Tag Archives: Atheism

Polemics

What are the minimal requirements for rational morality?

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UPDATE: Welcome readers from the the Western Experience! Thanks for the link, Jason!

Last week, I posted a list of 13 questions that Christians could use to get discussions going with their atheist friends. Basically, you ask your atheist friend out to lunch, ask them the questions. We got 10 responses to the questions, which I summarized here. And I had lunch with another one of my friends, another Jewish atheist, who goes to a Reformed synagogue, as well.

Basically, the questionnaire’s purpose is to establish whether atheism provides a rational foundation for moral behavior. Specifically, can atheism account for the minimal requirements for rational moral behavior (see below).

1) Objective moral values

There needs to be a way to distinguish what is good from what is bad. For example, the moral standard might specify that being kind to children is good, but torturing them for fun is bad. If the standard is purely subjective, then people could believe anything and each person would be justified in doing right in their own eyes. Even a “social contract” is just based on people’s opinions. So we need a standard that applies regardless of what people’s individual and collective opinions are.

2) Objective moral duties

Moral duties (moral obligations) refer to the actions that are obligatory based on the moral values defined in 1). Suppose we spot you 1) as an atheist. Why are you obligated to do the good thing, rather than the bad thing? To whom is this obligation owed? Why is rational for you to limit your actions based upon this obligation when it is against your self-interest? Why let other people’s expectations decide what is good for you, especially if you can avoid the consequences of their disapproval?

3) Moral accountability

Suppose we spot you 1) and 2) as an atheist. What difference does it make to you if you just go ahead and disregard your moral obligations to whomever? Is there any reward or punishment for your choice to do right or do wrong? What’s in it for you?

4) Free will

In order for agents to make free moral choices, they must be able to act or abstain from acting by exercising their free will. If there is no free will, then moral choices are impossible. If there are no moral choices, then no one can be held responsible for anything they do. If there is no moral responsibility, then there can be no praise and blame. But then it becomes impossible to praise any action as good or evil.

5) Ultimate significance

Finally, beyond the concept of reward and punishment in 3), we can also ask the question “what does it matter?”. Suppose you do live a good life and you get a reward: 1000 chocolate sundaes. And when you’ve finished eating them, you die for real and that’s the end. In other words, the reward is satisfying, but not really meaningful, ultimately. It’s hard to see how moral actions can be meaningful, ultimately, unless their consequences last on into the future.

Tomorrow, I will explain why the answers given by the atheists show that the worldview of atheism offers none of these 5 requirements, and that therefore morality is really, really, really irrational on atheism. Atheist can look over their shoulders at their neighbors, and act like them in order to feel happy that they are acting consistently with the arbitrary fashions of their herd, but that’s all they can do, on atheism.

Further study

You can get the full story on the requirements for rational morality in a published, peer-reviewed paper written by William Lane Craig here. You can also hear and see him present the paper to an audience of students and faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. The audio is clipped at 67 minutes, the video is the full 84 minutes. There is 45 minutes of Q&A, with many atheist challengers.

The video of this lecture is the best material you can get on this issue, and the Q&A from the hostile audience is vital to the lesson. More debates on atheism and morality can be found on the debate and lecture page.

You can find a post contrasting the morality of an authentic, consistent Christian with an authentic, consistent non-Christian here. A post examining how atheism is responsible for the deaths of 100 million innocent people in the 20th century alone is here. A post analyzing the tiny number of deaths that religion was responsible for is here.

Videos

Bill Maher mocks Carrie Prejean’s stand on marriage

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Spotted this video over at Hot Air, posted by AllahPundit, who is an atheist. He is beginning to question whether atheism leads to great heights of moral behavior. You’ll recall that this is one of the factors that convinced A.N. Wilson, as well as the Wintery Knight himself.

Atheism maintains that the universe is an accident, that there is no objective moral standard, no free will, no accountability when you die, no ultimate significance to our actions, no after-life, and no one to whom moral duty is owed. Bill Maher is a committed atheist. Let’s see what counts as morality on atheism.

And here is an excerpt from AllahPundit’s comments:

A quickie from last night’s show displaying all the charm and subtlety we’ve come to expect, and surely the first time in his life that he’s had an unkind word to say about breast implants. There’s something cosmically apt about him attacking her: No one in American media better embodies the lefty paradox of libertinism paired with judgmentalism, therefore no one’s better qualified to prosecute her for the left’s capital crime of hypocrisy.

Why are atheists making moral judgments in an accidental universe, where their moral standards are just their own personal preferences, or at best the arbitrary conventions of their society? Why even attribute blame to Carrie Prejean if she doesn’t even have free will, which is an impossibility on atheism, since we are just mindless matter?

There are some things that other people do that I don’t like based on personal preferences. For example, I do not like people who spend a lot of time following sports or watching popular movies in the theater. But I don’t insult them for not complying with my preferences. And that’s all morality is, on atheism. Individual preferences and cultural conventions.

You can only judge others if there is an objective standard that is binding on this other person. What sense does it make to mock and deride people who have different preferences than you do? It seems as if atheists do believe in objective morality, however inconsistently. But only when judging others, never when judging themselves.

News

Sweden legalizes sex-selection abortions

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Story from Hot Air.

Excerpt:

Sweden has approved gender-specific abortions, allowing parents to rid themselves of an unwanted daughter in a closely-watched ethics case…

Last month, I noted the opposition of the abortion-rights group Center for Reproductive Rights to the same practice in China, where the state’s one-child policy makes gender selection more important for parents.  Sweden has no such restrictions; in this case, the woman already had two daughters and wants a son.  CRR opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, putting their fright over what they call “fetus rights” over their objections to gender-specific infanticide.

At least Sweden remained consistent.  Unlike the CRR, their decision reluctantly noted that the woman’s motivation was irrelevant if one accepts that someone can “choose” to end human life as a right.  One wonders whether CRR will protest this decision in Sweden as they do in China, extending their intellectual confusion over the nature of “choice” as an absolute right.

Keep in mind that Sweden is the most secular nation in the world. What did we learn from the responses to our survey of atheists that would explain why they would support such barbarism?

We learned that atheists believe:

  • There is no such thing as human rights or human dignity, objectively speaking
  • There is no such thing as moral values or moral duties, objectively speaking
  • The purpose of life is happiness in the here and now
  • There is no ultimate significance to any actions – it doesn’t matter what you do, your end is the same
  • Our actions are biologically determined, so we’re not responsible anyway
  • There is no after-life, no accountability after death for actions
  • Morality is determined by each person’s personal preferences, or arbitrary cultural conventions

On atheism, the weak have no objective human rights or human dignity, because people are just arrangements of matter, not creatures made in the image of God. On atheism, there is no purpose for the weak, such as the purpose of freely coming to know God, that would give them dignity and value, regardless of their social utility.

So, the strong can oppress the weak, even to the point of slavery or murder, in order to maximize their own happiness in the short time they are allotted to live. On atheism, why not? Why let anyone else offend you, burden you and diminish your happiness, if you can use force to silence or destroy them?