Thank you.
I've thought about this before, and that's pretty much the conclusion I reached. The way I see it is, if there is no God to tell us what is right and what is wrong, then on what do we base our morality? There are a few possibilities:
- Each individual - If each individual decides for himself what is right or wrong, then what do we do when two people's views on morality conflict? What if a man believes that polygamy and concubinage are acceptable and has many women whom he sleeps with, but his wife believes that anything beyond one wife is adultery? Which of them get's to decide what is moral? If the man decides, then he forces his wife to live with conditions she finds unacceptable, but if the woman decides, then she is putting restrictions on her husband's behavior that he believes are unreasonable. Who has the authority to tell someone else that they're wrong?
- The legal system - We could base our morality on the laws passed by our elected (or other) officials, but what do we do when laws conflict? Prostitution is legal in Nevada, but illegal in California. Does visiting a prostitute change from being moral to immoral and back again, just by stepping over an imaginary line?
- Society - Similar to the last one, but a bit different. If society as a whole accepts a certain type of behavior, we could consider it moral, and if society considers it unacceptable, it would be immoral, regardless of what immoral laws may be in place. But societal views can change. Fifty years ago, practically everyone thought homosexuality was immoral, but today most people don't have a problem with it. The same can be said of abortion and a number of other issues. Do things change from moral to immoral or vice versa over the years? And what about when different societies have different views? Americans, for example, generally believe that women should have equal rights with men, while people in Saudi Arabia would disagree. If each society determines it's own morality, what gives Americans the right to say Saudis are violating women's human rights?
Whatever we choose, we end up with relative morality, which is, in reality, no morality at all. The only thing we can trust to remain unchanged is a revelation of morality from God.
The TOG
Very well put TOG, and again much appreciated.
After reading your Opening Post and your post up there, I have reason to believe you might appreciate and enjoy William Lane Craig's fine essay titled:
The Absurdity Of Life Without God: Why on atheism life has no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose, and why this view is unlivable.
Start quote.
"No Ultimate Value Without Immortality and God
If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. Since one's destiny is ultimately unrelated to one's behavior, you may as well just live as you please. As Dostoyevsky put it: "If there is no immortality then all things are permitted."
On this basis, a writer like Ayn Rand is absolutely correct to praise the virtues of selfishness. Live totally for self; no one holds you accountable! Indeed, it would be foolish to do anything else, for life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest.
Sacrifice for another person would be stupid.
Kai Nielsen, an atheist philosopher who attempts to defend the viability of ethics without God, in the end admits:
We have not been able to show that reason requires
the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons,
unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual
egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here.
The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one.
Reflection on it depresses me . . . . Pure practical reason,
even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you
to morality.
But the problem becomes even worse. For, regardless of immortality, if there is no God, then there can be no objective standards of right and wrong.
All we are confronted with is, in Jean-Paul Sartre's words, the bare, valueless fact of existence.
Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or the by-products of socio-biological evolution and conditioning.
In a world without God, who is to say which values are right and which are wrong? Who is to judge that the values of Adolf Hitler are inferior to those of a saint? The concept of morality loses all meaning in a universe without God.
As one contemporary atheistic ethicist points out, "to say that something is wrong because . . . it is forbidden by God, is . . . perfectly understandable to anyone who believes in a law-giving God. But to say that something is wrong . . . even though no God exists to forbid it, is not understandable. . . ." "The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone."
2
In a world without God, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong."
End quote.
Read more:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god#ixzz2qmt9maDQ
________________
* Text rearrangement above by Jack (for easier-on-the-eye reading)
* William Lane Craig is one of Christendom's most able apologist, and he seems to be a very warm hearted and down-to-earth Christian too. I have been blessed to read his Reasonable Faith and to listen to many of his videos, read many of his debates, and several of his articles on Christian Apologetics.
Cheers.
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