Growing up in a small town in southwest Oklahoma had its charm. We were able to be kids and we got in our share of trouble. By the time I was in my teens, Cyril had become a sleepy little town, far from the bustling small town it was when the oil refinery was still open. After the refinery shut down, Cyril became one of the few super-sites in the United States. That meant where the refinery once stood, now stands tall fences and millions of taxpayer dollars. To my friends and I, it meant lack of access to a nice fishing pond.
One warm spring afternoon, my friends and I were several hours into a fishing tournament. We wanted to win at all cost. One of us had the bright idea to sneak into the old refinery pond and catch what we thought would be monster untouched large mouth bass. Looking back, we probably are lucky we didn’t catch a three-eyed mutant fish with all the pollution that was in that pond. Anyways, we parked our truck out on a dirt road and began our trek to the pond. Just before we made it to the honey hole of fish, we encountered a fence. Now, a fence had never stopped us before, but this fence had a sign on it. It was not the federal law we were breaking that caused us to pause, it was the words that said, “electrically charged”.
After throwing a few sticks at the fence and a quick discussion, we determined that the fence probably hadn’t had electricity running through it in years. I walked up to the fence, reached out, and touched it. Nothing. I tried a few more times. Still nothing. I smiled in approval to my buddies and threw my leg over the fence, then the unimaginable happened. A surge of electricity went through my body that hurt so bad I am certain Nikola Tesla felt it from the grave. I was stunned. Literally. I couldn’t let go of the fence and with all the eloquence and grace of a laughing hyena, one of my friends did his best Pele impersonation and kicked me off the fence to the other side.
As I laid on the ground, ashamed of my choices, my friends walked a few meters down and went through an open gate we had not noticed. While everyone else fished for three-eyed bass, I couldn’t help, but think of the terrible choices that led to my agony. In a culture where truth and morality are often described as relative with little thought of the consequences, I think it is important we look at a few of the claim’s atheist make about morality.
Perhaps, the claim I hear made most often by atheists is that morality is relative. The atheist claims there is no such thing as objective moral truth. This line of thinking seems to appease the masses. It allows for an individual to chose whatever he or she wants to do without fear of guilt or judgment. If a person just believes something with all they have it becomes true for them. However, if one would just examine the problems with throwing out absolute truth for a brief second, it would become apparent no one can actually live this way. For example, when we see a terrorist fly a plane into a building with women and children, people instantly feel this was a moral wrong. If morality is up to the individual, one cannot reasonably condemn the acts of the terrorist on 9/11 or the killing of children at Columbine High School.
Let’s dive a bit further into the statement, “Truth is relative.” The statement itself is illogical in nature. The statement is claiming objective truth while trying to dismiss it in the same breath. It is a logical fallacy and a self-refuting statement. After looking at the evidence, one can clearly see that truth and morality cannot be grounded in the individual.
Another claim made by atheist is that morality is grounded by naturalism. They make the case morality is governed by human flourishing. Whatever, causes humanity to flourish is true moral living. This idea also has its own problems. If morality is to be grounded in human flourishing, why do we feel the need to take care of the weak, sick, and elderly. Atheist often claim that humans have innate senses to take care of the weak, sick, and elderly because they realize they too may end up sick, weak, and elderly someday. However, from a total naturalistic perspective this trait should have never occurred. Caring for the sick and weak is not part of the ideal natural selection process. This trait actually damages the ability for human flourishing.
The last attempt of atheist to ground morality we will discuss is grounding morality in society and culture. This has become a very popular stance among atheist today. I have no objections to saying society and culture play a role in some aspects of what is acceptable among groups of people, but grounding morality in culture lacks substance. For example, if morality was merely grounded in culture, we had no real authority to stop Nazi Germany from killing millions of Jewish people in WWII. One could argue that since the U.S. culture saw this act as wrong, we were entitled to stop it, but the problem of morality remains. If this is the case, Hitler’s morality is still no better than our own. Morality is just an arbitrary construct of a culture with no real higher measuring stick other than the culture with the bigger guns. According to Norman Geisler, “If the Moral Law doesn’t exist, then there’s no difference between the behavior of Mother Teresa and that of Hitler” (178).
The above attempts of atheism to ground morality demonstrates another stubborn fact atheism cannot explain. Whether the atheist is trying to ground morality in the individual, the culture, or in naturalism he still falls short of a consistent reasonable answer. It appears atheism continues to wrestle with morality, reaching out touching a charged fence, feeling safe for a fleeting moment, only to be shocked when there is a pesky fact they didn’t consider.
Bibliography
Geisler, Norman L, and Frank Turek. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Wheaton: Crossway, 2004.
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