The Ethical Atheist

We have an atheist troll ("Mason") who drops links to web sites (without offering any comments) that, apparently, he takes to offer something of a substantive challenge to Christian theism. Here is the link:

http://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/ethical_atheist.html

I'll just cut, paste, and then respond. You will be appeared to in a red way by the Ethical Atheist's words. He has headings for his points, I'll follow his lead:

HOW CAN YOU HAVE MORALS AND BE ETHICAL WITHOUT GOD?

"For centuries, religion has attempted to hijack morality. They claim it is impossible to live a moral and ethical life without God. They claim that the Bible (or Koran, or Book of Mormon, or whatever book they are using at the time) defines morality and sin. Therefore, if you don't believe and live by their book, you are immoral, sinful and unethical."

i) For centuries, non-religion has attempted to hijack morality.

ii) Notice the old canard that "atheists cannot be ethical" is dusted off and pulled out. This claim is vague and ambiguous. For example,

a) I haven't heard a theist, especially in any published literature, claim that an atheist cannot be ethical where this means, "Atheists will necessarily eat your young children, bathe in their blood, and howl at the moon," or some such unethical activity.

b) In fact, I've heard the opposite. One such example can be found in W.L. Craig's debate with W. Sinnott-Armstrong. In clarifying his moral argument he tells us what is not being claimed: "The question here is not: 'Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives?' I am not claiming that we must" (p.18). In fact, I have found this to be the standard and agreed upon position by whoever I have read.

c) So where does this oft repeated claim come from? I'll wager a couple of guesses: [1] From misunderstanding what theists have said. I once read Dan Barker's conversion testimony. He relayed a story about what his old pastor told him as Barker confided in him about his losing faith in faith. Barker said that the pastor said, "Dan, if it weren't for Jesus, I'd reach across the table right now and choke you to death." Interpreted charitably, I think the pastor just meant something like this: "Dan, if God didn't exist, there would be nothing objectively wrong with me reaching across this table and choking you to death." Interpreted thusly the claim is something like this: "Atheism cannot account for the grounding (metaphysically or epistemologically) of objective, normative, ethical principles that serve as action guides for moral behavior. [2] From atheists themselves. It is well known and documented that atheists, Nietzsche for example, have claimed that with the death of God, there are no rules. But even this doesn't imply that atheists can't live moral lives (but 'morality' is a construct, not an objective reality). In fact, since man is the master of his own ship, the only rule is that he live according to his rules that he has set for himself (yet Nietzsche couldn't justify making this rule an inter-personal normative rule). Or, take a Dawkins: "The universe 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." But again, all this means is that there are no objective, normative moral principles floating about. This doesn't mean that man can't be moral because perhaps man decides to form a contract, make "moral rules" and live according to them so we do not revert to a Hobbesian state of nature. We make rules so that we can flourish, and to follow those rules is to be moral. Now, I'm sure that there has been a theist or two who has made the claim that atheists can't be moral where this means that they, of necessity, must be eating children and such. But certainly the honest debater doesn't pick on the claims made by a few, especially when the majority of their own side has dismissed this claim.

iii) At the risk of sounding contradictory, there is a sense in which the atheist cannot be a good person, an ethical person, a moral person. This would be because many Christian ethicists recognize more than a deontological constraint on your ethical theory. If my theory is true, for a person to be considered good, or ethical, he must meet three criteria. That is, there is a deontological, a teleological, and a virtue (which includes intent, motive, etc.,) constraint. So if Christian theism is true, it is not enough that you do the right act (say, honoring your parents), you must do it for the right goal (honoring God), and the act must flow from a virtuous character (desire to please God, to glorify him, etc). Much more could be said about these three, I was just emphasizing enough to make my point. Now, Christian theism teaches that only the regenerated person can do something from the virtuous character. Since atheists are not, much to the readers surprise, regenerated, they will not be able to meet at least one (almost certainly two) of these criteria. In that sense, they cannot be moral.

But, this point isn't simply a Christian one. Non-Christian virtue ethicists have made similar points. They point out that it is not enough to simply do one's duty (following a Kantian maxim), they must do it from a good character. If someone S does a duty for the sake of duty, they will claim this is not enough to make what S did, good. Surely, they claim, there is a difference between these two cases:

[C1] You are in a hospital and recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident and your friend, Tom, stops by to visit you. After a while chatting Tom gets ready to leave. You thank him for stopping by and Tom confesses that he did so because it was his duty. He wasn't moved to visit you out of concern, or love, but simply because he felt that it was a duty to visit your friends and family if they are in the hospital.

[C2] Same situation, but Jill visits you out of real and sincere concern for her friend. Her act is motivated by a virtuous character.

Surely there is an ethical difference between [C1] and [C2].

With [C1] the deontologist would say that your act was more moral the more you didn't want to do your duty. You did duty, for the sake of duty, nothing else. The virtue ethicist notes, rightly I think, that this misses out on a major factor in judging moral actions. The point here, though, isn't to debate virtue ethics. I'm simply pointing out that secularists (say that they combine virtue and deontic ethics) have also made the same basic claim that I have made. That is, there is more to judging an act right, or a person good, than mere duty doing.

iv) The cash value of (iii) is that there is a sense in which we can say that atheists cannot be moral. Now, certainly we don't mean that they can't (or don't) follow moral norms (but there are some norms that they do not follow, e.g., praying), we mean that they cannot meet all the requirements needed for us to judge them as "good" people. Thus in a minimalist sense, atheists can be moral. That is, they can follow (many of) the right standards. Of course this was recognized far before these contemporary debates (cf. Romans ch. 2). My more qualified sense is something that the atheist can accept since it depends on theism being true. Thus if theism is true, the atheist cannot be "good" where "good" means more than merely following your duty, or even exhibiting a couple of good character traits (though this would have to be defined biblically, and so it would be hard for the atheist to really have these. Perhaps he can have them in a minimal way. I leave that open for discussion). But, I take it that in this debate, and the sense the Ethical Atheist meant it in, the claim that "atheists can't be moral" is usually intended to connote the idea that atheists cannot adhere to some basic, fundamental, paradigm cases of morality according to a normative model. That is, atheists can refrain from murdering, lying, stealing, etc. (Of course, even here, qualification could be made, for there is much more to following those commands than ordinarily thought. But again, I'm speaking in a very minimalist way. Perhaps a way in which the atheist can accept as what constitutes following moral precepts.)

v) Thus I think the question isn't, "Can atheists act morally?", the question is, "Can atheists provide an account for objective morality?".

I hope that is a helpful analysis of his quote.

Moving on...

"'Sin' is a very subjective concept which varies among religions. Religious books contradict themselves, and each other, on the definition of sin. They often define sin, only to have major religious figures commit these precise sins. In the Christian tradition, we are told "Thou Shalt Not Kill". Yet, many followers of the faith did exactly this and were often directed by God to do so. Moses was a murdering and raping machine... a sinner by religious definition. So much for 'sin'. Morality and ethics, on the other hand, are terms we accept and use regularly."

i) Sin isn't a subjective concept. If Christian theism is true, sin is something like any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God. That the concept varies among religions does not prove that it is relative or subjective. From disagreement does not non-objectivity follow.

ii) Notice that no texts are cited to back up his claims. Furthermore, his claim, if true, provides empirical conformation of Christian theism. Christian theism predicts that men, even the most religious (sometimes, especially the most religious!), will sin. So, to point out one of them sinning is to confirm what the theory predicts.

iii) Since no one is perfect, then every person who claims to hold to an ethical theory has violated (sinned against) the principles espoused in that theory. Since I assume that The Ethical Atheism is not perfect, then his point is self-refuting. For if he has violated his own precepts, then he must, on pain of inconsistency and arbitrariness, claim: "So much for my moral principles."

Continuing...

"Many religious followers often refer to examples of morality and ethics in religious people (e.g.. Mother Teresa, volunteers helping poor farmers in third world countries, people helping the poor in our own country, etc.). They use this as their justification that you must be religious to be moral and ethical. This is an argument which fails basic logic. It ignorantly assumes that moral and ethical individuals do NOT exist outside of religion. Yet, there are many non-religious people who help the poor, help educate our children, strive for peace in the world, and so on. Just as morality and ethics is not solely owned by religion, corrupt and abhorrent behavior falls on both sides as well. Religious individuals are guilty of discrimination, raping our children, stealing funds from the Church, covering up crimes, murdering others in our society and abroad, etc. Yet, so are non-religious people. Both sides are guilty. It is not our intention to prove which side is more guilty of these actions. We only emphasize that their is good and bad behavior on both sides. Therefore, morality and ethics are concepts that exist within religion AND in the absence of religion."

i) No, that's not the argument. The argument is, how do you objectively decide between what Mother Theresa did and what Hitler did. The argument from moral saints is that if there can be people who are "more" moral than another, then what is the standard by which this is judged. How is it accounted for. Furthermore, the moral saint argument can be used to bolster an argument for an ethic of virtue, which in turn can be used to argue for theism since teleology seems more at home in theism than in naturalism (or, atheism). Just as a properly-functioning cognitive faculty seems to assume a theistic worldview, so does a properly-functioning moral faculty.

ii) His comment assumes moral realism, this must be accounted for given his assumptions.


DEFINE "ETHICS"

"ethics (eth'iks): 1. a system or set of moral principles. 2. the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or governing a particular group, culture, etc: medical ethics. 3. the branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of actions and the goodness and badness of motives and ends. 4. moral principles, as of an individual.

Now, did we see anything in this definition confining ethics to religion? No. Just as our discussion above states, ethics is not confined to, or from, religion. Yet, we never seem to get beyond this in discussions with religious people. Why is this? Because they have been taught from birth that morality and ethics are meaningless unless spoken of in the context of religion. We believe this to be completely wrong."

i) Do I need to point out that citing a dictionary definition doesn't prove or disprove anything other than to verify a historical fact about how a term has been used?

ii) One would say that we find this that, if taken normatively and objectively, are incompatible with naturalism (or, atheism): moral principles, right, wrong, good, bad, ends.

iii) Those things seem right at home in a theistic universe, it is not clear that they do in an atheistic universe. Thus Mackie, "If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe." (Inventing Right and Wrong, p. 38)

Moving along...

"Where do 'ethics' come from? Are we born with them? In some cases, yes. In others, no. It is probably safe to say that the desire to murder or kill other living creatures is NOT something we possess from birth. Without the influence of violence in the media and that 'learned' after birth, most children would not have a desire to kill - for religious reasons or otherwise. This is a learned behavior in some people. However, an opposite learned behavior also exists - the desire not to kill."

i) That someone learns some X does not logically imply that X is not innate. Many philosophers have argued that we are born with innate mathematical knowledge, yet we are still taught math.

ii) There is no evidence to back up any of his assertions, we're just supposed to take his word for it. has he studied all of the anthropological data? The pro and the con?

iii) The above can be fully consistent with a theistic worldview where all men are born with the law of God written on their heart. This could also explain the desire to refrain from murder. Thus his evidence can be fully consistent with a Christian worldview. It should be therefore obvious that his claims cannot serve to refute that ethics need a theistic (or, religious) grounding (whether metaphysical or epistemological, or both).

iv) Does he think murders only started after "the media" reported violence? Seems to me that even atheists have noted that "in a state of nature" the desire is to kill since that state is an egoist state. Hobbes thought we needed a social contract with rules outlawing murder precisely because we would revert back to our natural, killing selves. I shouldn't have to point out that the social contract theory is a popular theory with atheists. So, not everyone would agree with the Ethical Atheist on this one.

v) If murder is a learned behavior, how did anyone ever commit the first murder? Who did s/he learn it from?

vi) Is it a "learned behavior" in "some people?" If so, is it an "innate behavior" in "some other people?"

vii) I don't see how any of this shows where "ethics came from." It seems all over the map. Some are learned. Some are innate. Some that are innate in some are learned in others. And some that are learned in some are innate in others. Some ethics "come from" being born with them, and others, not.


ETHICS IN EDUCATION

"In general, we believe ethics to be solely the product of education. Education is a broad term and this term was used here precisely for that reason. Children learn from a wide variety of resources. They learn in school, from their parents, from the behavior of those around them, from the mass media, etc."

i) But above it was stated that only some ethics were the product of education.

ii) This answer doesn't seem to provide a good account for what makes an action right or wrong. Mark Timmons identifies 6 standards (though he allows for more) for evaluating moral theories. One of them is the explanatory power standard. According to Timmons (Moral Theory, p. 15), a moral theory attempts to provide principles that explain what makes an action right or wrong. That is, a moral theory should not only tell us what actions are good or bad, but why such actions are good or bad. It is certainly hard to see how if moral principles are the "products" of education, this explains what makes said principles (by which we judge people or actions) good or bad; right or wrong. Indeed, some people have educated their students according to contradictory moral principles.

iii) This theory is certainly not the accepted view of atheists and naturalists. Some would say that moral principles are necessary truths expressed as conditionals (cf. Shafer-Landau). Some would say that ethics are the products of social contracts (cf. Hobbes). Some would say that ethical principles are the product of virtues (cf. Aristotle, Mill, etc). Some would say that ethics are supervenient facts, products of the natural world (cf. Brink).

iv) It doesn't follow that if someone S is taught something X, that X is the product (brought into existence by) of the teaching. Take mathematics. Most sensible people are realists about mathematical entities and truths. That we are taught mathematics, then, in no way shows that they are the product of such teaching. His argument is a non-sequitur, then.

Moving on...

"The ethics of our children, and thus the ethics of future societies, is completely in our hands. Children do not know hate at birth. They do not know Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Palestinian, East or West, Baptist or Mormon, our country or their country. They know love, yet do NOT know hate. Whether you know it our not, you are giving your children these faculties."

i) This assumes that concern for posterity is a justified ethical activity on the Ethical Atheists standards. Many theories cannot account for this (e.g., Egoism, Kantianism).

ii) I'd suggest this guy spend some time around children. He's also making a statistical claim without any evidence to back it up. He gives us no reason to accept it.

iii) How do infants know "love" at birth? Has he read the psychologists report on the cognitive abilities of infants?

iv) Being born all cute 'n cuddly may be, on his worldview, a survival trait which staves off attack from other members of the society. But, when the child is older and more developed, he jumps right into his role as hater.

v) Egoists like Hobbes would disagree with the above claim he makes. All men are born "in a state of nature."

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"Taken together, these plausible descriptive and normative assumptions yield a state of nature potentially fraught with divisive struggle. The right of each to all things invites serious conflict, especially if there is competition for resources, as there will surely be over at least scarce goods such as the most desirable lands, spouses, etc. People will quite naturally fear that others may (citing the right of nature) invade them, and may rationally plan to strike first as an anticipatory defense. Moreover, that minority of prideful or “vain-glorious” persons who take pleasure in exercising power over others will naturally elicit preemptive defensive responses from others. Conflict will be further fueled by disagreement in religious views, in moral judgments, and over matters as mundane as what goods one actually needs, and what respect one properly merits. Hobbes imagines a state of nature in which each person is free to decide for himself what he needs, what he's owed, what's respectful, right, pious, prudent, and also free to decide all of these questions for the behavior of everyone else as well, and to act on his judgments as he thinks best, enforcing his views where he can. In this situation where there is no common authority to resolve these many and serious disputes, we can easily imagine with Hobbes that the state of nature would become a “state of war”, even worse, a war of “all against all”.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/#4

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vi) What does it mean to say that "ethics is in our hands?" This seems highly subjective. Is it us who make actions right or wrong? If so, we have an admission of guilt - the atheist cannot provide an account for the objectivity of morality.

Continuing...

"If you teach your children to hate and to be intolerant of conflicting religions: they may grow up to be suicide bombers; they may become murders of Planned Parenthood workers; they may discriminate against their neighbors; they may promote overthrowing the government in bloody coups (e.g.. Pat Robertson); and they may become the next Hitler. If you let your children grow up watching violent television, your children may grow up to have little regard for life; they may kill others or promote war; they may torture animals; and they may have no concept or desire for peace on Earth."

i) So atheists can be moral because of psychological programming?

ii) They might also become Stalins and Pol Pots too. Let's not leave out secular tragedy.

iii) None of this is an account for what grounds the normativity and objectivity of morality.

iv) Also, note the atheist trying to censor what people watch. How enlightened.

v) If we were all born so "loving" how'd we wind up here? Who did the first person learn immoral behavior from?

vi) Are the above moral absolutes? Say that your neighbors are child rapists. Say that your government is Hitler's.

vii) The above seems to appeal to a consequentialist account of what makes an action right or wrong. Of course this is fraught with problems, as the standard literature will show. For example, if we could stop a riot which was killing thousands of innocent lives by framing an innocent man (if we knew this would stop the riots, and we would never be found out, etc.,), would this make it right?

viii) Notice that murdering Planned Parenthood workers is deemed "immoral," but our country's murdering of millions of unborn human beings every year isn't mentioned. Perhaps if the secularists are so concerned with life, and stopping violence, they shouldn't allow women to slaughter their children with impunity.

ix) What of those who educated their children that blowing up buildings was the right thing to do? If this doesn't "produce" said actions as "right," then how does education "produce" ethics? Perhaps he means that there are true principles to teach, and false ones. If so, how does he account for such truth and objectivity?

Moving on...

"On the other hand, if you raise your children to understand morality and ethics; and to live by these rules, the world just might be a better place. If more truth and honesty existed in educating our children around the world, we believe that chance would exist for peace and reconciliation. If you teach your children to accept their neighbor, chances are they will. They will be subjected to other influences, but the role of the parent should not be underestimated."

i) This is all fine and dandy, how is such accounted for?

ii) What is the norm or standard by which we can say that the world is getting "better?"

iii) It has been known for quite some time that the mere teaching of rules doesn't provide the necessary motivation for a person to do right acts. Virtue ethicists have long pointed out that virtues without rules are blind, but rules without virtues are motivationally impotent to inspire us to action. But getting into "proper" character introduces teleology (or other normative notions) into the discussion. What grounds this?

iv) How does man become a better person? Try harder? Is that all the secularist can tell us? Empirical observation should show that this is a pipe dream. Christianity teaches that men need a new nature.

v) To speak of "the role" of the parent smacks of something like Aquinas Natural Law theory. As if there was a "proper" or "natural" role parents should play. How is this defended given evolutionary assumptions? Why not seed as many flowers as possible?

vi) He speaks as if he thinks the way the world is isn't the way it "should" be. Something has gone terribly wrong. The theist has an answer here, what is his?

"What is the biggest contributor to hate and intolerance in our world? The answer is simple: religion. More conflict is generated by religious beliefs and actions than from any other source. And, this not only applies to conflict between countries and societies; but to conflict within individual countries and societies."

That is his answer - religion is to blame.

i) Ah, yes, the vague and undefined scapegoat - Religion!

ii) When one deals at the level of such abstract notions as "Religion," we can cite any numerous concept that can easily take its place. In common with almost all wars and mass violence has been, "Politics." Or, how about, "Man?" Some atheists have noted that "man" is the problem. Rather than Hitchens' "How Religion Poisons Everything," one could equally point out "How Man Poisons Everything."

Well, is "religion" the cause of our problems? If "religion" (notice these terms are never defined) was gone, would wars follow them? David Livingstone Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of New England, and an atheist, has written a book called "The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War." In it he claims to analyze war as a philosopher and a researcher. He puts in some serious time looking at "war." As an atheist, and an ardent evolutionist (co-founder of the Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology), what has his hard thinking and long hours of research led him to find?

"War can be approached from many angles. We can consider it from the standpoint of economics, politics, history, ideology, ethics, and various other disciplines. All of these are important, but there is one dimension that underpins them all: the bedrock of human nature." (p. xiii)

"Historically, there have been two broad, sharply polarized views of the relationship between war and human nature. One is that war is human nature in the raw, stripped of the facade of contrived civility behind which we normally hide. In most recent incarnations of this ancient theory, the taste for killing is said to be written in our genes. The other is that war is nothing but a perversion of an essentially kind, compassionate, and sociable human nature and that it is culture, not biology, which make us so dangerous to one another. In fact, both of these images are gross oversimplifications: both are true, and both are false. Human beings are capable of almost unimaginable violence and cruelty toward one another, and there is reason to believe that this dogged aggressiveness is grounded in our genes. But we are also enormously sociable, cooperative creatures with an elemental horror of shedding human blood, and this, too, seems to be embedded in the core of human nature. Strange as it may sound, I believe that war is caused by both of these forces working in tandem; it is a child of ambivalence, a compromise between two opposing sides of human nature." (p. xiv, emphasis original)

"What evidence was that these people [who cased wars or acts of terror or brutal slayings] were insane? There is usually none. The psychologists who painstakingly sifted through the data on the senior Nazi officer brought to justice in the Nuremberg trials found that ‘high-ranking Nazi war criminals … participated in atrocities without having diagnosable impairments that would account for their actions.’ They were ‘ as diverse a group as one might find in our government today, or in the leadership of the PTA.’ If the Nazi leaders were not deranged, what about the rank and file who did Hitler’s dirty work? What about the members of the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing units that committed atrocities like the mass killing at Babi Yar, where 33,000 Jews, as well as many gypsies and mental patients, were machine-gunned to death during two crisp autumn days in 1941? Do you think these men must have been psychopaths or Nazi Zealots? If so, you are wrong. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that they were anything other than ordinary German citizens. ‘The system and rhythm of mass extermination,” observes journalist Heinz Hohne, “were directed by … worthy family men.” The men of the German Reserve Police Battalion 101, a killing squad in Poland who were involved in the shooting of at least 38,000 Jews and the deportation of a further 83,000 to the Treblinka death camp, were ordinary middle-aged family men without either military training or ideological indoctrination. ‘The truth seems to be,’ writes psychologist James Waller, ‘that the most outstanding characteristic of perpetrators of extraordinary evil lies in their normality, not their abnormality.’ Purveyors of violence, terrorists, and merchants of genocidal destruction are, more often than not, people who fit the profile that Primo Levi panted of his Nazi jailers at Auschwitz: ‘average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked … they had our faces.’ To Hannah Arendt they were ‘terribly and terrifyingly normal.’ They could be your neighbors, parents, or children. They could be you.” (p. 4)

“Wars are purposeful. They are fought for resources, lebensraum, oil, gold, food, and water or peculiarly abstract or imaginary goods like God, honor, race, democracy, and destiny” (p. 7)

“Hobbes thought that antagonism simmers beneath the surface of all human interactions, constantly threatening to erupt into lethal violence, and the problem lay in human equality.” (p.9, ).

And so on the one hand we have those in the New Atheist camp that wish to blame wars on religion, or religious belief, and on the other hand we have philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and myriad researches who point out that wars are fought for an abundance of reasons - belief in God being only one of the contributing factors for some wars - but the underlying cause is human nature. It is man that causes war. Man is the problem. And, these so-called butchers are just like you and me.

It seems to me that Christians have been saying this for a long time. Man’s sinful nature is a major cause of the world’s problems. Southern Presbyterian R.L. Dabney says that when we speak of man being sinful by nature we mean, “the evil quality which characterizes man's natural disposition and will. We call this sin of nature original, because each fallen man is born with it, and because it is the source or origin in each man of his actual transgressions.” What is needed, then, isn’t books by The New Atheism telling people that religion (again, a word they always fail to define) is the root of all evil. As shown above, even if religion was removed, war would still rage. And, man would still be here. There would be something else to fight over. There always is. The New Atheists have done us a disservice in their sloppy overgeneralizations. They have made those atheists (mainly the young and impressionable militant types who live in cyber-space) who have trotted out their arguments look like uneducated, sloppy thinkers. Rather than carefully think through these issues they have, as David Livingstone Smith says following Plato, failed to “carve nature at its joints,” but have opted to hack off parts “like a clumsy butcher” (p. 15). So, not only have they been sloppy in their generalizations, failing to note the abundant causes of war and violence, the more careful thinkers in the atheist community have noted that they haven’t even needled the correct problem, the underlying source of war and violence - man.

Now, Smith argues that man can get around this genetic problem by lifting himself up by his own bootstraps, so to speak (p. 27). Man is the problem, and paradoxically, man is the solution to the problem! Man is the Messiah. We will save ourselves. But we will still be man. But this Messiah is a false Messiah. Smith only has what Dawkins would call blind faith in man’s ability to save himself. Smith ends his book by saying this of war and killing: “Both are deeply rooted in human nature, and neither can be extirpated. If I am right, we will never stop men from enjoying war, and trying to do so is a fools errand. The most that we can hope for, in the end, is for men to detest it more than they enjoy it, and the only way to shift the balance is to expose the self-deception that makes killing bearable” (p. 215). And so on the one side we have anti-intellectual men who have not done their homework and thus cannot hope to provide a solution having failed to grasp the problem, on the other side some atheists have drawn close to the problem, but there is no solution other than that of faith, mere hope.

This hope seems totally blind given that normal, intelligent, seemingly emotionally stable and compassionate men like, say, Winston Churchill could claim “I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering thousands every moment - and yet - I enjoy every second of it.” And “philosopher-soldier” J. Glenn Grey describes man’s thoughts about killing in WWII: “Happiness is doubtless the wrong word for the satisfaction that men experience when they are possessed by the lust to destroy and kill their kind.” And, take the words of Henri de Man, a soldier in WWI who later became leader of the Belgian Socialist party. He was a cultivated and intelligent person, but he says that after he secured his first hit on an enemy position and saw pieces of men’s bodies fly up in the air, and listened to the screams of the wounded, he “experienced such extreme pleasure that he wept for joy.” And, Vietnam veteran Philip Caputo says that his experience in war was “like getting screwed for the first time,” and it was an “ache as profound as the ache of orgasm.”

Smith thinks the above is the “delusion” that we must escape. He does not tell us how except to say that we can “use nature against nature” (p. 215), like how we use our desire for a long-term companion to ward off our desire to sleep with anything that breathes. But of course if you’re smart, like most men think they are, they‘d rather become good liars and end up sleeping with everything that breathes, while also keeping their wife in the dark. Have their cake and eat it too. Maybe like the formation of the atheist universe, it will just happen. Perhaps given Smith’s worldview, the above is no delusion. Perhaps the delusion is shaking your fist at Mother Nature. At transcending your genes. This is what Bertrand Russell thought:

“Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.”

Thus the desire to shake your fists at The Law of Nature is the delusion. But some like to live in a delusion. In the Christian worldview, we teach that man needs a new nature. He is still man but his old, sinful nature, needs to die. We need new natures. This is called regeneration. B.B. Warfield expresses regeneration thusly: “Regeneration (from Lat. re-, again + generare, beget) is a theological term used to express the initial stage of the change experienced by one who enters upon the Christian life. It is derived from the New Testament, where the ‘new birth’ (1 Pet. i. 3, 23; Titus iii. 5; John iii. 3 f.) is the beginning of that ‘renewal’ which produces the ‘new creature.’” Man doesn’t contradictorily save himself, he needs a savior. This savior is Jesus Christ. This regeneration is only the start of the new life. We still have vestiges of an enemy within. So, the war to be fought is against our old self (for those hawks who love a good fight, try battling against your old self day in and day out), not necessarily against an Osama Bin Laden (there is still a place for defense, but that goes beyond the scope of this entry). Even a regenerate man will still sin. But that is looking at things in a short-sighted fashion. This is the beginning of the process. (Though the here and now would change tremendously if more people were truly regenerate and looked to the principles of peace-making to solve problems.) Eventually, we will come to the place where the Prince of Peace rules. Indeed, the new heavens and earth is described in Revelation 21:25 as a city with open gates. In it’s historical context, this means safety. Cities would protect their inhabitants against attacks by closing its gates. In Isaiah 2:4 we read, “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

On the other hand, to reject this salvation, means an eternity of war. The Nazis carried out their atrocities under the umbrella of God’s restraining grace - while he waits for all his elect to come to him. This will be removed. Some soldiers have described war as hell. This might be closer to the truth than you think. Reading the above comments about the love many men left in an un-regenerate state have for war and killing, what might a place where these men - you included - were un-restrained - you included - from committing the kind of evil they are really capable of be like? So, trusting in the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and even the more level-headed Livingstone Smith, will only get you, eventually, to a more violent place, where the wars we see will seem like a day at Disneyland.

People who makes claims like the above seem out of touch with reality, and blind to the violence their own systems could (and have) caused. Also, empirical tests have been done of things like "suicide bombing." McGrath comments that, "As Robert Pape showed in his definitive account of the motivations of such attacks, based on surveys of every kind of suicide bombing since 1980, religious belief of any kind is neither necessary nor sufficient to create suicide bombers -- despite Dawkins's breezy simplifications. (Remember, the infamous suicide vest was invented by the secessionist Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka back in 1991.) Pape argues that the fundamental motivation is political: the desire to force the withdrawal of foreign forces occupying land believed to belong to an oppressed people who have seriously limited military resources at their disposal. This isn't what Dawkins will want to hear, but it is an important element in reflecting on how this phenomenon arose and what might need to be done to end it" (McGrath, the Dawkins Delusion, p.80).


SO, WHAT'S AN "ETHICAL ATHEIST"?

It actually quite simple. An Ethical Atheist is someone who lives by a personal desire to do good things in their limited life on Earth.

i) And this provides an account for the objectivity and normativity of ethics how, exactly?

ii) We grant that atheists want to do good things. This doesn't mean that they can account for that behavior. It appears that the Ethical Atheist is simply a subjectivist.

iii) Also, it might look as if he's a virtuist here. But this has problems in and of itself too. Aren't we all familiar with people who constantly screw things up but have "good intentions?"

iv) This sounds fine formally, but where's the material? What is "the good" and how is it accounted for?

Continuing...

We believe in living in peace with our fellow man. In fact, to us, there is no better calling. You have to understand that, to us, it is all we have. Without a belief in the afterlife, this life is all we have. We cherish it and are grateful for our time alive on this planet.

i) And some have noted our plight and have concluded that they should grab for all the gusto they can get. There's no ultimate justice or meaning (or than what you make of each moment), so why not molest as many children as possible and if caught swallow a cyanide tablet?

ii) Or, take the ring of Gyges. Why be moral if you found a ring that made you invisible? You could get away with anything. This life is all you have. You could seal billions and live a life of luxury. Have the fastest cars, the biggest houses, the finest women, the most expensive clothes. If this is all you have, and you could get away with the actions, why be moral?


SHOULDN'T THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION THEMSELVES?

"Religious people should ask themselves the question, "Why have atheists given us most of the greatest scholars and scientists we've ever known?" Or, "Why did Christianity proceed with the Inquisition?" Or, "Why did we murder, torture and imprison scientists that were helping us understand the world in which we live?" Or, "Why did Christianity carry out the Crusades?" Or, "Why does our Koran teach us to kill the infidels?" Or, "Why do we believe that our most recent 'Book of Mormon' is best? What about the Bible? What about the New Testament? What of all the other religious books claiming to be the 'True Word of God'?"

i) I find his first question laughable.

ii) Or, why did atheism proceed with the gulags?

iii) Or, why did atheists imprison scientists: "Although no great theoretical contributions or insights came from it, neither were there any apparent errors in Stalin's understanding of linguistics; his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from the sort of ideologically driven theory that dominated genetics.

Scientific research was hindered by the fact that many scientists were sent to labor camps (including Lev Landau, later a Nobel Prize winner, who spent a year in prison in 1938–1939) or executed (e.g. Lev Shubnikov, shot in 1937). They were persecuted for their dissident views, not for their research." SOURCE

iv) Or, why did Christianity give us the modern University? The printing press? Institutions like the Red Cross. Massive literacy so that people could read their Bible's for themselves? We could go one and on. The point is that none of the above proves anything either way. And, as I argued above, to point out sin (immorality) on behalf of Christians (and everyone, really) is just what we would expect to find. The Ethical Atheist needs to get his head out of "this life." Christianity never was a religion that said all of out troubles in this life would be over. The Social Gospel is a false gospel.

CONCLUSION

All we've been treated to was a truck load of assertions and a pie in the sky bye and bye "what if" story. Telling people "just do better" isn't going to work. Man can't save himself. A drowning victim needs a lifeguard. A falling man needs a parachute. Looking to ourselves to get us out of our problems, when we are the problem, is the height of irrationality.