This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled
A few
years ago, a gentleman (we’ll call him “John”) replied to a blog I posted at
CrossExamined.org. As a skeptical non-believer, John wasn’t responding to what
I had posted, but to fellow atheists who had been interacting with Christians
in the comment section. John’s post was controversial but honest. In fact, he
clearly delineated the problem of atheistic moral grounding. While the comments
on the blog aren’t typically all that courteous, John complained they were too
courteous, especially given the atheistic worldview of the people who were
posting. Here’s what John had to say:
Then you'll forgive me if I prefer to interpret "John" as a Christian pretending to be an atheist.
“[To] all my Atheist friends.
Let us stop sugar coating it. I know, it’s hard to come out
and be blunt with the friendly Theists who frequent sites like this. However in your efforts to “play nice” and
“be civil” you actually do them a great disservice.
We are Atheists. We
believe that the Universe is a great uncaused, random accident. All life in the
Universe past and future are the results of random chance acting on
itself. While we acknowledge concepts
like morality, politeness, civility seem to exist, we know they do not.
Then this atheist is stupid and sounds like one of Frank Turek's minions. Obviously morality exists. The fact that all morality is ultimately relative and subjective does not mean it doesn't exist. Under your logic, when I decide whether or not to disobey my wife's command to avoid cookies until after dinner, this doesn't exist, because it involves a moral decision that doesn't come from God or the bible.
There is no biblical or universal law on whether kids should receive a formal education. And your Jesus never expressed or implied the slightest justification to say kids needed any such thing in the first place. But that hardly argues that there's
no morality involved in the modern person's decision to make their kids attend school. The morality might be subjective, but its still there. What fool thinks "subjective" means "non-existent"?
Our highly evolved brains imagine that these
things have a cause or a use, and they have in the past, they’ve allowed life
to continue on this planet for a short blip of time. But make no mistake: all our dreams, loves,
opinions, and desires are figments of our primordial imagination.
That's a reductionist way of putting it, something that sounds like what Turek would say, but yes, that's correct, but only because it isn't being pushed to the extreme Turek pushes it. But as we will shortly see, he does push this further and thus lands himself in fallacy-land.
They are
fleeting electrical signals that fire across our synapses for a moment in time.
They served some purpose in the past.
They got us here. That’s it.
No, if they got us here, there's a darn good chance they will continue having beneficial significance in our lives. It isn't like there's some giant truth out there that says electricity and brain synapses stop benefiting human beings after 20,000 b.c.
All
human achievement and plans for the future are the result of some ancient,
evolved brain and accompanying chemical reactions that once served a survival
purpose.
And they
still serve a survival purpose no less than they did thousands of years ago. The fact that we now have cars, computers and telephones doesn't change the fact that the prior conditions of the mind that enabled us to survive the wilds of prehistoric life, continue to operate in our brains today. The cave man finds a stick and discovers its use in fighting off competing tribes. Today's high school student uses computers to prepare for college exams. There's more sophistication, but the basic survival mechanisms are still the same. We still resolve things down to whether the way we react to a circumstance will facilitate our injury or our ease.
Ex: I’ll marry and nurture
children because my genes demand reproduction, I’ll create because creativity
served a survival advantage to my ancient ape ancestors, I’ll build cities and
laws because this allowed my ape grandfather time and peace to reproduce and
protect his genes. My only directive is to obey my genes. Eat, sleep,
reproduce, die. That is our bible.
You might take a look around in Christianity. They also constantly focus on eating, sleeping, reproducing and dying. Their choice to believe in some pie-in-the-sky utopian fairy tale ending doesn't change the fact that they grope around putting forth just as much effort at basic survival as the atheists. Whether a person raises a family working as a youth group pastor or as a freelance atheist bible critic, doesn't make an ultimate difference. If you don't concern yourself with food, water and shelter, you can look forward to dying.
We deride the Theists for having created myths and holy
books. We imagine ourselves
superior. But we too imagine there are
reasons to obey laws, be polite, protect the weak etc. Rubbish.
Not rubbish. There
are reasons to obey laws, and those reasons remain vaild even if they don't point back to god, such as the threat of jail. There
are reasons to be polite, and those reasons don't stop providing reasonable justification for the behavior merely because they don't point back to some god: its pretty obvious to even stupid people that being polite works wonders at making life more easy, while being impolite merely increases the probability that others in the group will not be interested in helping us surivive.
Protecting the weak is not a good example, since people debate whether weak people should be allowed to perish. We take care of our elderly, but unfortunately there comes a time when we have to decide that facilitating their death is better than preserving their life. There's a huge rift between the legislator who decrees only jail for the convicted pedophile, and the community at large who can think of no better solution than the prison guards putting him in main population and thus ensuring he gets beaten to death.
We are nurturing a new religion, one
where we imagine that such conventions have any basis in reality.
Yes, this "John" is definitely a minion of Frank Turek, or Turek himself. His crazy denial of the reality of atheist morals is a dead giveaway. Morality is obviously proven to exist when the adult atheist man decides against having a one-night stand with the lady he met at the bar. The fact that he doesn't ground this personal choice in god or something the bible says, doesn't mean the moral doesn't exist. You may as well say counterfeit money doesn't exist because it is not legal.
And the fact that the moral is completely subjective doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Subjective things still exist despite their subjective nature. I have a moral that says I shouldn't purchase alcohol for minors. But under your logic, that moral doesn't exist because it is subjective and I refuse to link it back to god. How stupid!
Have they allowed life to exist? Absolutely.
But who cares?
Anybody who has normative genetic predispositions. Animals are not made in the image of god, yet many of them obviously 'care' about group survival.
Outside of my
greedy little gene’s need to reproduce, there is nothing in my world that stops
me from killing you and reproducing with your wife.
Which person is morally superior? the atheist, who says he isn't killing the guy down the street and impregnating the widow because of his group-survivial genes and childhood conditioning, who therefore likely won't be persuaded to change his mind about it?
Or the believer in god, whose similar moral opinion can be reversed very quickly merely upon their discovery that God wanted them to kill this man and impregnate his wife?
According to the bible, God specified conditions under which the Hebrew army man who recently massacred the female war captive's family, can get her pregnant:
10 "When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive,
11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself,
12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails.
13 "She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.
14 "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 her. (Deut. 21:10-14 NAU)
Nothing in the text expresses or implies that she has to give consent, and in light of how utterly secondary women were in ancient Israel, it is irresponsible for apologists to split hairs in their dishonest effort to make this passage harmonize more with modern western notions of decency and fairness.
Even if we assume the only female war captives caught by the Hebrews would be virgins, still, they could possibly have been betrothed to another man in their own nation before the Hebrews invaded, so with all the kidnapping the Hebrews did under Moses and Joshua, surely some of the Hebrew army men eventually impregnated pagan women who had previously been pledged to, betrothed to or otherwise promised to another man in their own nation before the war.
Methinks the smartest apologist in the world shouldn't have raised the alleged immorality of a man killing another man and impregnating his widow. It makes you sound as if you hate the murder and forced marriages decreed by YHWH just as much as atheists do.
Moses ordered the Hebrews to kill all of the Midianites and spare only the virgin girls, a sparing which inerrantist commentators say was for the purpose of using them as house-slaves or wives:
9 The sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods they plundered.
10 Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire.
11 They took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast.
12 They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.
17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves. (Num. 31:9-18 NAU)
Women who had known men sexually, whether Midianite or sinful Israelite men, were to be considered unclean, since they were the main instrument of Israel’s demise at Baal Peor. Only the young girls would be allowed to live so that they may be taken as wives or slaves by the Israelite men, according to the principles of holy war (Deut 20:13–14; 21:10–14). By this they could be brought under the umbrella of the covenant community of faith.
Cole, R. D. (2001, c2000). Vol. 3B: Numbers (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 499).
Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
Wallace continues:
Only the fear that I might be incarcerated
and thus be deprived of the opportunity to do the same with the next guy’s wife
stops me.
Yup, Frank Turekism 101 all over again. I'm an atheist. My reticence to kill the guy down the street and impregnate his wife draws from a combination of my genetic predispositions (being human implies desire to conform to the group to one degree or other, which enhances survival) and the way I was raised (obey the laws). So if there are barbaric atheists whose sole reason for refraining from such activity is the threat of jail, that hardly argues that this is the motive of
all atheists.
Turek's problem at that point is that we don't need anything more than genetic predisposition and environmental conditioning to rationally justify our actions.
While we would not approve as a society of the mean kid who grows up to be in and out of jail all the time, I'd bet the farm that he's only doing what everybody else is doing: reacting to his genetic impulses as they were shaped to one degree or other by childhood conditioning. We wouldn't allow him to do as he pleases, but at the same time, we'd have difficulty blaming him. If a kid is born to genetically defective parents and is raised in violence-ridden squalor and learns that hurting other people solves his problems, you couldn't really blame him. If you could, then we wouldn't have to worry about subjecting children to violent and sickheaded ideas, after all, when they become adults, they'll have "no excuse" for being sickheaded and violent themselves.
So while popular sentiment says "I was raised by bad parents but I turned out ok so there's no excuse for your actions!', the truth is that t
he degree to which an adult can overcome improper childhood conditioning depends on their genetics. That's why some abused kids turn out fine and others simply repeat their parent's mistakes. That scientific truth might not jive well with society's need to hold people "accountable", but common sense says society would be more objective if its ideas of civility were based on genetic truths. And we already recognize a mitigating factor if the convicted criminal can show that they have a mental defect, or were raised by crazy parents.
Some of my Atheist friends
have fooled themselves into acting like the general population. They live in suburban homes, drive Toyota
Camrys, attend school plays. But
underneath they know the truth. They are
a bag of DNA whose only purpose is to make more of themselves.
Yup, Frank Turekism 101, all over again. Hi, Frank. How much fun do you have lying about yourself on the internet? What, did you notice that the moral law in the bible never applies when you are online?
Or did you recently discover those two bible verses that teach lying is acceptable to god where it achieves a greater good (Exodus 1:19, James 2:25)?
Or maybe you suddenly discovered a bible passage that would give you the perfect excuse to lie: God commissioned an evil spirit to come into your mouth and tell lies:
19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you." (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)
Frank's claim to fame is a stupid bit of sophistry by which he blindly assumes that
in the absence of god, life must always be viewed in absolutely 100% reductionist terms. So Frank would insist that if atheism is true, then a hammer is not a 'hammer". Because it is ultimately a collection of atoms, then that is
all that it can be, if god doesn't exist.
Unfortunately for Turek, there is no semantic or philosophical justification for the assumption that in the absence of God, absolute reductionism must always steamroll any other perspective. Turek would have difficulty explaining how it could possibly be incorrect for an atheist to believe that something can be more than merely the sum of it's parts. Yes, the hammer is a collection of atoms, but why would god need to exist to justify the atheist in asserting that some collections of atoms prove themselves much more efficient at driving nails into wood (hammers), and other collections of atoms are absurdly useless toward achieving the same goal (pillows)?
There's no reason to think god needs to be invoked to explain how creatures can see differences between one collection of atoms and others. Lizards are not made in the image of God, according to Turek and his bible, yet lizards clearly don't think collections of atoms we call "rocks" can perform the same benefit to them as those collections of atoms we call "insects". So even life forms Turek admits lack a spirit and a rational mind (i.e., those we'd expect to exist in an atheist universe) would not, in the atheist universe, see everything in completely reductionist terms, and therefore go around viewing different collections of atoms (glass, acid, air, sand, insects) as all equally useful for food.
If lizards can rightly discern differences between individual collections of atoms without needing to be made in the image of god, so can human beings.
So be nice if
you want. Be involved, have polite conversations, be a model citizen. Just be aware that while technically an
Atheist, you are an inferior one. You’re
just a little bit less evolved, that’s all.
When you are ready to join me, let me know, I’ll be reproducing with
your wife.
Your god clearly intended for lower mammals to engage in competitive mating. So don't put it past him to want to see humans doing this too, as he stages his sadistic gladiator games and watches from above in all the glory of Nero Caesar.
You can also be steamrolled by atheist criticism of bible-god's morality. If all of God's actions are righteous, then all of his omissions or failures to act are also righteous. So when you are walking down a lonely deserted street, and discover some man raping a women, you are forced to conclude that God obviously didn't wish to stop this, so as a good Christian, you cannot automatically conclude god wanted you to stop it either merely because your freewill decisions caused you to be on the same part of the earth at the tie the rape is happennding. If God didn't stop it, there is no guarantee that he wants YOU to stop it either. God's refusal to interfere justifies the same inference you'd draw if you notice any other human being just standing there watching a rape and doing nothing even when the danger would not likely increase were they to interfere by calling the police.
Some would say that a philosophy which requires you to think for a while about whether to put a stop to a rape, cannot be superior to other philosophies that counsel the viewer make an effort to stop this crime.
I know it’s not PC to speak so bluntly about the
ramifications of our beliefs, but in our discussions with Theists we sometimes
tip toe around what we really know to be factual.
Granted, there are plenty of atheists who don't know enough about the philosophical issues to maintain consistency with their beliefs when engaged in dialogue with Christian apologists.
Maybe it’s time we Atheists
were a little more truthful and let the chips fall where they may. At least that’s what my genes are telling me
to say.”
Good idea. Some atheists are exactly like Christians, and worry so much about sounding good that they end up misrepresenting themselves as more aligned with others than they really are.
John bluntly captured the true nature of morality when it is
untethered to a transcendent source.
No he didn't. The ultimately atomic nature of human beings does not mean there is nothing else that is true about them, as I carefully explained above. There are rational reasons to think some collections of atoms are more useful to a goal than others. Humans desire to exist in groups and impose injury on outsiders who threaten the group's peace and survival, whether they are ultimately nothing more than atoms, or ultimately spiritual creatures made in the image of a god.
If insects like bees and ants can still engage in society-like functions without needing to be made in the image of god, then human beings can also engage in societal behavior without needing to be made in the image of god.
Since posting this comment, I’ve been able
to peek at John’s life in a very limited way and I’ve had a brief interaction
with him. He appears to be a creative, responsible, loving husband and father.
He also appears to be rather stupid, shallow, and far closer to Frank Turek's absolute reductionist fallacy than any "atheist" I've ever seen.
In fact, his outward life looks much like the life you and I might lead as
Christians.
Liars can never perfectly mask the truth.
As an atheist, my moral compass was much like that of the
Christians I knew. But knowing what is far different than knowing why. I
embraced a particular set of moral laws even though I couldn’t account for
these laws in a world without a transcendent moral law giver.
Then you were a stupid atheist. Once again, since you deny insects are created in the image of God yet they still engage in group-think and other group-survival actions by helping each other, then apparently "made in the image of god" is not necessary to explain the fact that humans do the same.
I typically
attributed morality to some form of social or cultural evolution, but as John
correctly observes, our selfish genes are not interested in the welfare of
others when their personal survival is at stake.
Adopt several crack babies and raise then yourself, then we can talk about your unselfish genes. Until then, continue achieving your goal of attracting attention to yourself by selling Jesus at a reasonable discount for prayer groups and apologetics clubs, you capitalist insect, you.
Without a true transcendent
source for morality (and purpose), skeptics are left trying to invent their
own, justifying their subjective moral rules as best they may.
I don't see the problem. Us moist robots trying to achieve a somewhat utilitarian goal in the quest to survive and thrive due to our mammalian genetic predisposition toward working for the group's overall good, is a hell of a lot better than serving a sadistic sociopath "god" who causes men to rape women and beat children to death (Isaiah 13:16-17).
When a person harms us contrary to societal convention, we rationally deal with it by talks, lawsuits, settlements, notifying the police, etc. This is morally far superior to the stupid idea that their harming us offends some big man in the sky, necessitating that he come down to earth and kill himself to appease his own wrath. The whole god's-justice-required-that-Jesus-die-for-our-sins bullshit is contradicted by other biblical texts making it clear that god sometimes sees no problem in dealing with sin by simply waving his magic wand and freeing the sinner from the the legal consequences the Law required. King David killed Uriah the Hittite, then committed adulterty with Bathsheba the widow. Look how easy it is for god to exempt this unconscionable rascal from the death penalty for murder and adultery:
7 Nathan then said to David, "You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel, 'It is I who anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul.
8 'I also gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these!
9 'Why have you despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.
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." (2 Sam. 12:7-14 NAU)
If God can just "take away" a person's sin like this, then obviously Jesus' death was far from "necessitated" by God's righteousness.
By the way, smart guy, you own infinitely righteous god encourages the "sinful" people living in the last days to just keep on sinning:
8 I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things.
9 But he said to me, "Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets and of those who heed the words of this book. Worship God."
10 And he said to me, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.
11 "Let the one who does wrong, still do wrong; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and let the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and the one who is holy, still keep himself holy."
12 "Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.
13 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." (Rev. 22:8-13 NAU)
If Wallace thinks pedophiles are "filthy" in raping kids, then child rape would be one of the filthy things Jesus is telling sinners to continue doing in Rev. 22:11.
Some would argue that an atheists indefensible moral hatred of pedophilia is still preferable to a morality grounded in a god who wants child rapes to continue occurring.
Wallace continues:
In the end, as
John rightly observes, they end up “nurturing a new religion” and creating for
themselves the very thing they detest.
That's also stupidly reductionist. Yes, atheism is true. No, that doesn't necessarily imply some life forms won't become self-deceived and end up concluding their fantasies are actual reality.
When John first posted his comment (and I first started
talking about it on my podcast), many of the other atheists who post at CrossExamined
were infuriated. Some denied John’s identity as a skeptic and accused him of
being a disguised Christian.
Count me in. It was either Frank Turek or one of his cohorts.
But in my interaction with John, he told me he was
weary of hearing fellow atheists mock their opponents for hypocrisy and
ignorance, while pretending they had a definitive answer to the great questions
of life.
Sounds like something a Christian pretending to be an atheist would say. And nobody pushes the alleged absurdity of atheist morality more than Turek.
He simply wanted his fellow atheists to be consistent.
Then he might start off showing that he thinks glorifying Christ by honesty is more important to him than the lesser good he thought he could gain by lying about his true identity.
As it turns
out, theism provides the consistent moral foundation missing from John’s
atheistic worldview.
That's right, if you want to rape women and kill children and engage in other realities of ANE warfare, the best chance you have of convincing others you were morally justified to do so, is to assert that God exerted irresistable sovereignty over your brain so much that your freewill disappeared and you were put in the same position as the fish that has been hooked and is being reeled in:
1 And the word of the LORD came to me saying,
2 "Son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him
3 and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal.
4 "I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords; (Ezek. 38:1-4 NAU)
That oughta give you something to Google for the next 5 years: If God respects human freewill, why does he characterize his sovereignty over unbelievers and their motives, with metaphors that bring to mind images of animals who are being forced to move against their will?
Maybe Ezekiel was a hyper-Calvinist?
Maybe bible inerrancy is false doctrine?
Don't forget to remind us, Wallace...God will not help Christians do what they need to do, unless they purchase your books. There's a presumption of "buy Wallace's books!" in every New Testament teaching on prayer. Leaving us all wondering how the Holy Spirit could have managed without you for 2,000 years.
