Tag Archives: Rationality

Commentary

Do all the decisions a Christian makes have to be divinely directed?

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There are two views on the topic of decision making and the will of God. The view you learn in the church is called “the traditional view”. I call this view the feminized/postmodern view. The more practical view is called “the wisdom view”. I call this view the battlefield/military view. I am a proponent of the wisdom view.

Let’s learn about the two different views:

[The traditional view is] that God has a plan for our lives and that we receive guidance through methods such as “open and closed doors”, “feeling led” and “the still, small, voice”. Once the view has been well explained, through the foil of a fictional seminar, the book continues to critique this view, explaining how it is based on a poor use and understanding of scriptures, and how some of the reasons given in support of the view do not apply.

[The wisdom view] holds that God does not have an “individual will” for our lives, but rather that all of God’s will can be summed up within two categories, God’s sovereign will and God’s moral will. Basically God’s sovereign will is all the things that god decrees will happen. It is hidden (mostly) from us, and does not play an active part in our decision, although some of it is revealed in the bible. God’s moral will is the part that we must concern ourselves with in making decisions. It is fully revealed in the bible and our decisions must be made within it. We may use wisdom in applying god’s moral will to our lives, or we may be in an area not covered by god’s moral will. We must finally submit in advance to God’s sovereign will, being prepared for him to sovereignty intervene and redirect us through whatever means he wills (see James).

Here’s a bit more from someone else:

Regarding the view that God has a personal will for us individually that we have to discern and find, J.I. Packer says, “The first thing to say is that the idea of guidance is actually a novelty among orthodox evangelicals. It does not go back farther than the last century. Second, it has led people to so much foolish action on the one hand, and so much foolish inaction on the other, as well as puzzlement and heartbreak when the ‘hotline’ to God seems to go silent, that it has to be discredited. Third, it must be said that Scripture gives us no more warrant constantly to expect personal ‘hotline,’ ‘voice-from-the-control-tower’ guidance than to expect new authoritative revelations to come our way for the guidance of the whole church.” (Hot Tub Religion, page 118).

As to the point of the question, how do I make decisions, I attempt to make decisions in light of three factors: God’s moral will, wisdom, and my personal desires. If something is opposed to God’s moral will, then I should obviously flee from it. If it’s not opposed, then I consider the wisdom of the choices. For example, would it be wise for me to marry a woman who loves Jesus, though we have nothing else in common? Probably not. If the options pass the criteria of wisdom, then I’m free to choose how I wish. If I’m offered two jobs, and both are honoring to God, and both would be wise to take, then I’m free to choose the job I would like more. I don’t need to put out a fleece or await some other confirmation from God. If it’s moral and wise, then the only question as to whether or not it will honor Him is my attitude.

Some examples of this model used in the Bible (in theological circles referred to as the Wisdom Model) are in Paul’s planning of a mission to Rome in Romans 1:9-15, 15:22-24, the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:1-29), and Paul’s instructions for legal disputes (1 Cor 6:3-6).

The best book on this topic is Garry Friesen’s “Decision Making and the Will of God”. In it, you’ll find a full assessment about what the Bible teaches on this topic.

When I am trying to decide what will be effective, I look at Christian scholars, at their papers, books, and public debates. That’s effectiveness because it is addressed to a non-Christian audience in public with the force of reason and evidence. It is persuasion and it is addressed to rational minds. I want to change the minds of people who have a large influence on society on the whole. I don’t think that offering Christianity as life-enhancement or self-help is really “having an influence”. I think that offering Christianity as truth, with support, is “having an influence”.

So let me be clear about what I believe:

  • I don’t think that God normally talks to people directly
  • I don’t believe that life is an Easter egg hunt, filled with clues accessible only to emotion and intuition
  • I don’t believe that God expects people to discover a specific will for their lives using non-rational means
  • I think that people make up their own life plan that is consistent with the Bible
  • The goal of the life plan is to be effective, and there are no other considerations
  • I think that there are many good things a person can do, but that some are more effective than others
  • I think that with respect to the goal of serving God effectively, my happiness is expendable
  • I don’t think that the purpose of doing something for the Lord is to feel good about ourselves
  • I don’t think that people should choose ineffective things to do just because they like them
  • I don’t think that people should choose ineffective things to do just because they are good at them
  • I think people should do hard things that they don’t like – as long as it’s more effective
  • I don’t think that any course of action is as effective as any other – some plans accomplish more
  • I don’t think that life is totally unpredictable and irrational and subjective
  • I think that we can know what is or is not effective by studying and learning about the world
  • I think life is like a battlefield that must be surveyed, understood and acted upon deliberately

I think that every person is the commanding officer of his or her own life, and each person must study everything they can, make a plan that is consistent with the Bible’s moral prescriptions, execute the plan and achieve whatever they can achieve for the Lord. And the goal is not comfort or happy feelings, but real achievements. Life is more like a war than a vacation resort or a buffet or a shopping center. God’s will for us is not have happy feelings, but that we freely choose to sacrifice ourselves out of obedience and service to him. In my case, that means studying hard things, making money, saving money, and giving money away to good scholars, sponsoring good events and being persuasive to non-Christians. I cried when I had to learn calculus, because it was so hard. But who cares?

I think that it is very important to realize that God is not impressed by our not being smart and not being effective. If we have the ability to be smart, then we should be smart, whether it makes us happy or not. If we have the ability to make money, then we should make money, whether it makes us happy or not. If we have the ability have a great influence, then we should have a great influence, whether it makes us happy or not. There will be plenty of time for happiness after we’re dead. With respect to God’s purposes in the world, my happiness is expendable. The thought about what “I want” doesn’t enter into my mind.

Whenever someone questions my plans by saying that I am asserting my will over God’s will, the first question I want to ask that person is this: “how do you know what God’s will is?” and “what is your basis for thinking that my plan will not be effective?”. I want to know if I have misunderstood something about the way the world is, or miscalculated in some way. I want someone to look at my calculations and show where they are going to produce a less optimal result for the Lord. That’s the only concern I have – effectiveness.

This article by Greg Koukl may be helpful.

And I also found this summary of the Friesen book useful:

In nine parts.

Podcasts

Can atheists be moral? Sean McDowell and James Corbett debate

6 Comments

Brian Auten posted the audio a few milliseconds after the debate concluded!

Here is the MP3 file.

Sean’s case is similar to the one I make, but he only has 3 minimal requirements for morality.

First, he explains the difference between objective and subjective truth claims, and points out that statements of a moral nature are meaningless unless morality is objective. Then he states 3 things that are needed in order to ground objective morality.

  1. an objective moral standard
  2. free will
  3. objective moral value of humans

The question of the foundations of morality is without a doubt the easiest issue for beginning apologists to discuss with their neighbor. If you’re new, then you need to at least listen to his opening speech. He’s an excellent speaker, and his rebuttals are very, very smooth. The citations of atheist philosophers like Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, e.g. – to show that “religious” wars had nothing to do with religion, really hurt his opponent. He seems to cite prominent atheists like Thomas Nagel, Richard Taylor, Michael Shermer, etc., constantly in order to get support for his assertions. That took preparation. I can’t believe that McDowell is this calm in a debate situation.

When I listen to Frank Turek, he seems to struggle in his rebuttals. McDowell sounds like he foreknew exactly what his opponent would say and pre-wrote responses. He even had powerpoint slides made in advance for his rebuttals! I am not making this up – Corbett even remarked on it.

For those of you who want to understand how these things work, listen to the debate. There is a period of cross-examination if you like that sort of thing. I do!

EXTRA:

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