Tag Archives: Moral

Commentary

Why Christians should focus on cultural issues as well as evangelism

1 Comment

Scott Klusendorf linked me this article on Facebook, in which he gives five reasons why Christians should not JUST focus on the gospel, but should instead be good at promoting goodness and opposing evil.

Excerpt:

First, it does not follow that because cultural reformers cannot make a culture blameless before God, we shouldn’t try to make it better for the weak and oppressed. I do not know of a single pro-life leader, for example, who argues that cultural reform can save souls eternally; only the gospel does that. The fact that cultural reform cannot get a man to heaven, however, does not mean that it cannot (in many cases through political means) save him from injustice here on earth. In short, pro-life advocates like me do not work for change in culture to save the world from spiritual death, but to save the most vulnerable members of the human family, the unborn, from physical death.

Second, the goal of cobelligerent cultural reform is not necessarily to change the hearts of individuals (whether saved or lost), but to restrain their evil acts. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it well: “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”3 The purpose of government, according to Scripture, is not to ensure salvation, but to promote justice (Rom. 13:1‑4). The primary purpose of the church, of course, is to preach the gospel of Christ, but if Christians, collectively, do not also challenge government to fulfill its duty to protect the weak and defenseless, who will?

Third, the notion that “there can be no real cultural impact apart from the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ” sounds good, but it is simply incorrect. Consider the moral evil of slavery in America, which did not end because of mass conversions to Christ. It ended when believers and nonbelievers joined forces to stand against it—and paid for it with the lives of 360,000 Union soldiers. Was the abolition of slavery not a “real” cultural improvement? True, it did not make those who participated right with God, but it did take the physical whips off the backs of oppressed people. That is moral and cultural improvement by any reasonable standard.

Fourth, it is not spiritually unacceptable for Christians to mobilize with non-Christians for causes other than preaching the gospel. Prior to the Civil War, Protestant clergy worked with non-Christians and organized the Underground Railroad to free black slaves. Anyone who thinks that God’s people are wasting their time pursuing social justice may want to take a look at how important it is to God: Jeremiah 5:26‑28; 9:24; Isaiah 1:16‑17, 21‑23; 58:6‑7; 61:8; Psalm 94:1‑23; Proverbs 24:1‑12; Matthew 25:41‑46.

Fifth, why should anyone suppose that pro-life advocacy detracts from the discipline responsibilities of the local church as outlined in Matthew 28? Simply put, the answer to a lack of evangelical fervor for the Gospel is not to withdraw our political advocacy for the weak and vulnerable; it’s to encourage Christians to do a better job presenting the gospel. We don’t have to stop rescuing the innocent to do that.

This is why I try to have a balance of apologetics with other issues. And not just social policy, but fiscal policy and foreign policy. We need to have complete, comprehensive, coherent Christian worldviews. One obvious benefit of this is that we can connect Christianity with any topic when we are talking to others in the workplace, or anywhere that normal conversations occur. And if we study everything very well, people will link our intelligence to our faith. They’ll say “if you’ve put this much thought into economics, then you must have a well-thought-out faith, too”. Being well-rounded makes you more convincing, more influential on moral and cultural issues, and more effective at turning conversations to the gospel.

Polemics

Responding to an atheistic commenter on the moral argument

8 Comments

Here’s Joey’s original comment:

I am unconvinced by the argument that we can only have morality when there is a god, especially the christian god.

1. Moral principles have existed long before the christian or jewish god has ‘declared’ it in the bible. Look at the writings of Confucius for example.

2. As an atheist my sense of morality is based on empathy, compassion, psychology, science and logic. It is a human (and dare I say evolved) trait to want to empathise – and when I see suffering I want it stopped because it makes me feel bad. I look at science and psychology and see how we are all extremely similar to each other in our make up, and should therefore logically be treated the same by each other. And I look towards how I would want to be treated in such a situation as well – because I do not want to be defrauded, I would want to protect other people being defrauded because after all, why should I get preferential treatment if we are all equally human? There are so many basis for morality!

3. I personally find it a little odd that christians feel they are more moral because they can say that god tells them to be moral. Which would you rather prefer – someone to say to you “I love you because I do and you are amazing”, or “I love you because god tells me to”? Who would you rather be friends with, someone who says “I am not going to kill you because I find it repulsive to the core of my being”, or “I am not going to kill you because I believe god tells me not to, even though you deserve to die because of your sin”

4. That leads me to my fourth point. Morality which is solely based on god has a loophole – which is this: everything god says is wrong is wrong, unless god commands otherwise. I say this specifically because whilst as an atheist I can unashamedly say that I believe the invasion and conquest of another country and the slaughtering of all that nation’s men, women and children is morally repulsive. Christians do not have that luxury, because their moral god commanded them to do exactly that in the bible and said it was ok. Or what about this morality: David and Bathsheba sins by committing adultery and murder. Rather than punishing them for it, god punishes the little baby of theirs by killing him. Or how the bible justifies slavery. Or how the bible commands women to obey their husband but not vice versa. Justice? I would not want to place my trust on that kind of morality.

Micah’s response:

@Joey

“1. Moral principles have existed long before the christian or jewish god has ‘declared’ it in the bible. Look at the writings of Confucius for example.”

(For the sake of this post, I’m going to be framing responses by way of the Moral Argument)

The moral argument entails that it is God Himself that grounds morality, not the writings of the Bible. Taking into account even the writings of Confucius, those statements still need to be grounded by God Himself. He is the bar of morality by which we can measure such statements to be moral or virtuous or good. The argument does not even entail that we need to believe in God or that only the Bible has virtues in its text in all religious literature. The argument does not single out Christianity.

“It is a human (and dare I say evolved) trait to want to empathise”

To say that morality is a trait that you evolve means that morality is just something used to propagate the species. It’s not actually “good” in the end, just that specific interests or requirements are met in such a way as to preserve the species called “homo sapiens” and continue to pass on genes.

Beyond that, what if we rewound the clock and let evolution play out again? We may have had a different set of moral rules where, say, rape is virtuous.

Or try thinking of it this way: if aliens (who are personal and rational like ourselves) who evolved in some other star system came to Earth and started killing and raping people, would you try to appeal to your human morality? Why? These aliens have just evolved to have these morals, so you can’t say rape is wrong or planet take-over is wrong because you’d just be selfishly appealing to human morality (which again, would be for the sake of survival anyway). And to argue that we humans have the better morality than the aliens simply begs the question.

“and when I see suffering I want it stopped because it makes me feel bad.”

There are a lot of things that make us feel bad, but that isn’t an indicator of what is right and what is wrong. The soldier who nobly smothers a grenade with his body to save his comrades has that sense of dread and self-preservation about him, but to act against his feelings and his flight-or-fight responses, we can say, is a good moral sacrifice.

Or to put it another way, it makes me feel bad when my girlfriend cheated on me, therefore it seems to me clear that beating her would be the right course of action. Hey, she cheated, not me. She broke the relationship, not me. She made me feel bad!

“I look at science and psychology and see how we are all extremely similar to each other in our make up, and should therefore logically be treated the same by each other.”

I really don’t understand how it follows logically that since we’re similar, we should treat each other the same way. If you look at the business executives that sit comfortably in their lap of luxury with no worry of recourse, they don’t have to follow the golden rule. They use and abuse others and make shady deals and cut corners, all within reasonable bounds to preserve their company and their name, and live off their profits and not have to worry about the poor soul across the street that struggles to make ends meet for his family. To say that he ought to help others and not be selfish would again seriously beg the question as to what grounds morality.

In a cold, bleak universe where there is no God, and evolution reigns supreme, we’re no different than a pack of flies. We’re just a more complex collection of molecules with our brains wired for survival, self-preservation, and gene-propagation. I don’t see any reason on the atheist view to live for others or to even live a virtuous life.

And on top of that, you have the problem of the fact that morality is abstract. There is no “morality-thing” that we attend to, it’s an abstract rule or concept. Why then should we follow one set of abstract rules (i.e. – don’t steal, be charitable) and not another set (i.e. – just make sure you don’t get caught; don’t help the weak; live for yourself)? If you say that we need to follow whatever our genes say, then what of conflicting matters such as “I shouldn’t kill him” vs “I can easily get away with it and pin the blame on this other guy”? Which genes should we follow? The apparently selfish ones or the apparently virtuous ones?

“And I look towards how I would want to be treated in such a situation as well – because I do not want to be defrauded”

So morality basically comes down to mutual deceit. You don’t kill me, and I don’t kill you. That really doesn’t explain a host of moral actions, moral situations, moral vices, immoral people, etc. Especially the heroic virtue of sacrifice.

And would your statement work in reverse as well? If I gave you $20 out of my own wallet because I knew you were jobless and needed a meal to eat for lunch, would I then have moral permission to demand that you need to pay me back? I mean, I gave something up, and to be FAIR, that other person should pay me back too. Besides, I could’ve used that $20 for a “better” purpose relating to MY self-preservation and MY survival (or my family’s survival).

“I personally find it a little odd that christians feel they are more moral because they can say that god tells them to be moral.”

No, we are not more moral, you completely misrepresent Christian teachings. None of us are moral. None. No one. We are not good enough to meet God’s standards. We can only come to God as holy and righteous because people who place their faith in Christ are covered by Jesus’ righteousness. His holiness is imputed to our account; a free gift.

“Which would you rather prefer – someone to say to you “I love you because I do and you are amazing”, or “I love you because god tells me to”?”

If someone were to say the latter, then they wouldn’t be following God’s commands at all. Jesus said to love our neighbors as yourself, not “love your neighbors because I said so” This is such a gross misrepresentation and a false dichotomy of Christian virtue that a simple remedy of actually reading the New Testament would be a show stopper.

We Christians are called to seek those who are not in Christ because we have the urge to share the good news and help save those and have compassion because God had compassion for us, willing to not let any perish. God’s forgiveness is open to EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE PLANET, and to refuse forgiveness pretty much means to refuse being saved. The phrase often goes, “God doesn’t send people to Hell, people send themselves quite fine on their own”

Of course, if you want to insist on the position that God has given us some sort of, “love me or die” ultimatum, then you’re going to need to explain the biblical data where God selflessly gives His Son as the perfect sacrifice to cover all sins for all people, and that all we need to do on our part is to place our trust in Christ; no rituals required. You also would need to explain away the verses that say that God does not delight in the death of the wicked, or that He calls “judgment” His “strange work”. Or the verses where He pleads to Israel to turn back from their wicked ways and cries out, “Why will you die O Israel?”

If you only focus on the verses about God’s judgment and wrath (which are expressions of His perfect Justice) and block out the verses about His sacrifices, His patience, His love, and His urgings to turn back, His compassion, etc. then you are not being truthful to the whole data set, and so your position holds no water.

“everything god says is wrong is wrong, unless god commands otherwise.”

Again, you misrepresent the Christian position. God’s commandments are an expression of His morality and goodness, but His NATURE is the bar of justice and morality and goodness. Let us be clear on this, it is His nature, not His commands, that things are deemed right and wrong. This is not a “God said so, therefore, it’s right”. It’s a, “God is so, therefore, it is right”.

…And I’m not even going to get into the Old Testament because I could write 30+ pages on why you have a bad grasp on the culture of Israel and the Ancient Near East. I suppose I could copy and paste my thesis on “Does the Old Testament Sanction Slavery?”, but it’s roughly 10-11 pages, and this post is already long enough. Suffice to say here, at least in regards to slavery, no, slavery in the Bible and the Ancient Near East is NOTHING similar to the slavery that occurred in America because it didn’t involve forced labor, it didn’t involve outside field work for the most part, slaves/bond-servants had incredibly good health insurance, bond-servants were paid, God tells Israel to treat their servants with compassion and reminds them of their time as slaves in Egypt, slaves can rescind their contracts at any time, slaves can own property including land, slaves can choose to stay with their master if they wanted to when the contract expired, slaves could learn a trade and after their contract ended, their master was mandated to send them off with a monetary-gift, etc. Yeah, not looking like Colonial America at all.

My response:

1. Either moral principles are 1) one person’s opinions, 2) conventions of a group of people existing in a certain time and place, or 3) objective prescriptions of how humans ought to act for all times and places. Non-theistic systems of ethics are necessarily 1 or 2 – they are just individual or collection opinions that refer to nothing objectively. The universe is an accident on atheism, and there is no way we ought to be. So there is no morality on atheism. Just words that people either accept or reject.

2. What you just said there is that what you think people ought to do is based on your subjective feelings and opinions. You like apple pie and I like blueberry pie. You think I ought to like apple pie. But there is no objective truth on the matter – you just have preferences, on atheism. You have opinions. But that is not morality, it is just personal tastes and preferences that you invented arbitrarily for yourself. That’s not morality, that’s personal preferences. And when an atheist understands the laws or values of a culture, he understands that they are arbitrary conventions that vary by time and place and not really rooted in any objective standard of how we ought to be.

3. Atheism has no objective moral standard because the universe, and humans, are ACCIDENTS, on atheism. There is no designer that prescribes behavior for humans on atheism. On theism, there is a designer who creates the universe and prescribes standards of behavior that are OUTSIDE opinions and preferences. You are talking about what you like and don’t like, and I am talking about what is objectively right and wrong. What you like and don’t like is based on your feelings, but on theism, right and wrong are based on the character of the person who creates the universe and is in a position to decide how free creatures ought to choose.

4. As an atheist, every opinion you have on what other people can do is AS WARRANTED as some other opinion of the opposite. The warrant for a belief on your view is in your feelings and maybe in the arbitrary customs of the people group where you find yourself in this time and place – which is no better or worse morality than any other time or place, but only different. You think that slavery is right or wrong based on opinions. You think that genocide is right or wrong based on opinions. You think that rape is right or wrong based on opinions. You think that murder is right or wrong based on opinions. And your opinion on moral questions is AS WARRANTED, on atheism, as the opposite opinion – because there is no objective standard, only your personal opinions and the fashions of your culture in this time and place. There is nothing more to morality on YOUR view than feelings and opinions and conventions. If you think that murder is wrong as an atheist, then what you mean is that your opinion is that murder is wrong, and that someone else who thinks that murder is right is AS WARRANTED IN FORMING THAT VIEW AS YOU ARE IN FORMING YOURS. Both opinions are rooted in the same ontological ground – FEELINGS.

Let me show you what atheists actually think about morality:

The idea of political or legal obligation is clear enough… Similarly, the idea of an obligation higher than this, referred to as moral obligation, is clear enough, provided reference to some lawgiver higher…than those of the state is understood. In other words, our moral obligations can…be understood as those that are imposed by God…. But what if this higher-than-human lawgiver is no longer taken into account? Does the concept of moral obligation…still make sense? …The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone. (Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1985), p. 83-84)

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference… DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. (Source: Richard Dawkins)

The position of the modern evolutionist is that humans have an awareness of morality because such an awareness of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate when someone says, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory. (Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262-269).

Atheism is the complete ANTI-MORALITY point of view.

If you don’t have a rational basis for acting morally, then you will only do it when you want to feel happy, and avoid feeling unhappy. You’ll do it if you feel like it, if people are watching, etc. But you won’t do the right thing if it gets in the way of your selfishness.

For a really good debate on whether morality is real on Christianity and/or atheism, listen to this debate with Glenn Peoples against Cambridge philosopher Arif Ahmed.

If you would like to hear another good debate on whether Christianity and/or atheism can ground some of these requirements, then click here. This one features Sean McDowell.

And here’s a debate that I did with one of our best atheist commenters, Moo.

More about atheistic concepts of morality

Some debates on God and morality

News

What happens when the government pays people to have babies out-of-wedlock?

44 Comments

Take a look at this article from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Ruth Blog)

Excerpt:

Britain’s most feckless father is having another five children  – and is apparently ‘engaged’ for the third time in three months.

Unemployed father-of-10 Keith Macdonald – who pays just £5 a week to support his offspring – will cost taxpayers more than £2 million by the time all his youngsters reach 18.

He has got two new girlfriends pregnant, is having another baby with an ex and a fourth woman who was already known to be having his child has discovered that she is actually having twins.

But it remains unclear whether the latest pregnancies will make Macdonald, from Washington, Tyne and Wear, a father-of-15. The 25-year-old has admitted he has only eight youngsters, while one of his former lovers has claimed he already has 11 children – so when the next five are born he would have 16 in total.

[…]By the time each of his 15 children are 18, they will have cost the state £50,000 in child tax credits, £20,000 in child benefit while each mother could receive £30,000 in income support and £50,000 in housing benefit.

He’s also spent time in prison and is currently unemployed. So where exactly is this guy getting the money to convince all these women of his ability to provide for them?

The father, who has met most of his conquests at bus stops, claims £68.95 per week in disability benefits because he has a bad back and £44 per week in income support.

He has previously said it was ‘not his fault’ he had fathered so many children.

[…]He fathered his first child when he was just 14.

What can these women possibly be thinking, having sex before marriage with such a beastly man?

He is now engaged to marry 32-year-old unemployed Amy Ward, from Chester-le-Street, Tyne and Wear, and she is expecting his child.

Unemployed Emma Kelly, 18, and 21-year-old ex-girlfriend Clare Bryant – have also both recently been made pregnant by the feckless father, it emerged today.

And another one of his expectant partners – 24-year-old Danielle Little – has just found out that she is expecting his twins.

It remained unclear when Macdonald, who has been in and out of prison, will tie the knot with his expectant fiancee Miss Ward.

[…]But Macdonald was also engaged to unemployed Danielle Little, from Sunderland, in September.

He had promised to marry 19-year-old beautician Sarah Armstrong from Chester-le-Street in the same month when he discovered she was pregnant.

Miss Little warned Miss Ward about the feckless father on Facebook – but she reacted with fury in a post on the site.

She wrote: ‘Some people just don’t get on with their own lives and just like to cause s*** for other people.’

I think everyone can see that this man is not the sort of man that would pass any father’s pre-dating interrogation. This man is scum. There was a time when a man like this would not have been able to afford bus fare if he didn’t have a job. But now the government is paying him so that he can carry on with women as if he actually had a job. They are enabling him to act like a child well past the time where he should have grown up.

The author of the post on RuthBlog asks this:

Questions for Your Consideration

  1. What is the womens’ role here? Are they victims? Why is the article centered around the man?
  2. Imagine what these kids’ reactions might be when they grow up and learn their dad is the father of many other children, most by different mothers. Do you think the parents considered the kids’ reactions before having sex? Generally speaking, are a child’s future (and unknown) reactions something parents ought to consider?
  3. In your opinion, is this the sort of future most women dream about when they’re young? What is the government’s role, if any, in supporting the dreams of its youth?

Those are good questions, but I have one of my own.

Husbands or government

When women think about marriage, do they think about where the money is going to come from to buy all of the things they dream about? I know that they dream about babies, weddings, clothes, shoes, jewelry, a home, home decorations, a garden, furniture, drapes, vacations, and so on. But my question is – are they dreaming about who is going to pay for all of that? And if they know about these costs, then why are young, unmarried women voting to increase government spending on welfare? The only way to pay for all these benefits is by raising taxes and confiscating their future husband’s earnings and investments. It may feel good to “soak the rich”, but does it result in more marriage-minded men? (Obama has greatly increased welfare benefits, thus undermining marriage and the need to choose a man who can earn money). How does heaping taxes and regulations on businesses make a man more likely to be employed? How does raising capital gains and dividends taxes make a man more able to earn a return on his investments?

A man cannot pay for all of these social programs, (which just incentivize more and more costly behaviors), at the same time as he is supporting a family of his own. If the government is handing out money to single mothers, then women do not need men to prove that they are good earners before having sex with them. So men stop trying to do well in school and get good jobs, and instead focus on being popular, exciting and entertaining.

The man in the Daily Mail article is an ex-con and unemployed. He is the worst sort of man for a woman to choose – and yet women are falling all over him. Because the government is making it unnecessary for them to care about whether he can earn a living and act responsibly. The government is saying “we pay the bills, so you can choose men on the basis of sex, drama and to impress your girlfriends with the drama”. Women have decided that there is no way that men ought to be – they certainly should not be respected as the protector and provider and moral/spiritual leader.

Ends and means

I have been struggling lately to understand why women spend so much time thinking about what they want, and complaining about their friends who are getting married, and yet spend so little time acquiring funding, skills and knowledge to achieve what they want. One woman I know who wants to get married recently gave a one-word review of “Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands”, which I made her read. Her review was “Barf!”. She has no idea what demands marriage will place on her, and resents the needs of men (and probably resents the needs of children too). However, she is very interested in Mark Driscoll and loves to load up obligations on men. Obligations on men = GOOD! Obligations on women = BARF! That’s how she thinks. It’s the feminist double-standard that Dr. Laura writes about in PCF Husbands. And, of course, if anything thing goes wrong with the intentions of women, they can just blame the man and claim that the failure was unpredictable and not their fault.

I once had a conversation with an unemployed Christian woman who was explaining to me how she had a right to collect welfare from the government in order to have a child out-of-wedlock by choice. She had NO IDEA what fatherlessness would do to a child, and NO IDEA how increased welfare spending caused higher taxes and reduced the number of men who could afford to marry. She was left-wing on most fiscal policies. (But she was also not a feminist and she was chaste, so not totally awful)

Contrast that woman with another Christian woman I know who did a B.S. and M.S. in engineering, worked 10 years, saved all her money, and helped her husband pay off their house, before becoming a stay-at-home mother. She wanted a husband and a home, so she went out and did two degrees in engineering so that she could help her husband pay for the things she wanted – before becoming a stay at home wife and mom. The engineer is vehemently opposed to big government, higher taxes and welfare because her husband’s salary is what is allowing her to be a good wife and mother, away from the stress of work.

Socialism and feminism

Why are women pursuing men like the unemployed ex-con? I actually wrote a post on why women prefer bad men, and why they would prefer not to have to deal with traditional men acting in traditional male roles. It’s less work for them if they just get a check in the mail – they don’t have to be respectful of a husband if a check just comes in the mail. Some women really resent the authority that a man has in the home as the primary earner, and they also resent having to respect men and deal with their other needs for sex, verbal encouragement, etc. They want government to replace men, because men, especially good men, are authoritarian and demanding and judgmental. And the result is skyrocketing rates of single motherhood. The out-of-wedlock birth rate is 40% in the United States, costing us 112 BILLION dollars a year.

Here is another post discussing research on the attitudes of college women to hooking up done by the University of Virginia. Women really are choosing this. No one is making them do it. They are doing it because they want to. The bounds of traditional sexual morality, traditional sex roles and traditional courtship  are not fun. Read the research and see for yourself what they say.

Socialism and Polygamy

This post on Haemet talks about the social costs of polygamy, which is another arrangement that can’t easily be sustained without government support.

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