Wisdom and Folly

Among the issues debated between theists and atheists is the question of God’s relation to ethics.  Many theists, including myself, maintain that without God there is no foundation for ethics.  Not only does atheism fail to provide any ultimate motivation to live virtuously but the very concept of moral goodness is undermined.  Atheists, of course, beg to differ, insisting that the concept of goodness can be adequately understood in terms of natural facts about the world, such as pleasure or human survival.  And as for moral motivation, most atheists seem to maintain that the goal of making this life the best it can be provides sufficient grounds for good behavior.

Not only do atheists (typically) maintain that ethics (both the concept of the good and the incentive to live rightly) is possible without God, they also often argue that God actually undermines ethics.  That is, they claim, ethical theories that appeal to God are problematic at best and incoherent at worst.  And it’s interesting to see how often they trot out a 2500-year-old argument, originating with Socrates (who, ironically enough, was himself a theist).  The argument, commonly known as the “Euthyphro dilemma,” originally took this form:  Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is something pious because the gods love it?”  Transposed into the context of a theistic (rather than polytheistic) divine command ethic, the dilemma looks like this:

1. Does God command X because it is good

               or

2. Is X good because God commands it?

 The question might appear trifling, but it does have some bite to it.  If we opt for (1), then something besides God’s commanding a behavior makes it good.  That is, the standard for goodness is not God’s commands, which seems to flout the notion that God is the foundation of ethics.  On the other hand, if we go with option (2), then this prompts the question why God commanded X, so it is really no answer at all.  Now, one could insist that this “why” question admits of no answer and that God’s commands are ultimately arbitrary.  But, then, this implies that God could just as well have commanded that we rape, murder, and steal from one another and, consequently, such behaviors would have been just as moral as kindness, compassion, and generosity are now.  This seems absurd, so option (2) is no more appealing than option (1).

The theist appears to be stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place here—specifically the options of admitting either that God is not the foundation of ethics or that God’s commands are arbitrary.   Is there a way out for the theist who insists that God is foundational to—or in any way crucially related to—ethics?  Many atheists and agnostics believe this argument to be devastating.  But, really, the solution is quite simple (as evidenced by the fact that in every one of my philosophy classes in which this argument is discussed some student solves the riddle on his or her own, or else with just a little Socratic leading by yours truly).  Can you figure it out?  See if you can do so before reading the next paragraph.

The best response—as I see it anyway—is to take the approach of Thomas Aquinas, among many others, and go with option (1) but to qualify this in an important way.  Yes, God commands what he does because those things are good, but the standard for goodness is not something external to God.  Rather, the divine nature is the moral standard.  It is the character of God which determines how God commands us to behave.  This explains why Scripture often uses the term “godly” and “godliness” as synonyms for moral goodness or piety.  They are one and the same thing.  To be moral is to reflect the moral nature of God.  So each divine command is essentially a specific application of the general command to morally imitate God.  Moreover, given this approach, divine commands are not properly conceived as the source of goodness but rather they serve the function of making the standard of goodness known.  That is, the role of divine commands is epistemological, whereas God’s character is the ontological ground of ethics.

Of course, atheists and many others will object that defining moral goodness in terms of the divine nature begs the question, Why call God’s nature good?  But this question could be asked about any proposed ultimate standard for ethics (e.g., pleasure, human survival, universalizability, etc.).  If there is indeed a moral standard, then its goodness must be fundamental, absolute, and inexplicable.  The nature of God is far superior to any alternative proposal because God is a being, not a mere concept or ideal.  Moreover, this Thomistic approach has the additional virtue of paralleling the foundation of ethics to that in theistic ontology and epistemology, where we understand God to be the ground of all being and of all rationality, respectively.  (I would even extend this, perhaps more controversially, to the realm of aesthetics, and propose that God is the ground of all beauty.)  Here we see another dimension of the conceptual coherence of theism.

Several blogs have recently featured reviews or interviews with me about my book, The Making of an Atheist, including the blog of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, Cloud of Witnesses and Exo Tays Parembolays. 

So far, most responses to the book have been enthusiastically positive, though there have been some negative comments (from folks who have yet to read the book!), suggesting that I commit an ad hominem fallacy in claiming that atheism results from self-deception and immorality.  This would be true if the point of my book was to argue that atheism is false.  That’s not the book’s aim at all.  Rather, my purpose is to give an explanatory accountof the origins of atheistic belief.  That’s quite a different matter, and my account actually parallels the attempts of such atheists as Feuerbach and Freud to explain theistic belief.  Atheists typically applaud their accounts and aren’t inclined to accuse them of ad hominem reasoning.  Perhaps its too much to expect that they would show me the same courtesy.

As you might have noticed on the sidebar, my latest book, The Making of an Atheist, has just been released.  In the book I discuss the moral-psychological roots of atheism, showing how disbelief in God is not the result of an intellectual assessment of evidence but rather the consequence of willful suppression of the truth about God.  Essentially, I turn the tables on Richard Dawkins and his ilk, as I argue that it is not theists but atheists who are delusional.  You can find out more about the book here.

I was recently interviewed about the book on Prime Time America.  The interview is in two 10-minute parts.  Here are links to the first and second parts of the interview.

My current book project is on the subject of atheism.  Though there have been plenty of books on this topic the last few years, both by atheists (the “new atheists” as they’ve come to be called) and their critics, nearly all of these books address the evidence for or against theism.  Atheist writers complain that because of the existence of evil and the immorality of believers faith in God is unreasonable.  And they argue that the explanatory power of science makes faith unnecessary.  Defenders of theism have given rejoinders to these arguments and offered evidences for God either overlooked or underappreciated by the new atheists.  Some Christian apologists have devoted entire books to critiquing particular works by the new atheists (e.g. The McGraths’ The Dawkins Delusion and Zacharias’ The End of Reason).

But lost in the whirlwind of this debate is the deeper question as to whether atheism is actually the product of rational inquiry.  Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have suggested that theists suffer from a sort of delusion.  Could this be a case of “If you spot it, you got it”?  If anyone is delusional, perhaps it is atheists.  After all, looking at the matter from a statistical standpoint, is it more likely that over 90% of human beings (religious believers) are deluded or that only a small minority (atheists) are so deceived?  To take the former view, along with Dawkins, Dennett, and others, is a serious psychological indictment of the human race.  (And, given this thesis, one wonders why these authors would expect their readers to have a rational response to their books!)  On the other hand, if atheists are the duped ones, what explains this?  Is it simply a misconstrual of the evidence for God?  If so, what could account for that?  Is the problem somehow psychological, sociological, or even moral in nature?

These are some of the questions I am raising (and attempting to answer) in my book, which will be published by Moody Press in 2010.  I would welcome your own thoughts on the matter…whether or not they turn out to be delusional.

Want to check out something amazing?  How about an atheist who extols the benefits of Christian evangelism?  Think I’m kidding?  Read this London Times article.

Here’s an excerpt from Matthew Parris’s fascinating confession:  “Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.”  Parris goes on to note that “Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.”

How refreshing to see such an even-handed appraisal of the salutary effects of the Christian worldview.  At a time when the “new atheists” are making millions publishing books which demonize the faith, this is a much-needed corrective.  But this piece also raises some interesting questions.  If you’re like me, you found yourself wondering how Parris could persist in his atheism, given his obvious recognition of the power of the gospel.  After all, he admits the reality of “spiritual transformation.”  The rebirth, he grants, “is real.”  So what gives here?  My guess is that Parris regards the change in converts to be entirely moral in nature.  The transformation  and rebirth, he might tell us, are just shorthand ways of describing a shift in ethics.  Yes, these new Christians fervently believe in God—about which they are deluded—but the critical fact is that their behavior and motivations change with conversion.  And, given the positive cultural impact of this, that’s all that really matters.

If this is Parris’s analysis, then it begs an obvious question:  How could such a fundamental delusion be so practically beneficial, producing so much personal and social renewal?  Not an easy question to answer.  This is why Parris’s position is an unstable one.  I suspect he will eventually come to grips with the reality of God or else change his tune about the public benefits of Christianity.  In any case, he should be commended for his candor and courage.