally opposed.” In the mind of the pro-lifer, this is like telling an abolitionist, “Don’t like slavery, don’t own one,” or telling Dietrich Bonhoffer, “Don’t like the holocaust, don’t kill a Jew.” Consequently, to request that pro-lifers “shouldn’t force their pro-life belief on others” while at the same time claiming that “they have a right to believe what they want to believe” is to reveal an incredible ignorance of their position. Contrary to popular belief, the so-called “pro-choice” position is not neutral. The abortion-rights activist’s claim that women should have the “right to choose” to kill their unborn fetuses amounts to denying the pro-life position that the unborn are worthy of protection. And the pro-lifer’s affirmation that the unborn are fully human with a “right to life” amounts to denying the abortion-rights position that women have a fundamental right to terminate their pregnancies, since such a termination would result in a homicide. It seems, then, that appealing to moral relativism (or moral pluralism ala Mario Cuomo) to “solve” the abortion debate is an intellectual impossibility and solves nothing.

Censorship and the Public Good

Another example of how ethical relativism affects the way many people approach public moral issues can be seen in the arguments concerning the right to boycott products advertised on television programs which certain groups believe are psychologically and morally harmful. The usual argument in response to these groups is, “If you don’t like a particular program, you don’t have to watch it. You can always change the channel.” But is this response really compelling? One must point out that these groups are not only saying that they personally find these programs offensive, but rather are arguing that the programs themselves convey messages and create a moral climate that will affect others — especially children — in a way they believe is adverse to the public good. Hence, what bothers these groups is that you and your children will not change the channel. I believe that as long as these groups do not advocate state censorship, but merely apply social and economic pressure to private corporations (which civil rights and feminist groups have been doing for some time now), a balance of freedoms is achieved. Both are free to pursue their interests within the confines of constitutional protection, although both must be willing to accept the social and economic consequences of their actions. This seems to best serve the public good. Notice that this position does not resort to ethical relativism, but takes seriously the values of freedom, the public good, and individual rights — and attempts to uphold these values in a way that is consistent and fair.

ARGUMENTS FOR MORAL RELATIVISM

There are several arguments people have put forth to defend moral relativism. Of these, two are especially popular, surfacing again and again in our culture under different forms. The remainder of this article will be devoted to examining these arguments.

The Argument from Diversity in Moral Practice

Argument no. 1 states: Since cultures and individuals differ in certain moral practices, there are no objective moral values. Several objections can be made to this argument. First, the fact that people disagree about something does not mean there is no objective truth. If you and I disagree about whether or not the earth is round, for example, this is not proof that the earth has no shape. In moral discussion, the fact that a skinhead (a type of young Neo-Nazi) and I may disagree about whether we should treat people equally and fairly is not sufficient evidence to say that equality and fairness have no objective value. Even if individuals and cultures held no values in common, it does not follow from this that nobody is right or wrong about the correct values. That is, there could be a morally erring individual or culture, such as Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Another problem with this argument is that it does not follow from the fact that cultures and individuals differ in moral practices that they do not share common values. For example, the fact that some female islanders who live in the South Seas do not cover their breasts and British women do doesn’t mean that the former do not value modesty. Due to the climate, environmental conditions, and certain religious beliefs, the people of the South Seas have developed certain practices by which to manifest the transcultural value of modesty. Although cultures may differ about how they manifest such values as honesty, courage, and the preserving of life, they do not promote dishonesty, cowardice, or arbitrary killing. Second, sometimes apparent moral differences are not moral differences at all but factual differences. For example, many people who live in India do not eat cows because they believe in reincarnation — that these cows may possess the souls of deceased human beings. In the United States we do not believe cows have human souls. For this reason, we eat cows — but we do not eat Grandma. It appears on the surface, therefore, that there is a fundamental value difference between Indians and Americans. This is a hasty conclusion, however, for both cultures do believe it is wrong to eat Grandma; the Indians, however, believe the cow may be Grandma. Thus it is a factual and not a value difference that divides our culinary habits. Other examples can be produced to show why this first argument for moral relativism is inadequate.² It should be noted, however, that the fact there are some common values among peoples and cultures does not mean all cultures share all the same values. Obviously certain peoples and cultures may have developed some values that others have not. Hence, the discovering of a unique value in a particular society does not in any way take away from my central thesis that there are certain values to which all societies either implicitly or explicitly hold. Third, the argument from differing practices puts an undue emphasis on differences while ignoring similarities, in addition to giving the mistaken appearance that all moral conflicts are in some sense insoluble. In discussing moral conflicts in the United States we tend to focus our attention on contemporary issues — abortion, euthanasia, affirmative action, and so forth — over which there is obviously wide and impassioned disagreement. However, we tend to ignore the fact that the disputants in these moral debates hold a number of values in common, that there are many moral issues on which almost all Americans agree (e.g., “It is wrong to molest six-year-old girls”), and that a number of past moral conflicts have been solved (e.g., slavery, women’s suffrage). Hence, by focusing our attention only on disagreements, our perception has become skewed. Philosopher James Rachels illustrates this point with an example from the sciences:

If we think of questions like this [i.e., abortion, euthanasia, affirmative action, etc.], it is easy to believe that “proof” in ethics is impossible. The same can be said of the sciences. There are many complicated matters that physicists cannot agree on; and if we focused our attention entirely on them we might conclude that there is no “proof” in physics. But of course, many simpler matters in physics can be proven, and about those all competent physicists agree. Similarly, in ethics there are many matters far simpler than abortion, about which all reasonable people must agree.³

The Argument from the Virtue of Tolerance

Argument no. 2 for ethical relativism states: Since ethical relativism promotes tolerance of certain cultural practices that members of Western civilization may think are strange, ethical relativism is a good thing. However, although tolerance often is a virtue, ethical relativists simply cannot justify their own position by appealing to it in this way. First, the value of tolerance presupposes the existence of at least one real objective (or absolute) value: tolerance. Bioethicist Tom Beauchamp makes this observation:

If we interpret normative relativism as requiring tolerance of other views, the whole theory is imperiled by inconsistency. The proposition that we ought to tolerate the views of others, or that it is right not to interfere with others, is precluded by the very strictures of the theory. Such a proposition bears all the marks of a non-relative account of moral rightness, one based on, but not reducible to, the cross-cultural findings of anthropologists…But if this moral principle [of tolerance] is recognized as valid, it can of course be employed as an instrument for criticizing such cultural practices as the denial of human rights to minorities and such beliefs as that of racial superiority. A moral commitment to tolerance of other practices and beliefs thus leads inexorably to the abandonment of normative relativism.⁴

Second, tolerance can only be a virtue if we think the other person, whose viewpoint we’re supposed to tolerate, is mistaken. That is to say, if we do not believe one viewpoint is better than another, then to ask us to be tolerant of other viewpoints makes no sense. For to tolerate another’s viewpoint implies that this other person has a right to his or her viewpoint despite the fact that others may think it is wrong. To be tolerant of differing viewpoints involves just that — differing viewpoints, all of which cannot be equally correct at the same time. The man who supposes himself tolerant while at the same time he believes nobody is either right or wrong about any moral value is actually no more virtuous than the man who supposes his virginity is chastity even though he was born with no sexual organs. Consequently, real tolerance presupposes someone is right and someone is wrong, which implicitly denies moral relativism. It must be acknowledged, however, that there is a noble motive behind the relativists’ appeal to tolerance. They believe their view of tolerance will help us to better understand other cultures and people without being hypercritical about their practices. This in turn will keep us from using such criticism to justify the forced imposition of our own cultural practices on them, such as putting blouses on the bare-breasted women of the South Seas or forcing polygamous families to divide and become monogamous. I can sympathize with this view of transcultural tolerance. As I stated earlier, however, a cultural practice is different from a cultural value. It does not follow from different practices that people have different values. The local controversies surrounding the elimination of certain books from public school curricula and libraries is an example of how people can agree on values and yet disagree on practice. Those who favor more conservative guidelines, and who are often referred to as advocating censorship, usually propose that certain materials are not suitable for certain age groups. They argue that parents, not educational administrators, are best suited to know what is good for their children. On the other hand, their opponents, who are often referred to as advocating freedom of expression, usually propose that it should be up to the teacher and the educational administrators to choose what is suitable material, although they do believe that a line should be drawn somewhere. For example, none of these defenders of freedom of expression defend the placing of hard-core pornography in the hands of fourth graders. This, of course, makes the debate all the more interesting, since it means that both sides agree on the following general principles: a line must be drawn, certain materials are suitable for certain age groups, and education is important. Both advocate some kind of “censorship.” They just disagree on who should be the censors, what should be censored, and on what basis the decision should be made. Therefore, they both hold to many of the same values, but they disagree as to the application of these values, and the acceptability of certain factual claims. Although this distinction between practice and value helps us to be tolerant of unusual cultural practices, we are still able to make valuable moral judgments about others and ourselves. First, we are free to criticize those intolerable cultural practices that do conflict with basic human values, such as in the cases of genocide in Nazi Germany and apartheid in South Africa. Second, we are able to admit to real moral progress, such as in the case of the abolition of slavery. And third, there can exist real moral reformers, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and the prophets of the Old Testament, who served as prophetic voices to reprimand their cultures for having drifted far from a true moral practice based on basic human values. The above three points — each of which follow from a belief in objective transcultural values — do not follow from a belief in ethical relativism. That is to say, to remain consistent the ethical relativist cannot criticize intolerable moral practices, believe in real moral progress, or acknowledge the existence of real moral reformers. For these three forms of moral judgment presuppose the existence of real objective transcultural values. Although much more can be said about the justification and existence of certain values,⁵ the above is sufficient to demonstrate that ethical relativism is enormously problematic. It shows that we can rationally discuss and argue with each other about right and wrong without resorting to the claim that ethical judgments are merely subjective or relative and that all such judgments have equal validity. For to claim the latter logically leads one to the bizarre judgment that Mother Teresa is no more and no less virtuous than Adolf Hitler. I believe this is sufficient to show ethical relativism to be bankrupt. Moral relativism has been rejected by a near unanimous number of both secular and theistic ethicists and philosophers.⁶ Yet it is still popular to espouse this view in many of our secularized cultural institutions. It is thought to be more tolerant, more open, and more intellectually respectable than the old-fashioned “absolutism.”⁷ As we have seen, however, moral relativism is inconsistent with tolerance, closed off to the possibility of moral truth, and an intellectual failure. Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D. is a Lecturer of Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His latest books are Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights (Baker, 1993) and Are You Politically Correct? Debating America’s Cultural Standards (Prometheus, 1993).

NOTES

¹ Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 25. ² James Rachels, “A Critique of Ethical Relativism,” in Philosophy: The Quest for Truth, ed. Louis P. Pojman (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1989), 322-23. ³ James Rachels, “Some Basic Points about Arguments,” in The Right Thing to Do: Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy, ed. James Rachels (New York: Random House, 1989), 40. ⁴ Tom L. Beauchamp, Philosophical Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 42. ⁵ For a philosophical defense of particular universal values, see C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 95-121; Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1984), chapters 1-5; Rachels, “A Critique,” 322-24; and J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), chapter 4. ⁶ E.g., see Rachels, “A Critique”; J. P. Moreland and Norman L. Geisler, The Life and Death Debate: Moral Issues of Our Time (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), chapter 1. ⁷ I think this is more accurately referred to as moral objectivism, since not all the values the absolutist holds are absolutely equal; some are better than others. See Norman L. Geisler, Christian Ethics: Options and Issues (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989). This article is a significantly revised version of a portion of chapter 1 of Francis J. Beckwith’s Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), 19-25. Reprinted by permission.