Frank Turek's absurd belief in objective morality

 Christian apologist Frank Turek increased his popularity with his "Stealing from God" book that he supports with book-tours in which he attempts to argue that morals are objective, so since this requires an objective moral law giver, and atheism provides none, the existence of objective morals necessarily implies the existence of God, hence, atheism is false.


Turek says, in an article entitled Atheists have no basis for morality:

Monday night at UNC Wilmington, despite no cooperation from the school (see my last post), just over 200 people showed up for part 1 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. 

Maybe god is punishing you for misrepresenting him and mistaking your marketing bells and whistles for the wooing of the Holy Spirit.  Just a thought.

Several atheists asked questions– actually made statements– and struggled greatly when I asked them to offer some objective basis for morality from their atheistic worldview. 

 Then they were not very educated about matters of morality.  You won't find the atheist writing at this blog to be struggling, to any degree, to answer your ridiculous questions and challenges.

For now, your question was illogically loaded.  The only reason to ask an atheist for an objective basis for morality, is because that atheist thinks morality does indeed have an objective basis.  Any such atheists are wrong.  If atheism is true, morality does not have an objective basis (i.e., a basis that transcends humanity).

Also, the fact that most humans are social mammals logically requires that they find unacceptable any acts that inhibit the thriving and surviving of the members.  Murder reduces the numbers of living things and deceases chances of thriving.  Rape increases the likelihood of additional children that were not planned and thus strain the group's resources.  Since no theory needs to be 100% perfect and explain every last little electron in the universe, the issue is not whether the naturalistic theory is comprehensive, but whether it is reasonable.  It is.  The naturalistic explanations for why most people find rape and murder to be immoral, are reasonable.  Merely calling them 'opinion' does nothing to show the theory unreasonable.  Some moist robots have an atomic configuration that motivates them to care about the survival of others.

On the other hand, the explanatory theory that says "God put his laws into our hearts" is beset by far worse shortcomings and fallacies:

What is the reason we cringe at the thought of burning teen prostitutes to death?  Because the god who required this in other cultures (Lev. 21:9) has put his laws into our hearts?  Or because the culture we are born and raised in can have a very profoundly strong impact in shaping our moral opinions?

Turek's explanation cannot point to any specific empirical evidence of a god putting his laws into our hearts, while the entire business smacks of telepathy and other foolishness that we know is bullshit.  At the same time, the naturalistic theory can point to the lower animal world, those who Turek agrees are not made in the image of god, and we find that those calibrated to care about survival of the group, do indeed also find murder and rape unacceptable.

What standard is Turek using to form his belief that rape is objectively evil?  It cannot be the bible or 'god', since Isaiah 13:16 would then have God causing men to rape women, that is, have God acting contrary to his own nature.

  They kept trying to give tests for how we know something is moral rather than why something is moral. 

That's easy.  Try the Constitutions and Laws of the country you were born in.  They reflect the moral outlook of the majority of the people. 

One atheist said “not harming people” is the standard.  But why is harming people wrong if there is no God? 

If you mean "objectively wrong", then harming people isn't wrong, because there is no objective standard governing the question of which human activities constitute immoral harm.  Furthermore, "harm" is subjective and requires analysis of context.  Doctors cause harm all the time, but most of us say this is justifiable because the harm creates a greater future good.  So it is the same in other areas of life. 

If you "subjectively wrong", then the wrongness of harming people does not go any further back than the human being who is calling it wrong, and perhaps the other human beings in the world who agree with him.  But again, that doesn't establish that the moral opinion is objective.

Another said, “happiness” is the basis for morality.  (After I asked him, “Happiness according to who, Mother Teresa or Hitler?,”  he said, “I need to think about this more,” and then sat down.) 

 Thus indicating that these atheists were woefully uneducated about the matters to justify pontificating about them as they tried.  

This says nothing about the intelligence of these people– there just is no good answer to the question.  

 Incorrect, you appear to have been addressing absolute dolts.  The reason you find a lot of people agreeing with you that morals have an objective basis that transcends humanity is because the vast majority of people have never taken an introductory course in moral philosophy.  You are dishonestly trading on their strong personal views and their ignorance.  Your problem is that the naturalistic explanation for most humans in history agreeing certain acts are immoral, reasonably accounts for all the empirical data, at which point, there is no compelling "need" to invoke god to explain it.

Most humans are social animals who desire the company and fellowship of other humans.  Since unrestrained murder and rape would clearly hamper the human's instinctive goal to both survive and thrive, it is instinctive for humans to view murder and rape as unacceptable behavior.   You don't think the insects are made in the image of god, yet the social insects like wasps will attack you if you do thinks to disrupt their social goals, such as throwing dirt clods at wasp-nests.  The same is true for most of the higher order mammals.  Anything that inhibits their ability to survive or thrive as a group, is automatically deemed unacceptable and deserving of suppression.

You cannot avoid this rebuttal by doing what you do best, and pretending that an endless series of "but how do you know that?" will help you save face. Humans are instinctive social animals, so that is quite sufficient to explain why those who desire most to live in groups agree that things like rape and murder are unacceptable.  Questions about how humans were created, etc, are another topic.

Without God there is no basis for objective morals. 

Correct.  That doesn't mean subjective morals cannot exist.  There is no proving to another person that the subjective morals of modern-day America are "better". All we can say is that if you act contrary to those morals, you will be put in jail or killed. 

And God himself in Genesis 6:6-7 must have come to feel that his prior decision to create mankind was immoral, or else he wouldn't have "regretted" doing so.  No, Turek, there is nothing in the grammar, immediate context, larger context or genre of Genesis 6 to suggest that this oassage is an "anthropomorphism", so it is reasonable to take it equally as literally as the other events in the context.  In that case, your own God contradicts his own morals, since it was HE who created mankind, and HE who later discovered that said creative act was immoral.  If God didn't think creating man was immoral, what does it mean to say God "regretted" making mankind?  If you think your prior decision was morally good, could you ever "regret" it?  No, not unless you start thinking that decision wasn't as good as you had first thought. 

And Christians must be without god, because they are often dogmatic in their moral disagreements with one another:

• Does the Christian god think it morally good for a Christian adult to join a worldly military?  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Does the Christian god think it morally good for voluntary abortion to end a pregnancy caused by rape?  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Does the Christian god think it morally god for married Christian couples to use condoms?  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Is corporal punishment of kids morally good?  How do you know what level of non-lethal pain is the maximum that objective goodness will allow?   Why would Proverbs 22:15 and other passages require striking kids with a "rod", if the level of force it is talking about would not produce any more pain or injury than what could be produced by the "tap" of an open hand that so many Christians think is the limit?  Proverbs 20:30 has only good things to say about beatings that produce bruises, and contrary to popular belief, "immediate context" does not always prevail when dealing with Proverbs.  While some commentators try to get away from a moral nightmare by pretending that the "immediate context" of Proverbs 20:30 restricts that passage to mere judicial beatings of adults in criminal courts:

20:30 In context this is not parental discipline but beatings administered by the king’s officers as punishment for crime. Yahweh can peer directly into a person’s innermost being (v. 27), but the king can touch the criminal’s soul by harsh retribution.

Garrett, D. A. (2001, c1993). Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 179). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 Other equally Christian scholars maintain that the way different Proverbs about different matters are often strung together, you cannot limit what one of them is talking about by appeal to "immediate context":

With the book of Proverbs one can select at random a single verse or two and observe a complete unity of thought in them that may not have any real connection with what precedes or follows. Yet this does not hinder interpretation of its meaning

 Ardel B. Caneday, Qoheleth: Enigmatic Pessimist Or Godly Sage?, 
GTJ—V7-#1—Spr 86—31

• And if Proverbs 20:30 is extolling the goodness of the criminal receiving bruises and welts from the corporal punishment inflicted by a court....do you agree that human courts achieve objective moral good by physically beating convicted criminals, yes or no?  Or did you suddenly discover that god's objective biblical morals don't apply if the culture in question is too different from the biblical culture?  Sound like cultural relativism to me.
• How do you know that vigilante justice is objectively immoral, given that Peter in Acts 5:29 appears to have found an exception to Romans 13?  If there are pacifist exceptions to Romans 13 wherein you can safely disregard worldly law, then how do you know that pacifist exceptions are the only types that exist?  How do you know where to draw the line?  What makes you so sure that God doesn't wish to act through you personally to murder the convicted and self-confessed pedophile living locally in your neighborhood?  Before you answer, ask how many tears you'd shed if you found that this man was found gunned down in a ditch earlier this morning.  You won't exactly be clearing your schedule just to make time to attend his funeral, amen?  And your own bible requires that the person who murdered the pedophile was doing the will of God regardless of how the death was actually achieved (Deut. 32:39, Job 14:5). 
• Is it morally good to torture babies to death?  If not, then you must think your god once violated his own objective morals in torturing to death the baby born to King David and Bathsheba:

  13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:13-18 NAU)

The baby obviously wasn't "deserving" of this torture, and yet v. 18 indicates the torture lasted for seven days.  Oh, did I forget?  This doesn't even qualify as the child being punished for the sins of the father.  Before the child was stuck by God, Nathan the prophet said God had "taken away" David's sins (v. 13).  God's torture of the baby cannot be considered "punishment" in any way, since the "taking away" obviously operated to exempt David himself from the death penalty required for adultery and murder.

• If God really is the author of all murder and death (Deut. 32:39) and has set a specific number of days for each human to live, a number they cannot increase or decrease (Job 14:5), then how can you say murder is immoral?  If a man pulls out a gun and shoots the Christian bank teller dead, this is also God calling that bank teller home...it is not limited to the earthly perspective of "murder".  if those bible passages are true, you are calling God's own actions objectively immoral when you call murder immoral.  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Does god approve of a legislature taking the death penalty, usually applicable only to murder, and extending it to other crimes such as child rape?  Not a few people were angered when a man who nearly fatally raped his daughter, escaped Louisiana's death penalty for that crime when the US Supreme Court found such law to be cruel and unusual. 
• Does God think it is moral or immoral that America's courts have a general rule generally excluding hearsay?  The fact that most of the bible is in hearsay form and allegedly comes from God, requires that the answer is "immoral".  Yet if Christians were to start a movement to overturn the court rule banning hearsay, it would likely trigger a legal war that would produce various degrees of harmful collateral damage, such as wronged Plaintiffs preferring to take the law into their own hands instead of having the matter adjudicated in a court that foolishly allows hearsay.
• If rape is objectively immoral, why does God claim responsibility for causing men to rape women in Isaiah 13:16?  Even conservative Christian commentators admit God was "taking responsibility" for these and other atrocities in the immediate context, such as beating children to death:

 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger.
 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land.
 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.
 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.   (Isa. 13:13-18 NAU)

17–18 As the macabre scene resulting from the cosmic quake passes, the finger points to historical movement. Yahweh calls attention to stirrings among the feared Medes for which He claims responsibility.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary : Isaiah 1-33.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page 198). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

What now, Turek?  Do atheist bible critics have an intellectual obligation to study the convoluted tortured reasonings of Christianity's 500-year old in-house Calvinist-Arminian debate on the biblical extent of God's sovereignty (or the 1500 year old Augustinian/Pelagian debate),  before they can be justified to draw conclusions here?  If so, how long must the atheist study such debates before they can justifiably draw conclusions about it?  2 weeks?  20 years?

And don't forget, Turek:  Calvinists are Christians who say the bible teaches that God secretly wills for us to violate his revealed will:

If someone disobeys God's revealed will, that's because God "secretly" willed them to disobey his revealed will. (Steve Hays, from Triablogue)

• When we jaywalk, would it be objectively morally good to consider this sufficient to prove us guilty of murder?  Before you balk at the stupidity of such a suggestion, read James 2:10-11 for the first time in your life, and ask yourself how feverishly stupid it would be to try and make such careless sophistry apply in real-world situations:

 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.
 11 For He who said, "DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY," also said, "DO NOT COMMIT MURDER." Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. (Jas. 2:10-11 NAU)

Then tell yourself that such sophistry does apply in the allegedly real-world situation of your guilt before god.  Then tell yourself that the only people who are allowed to invoke the mysterious ways of God to get their asses out of a theological jam are Trinitarian bible-inerrancy-believing evangelical Protestants.

It is reasonable to expect that if the Christian god exists and has imposed 'objective' morals on humanity, he would not remain so silent and hidden from his own genuine seekers, as to facilitate such moral division among genuinely born-again Christians.  One reasonable conclusion is that Christians who read the same basic bible and hold the same theological tenets always disagree about moral issues they find to be "important" because there is no objective moral law giver.

It’s just Mother Teresa’s opinion against Hitler’s. 

 That's exactly right.  Most citizens of most countries are civilized and have common sense.  Nation would not likely rise against nation in war if knowing which morals come from God was the pre-skool matter that Turek pretends it to be.

The atheists’ responses to the cosmological and design arguments– the arguments that show us that the universe exploded into being out of nothing and did so with amazing design and precision– were “we don’t know how that happened.”

 Once again, you capitalize unfairly on ignorant atheists.  That would be like the atheist concluding Christianity is false because of all the stupidity he can find in a KJV Only Pentecostal church that allows its members to play with live rattlesnakes.  Stop pretending that defeating an ignorant atheist means defeating atheism.  It is illogical.

As far as the cosmological arguments, Turek has a serious problem:  Genesis 1 and 2  would NEVER have caused its originally intended pre-scientific audience to think the "beginning" started with an explosion, as nothing therein is expressed or even implied.  Nothing could be a more flagrant example of eisogesis than Truek reading modern science's big-bang theory into Genesis 1-2.  He may as well read macro-evolution into it as well.  Not only does the Big Bang contradict Genesis 1 and 2 (which set forth God's work as the result of a carpenter or artist), plenty of conservative bible-inerrancy-believing creationist Christians agree the BB is bullshit, such as Institute for Creation Research.

Now Turek cannot say it is the blinders of atheism and rebellion toward god that cause an atheist to be blind to the Big Bang in Genesis 1 and 2, unless he wishes to accuse his own born-again Christian brothers of being atheists.

   This is simply an evasion of the evidence that clearly points to an eternal, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal and moral First Cause of the universe.   Since nature itself was created, this Cause must be beyond nature or “supernatural.”

Sorry, the arguments for the universe being created, are unpersuasive to say the least, while the evidence that the field of planets and stars extends infinitely in all directions is rather clear from the fact that astronomers continue increasing their estimate of the number of stars with each passing decade:  "There are a dizzying 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, up to 20 times more than previously thought, astronomers reported on Thursday."

Even astronomers who disagree with the infinite-space model agree it is at least possible, and that's a serious problem for the lemon-head apologists who want us to think an infinite universe model is "illogical" or otherwise not a valid option:

GREENFIELDBOYCE: So it goes on, but is it infinite? Chuck Bennett is an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.  

CHUCK BENNETT: It is somewhat unimaginable, but quite possible that our universe simply goes on forever.

The issue is not which cosmological theory is "true", that is a child's approach.  The issue is whether theories of the universe that make it harder for you to "prove god" can be reasonable.  They can.  It isn't like the infinite universe model is on the order of flat-earth or ancient astronauts.

I end with a challenge to the stupid fundamentalists who believe hell's fire is more literal than symbolic, and who deny any possibility of second chances for those who die after knowingly rejecting the gospel:


Suppose you are the parent of a 10 year old girl who hasn't actually believed the gospel just yet, she simply goes through the motions like so many other kids.  She is invited to a church that promotes whatever  specific doctrinal bullshit you consider minimally necessary to true orthodoxy.   She goes, they tell her the true gospel, they ask if she wants to repent, she says no, and on the way home, while having no personal faith in Christ, dies in a car accident.  That is, she died immediately after knowingly refusing to obey the revealed gospel.  God then shows you a vision of her being tormented by the flames of hell, and tells you this torture will go on for all eternity, because God thinks 10 years old is the age of accountability for that particular child.

Suppose every time you attend church thereafter and sing songs about God's eternal 'love', God puts this vision of your daughter's real, current, irreversible and eternal suffering into your mind.  Your daughter is screaming in mindless agony in this torture-by-fire WHILE you are smiling and happily clapping your hands in church to songs about about the wonderfully comforting love of the God who is, at the same time, torturing your child.

Could you continue worshiping God in good conscience if you had that much precise information about the ultimate fate of a deceased child?

Or did you suddenly discover that the biggest problem in your life right now can be solved by suddenly discovering that the age of accountability is 37?

How to make all these problems disappear in one fell swoop?  Become an open theist.

Atheist rebuttal to Crossexamined.org on Objective Morality

This is my reply to an article by Cole James entitled

Objections to Objective Morality

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

I took a philosophy class while I was in college. The topic of this class was on contemporary moral issues, so you know we got into some heated topics. I heard every objection under the sun to objective morality.

No you didn't.  You didn't hear my objections.  You likely also didn't hear the professor ask you whether your refusal to support burning teenage prostitutes alive arises from the moral relativity of the culture you were born and raised in, or if it arises from morals put into your heart by the same God who ordered this atrocity in Leviticus 21:9.  

Everything from it was not very “tolerant,” to different cultures act differently so therefore there cannot be objective morality. I was the minority in this class to say the least!

 I think a moral relativist is stupid if they are pushing "toleration" as strongly as you imply.  There are purely naturalistic justifications for refusing to be tolerant of the practices of other cultures.  I have a naturalistic desire to see my children live and grow into adulthood, this doesn't need to imply any more spirituality than is implied from the fact that lower life forms also desire to see their young survive...lest you end up taking the position that the only reason the insects care about their offspring is because they were made in the image of god?

Objections Objective Morality

Objective morality means that moral statements like “murder is bad” is independent of the person saying it.

So go ahead, prove that "murder is bad" is objectively true, and prove it independently of the person saying it.  That is, prove it without relying on anything else that person says. 

Objective morality means that there is a standard of morality that transcends human opinions and judgements.

Would that be the morality of the god who ordered teenage prostitutes to be burned to death in Leviticus 21:9?  Would it be the morality of the god who "stirs up" the Medes to rape Babylonian women in Isaiah 13:13-17 (i.e., the horrific morality of the OT god is not limited to the Hebrews, God also applies it to Gentile nations)?

Morals are not invented, they are discovered.

That's right.  Little johnny thinks nothing of hurting his baby brother in a toy-war, and doesn't "discover" it is "wrong" until mommy or daddy impose their morals on his impressionable barbaric brain.

Now that our society has seemingly transformed into a “post-truth” society, objective morals have come under attack. A “post-truth” society is a society which is not concerned with objective facts, but rather, right and wrong are based on personal subjective feelings, tastes, and personal belief.

Then Christian apologists take part in such post-truth society.  God clearly approves of men raping women, today's apologists don't.  Everybody changes with the times.

As Christians, one of the best arguments we have for God is the moral argument.

Then it sure is funny that the bible nowhere indicates approval of using such argument to prove god.  Methinks you are so lacking in the Holy Spirit, you care more about all the bells and whistles you can invent to help God do apologetics, than you care about the truthfulness of your own witness in the "power of the Holy Spirit".  The biblical standard of truth takes a direct hit from it's own defenders.

Of all the attacks on Christianity and God, a Christian will most likely hear the most attacks on this subject. Why? Because everyone can relate to this topic. Each one of us every day makes moral judgements and decisions every day, ranging from opening the door for someone to helping someone who just got in a car wreck.

Since you claim such matters involve morals, go ahead: demonstrate that the Christian who refuses to open a door for someone, or the Christian who refuses to help somebody who just got into a car wreck, is objectively immoral for such omission.  Or you can save yourself a lot of headaches by admitting that many moral situations aren't governed by an absolute moral standard.

Just so we can have a basis for what the argument actually is, it goes as follows:

Premise 1: If objective moral values and duties exist then God exists

Premise 2: Objective morals values and duties do exist

Conclusion: Therefore, God exits

 Ok, so since the dictionary defines "objective" as "not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.true for reasons independent of human opinion", you should be able to demonstrate any particular objective moral truth you wish, and do so without needing to hear any human being state their feelings or opinions on the subject.

You think rape is "objectively" immoral?  Go ahead, prove it without considering what any human being thinks or feels about it.   Just like you can prove the objective existence of trees without needing to depend on what other human beings think or feel about trees.

With the argument in mind, consider four objections:

    There are so many different cultures with different values, there can’t be objective morals! Look how different we are!

Off the bat, I agree with this objection. There are many different cultures appearing to be morally different on the surface. However, as one reads between the lines it becomes apparent that these different cultures are not really that different.

 Then because you morally approve of male genital mutilation (circumcision), explain the basis upon which you think female genital mutilation (clitordectomy) is "objectively" immoral.   Wouldn't subjecting female children to a procedure that inhibits the libido they will have as adults, prevent a certain amount of lust/sexual sin?  How can preventing sin be objectively bad?

It is important as we read between the lines to keep in mind that when looking at cultural diversity we need to determine whether differences are really about core morals or instead about application of that core moral truth. For example, what constitutes murder?

That doesn't matter to you, your problems are bigger than that.  The bible makes God's participation in all murders mandatory and unavoidable with the following texts:

 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU)

 5 "Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass. (Job 14:5 NAU)

Suppose a man murders the cashier at a gas station.  Did God set a limit to the number of days this cashier was to live?  If so, how can god "set" that number of days, without himself being intimately involved in the immediate cause of their death (i.e., murder)?

How can you call murder objectively immoral, when God himself has equally as much involvement in murders as do the humans pulling the trigger?

What my classmates did not realize is that these difference were in how morals were applied, not a difference in morals. Peter Kreeft says this,

“No culture has ever existed which believed and taught what Nietzsche called for: a transvaluation of all values. There have been differences in emphasis, for instance, our ancestors valued courage more than we do, while we value compassion more than they did. But there has never been anything like the relativism of opinions about values that the relativist teaches as factual history. Just imagine what that would be like. Try to imagine a society where justice, honesty, courage, wisdom, hope, and self-control were deemed morally evil. And unrestricted selfishness, cowardice, lying, betrayal, addiction, and despair were deemed morally good. Such a society is never found on Earth. If it exists anywhere, it is only in Hell and its colonies. Only Satan and his worshippers say ‘evil be thou my good.’”

Kreeft and you are wasting time pretending that the absurd extremes some moral relativists take, constitutes the best which the moral relativism camp has to say.  Relativity of morals does not mandate that nobody give a fuck about anything except themselves.

Turek is an idiot to insist that all human beings become sociopaths when and if God's existence be denied.  If several sociopaths share a common goal and can see that they can attain it more efficiently by working together and making certain sacrifices for each other, they will.  The phenomena of one life-form cooperating with another to achieve a common goal has nothing about it mandating that God exist or that morals are objective.

It really comes down to a case-by-case basis. For instance, in the Hindu religion, they believe in reincarnation. Some of these people will starve themselves because they will not eat a cow. Why? Because they believe their great uncle died and reincarnated into a cow. Looking on the surface at this, it may look like there are differences in morals, but we need to read between the lines. As we read between the lines we see that the morals of our culture and their culture are the same. They think it is wrong to eat the cow because they believe that is their great uncle, we also believe it is wrong to eat our great uncle. As we can see, this really is not an objection, it is just a matter of not digging deeper.

Then how do you explain your differences with cultures that embrace endocannibalism?  How much reading between the lines must we accomplish before we find out that we and they agree about morality?

How do you explain our disagreement with cultures that eat their enemies?  If we read between the lines long enough, will we discover that we and they agree on the morality of it?

If we can avoid the stigma of what they do, by pretending its significance is limited to the reason why they do it, then why would you object to cannibalism?  That's just their way of dominating their enemy, and even modern American Christians generally support a military that obviously finds it morally good to dominate our enemies.

    Objective morality is not very tolerant! Relativism is much more tolerant of people’s opinions and beliefs.

This objection is entirely problematic. First, it is a self-refuting statement! By someone telling a person that his/her beliefs are not very tolerant, they in turn are being intolerant of the other person’s views. Moreover, this objection assumes that tolerance is really objectively good.

A second answer to this objection is, if relativism were true, why not be intolerant? Why should I be tolerant?

The new age fools who advocate absolute tolerance are indeed stupid, because there's at least one thing they don't tolerate; intolerance itself.  But too much tolerance would go against what the majority of Americans believe in, that is, that our society should be intolerant of certain practices.  This moral is itself relative, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  Bunches of people with shared moral values have been grouping together for centuries, nothing about this requires implying "god".

Do you see where I am going with this?

Relativism is the view that morality is culturally based, therefore being subject to a person’s individual choice. With this view, there is no objective standard that a relativist can point to, to say that someone should be tolerant.

At root, this is merely an emotional objection. The person who puts out this objection probably does not want objective morality to be true because it will change their lifestyle. So called, “tolerance” feels better to them, and indeed it is a good quality (Paul thought so), but again, just because it feels good does not mean I ought to be that way.

I don't object to objective morality that way, so, those concerns are dismissed.

    There are so many different understanding of morals, there cannot be objective morality.

Just because there is widespread disagreement about a particular moral issue, does not mean that truth does not exist.

But the widespread disagreement makes it reasonable to presume that there is no moral "truth" about it, it is nothing but human opinion.  Just because you've never seen the tooth-fairy doesn't mean she doesn't exist, but what fool would rest their skeptical case on this trifling technicality?

Think of it this way, just because eight students have different answers to a math problem does not mean that a right answer does not exist.

 Fallacy of false analogy, answers to math problems are governed by mathematical principles that are universally recognized.  Answers to moral problems are usually controversial because the underlying principles are the subject of widespread disagreement.

Otherwise, you invite the criticism that you can resolve moral disagreements among Christians with the kind of finality with which mathematical problems are resolved.  Wanna go there?  If not, then drop the math-analogy, Einstein.

Philosopher Dave DeSonier says it best,

“Finally, even if one believes that morals (not just facts or practices) do actually differ between cultures, it does not logically follow that there must be no absolute, objective moral standards that transcend cultures.

It doesn't have to logically follow.  It is reasonable, even if not logically necessary, to assume moral disagreements between cultures imply that morality is ultimately relative.  Your above examples were carefully selected; apparently, you were aware of the harm to your case if you had cited suicide bombing or gang violence or torture of prisoners or what crimes deserve the death penalty, since different cultures  disagree with each other about those matters too, yet no amount of reading between the lines is going to indicate other cultures agree with America on basic morals.

Just because five independent observers of an automobile accident give very different accounts of the event, it would be false to conclude that there is not an accurate, objective, and true description of what actually occurred.”

Fallacy of false analogy:  the reasons why Christians find Leviticus 21:9 objectively immoral have nothing in common with the situation of witnesses to an automobile accident.  All DeSonier is doing at this point is blindly assume that moral truths are just like empirical truths.

Even the skeptic David Hume understood this much. He points out,

“the fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes ethical objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity.”

Same answer:  Hume's popularity with skeptics doesn't mean every view he held is considered gospel by skeptics.  My reasons for rejecting ethical objectivism continue to bulldoze your idealistic pipe dreams, whether you can find other atheists who disagree with me or not.  You need to worry more about the specific arguments and less about finding enemies who agree with some of what you believe.  I can find Christians who think god will never send anybody to hell, but why should you give a shit about that?  Then I don't give a shit about you finding atheists who espouse ethical objectivism.

I am very happy to disagree with atheist Dan Barker's arguments for moral objectivity.  Our recoiling from pain obviously doesn't prove anything, otherwise, we should avoid every situation that produces pain, such as visits to the doctor/dentist, and we should never attempt to reset a dislocated shoulder for someone if doing so would case them pain.   The home intruder recoils in pain when we shoot him dead, but what fool would argue that such recoil from pain made it immoral to shoot him?  If some pain can be reasonably said to achieve a higher subjective moral good, Barker's arguments for objective morality fail.

So we can see, that even though common objective morals might sometimes be hard to find or discover, it does not logically follow that therefore, there are no common objective moral values and duties.

Great.  When you plan to actually do what you are required to do, and fulfill your burden to cite an objective moral and the reasons why you think it is mandatory upon all human beings at all times, let me know.  But I'm an asshole, I won't be distracted by your technical trifles about how lack of evidence doesn't mean the tooth-fairy doesn't live on Pluto. If you claim x, you have the burden to prove x. We have no obligation to view you as God, view your opinions as gospel, and then worry about how to prove you wrong.  Get to work.

    I do not believe in God and I am a moral person. So you are saying that atheists cannot be moral people?

You must be a sorry apologist if the only way you can attack ethical relativism is by pretending these stupid amateur skeptical excuses represent the most powerful guns relativists can bring to the fight.  You couldn't prove the objective immorality of torturing babies, to save your life.  All you could do is insist such torture is objectively immoral, and then insist, equally blindly,  that anybody who disagrees with you is therefore too mentally unstable to be worthy of reasoning with.  But that's hardly "argument". Go ask Matthew Flannagan.  Every time I asked him what moral standard he is using to justify his belief that some human act is objectively immoral, he either disappeared, or his website conveniently decided, right at that point, to ban me for suspected but non-existent spam.  He denied in private email that he caused this, but he also didn't indicate he'd be trying to rectify this, and, shock, surprise, I still cannot post on his blog.  His apathy toward my inability to post at his website sure is convenient toward achieving the goal of ducking the bullet.

When you are faced with an adversary you cannot refute, just stop communicating.  It works for Matthew Flannagan, so it will also work for you and anybody else who prioritize the need to sell books above the need to be accurate.

This is NOT at all what objective morality means! Of course, an atheist can be a good moral person.

Then you apparently have never read your bible, which says nobody is good:

 18 And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. (Mk. 10:18 NAU)

  12 ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE." (Rom. 3:12 NAU)

What’s ironic is that I know some atheists who are actually more moral than many Christians!

That's not ironic, a person's morality arises from a combination of their genetic predispositions and their environmental conditioning.  And since god doesn't exist, seeing no moral improvement in the lives of those who claim to have "accepted Jesus" is nothing new.  All they did was join a club and sign the local creed, which had about as much spirituality to it as joining the cub scouts does.  

A person does not have to believe in God to be a good person. This is more of an objection of epistemology, or how we know something. The atheist can know morality, but they cannot justify or provide logical grounds for it.

 Sure we can.  I require my son to take out the garbage because

a.  the garbage needs to be taken out, because I personally don't like a dirty smelly house;
b. his obeying me keeps chaos out of the house, and keeping chaos at bay is required if we are to live happily with each other;.
c. his obeying me instills in him an appreciation that obeying an employer leads to the productive job-retention we all need in order to pay rent/mortgage and keep a stable place to live.

Why would you think a reasonable atheist needs anything more than this to justify saying it is morally good to ask their child to take out the garbage and for the child to obey?

From the Christian worldview, we believe God fabricated a moral code into our DNA (Romans 2:15), other people think we know morality because of evolution. Again, this is a question of how we know something, not why I ought to do something.

 Again, that's technically true, but if morality does come from evolution, then that leaves you in the lurch, with nobody having any reason to link morality to anything higher, like god.

This objection confuses ontology (is there a moral reality) with epistemology (how do we know morality). On the naturalistic atheist worldview, they cannot justify why someone ought to be moral.

And moral relativism is a good explanation for why Christians often fail to convince other Christians on moral issues like age of consent, death penalty, military service, assisted suicide, abortion etc, even if relativism isn't the only possible explanation.

There is no objective standard for the naturalistic atheist to point to.

There's no objective standard for the Christian to point to either.  Your moral disagreement with Leviticus 21:9 proves the point, as does your inability to convince other Christians that their specific morals are wrong.

This objection is just a common misunderstanding of the argument. A simple clarification of what you mean by the moral argument will handle this objection.

As I mentioned earlier, in our “post-truth” society it is inevitable that a Christian will run into one of these objections.

But if I have any say in it, Christians will routinely run into MY objections, and they will need to up their game, or concede defeat, the way Matthew Flannagan did with his dishonestly preventing me from posting further at his blogs after I asked the question moral objectivists cannot answer.

As Christians, we have to be prepared to answer these objections and to show that belief in God is rational and reasoned (1 Peter 3:15).

 You are also commanded to avoid wrangling words (2nd Timothy 2:14) and it wouldn't be very difficult to show how the ceaseless back and forth bantering required when Christian moral objectivists debate atheist moral relativists, is a fine illustration of said prohibited "wrangling".  See how I hammered the ever-mouthy female Christian apologist Lydia McGrew with that verse here.

What I have seen in dealing with the students in my class who opposed objective morality is that it is more of an emotional problem.

 Then you need to get out of class more often.  I've steamrolled moral objectivity several times at this blog, and none of my objections are as simpleminded as the stupefied drunks you prop up here.

As I mentioned in objection three, the students in my class did not want objective morality to exist because it would have to demand a change in their way if living.

Maybe so, but your argument sucks because all you are doing is refuting two-year olds.  When you learn enough of this topic to play with the big boys, let me know.

Hopefully, after reading this, you will be prepared to give a defense of one of the most relatable and fundamental arguments for the existence of God.

Sure...if your Christian readers anticipate that their only opponents will be atheists who have a very superficial understanding of these issues.  But you only do your students much harm if you are trying to prepare them to ward off my own attacks.  You gave them precisely nothing to take on me.

 I now reply to some of the replies that article generated:

    Andy Ryan says:

    July 21, 2017 at 3:14 am

    “Premise 1: If objective moral values and duties exist then God exists”

    That’s a non sequitur. What’s the connection between objective morality existing and Gid existing?

    Second, never mind swatting objections, where’s your evidence that OM actually exists?

    “Therefore, God exits”

    That’s a funny typo!

Good call!  I already steamrolled Christian apologist Matthew Flannagan by getting down to business and asking him what standard he uses to justify saying parents have an objective moral duty to avoid harming children.  Suddenly, I wasn't able to post there anymore, and Flannagan didn't reply to that question either
 While he denied via private email he had banned me by choice, he also refused to carry on the conversation through my blog or private email.  Let's just say Flannagan is nowhere near the moral objectivity warrior he thinks he is.  He is also the new father of conveniently timed accidents

        Butch says:

        July 28, 2017 at 10:13 am

        The connection is simple and it’s a shame you’re blinded to not see it. Without God it’s just your opinion.

 So what?  How does re-characterizing the morals of most Americans as "just opinion" operate to show any deficiency?  Yes, morals are absolutely nothing but opinions.  So what?

        As for your other question; Why is it only relatively wrong to torture babies for fun?

Because the only highest demonstrable authority for calling it immoral is human opinion.

And you have no business asking that question anyway, since your God could have killed King David's baby quickly, but instead decided to torture the child with a great sickness for 7 days before finally killing it.  If your god tortures children, then you cannot cite child-torture as a case of objective immorality:

 10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:10-18 NAU)

 Now what?  Did you suddenly become an open-theist?

I think any honest person knows it’s objectively wrong. Not relatively wrong.

 In other words, the only people your argument could convince, are people who already accept it.  That's the sign of a horrifically weak argument.

        If you hold it’s only relatively wrong then you have a serious problem that needs checked out!

So apparently god has a problem that needs checked out, since baby torture, being objectively immoral, doesn't allow for any exceptions?

And can’t say anything is wrong. Including raping your daughter and torturing her.

 Do you think the rapist continued to have sex with his victim after he was forced to marry her in accord with God's will?

 28 "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered,
 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days. (Deut. 22:28-29 NAU)

Deuteronomy 22 is talking about the man who seizes the non-engaged girl (Hebrew: taphas, the same word used in Deut. 21:19 to describe forceful arrest of a resisting criminal). 

The rape-interpretation of the “seize and lay with her” of Deut. 22:28 is confirmed by the “he violated her” in v. 29.  The Hebrew word for violated is עָנָה/anah, which means to be bowed down, afflicted.  Every other time this word is used to describe two people interacting, it is always describing a man forcing a woman to have sex against her will (i.e., rape):

It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled (Hebrew: anah)  her. (Deut. 21:14 NAU, see chapter ? for detailed exegesis of this passage)

But the men of Gibeah rose up against me and surrounded the house at night because of me. They intended to kill me; instead, they ravished (Hebrew: anah) my concubine so that she died. (Jdg 20:5 NAS)

 However, he would not listen to her; since he was stronger than she, he violated (Hebrew: anah) her and lay with her. (2Sa 13:14 NAS)

Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David's brother, responded, "Do not let my lord suppose they have put to death all the young men, the king's sons, for Amnon alone is dead; because by the intent of Absalom this has been determined since the day that he violated (Hebrew: anah) his sister Tamar. (2 Sam. 13:32 NAU)

They ravished (Hebrew: anah )the women in Zion, The virgins in the cities of Judah. (Lam 5:11 NAS)

You can’t claim anything is evil. Including the God you seem to not believe in.

We can claim something is evil if it is reasonable to use our subjective standard of good and bad.  I claim rape is evil, because it interferes with her rights as they exist in this country.  I don't need to prove that America's hatred of rape reflects a transcendent morality in order to be reasonable to say rape is evil.

You are merely fallaciously assuming that nothing but an absolute standard of right and wrong will suffice.  You couldn't be more wrong.  You could never host a garage sale.  After all, there's no absolute guide to how much a used dvd player is worth, so that puts you in Shitsville for the rest of your life.

                Terry Lewis says:

                August 16, 2017 at 10:46 am

                Hey Andy!

                Thinking someone blinded is not an insult; it’s an assessment of their abilities. Or do you think there’s something insulting about being blind?

                “That torture causes suffering is a fact that is outside myself.”

                True enough… but this is not a moral statement. It says nothing about whether such suffering should or should not be inflicted on another person. What say you about that?

I think baby-torture is immoral because it takes away from babies everything that my genetic predospositions and cultural conditioning say babies should be allowed to enjoy.  I think this is the part where you say it is objectively unreasonable to go along with one's culture.            

    KR says:

    July 21, 2017 at 6:58 am

    Premise 2 is of course equally problematic. If there are objective moral values, they should be demonstrable facts – yet I’ve never seen such a demonstration. The question I keep asking but never get an answer to is: when people disagree on a moral issue, how do we determine who’s objectively correct?

 By asking what Frank Turek's interpretation of the bible is, of course. If you point out that other evangelicals disagree with his morals or theology, then you probably aren't one of the elect and can be conveniently ignored.

My challenge to Lee Strobel: Isaiah 13:13-18, God causes rape

Here's my challenge to Lee Strobel at one of his Youtube videos:

Barry Jones1 second ago

Dear Mr. Strobel, Read Isaiah 13:13-18. 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger. 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land. 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword. 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished. 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold. 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children. (Isa. 13:13-18 NAU) Has God ever caused men to rape women, yes or no? In the context, who is responsible for causing men to rape women? Is it not the "fury of the Lord" (v. 13)? Is it not God's having "stirred up" the pagans to commit this atrocity (v. 16-17)? Does blaming God for these men raping Hebrew women, violate anything in the grammar or immediate context? Can you think of a convincing reason why you don't feel comfortable limiting yourself to the exact wording of the OT prophets, when you comment about God's relation to evil? If Isaiah 13 is better than anything a sinner like you could possibly say about God's sovereignty, why do you feel compelled to "explain" God's perfect choice of words with your own sinful commentary, especially given that you don't claim to be inspired by God to anywhere near the extent you think OT prophets were? Could it be that the reason you refuse to speak as simply and plainly as the biblical prophets did on such matters, is because you care more about making the bible-god attractive to modern western audiences, and care somewhat less about honoring your alleged belief that God's word, without your commentary, is **sufficient** for faith and practice?

  

Changing one stupid philosophy for another, a reply to J. Budziszewski

Triablogue promotes "Escape from Nihilism", below is my reply

ESCAPE FROM NIHILISM

Copyright © J. Budziszewski

In 1997, a group of students at the university where I teach asked me to give a
short talk about how I had returned to my abandoned Christian faith. The
following version was included in The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the
Fall of Man (1999, rev. ed. 2010). For a longer and more analytical account of
my reversion, see at this website “Why I Am Not an Atheist.”
Sixteen years ago I stood in the Government Department of the University of Texas
to give a talk. I was fresh out of graduate school, and it was my here's-why-you-houldhire-
me lecture. I wanted to teach about ethics and politics, so as academic job seekers
do everywhere, I was showing the faculty my stuff. So what did I tell them? Two
things. The first was that we human beings just make up the difference between good
and evil; the second was that we aren't responsible for what we do anyway. And I laid
out a ten-year plan for rebuilding ethical and political theory on these two
propositions.
Does that seem to you a good plan for getting a job teaching the young? Or does it
seem a better plan for getting committed to the state mental hospital? Well, I wasn't
committed to the state mental hospital, but I did get a job teaching the young. I've
been asked to tell you how I became a nihilist, and I've been asked to tell you how I
escaped from nihilism. Perhaps I should first explain just what my argument for
nihilism was.
As I mentioned above, I made two claims: first that we make up the difference
between good and evil,

That is obviously true, since it is a category mistake to apply "objective" to "morality" no less than it is to apply "greasy" to "4".

second that we aren't responsible for what we do anyway.

If Calvinist Steve Hays of Triablogue got it right, then no, we are not responsible for what we do any more than a pot is responsible for the shape the potter formed it into.

My argument reversed this order, because first I denied free will.

We have no reason to think the human mind is free of the laws of cause and effect that we see affecting everything else.  There is a very good reason that mature civilized adults exhibit routinely repeated patterns in their choices, and no, it's not coincidence.

The reasoning was not
very original. Everything we do or think or feel, I thought, is just an effect of prior
causes. It doesn't matter that some of those prior causes are my previous deeds or
thoughts or feelings, because those would be effects of still earlier causes, and if we
traced the chain further and further back, sooner or later we would come to causes
that are outside of me completely, such as my heredity and environment.

So far, so good.

Second I concluded that if we don't have free will, then good and evil can't
make sense.

Then you were a rather stupid atheist, since there's nothing about good or evil that require their definitions to be restricted to absolute terms.   Good and evil make perfect sense even where the context is wholly subjective, such as whether it be good or evil to preserve the results of unconstitutional searches merely because the officers acted in good faith upon a warrant lacking in probable cause (i.e., good faith exception to the exclusionary rule).  Many lawyers say that exception is evil, and ALL evidence obtained from an unconstitutional search must be supressed, while our courts are required to agree with the US Supreme Court that as long as the officer's reliance on the warrant was reasonable, the fruits of the search can be saved and used against the accused in trial.

On the one hand I'm not responsible for my deeds, so I can't be praised
or blamed for good or evil; on the other hand I'm not responsible for my thoughts, so
I can't have any confidence that my reasoning will lead me to the truth about good
and evil.

That is true, but the reason most humans praise and condemn each other is precisely because of ignorance or denial that we too are just machines.  Since most people neither know nor care about the arguments against freewill, the world is not psychologically ready to depart from their older way of holding others responsible for their deeds.

Now so far it may seem that my argument was merely skeptical, not nihilist.
But I reasoned that if the good for man cannot be known to man, then it cannot be
offered to man as his good; for all practical purposes, there is no good.

then you were wrong, since identifying good and evil using the criteria of one's living environment, city, state, or nation, is sufficient to justify saying good exists "for all practical purposes".

This practical nihilism was linked with a practical atheism, for my arguments were
couched in such a way that I thought they applied to God too. He couldn't escape
causality either, I thought; therefore He couldn't possess confident knowledge of
good and evil any more than I could.

non-existent beings have great difficulty possessing knowledge.

And even if He could achieve such a
standard, it would make no sense for Him enforce it; trapped in causality like Him,
human beings have no ultimate control over their conduct.

Sure it could make sense; if God exists, he could just be an irrational asshole like so many past human dictators.  If an ant is not correct to asssume human beings are all good or all powerful merely because we achieve something the ant never could, then we too are irrational to conclude "god", if he exists, is all good or all powerful merely because he is capable of feats we cannot accomplish.

The upshot was that
although God might exist, He would be irrelevant. I couldn't quite rule out the
existence of God, but I thought I could rule out the existence of a God that
mattered.

You should have met me earlier.  I could have introduced you to the atheist argument from incoherent religious language, and you would have found out that God's non-existence is equally as assured as is the non-existence of any incoherent concept.

Holes Large and Numerous
The holes in the preceding arguments are so large that one can see light through
them. One hole is that in order to deny free will I assumed that I understood
causality.

No, in order to deny freewill, all you have to know is that the mind is nothing but the operation of the physical brain, and at that point, you have no basis to say it is capable of doing something for reasons independent of physical law, anymore than a tree branch is free to do something contrary to physical law as it breaks off and falls to the ground.  The fact that most agree "freewill" disappears more and more, the further down the food chain you go (from animal to reptile to insect) seems to suggest that freewill really is nothing but an illusion.

That is foolish because I didn't know what causality really is any more
than I understand what free will really is. They are equally wonderful and
mysterious, so I had no business pretending to understand one in order to attack the
other. Another problem is that my argument was self-referentially incoherent. If
my lack of free will made my reasoning unreliable so I couldn't find out which
ideas about good and evil are true, then by the same token I shouldn't have been
able to find out which ideas about free will are true either. But in that case I had no
business denying that I had free will in the first place.

You don't need freewill to figure out truth anymore than a video camera needs freewill to make an accurate recording of reality.

At this point two things must be clearly understood. The first: One might think that
my arguments for nihilism were what led me to become a nihilist, but that is not
true. I was committed to nihilism already, and cooked up the arguments only to
rationalize it. The second: One might think that my recognition of the holes in the
arguments were what enabled me to "escape" nihilism, but that is not true either. I
saw the holes in my arguments even at the time, and covered them over with
elaborate nonsense like the need to take an ironic view of reality. Good and evil
just had to be meaningless and personal responsibility just had to be nonexistent.
The arguments were secondary. I was determined.

Personal responsibility doesn't require freewill.  We desire an ordered society that punishes criminals whose mental abilities are within whatever criteria of soundness we determine.  Your personal responsibility (I think you meant culpability) draws solely from others who impose their will.  Most criminals are perfectly content with their lifestyle.  A sense of moral culpability must be determined from outside the individual person.  There's a reason you need to teach kids manners.  If they are left to raise themselves as feral children, they will have no sense of responsibility and will do anything to survive, including steal, deceive and kill.

A friend may he forgive me for quoting him thinks my dismissal of my previous
rationalizations as elaborate nonsense seems too pat. Is it really that simple? The
answer is that yes, it really is that simple. In my present opinion (though not my
opinion of sixteen years ago), modern ethics is going about matters backwards. It
assumes that the problem of human sin is mainly cognitive that it has to do with the
state of our knowledge. In other words, it holds that we really don't know what's
right and wrong and that we are trying to find out.

Once again, there is no objective basis to declare any human act moral or immoral.  We might think we are "trying to find out" what's right and wrong, but all we are doing is evolving and having arguments with others about the matter.  Christian philosophers have already tried and failed to show objective morality with their personally chosen best examples.

Actually the problem is
volitional it has to do with the state of our will. In other words, by and large we do
know the basics of right and wrong

Not when most of the world disgrees with the fundie fanatics who claim God used to think it was morally good to burn teen prostitutes to death: Leviticus 21:9.

but wish we didn't, and we are trying, for one
reason or another, to keep ourselves in ignorance. Is this an ad hominem
argument that because my motive was bad, my nihilism must have been false? No,
it is a diagnosis, with myself as case in point. My nihilism was "false" because it
was self-referentially incoherent. [There may exist nihilisms which are false for
reasons other than self-referentially incoherency, but I am speaking only of the
version I held myself.] The motive was "bad" because although I knew this to be
the case, rather than give up the nihilism I embraced the incoherency. What one
must do with such a fellow as I once was is not to tell him what he doesn't know
(because he really knows it), but to blow away the smokescreens by which he hides
from the knowledge he has already.
The Motives Behind Nihilism
Then how did I become a nihilist? Why was I so determined? What were my real
motives?
There were quite a few. One was that having been caught up in radical politics of
the late 'sixties and early 'seventies, I had my own ideas about redeeming the
world, ideas that were opposed to the Christian faith of my childhood. As I got
further and further from God, I also got further and further from common sense
about a lot of other things, including moral law and personal responsibility.

Well then maybe you can get closer to God by lobbying for America to legalize a moral God approves of: burning teen prostitutes to death.  Leviticus 21:9

That first reason for nihilism led to a second. By now I had committed certain sins
that I didn't want to repent. Because the presence of God made me more and more
uncomfortable,

Then you must have been taking some drugs back when you were an atheist, as there's more reason for "god" to make anybody unconfortable than there is for the Bermuda Triangle to make them uncomfortable, ignorance being the only exception.

I began looking for reasons to believe that He didn't exist.

Sort of like the vast majority of Christians who came to faith in an emotional moment in church, and their acceptance of theistic arguments and bible inerrancy is wholly derivative.

It's a
funny thing about us human beings: not many of us doubt God's existence and then
start sinning. Most of us sin and then start doubting His existence.

Speak for yourself, that wasn't true in my case.

A third reason for being a nihilist was simply that nihilism was taught to me. I may
have been raised by Christian parents, but I'd heard all through school that even the
most basic ideas about good and evil are different in every society. That's
empirically false as C.S. Lewis remarked, cultures may disagree about whether a
man may have one wife or four, but all of them know about marriage;  they may

disagree about which actions are most courageous, but none of them rank
cowardice as a virtue.

But human consensus doesn't make a moral objective.  There is human consensus that burning teenage prostitutes to death is always immoral, but because of Leviticus 21:9, Christians must concede that the consensus is wrong, and it's not allways immoral to burn such girls to death.  Hence, moral consensus cannot be a justification to call any particular action of man objectively good or bad.

But by the time I was taught the false anthropology of the
times, I wanted very much to believe it.

And of course that couldn't have been the case with the start and rise of Christianity.  No, it was only the undeniable miracles of Jesus and the apostles that forced unbelievers to come kicking and screaming over the line into the faith, no presumption or wish-fulfillment about it.

A fourth reason, related to the last, was the very way I was taught to use language.
My high school English teachers were determined to teach me the difference
between what they called facts and what they called opinions, and I noticed that
moral propositions were always included among the opinions. My college social
science teachers were equally determined to teach me the difference between what
they called facts and what they called "values," and to much the same effect: the
atomic weight of sodium was a fact, but the wrong of murder was not. I thought
that to speak in this fashion was to be logical. Of course it had nothing to do with
logic; it was merely nihilism itself, in disguise.

Not at all, associating "objective" with "morality" is a category mistake, read how God accepts moral correction from Moses in Exodus 32:9-14.  SInce you cannot refute the thesis on the merits in the context, pretend that the larger context of Exodus is "necessary" to a "proper understanding" of those verses.

Yeah, and I cannot understand Exodus 32:15 without consulting the "larger context".  Sorry Charlie.

A fifth reason for nihilism was that disbelieving in God was a good way to get
back at Him for the various things which predictably went wrong in my life after I
had lost hold of Him. Now of course if God didn't exist then I couldn't get back at
Him, so this may seem a strange sort of disbelief. But most disbelief is like that.

Not mine. When I say God is stupid and cruel, I'm only tryinig to talk to Christians at their level, not because I seriously believe it to be the case.  Just like we often say to a 3 year old "Santa wants you to be nice" around Christmas.  We are not committing to the premise that Santa is real.

A sixth reason for nihilism was that I had come to confuse science with a certain
world view, one which many science writers hold but that really has nothing to
with science. I mean the view that nothing is real but matter. If nothing is real but
matter, then there couldn't be such things as minds, moral law, or God, could
there?

No, since minds are nothing but brains in action, morals cannot be shown to exist apart from physical matter stuff like brains, and incoherent concepts like god only arise because of misinformed physical brains.

After all, none of those are matter. Of course not even the properties of
matter are matter, so after while it became hard to believe in matter itself.

Not true, quarks and leptons are no less physical than rocks.  You cannot get rid of their physicality by calling them "energy", because energy is not some ghostly esoteric something-or-other that is different than matter, energy is nothing more than matter in motion.  The heat that burns your hand when you place it in the middle of an oven is not less physical than the wires carrying the electrical current into the oven.

You can use your finger to press a key on a computer keyboard, yet when you do, there's nothing "non-matter" about it, the entire operation was 100% physical from beginning to end.

But by
that time I was so disordered that I couldn't tell how disordered I was.

Sorry to hear it. Lay off the drugs.

I recognized
that I had committed yet another incoherency, but I concluded that reality itself
was incoherent, and that I was pretty clever to have figured this out even more so,
because in an incoherent world, figuring didn't make sense either.

Yup, drugs.

A seventh and reinforcing reason for nihilism was that for all of the other reasons, I
had fallen under the spell of the nineteenth-century German writer Friedrich
Nietzsche. I was, if anything, more Nietzschean than he was. Whereas he thought
that given the meaninglessness of things, nothing was left but to laugh or be silent,
I recognized that not even laughter or silence were left. One had no reason to do or
not do anything at all.

That was illogical.  Unless you are some idiot fanatic who never takes a shit except when he thinks god will be most pleased, it is clear that God's absence doesn't negatively impact one's sense of purpose in life.  You don't purchase a candy bar for the glory of God.  You don't run the kids by McDonald's to avoid having to cook dinner, because you wish to lay up for yourself treasure in heaven.  The normal shit that makes up the average Christian's life does not change even when they decide that atheism is true...unless they are irrational. If you could find purpose in purchasing a candy bar as a Christian, seems obvious you can find purpose in doing the same after telling yourself atheism is true.

This is a terrible thing to believe, but like Nietzsche, I
imagined myself one of the few who could believe such things who could walk the
rocky heights where the air is thin and cold.
But the main reason I was a nihilist, the reason that tied all these other reasons
together, was sheer, mulish pride. I didn't want God to be God; I wanted J.
Budziszewski to be God. I see that now. But I didn't see that then.

Nothing wrong with being master of your own fate since nothing fails quite like theistic arguments.

The Stupidity of the Intelligent
I have already said that everything goes wrong without God. This is true even of
the good things He's given us, such as our minds.

Some Christians would argue that God's presence doesn't make life any more bearable when life has you down.

One of the good things I've been
given is a stronger than average mind.

I would beg to differ.  Your basis for atheism was a scary exercise is willful blindness.

I don't make the observation to boast;
human beings are given diverse gifts to serve Him in diverse ways. The problem is
that a strong mind that refuses the call to serve God has its own way of going
wrong.

Then do what Steve Hays, a Calvinist at Triablogue does, and blame it on god.

When some people flee from God they rob and kill.

When some people convert to Christ they bomb abortion clinics.

When others flee from
God they do a lot of drugs and have a lot of sex.

When others flee TO God, they have lots of pedophilia sex.  Numbers 31:18.

When I fled from God I didn't do
any of those things; my way of fleeing was to get stupid.

Sorry to hear it.  My way of fleeing from God was not too different from the way I fled from the concept that the Bermuda Triangle is a gateway to another dimension:  I simply rejected the concept and moved on with my life.

Though it always comes
as a surprise to intellectuals, there are some forms of stupidity that one must be
highly intelligent and educated to commit. God keeps them in his arsenal to pull
down mulish pride, and I discovered them all. That is how I ended up doing a
doctoral dissertation to prove that we make up the difference between good and
evil and that we aren't responsible for what we do. I remember now that I even
taught these things to students; now that's sin.

Not at all, you Christians cannot even show that torturing babies to death solely for entertainment, is "objectively" immoral.  That's pretty said given your presupposition that some human acts are objectively immoral.

It was also agony. You cannot imagine what a person has to do to himself well, if
you are like I was, maybe you can what a person has to do to himself to go on
believing such nonsense. St. Paul said that the knowledge of God's law is "written
on our hearts, our consciences also bearing witness." The way natural law thinkers
put this is to say that they constitute the deep structure of our minds. That means
that so long as we have minds, we can't not know them.

Nice to know you don't trifle about "work of the law" in Romans 2:15 as desperately as some apologists do.

Well, I was unusually
determined not to know them; therefore I had to destroy my mind. I resisted the
temptation to believe in good with as much energy as some saints resist the
temptation to neglect good. For instance, I loved my wife and children, but I was
determined to regard this love as merely a subjective preference with no real and
objective value. Think what this did to very capacity to love them. After all, love is
a commitment of the will to the true good of another person,

Which is precisely why it is ultimately subjective.

and how can one's
will be committed to the true good of another person if he denies the reality of
good, denies the reality of persons, and denies that his commitments are in his
control?

He can't.  But defining those matters as "subjective" doesn't equate to saying they don't exist.  The time I put my kids to bed on a school night is a decision within the category of "moral", despite the fact that it is wholly subjective with no possible way of nailing down which precise bedtime is the "objective" one.  So love can be "real" while also being subjective.

Visualize a man opening up the access panels of his mind and pulling out all the
components that have God's image stamped on them.

I thought I told you to lay off the drugs.

The problem is that they all
have God's image stamped on them, so the man can never stop. No matter how
much he pulls out, there's still more to pull. I was that man. Because I pulled out
more and more, there was less and less that I could think about. But because there
was less and less that I could think about, I thought I was becoming more and more
focussed. Because I believed things that filled me with dread, I thought I was
smarter and braver than the people who didn't believe them. I thought I saw an
emptiness at the heart of the universe that was hidden from their foolish eyes. Of
course I was the fool.
Escape Through Horror
How then did God bring me back? I came, over time, to feel a greater and greater
horror about myself. Not exactly a feeling of guilt, not exactly a feeling of shame,
just horror: an overpowering sense that my condition was terribly wrong. Finally it
occurred to me to wonder why, if there were no difference between the wonderful
and the horrible, I should feel horror.

Easy, you find one accords with your wishes, and the other opposes those wishes.  We all wish to live, that's why we are horrified to think of another person taking our lives.

In letting that thought through, my mental
censors blundered. You see, in order to take the sense of horror seriouslyand by
now I couldn't help doing soI had to admit that there was a difference between the
wonderful and the horrible after all. For once my philosophical training did me
some good, because I knew that if there existed a horrible, there had to exist a
wonderful of which the horrible was the absence. So my walls of self-deception
collapsed all at once.
At this point I became aware again of the Savior whom I had deserted in my
twenties. Astonishingly, though I had abandoned Him, he had never abandoned
me.

The bible is not consistent on whether and to what extent God abandons those who walk away from him.

I now believe He was just in time. There is a point of no return, and I was
almost there. I said I had been pulling out one component after another, and I had
nearly got to the motherboard.
The next few years after my conversion were like being in a dark attic where I had
been for a long time, but in which shutter after shutter was being thrown back so
that great shafts of light began to stream in and illuminate the dusty corners. I
recovered whole memories, whole feelings, whole ways of understanding that I
had blocked out.
Of course I had to repudiate my dissertation. At the time I thought my career was
over because I couldn't possible retool, rethink, and get anything written and
published before my tenure review came up, but by God's grace that turned out to
be untrue.
Defending What I Had Denied
As an ethical an political theorist, what I do now is poles apart from what I did
sixteen years ago. What I write about now is those very moral principles I used to
denythe ones we can't not know because they are imprinted on our minds,
inscribed upon our consciences, written on our hearts.

Romans 2:15 says it is the work of the Law that is written on our hearts, which under bible inerrancy must mean Leviticus 21:9 is written on our hearts.  Yet no Christian thinks it morally good to burn teenage prostitutes to death.  I'd say you've got problems.

Some call these principles the "natural law." Such as it is, my own contribution to
the theory of natural law is a little different than those of some other writers. One
might say that I specialize in understanding the ways that we pretend we don't
know what we really do the ways we suppress our knowledge, the ways we hold it
down, the ways we deceive ourselves and others. I do not try to "prove" the natural
law as though one could prove that by which all else is proven; I do try to show
that in order to get anywhere at all, the philosophies of denial must always at some
point assume the very first principles they deny.

Not at all.  You couldn't prove any act of a human to be objectively good or bad, to save your life.  All you can do is reel in horror at the atheist who doesn't agree with you that torturing babies for fun is objectively immoral, call him a dangerous sociopath, and complain that the only opponents who count are those who already agree with you.  That's a pretty sad case for objective morality, that you cannot prove it unless your opponent agrees with you on it.

It is a matter of awe to me that God has permitted me to make any contribution at
all. His promise is that if only the rebel turns to Jesus Christ in repentant faith,
giving up claims of self-ownership and allowing this Christ the run of the house,
He will redeem everything there is in it.

Some would argue you wouldn't bloom with so much god-pollen if terrorists kidnapped your daughter and sold her into sex slavery.  There are very good reasons why "His mysterious ways" is nothing but a dogshit excuse.

Just so, it was through my rescue from
self-deception that I learned about self-deception. He has redeemed even my
nihilist past and put it to use.
Many of my students tell me they struggle with the same dark influences that I
once did. I hope that by telling the story of my own escape I may encourage them
to seek the light.
Copyright © J. Budziszewski