Category Archives: Morality
Daniel Florien Denies His Morals Come From the Bible (Surprised?)
Daniel Florien of Unreasonable Faith denies a charge I leveled at him: that his morals come from the Bible, same as mine. Where do his morals come from?
I get my morals from myself and my society. I treat others like I want to be treated, because that’s how I want others to treat me. I don’t steal because I don’t want to be stolen from. I don’t murder because I don’t particularly want to be murdered. And so on. (emphasis added)
In his book He is There and He is not Silent, Francis Schaeffer spends a chapter on this sort of mentality. The Greek philosophers tried to discover where morals come from, and one of their hypotheses was the polis, or city. For the Greek philosopher, the polis represented more than the physical city; it represented the entire social structure as well. The philosophers eventually rejected that notion, but it seems that modern thinkers are much more enlightened than the ancient Greeks, because the idea of morals stemming from the polis is back among atheists.
Rather than morality ruling society, society rules morality. It reduces morality to a majority vote. But morality is not, nor ever will be, a majority vote. The Greeks knew that, which is why they rejected the idea that the polis is the source of morality. Why don’t modern atheists see the same thing?
So is the self the source of morals? The Bible seems to support the notion that morality is the heart of people (Jer 31:33). The problem that we encounter when we make self the source of morals can be summed up by taking Florien’s expercise a step further.
He doesn’t steal or murder because he doesn’t want someone to steal from him or murder him. Fair enough. But what if he doesn’t mind it when his girlfriend cheats on him? Is it then acceptable for him to cheat on his girlfriend because it’s okay with him if she does the same? Well, I doubt that Mr. Florien’s girlfriend would agree (if he has one).
We can agree that the self may contain some morals. But it isn’t a perfect source for morality, as I’ve demonstrated above. There has to be some other source, some factor that guides our morality, a source that is perfect. We instinctively know that this source exists, somewhere. It isn’t the self, because the self is not perfect. It isn’t the polis, because that would reduce morality to a majority vote of various imperfect selves.
So what is that elusive source of morality that we all know exists? It must exist outside of self and outside of the polis, since it guides the actions of both rather than the other way around. I submit that that source is God, and that Mr. Florien (along with his atheist friends kind enough to visit my humble blog) draws his morality from God whether he knows it or not.
Answer to Rosemary
Normally, I answer comments in comments, but due to the length of Rosemary’s comment in this post, I decided to do it as a separate blog entry. Rosemary is way off base, and has no concept of sarcasm. Let’s see if we can make some sense of her comments.
But Did He Do Anything Wrong?
Daniel Florien from Unreasonable Faith caught Pastor Chris Fox from Kendalls Baptist Church impersonating atheists on Unreasonable Faith. I think Pastor Chris’s point was to show that atheists have no foundation for morality, however there are better ways to go about doing so.
One of the comments that Pastor Chris posted was as follows:
What’s wrong with killing babies? I see no problem with it. I have enough mouths to feed. I don’t get the argument and I am an atheist. Since I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in anything characterized as good, bad / right, wrong. So, what’s the big deal?
He gave away the farm in the first sentence. I’m assuming that he’s talking about abortion. It’s obvious that this was posted by a pro-lifer because no pro-choice individual would ever refer to abortion as “killing babies.” They would refer to it under the equally appaling tag “exercising reproductive rights.”
If you’re going to impersonate atheists, at least get the lingo right.
Which brings up the next question: Did Pastor Chris actually do anything wrong? Well, I think that he did and I’m happy to see that he apologized for it. What he did was create a false identity and attempted to make fun of the atheistic worldview. I’m not sure I see the hypocrisy in this, but what I do see is the same sort of mentality that led atheists to create Landover Baptist Church. We, as salt and light for the world, should avoid the same sort of dirty tactics that the world uses against us. Pastor Chris fell into temptation–he did to them what they did to us, an action specifically condemned by Paul in Romans 12:17.
What he should have done was to engage the issue intellectually. He should have logically demonstrated what we theists have always known: atheists have no foundation for morals, so they borrow morals from the Judeo-Christian worldview and declare that those are the morals that society has “evolved” with. Without God, life has no transcendent value and therefore things like “good” and “evil,” “right” and “wrong” have only what value we humans assign to them. Wrong and right become a matter of opinion in the atheistic worldview.
So, what do the atheists do? Well, they create the New Ten Commandments, of Which There are now 15 (listed on p. 263-264 of The God Delusion). But, the good folks from Atheism is Dead examined those 15 commandments and discovered that most were, in fact, biblically based. The atheist has no escape: his morals are derived from a Judeo-Christian sense of right and wrong, and that sense comes from the Bible and ultimately God himself.
This is how Daniel Florien and his readers knew what Pastor Chris did was wrong. They knew it was wrong because the Bible said that it was wrong, and that means that they get their morals from the same place as Christians.
Only One Less God?
One frequently hears atheists make the claim that everyone is an atheist when it comes to deities like Thor or Zeus. The modern atheist, the claim is made, only believes in one less deity than the theist. But is that really the case?
James White makes a case for how this assertion trivializes the fundamental difference in the worldviews of the theist and the atheist.
Deconversion Story
Johhny Bradford, a guest poster over at Unreasonable Faith, has posted his essay on why he no longer believes. It’s filled with all of the usual things for which I thought Christian apologetics have provided adequate answers, but I suppose not since I repeatedly see these same tired old arguments popping up in deconversion story after deconversion story. Let’s analyze this one and see if we can clear matters up.
The first one is typical: how could a loving God send people into a state of eternal torment for simply not believing in him? Well, the problem with that notion is Bradford’s theology of man. He believes that people are basically good, that we begin life with an “A” and gradually decline in points until we have an “F.”
But that isn’t what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that we are dead in sin. Keeping with the grading scale metaphor, we are born with an F. But it goes deeper than that: we can’t earn an A, no matter what! Hell isn’t what God wants for us, hell is what we deserve. A fair and just God would send any human being that comes before his judgment to hell.
Thank God that he is also merciful. Because it isn’t his will that any should perish, but that all reach repentance, he has sent his only Son Jesus to pay the penatly for us and die in our place. All a person has to do is have faith that God has already accomplished his (or her) salvation, and that’s it.
The Old Testament sacrificial system pointed the way to the New Testament’s single sacrifice for all of our sins. The book of Hebrews makes that quite clear. So this sacrifice was necessary in order to appease the justice of God, which demands that he take action against sin rather than ignore it.
People go to hell on their own merit. I read once on a T-shirt that free will never brought anyone to heaven, but it sent a lot of people to hell. I forget now who said that (I want to say it was Spurgeon), but there is much wisdom in that saying. Whether you believe in Christ or not, you still sin and God must punish sin. Any sin, no matter how minor, makes you hell-bound. It has nothing to do with believing in or not believing in God. Only by placing your faith and trust in the finished work on Calvary can you avoid hell.
Which leads us to Bradford’s next point. Christians behave the same way as their non-Christian counterparts. The fancy terminology here is hypocrisy. Here, I agree with him. According to the intro to dcTalk’s song “What if I Stumble,” the speaker says that “The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowlege Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.”
Christians aren’t suddenly made perfect by belief in Christ. Salvation is a once-in-a-lifetime event, but sanctification is an ongoing process that is often neglected. I blame the church in this case. There is a servere lack of discipleship in the church today. The main congregations are measured by baptisms, not retention. In reality, both should be a factor in determining the health of the congregation. In this, Bradford should take some of the blame as he is termed a “recovering Christian pastor.” So, as shephard of a flock, what did he do to help out with that problem? We wonder.
The atrocities of the Bible are discussed at great length here. The justification for what can only be described as mass genocide lies in the same theology of man previously discussed–man doesn’t start life with an A, he starts it with an F. Since the penalty for sin is death, those deaths were deserved. No one can stand innocent before God.
Of course, if I believed that hell was unjust, that hypocrisy was part of the case against the church, and that the atrocities of the Bible were unwarranted, then I would discard this faith, too. But I don’t believe in any of that stuff. Nor do I believe the typical atheist mischaracterization of those things, as Bradford clearly demonstrates that he does.
In all, I stand amazed that ministers of the Word can be duped by the secular opinion of the Bible and its contents. After all, we are taught that the world sees the Bible through a darkened lens, that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness doesn’t understand it. Yet, these same criticisms keep popping up over and over again, even though they are answered by apologists like myself.
Former Believers Had Severely Underdeveloped Theologies
Daniel Florien, curator of Unreasonable Faith, proves once again that former believers never actually took the time to understand theology. By quoting Robert Price, another ex-believer who also lacks a full understanding of good theology, Florien unsuccessfully tries to make the point that religious belief (specifically Christianity) stunts people’s moral, intellectual, and personal growth.
In the morality department, Florien once again cites fear of hell as the only reason that Christians are moral. No good for goodness sake; only goodness because of a reward in heaven.
I have a newsflash: Christians have nothing to fear from hell. The Christian’s faith in Jesus removes all need to fear going to hell. All of the good done by a Christian should never be because of fear of punishment. Instead, it should flow naturally from a heartfelt desire to please God. This is what saving faith is really about.
Christianity stunts a person’s intellectual growth, according to Robert Price, because wrong beliefs about theology will send you to hell. The safest path here is to not question anything. But this just isn’t right. I’ve said it time and time again that we go to hell because of our sins, not because of mismatched theology. It doesn’t take believing in something, it takes faith in Christ for eternal life.
I should point out that right doctrine and theology pleases and glorfies God, as C. Michael Patton argues here. That goes along with loving God with all of your mind. But it isn’t the main point–the main point is still faith in Christ.
Finally, Christianity stunts personal growth by teaching others a party line of morality instead of teaching them to think for themselves. In this post, I’ve argued that mankind is born into sin. We deserve the penalty for sin even when we’re fresh from the womb. Our entire nature is sinful. So, according to these guys, I’m supposed to adopt my own set of morals and beliefs based on what exactly? My sinful flesh? That’s a great idea.
A look at history should satisfy anyone that humans cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Ever. Not without a moral compass or some sort of guide. To the Christian, the Bible is that moral compass. Thinking for oneself when it comes to morals is just dangerous. This is moral relativism and the idea is a major philosophical failure.
How does atheism, on the other hand, promote moral, intellectual, and personal growth? Atheism has no moral compass, so it must rely on either moral relativism or some other philosophical system of morality. Usually, atheism assumes a Judeo-Christian system of absolute morality while trying hard to distance itself from God. So it looks like the Bible may be the atheist source of morality after all, they just don’t want to admit it. See this essay.
Friendly Atheist once posed the question If a miracle occured, would you believe in God? to its atheist readership. For humor, it added a webcomic where one character, a theist, asked another character, an atheist, what would it take to make him believe. The atheist said that if God printed a personal message to him in the stars, that would work. The next night, that happened and the atheist still found a reason not to believe. The comments section of that post was filled with agreement–the atheists almost universally declared that there is nothing that would make them believe–not even witnessing a bona fide miracle.
My point is this: who is more close-minded? Religion doesn’t close minds, atheism does.
Mass Genocide in the Bible
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Although it is rarely taught in Sunday School, there can be no doubt that mass genocide occurs with alarming regularity in the Old Testament. Just crack open a copy of Michael Earl’s self-published wonder Bible Stories Your Parents Never Taught You and read a few chapters. Over and over again, Israel kills not just the soldiers of the territory they invade, but the women and children, too.
All of this takes place at the behest of God himself, who is the one that orders the killings to take place. God very often indicates that he wants no survivors left.
This, according to our most scathing critics, leaves a huge moral dilemma: how can we continue to call the Bible the “Good Book” if it contains more violence than the average video game? Was the bloodshed and violence necessary?
Sins of Scripture IV: Homosexuality
Former Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong (or is it bishop emeritus?) writes next about the treatment of gays in his book The Sins of Scripture. I agree that the church has treated gays and lesbians unfairly. But I disagree with Spong that homosexuality is no sin. Clearly condemned in multiple places, the sin of homosexuality has become some sort of “super-sin” to evangelicals.
The only “super-sin” is blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Homosexuality, therefore, should be treated as any other sin. The sinner should be confronted about it, and walked through the Scriptures that condemn the practice. If he or she refuses to repent, I don’t think that ostracizing the poor chap is the answer–although a case could certainly be made for it. I think that prayer is the answer, like we would do for any other sin. Of course such a person would be excluded from church leadership, again, the same as with any sin.
Bishop Spong, however, believes that homosexuality is an inborn characteristic and as such is perfectly acceptable. What Spong fails to deal with, however, is that rage and alcoholism are also inborn characteristics. But no one would ever seriously argue that those two things are good, so why is homosexuality any different?
I also happen to believe that we are born with our sexual orientation. It fits perfectly with Jesus’ teaching to deny ourselves in order to follow him. Everyone has sin in their lives that they must deal with. The homosexual person has an orientation that is offensive to God, and he or she must deal with that sin just as the rest of us deal with ours. They shouldn’t get a free pass just because society is coming around to accept homosexuality for the first time in 10,000 years of human history.
Spong deals with three texts of the Bible that are used to condemn homosexuality: the holiness code of Leviticus, the story of Sodom, and Paul’s letters. Throughout his treatment, Spong uses emotionally loaded terms like “bigotry” and “homophobia” to describe people that hold to the Bible’s clear teaching that homosexuality is a sin. He often states that Bible-defenders get angry or upset when confronted with arguments in favor of homosexuality. What he never does is present an argument, or even a concise summary of his opponents’ views.
What America Needs to Know About Rick Warren
Vjack from Atheist Revolution has published a list of things that everyone needs to know about Rick Warren. He treats these things as if they are bad things, as if it is scandalous to believe any of them. I thought I’d take a look at his list and see just how scandalous it is.
- Warren’s much praised work on AIDS in Africa has been revealed as undermining scientifically-sound efforts to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS in favor of thoroughly discredited religiously-based methods. He opposes contraception, even when it comes to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS. This takes anti-intellectualism and religious delusion to astounding levels.
- Warren opposes reproductive rights for women and stem cell research. He has criticized Obama’s position on these issues and vowed to pressure him into changing his mind. This should be worrisome for anyone who values separation of church and state.
- He was a strong supporter of Proposition 8, the measure which rolled back civil rights for many Californians by denying marriage to GLBT couples. This is bigotry.
- Warren has equated gay marriage to incest and pedophilia. This is bigotry.
- Warren has publicly stated that he would not vote for an atheist, regardless of qualifications. He thinks that no atheist could possibly be worthy of holding office. This is bigotry.
- He is a creationist. Lest we dismiss this as mere stupidity, please remember that many of us are still having to fight to keep this nonsense out of our schools. (source)
All right, let’s break this down:
- In other words, if people aren’t allowed to have sex wherever and whenever and with whomever they want–which is what “scientifically-sound” methods do–then the approach is no good. It is no good to teach people to keep their pants up, no, we must give them condoms and allow them to have sex all willy-nilly. The only 100% effective method of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS is abstinence. The problem isn’t the method, as Vjack implies, the problem is the committment level of the people in question. I’ve covered this topic before.
- “Reproductive rights” is a very nice way to say “abortion.” Vjack is trying to use less emotionally-charged words in order to downplay a serious ideological argument. What Warren is opposing is the murder of the unborn children. Vjack himself admits to holding a similar position in this post.
- Proposition 8 was nothing less than an attempt to legislate morality, and therefore should not have been passed. My views on gay marriage are rather complex and best discussed in a separate post. For now, let’s say that I disagree with Proposition 8 but I think that it is harsh to call its supporters bigots. There are sound intellectual reasons to oppose gay marriage, but they are all grounded in the Bible and therefore have no place in the law books.
- Warren has never equated gay marriage with incest or pedophilia. What he has done is question where the state will draw the line as far as what immoral marriages it will allow. To that end, he cited incest and pedophilia as two examples of what may be allowed next. History offers no examples since gay marriage has been as universally forbidden as incest and pedophilia among the many cultures that have existed. Warren was speculating, not equating.
- I’m not going to disagree with this point. This is bigotry.
- There are many intellectual and philosophical reasons that lead someone to be a creationist. Just as there are many philosophical and intellectual reasons that lead someone to be a naturalist. I don’t call naturalism “nonsense,” even if I think that a person who holds the position is being intellectually dishonest. Neither view is nonsense; but one must be incorrect. I’ve made my stance known. Now, what about teaching creationism in school? It toes the line, but I don’t think that it should be illegal.
Vjack reveals himself as very close-minded to other points of view. He is so certain that atheistic naturalism is correct, that he won’t even consider the position of the other side. Perhaps Vjack is guilty of the same bigotry that he accuses others of.
What Do Christians Have to Live For?
A while back, Vjack of Atheist Revolution asked, “What do Christians have to live for?” He then proposed three ideas. First, he posits that we live for God. This is an excellent suggestion, though Vjack has no idea how it would be accomplished. Second, he thought that we might live for either the Rapture or the afterlife. This offers no incentive to take care of the planet since we are only on it for a short time. Third, he asks what incentive that there is for a Christian to be moral if all of his sins are paid for by Christ. Let’s address all three points.
First, how would a Christian go about living for God? One of the cries of the Reformation was soli Deo gloria, for God’s glory alone. The apostle Paul offers this as a suggestion in Romans–“Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Living for God is simple: place God first in everything that you think, do, and say. Everything that you do should be an act of worship.
The second suggestion, living for the Rapture or the afterlife, is a terrible idea. Vjack nails the problem inherent in it; namely, that there is no incentive for taking care of this planet, since the Christian isn’t going to be around long enough for it to matter. But that overlooks that we are stewards of this planet and have been charged by God in Genesis to take care of the planet (Gen 1:28-30).
Finally, Vjack wonders why Christians don’t rape and murder at will because all of their sins are paid for by Christ. The apostle Paul anticipated this sort of mentality when he wrote to the Romans. After building his case for salvation by grace without works of law, he asks if we should go on sinning so that grace may abound all the more. He answers with a resounding NO! Then asks, “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom 6:2) If we are in Christ, we are dead to sin and alive to God (Rom 6:11). We are a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). People who are alive to God demonstrate the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control by the power of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23). Therefore:
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Rom 6:12-14)
Back Rome Again 