An article I read awhile back that I recently came across again. For me personally, it's one of the strongest arguments against atheism. The underlined sections below were put in by me for my own benefit. From the Chosunjournal by whatistoknow (originally posted July 18, 2001):
"If there is no God, everything is permissible." -Fyodor Dostoevsky
Let me first say how much I admire the zeal and courage of all the non-Christian human rights activists many of whom have no other relationship with N. Koreans except their shared humanity.
Having said that, let me also assert that I do not believe that the idea of human rights can cohere apart from a belief in God. The concept of 'human rights' itself is a secular attempt to derive the benefits sprung from the Judeo-Christian notion of human beings being made in the image of God. But since this humanistic effort ultimately fails, as I will try to show in this essay, I reject as a false dichotomy that The Chosun Journal or anyone else for that matter can promote basic human dignity for North Koreans apart from appealing to a standard established by God.
Recently Milosevich stood up to the judges in the Hague and defiantly lambasted, 'Who are you to judge me for violating human rights? This is an illegitimate proceeding and I do not accept its authority over me.' The judges sat there speechless. Of course they did. How else could they respond except for 'We won the war, you lost. That makes us morally right and you wrong.' Without a transcendent standard to appeal to, that's all morality can become, 'Might makes right.'
But the problem is the mighty are not always right. Take for example the recent revelation that a popular U.S. senator had killed more than a dozen women and children during the Vietnam war. Not only has Sen. Kerry not been prosecuted as a war criminal, the Bronze star he received for this action (albeit the atrocity was concealed at the time the award was given) has yet to be revoked.
But what about appealing to the universal declaration of human rights, or in short, 'Majority rules' morality? Well how does one measure the rules of the majority apart from appealing to rules that are not manipulated by politics or bound by the mores of a certain age?
Recently Sudan replaced the US on the UN human rights committee. The human rights community was shocked and felt an earthquake shaking under their foundations. A beacon of light had been taken over by a slave-trading nation. But they should not have been surprised. For man-made declarations are as reliable as the capriciousness of their authors. Charters and the like are always amended, deleted, or simply rewritten depending on who's in or who's out or what's in vogue at the time.
But significantly, this is not the case with the Bible whose Author is purportedly without change and whose pages have not been revised since their original authorship over 3,200 years ago for the Old Testament and over 1,900 years ago for the New Testament. Archaeological proof of the unchanging continuity of the earliest manuscripts compared with the versions we read now attests to this fact and attests to its unhuman-like (divine?) quality.
My question to the human rights activists who are not guided by the God revealed to humanity through the Bible is this: What moral compass guides you if not the eternal one? Your trustworthy hunch? Were not all the major atrocities committed by people who operated by their own sense of right and wrong? Didn't the defendants at the Nuremburg War Crimes trials offer plea after plea, 'My conscience is clear'? What makes your instincts more trustworthy than theirs?
If we've learned anything from this past bloody century rooted in optimistic philosophies of human nature, it is that man cannot be trusted. Man is selfish, narrow-minded, and apathetic. A few tyrants are not the only ones to blame for history's horrors. The blood of millions is also on the hands of the billions who have stood by in their self-imposed ignorance and rational self-interest while their neighbors get raped or hacked to pieces or gassed.
Man has been far more content in building memorials than in preventing atrocities. Sin of omission is just as wretched as sin of commission and we are all guilty of it and in need of salvation from it. How many Holocausts, gulags, killing fields, Rwandan massacres, Japanese rape camps, and deported N. Korean refugees do people need until they finally begin to yearn for the redemption of that human nature which makes people stand idly by allowing all of these horrors to occur?
I am not a believer by choice but by necessity. If there were any other way to promote human dignity and respect for one another besides by promoting monotheistic ethics, I quite honestly might accept it. But history has taught me otherwise. The rescuers in the Holocaust with few exceptions were people morally enabled by the Bible to transcend the 'majority rules' morality of their time. Read Martin Luther King Jr.'s powerful Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and again one sees the necessity of appealing to a transcendent unchanging moral standard to give one the authority not only to battle a racist society but to confront fallen human nature itself.
Of course this is not to say that there are no good atheists. Some prominent N. Korean human rights activists easily show the contrary. But how do they measure let alone promote moral progress? By relying upon the principle of might makes right? Or a changing declaration? Or a politically manipulated UN? Or fickle popular world opinion? Moral progress by definition requires a universal, unchanging, shiftless, non-contradicting standard which any person can rely on to know if he is headed in the right direction or not. Nothing man-made (or even polytheistically made) could meet these requirements.
The unique gift of the Jews to the world is a book that reveals the coherent principle of moral progress rooted in the idea of one moral transcendent standard set by one Supreme Being that does not change or contradict itself over time, political trends, or mood swings because He does not change or contradict Himself as people or 'the gods' have been prone to do.
Only this monotheistic Lawgiver could give the philosophical and emotional support for the moral progress we have already seen in history led by those with the Bible in hand and heart: the end of ritual infanticide, the abolition of slavery in much of the world, the promotion of universal education and gender equality, and the establishment of hospitals, all before they became politically correct, are just a few examples.
No doubt many will cry out, "Inquisition!" or "Crusades!" But again, what standard are you using to judge these as evil? Believers can condemn them as utter hypocrisy in violation of the fundamental law of God, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' But what authority do atheists appeal to in their condemnation that does not fall into the trappings I've outlined above?
Nevertheless I cannot blame people today for their misgivings of my proposal that N. Korea should adopt Christian principles as its moral foundation. All they have to base their opinions on is the secularized Christianity we have today. But even today God has His remnant which has refused to bend the knee to Baal. The hundreds of believers who rescued Jews are good examples. So is Christian Solidarity which had led the fight against slavery in Sudan before it became politically correct. So are several of the Korean missionaries in China now.
You may point to the complicity of the Roman Catholic Church in Nazi Germany or to the silence of several white churches in segregated America, but these are powerful examples for why we need the Church to be more like Christ rather than more like society. I'm a firm believer of the separation of Church and state for this very reason. God forbid we have a secularized church! But the world be damned if the state is not informed, guided, and kept in check by a healthy Church.
Therefore, I reject as a false dichotomy that The Chosun Journal can advocate for the human rights of North Koreans apart from advocating for a coherent standard by which such rights can be affirmed and promoted. If North Korea could enter an age where a majority of their citizens picked up the Bible and followed its decrees, as there was a time in a morally progressive America in which that was the case, the North Korean people will be far more assured of obtaining the basic freedoms that God had intended for them to enjoy than reliance upon any man-centered ideas.
Psalm 146
Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them-- the LORD, who remains faithful forever.
He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, the LORD gives sight to the blind,
the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
The LORD reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the LORD.
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11 comments:
I agree. It's a great stab in the heart of atheism.
The only response that an atheist can give is that there is no objective morality. But if someone says that rape or cold blooded murder or child kidnapping are not wrong, that denial is immoral.
I disagree with your opinion. However I believe that the concept of a standard of ethics established by an All Mighty is the exact same as might is right. Is God or at least the concept of an almighty on your side or his side or any side the ultimate might? However that said I must make it clear that I feel as though genuine "moral righteousness" IS human instinct. However though various of cultural conditioning's and blind reliance on text that has been grossly misinterpreted, leads to humans doing evil things. Additionally the article claims, "If we've learned anything from this past bloody century rooted in optimistic philosophies of human nature, it is that man cannot be trusted. Man is selfish, narrow-minded, and apathetic." however how does that explain saints? Or for that fact any human that has ever attempted anything moral, by what ever standards. Is the action not enough to establish morality? However the arguement is about the standard of morality. Continued reliance on ancient text who's, "Author is purportedly without change and whose pages have not been revised since their original authorship over 3,200 years ago for the Old Testament and over 1,900 years ago for the New Testament" however that is false because of the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Again christian morality has changed over the centuries, why else would there be reformations?
Human rights can be achieved without god, Buddhism for example does not have a God and yet it is forgiving and understanding as the ideal Judeo-Christian enthusiast. Buddhism, which is older than Christianity, established equal gender role's, equality of humans and the whole shebang. But that was necessary for that age because we are still evolving on a conscious scale. For instance take a look at the maturation of countries. Tribes to villages to regions to empires to united culturally to countries to globalization. Terribly sorry for that random tangent.
Again great danger lies in complete reliance on conservatism. How will change actually come into being?
Again sorry for the random tangents I will expand later when I have more time.
Adio
but the moral code laid down by religions are also 'merely' hunches. say, there are plenty of religions out there, what if one had a different moral system than christianity? where perhaps rape was consider OK? then there is a choice to be made, which moral system? and how do you make this choice? by what feels right. and so, morals still stem from ourselves, and not from some outer force. Also, it seems to me some of the morals taught by the bible are highly questionable...
ah, daniel seems to have done pretty well in explaining the same thing ^^', sorry
Daniel and Ky,
Thanks for the feedback. There's a lot of topics covered in your comments, some of which can't be addressed without first adequately answering other ones. You guys address some of the later issues but not the fundamental one: morality without a God does not exist.
So I guess the question I first have to ask is whether or not you at least agree with that statement?
Keep in mind, this is a question which has absolutely nothing to do with who is the better person, after all, how could it be when the very term "better" is without definition? If we are nothing more than a collection of atoms, then the term "morality" or "human rights" are meaningless human inventions. "What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair." (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity)
Atheism's most famous advocate Richard Dawkins himself admits this for there's really no logical way around it. If you don't agree, then I'd certainly like to hear why not.
-Jon
I don't think god is needed for morality... it seems like morals are instinct to most of us, but instinct can be overridden (f.ex. the Nazis).. there was an interesting article somewhere, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/5373379/Animals-can-tell-right-from-wrong.html
So, if morals are an instinct, it would work to have the instinct for morals without any knowledge or belief in god. Furthermore, morals could be explained fully by evolution.
sorry for the quick comments, hope they make sense
Ky,
By suggesting that morality and instinct are synonymous you have agreed that there is no such thing as morality.
Morality by its definition refers to a universal standard which instinct is the complete opposite of.
Until you are able to address that issue, circumstantial evidence is of absolutely no use as this is a question of logic, both of the above statements you make cannot be true.
It is this precise realization which made many a men, most notably CS Lewis, convert from Atheism to Theism.
-Jon
I'm not sure I follow, how are morals from instincts different from other kinds? and how could this kind not still be a universal standard?
The difference you're asking about is the central thesis of this article. I don't see how you can disagree with the article when you don't comprehend its very thesis.
Not trying to be smug, but please re-read the article. An even better illustration of the difference is given in Mere Christianity - Right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe: http://www.lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt
Hmm, if that is the case the article does not seem to be doing a very good job, but anyway, this is what it seems like our discussion is going to me, please correct any mistake:
1: Article states that you cannnot trust man-made morals, because they are unreliable, changing and 'might makes right'. Therefore only from one god can there be a universal moral standard.
2: Daniel and I argue that in the end it is still personal choice and might 'makes right' which determine your moral system, since (to be brief) religions are many and there are plenty of choices to be made.
3:You suggest that we mighte not be adressing the core of the subject, that is, morality without god cannot exist.
4: I show an example from nature and argue that morals are insticts (which Daniel also did).
5: You state that if this is the case, morals are nonexistent, because morals cannot be instincts.
6: I wonder why
7: You say the article explains it... The article says only what is in 1. What Daniel and I argue for seems to undermine this.
8: I make this comment to try to understand the reasoning. Will get a paper copy of Mere Christianity.
Hey Ky, thanks for breaking it down like that to make things more manageable :)
You say that point #1 is false using the argument of choice in point #2. But choice has no bearing on the logical correctness of #1 since morality's definition is how we OUGHT to act.
You have not disproved point #1.
=============
As for your statement that morality = morals, I've said before, this is a matter of math, not of debate:
morality = unchanging standard
instincts = continually changing
your statement that instincts = morality cannot be true.
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