In my last post I began responding to a piece by Frederick Meekins, titled “Have Yourself A Theistic (Not Atheistic) Little Christmas,“ in which he charged that atheists are just as dogmatic in their epistemological assumptions as the most zealous evangelical Christian. Now I would like to examine the rest of what he wrote on atheists and morality.

He begins with the usual charge:

For example, if God does not exist, who is to say whatever the individual thinks or does is right or wrong? As has been said, in some cultures they are suppose to love their neighbors and in others they eat them. To the cannibal the adage is not so much finger licking good but rather good to lick fingers.

Think about this for a moment. Mr. Meekins is painting a picture of morality in which humans are helpless little babies that cannot reason at all about matters of right or wrong and therefore require a divine hand to set us straight. The Bible itself even makes it clear that this is not the situtation – when Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge their eyes were opened, and they recognized good from evil (Gen. 3).

But let’s turn around and ask the reverse question, for I think it is far more illustrative: If God does exist, how are we to know what is right or wrong? Can we just ask Him? Does God periodically send down commandments from the top of mountains? If somebody claims to know what God thinks, or claims that God has spoken a moral command to him or her, why should we believe it? In other words, how do we know what God’s true pronouncements are?

The Christian has an answer: the Bible. It is the word of God and contains all the moral guidance humankind will ever need. Of course, we shall not simply assume that an ancient collection of literature is the actual word of God, but I digress. So, is morality reduced to following the rules laid out in the Bible? I don’t think so. Christians hardly follow all of the hundreds of archaic codes and laws “revealed” to the Jews in the Old Testament. And for good reason. Nobody in this country follows the many rules and procedures for handling slaves. But, you might interject, that was a different culture and a different time – slavery was an accepted practice back then. However, if our only source of morality comes from the Bible then from whence came this notion that slavery is immoral? It certainly didn’t come from a closer reading of the Bible!

The Bible contains many more clearly immoral pronouncements. Take, for example:

Deuteronomy 23:2
Those born of an illicit union shall not be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

I would like to know if Mr. Meekins accepts God’s judgement on this matter. A child, and up to ten generations of his or her offspring, are to be damned simply because of an accident of birth that is no fault of and is not under control of the child itself.

Besides, it seems that much of the Old Testament histories is a story of the Israelites disobeying their divinely revealed laws and Yahweh getting angry. After all, what was the first thing that they did after Yahweh freed them from Egypt, led them safely to Mt. Sinai, and presented them with His ten commandments? They worshiped a golden calf. Some example!

So if the Bible cannot help steer us morally, then I believe that Mr. Meekins’ question is a valid one to ask him: Even if God exists, who is to say what is right and wrong?

You see,  it is not about what some individual thinks is right or wrong. The founding fathers of the United States recognized the danger inherent in bestowing upon a single individual all of the power to legislate morality. Humans are social animals, and morality is a social process of back and forth negociation, trial and error, and most of all rational considerations. We are collectively responsible for ourselves and what kind of a society in which we wish to live. That is not such a bad prospect.

But Meekins is not done yet. He has another punch to throw:

If anything, what atheists exhibit when they manifest goodness is remaining Judeo-Christian moral capital. These individuals professing godlessness remain largely good because they have been acculturated in a milieu largely Biblical in its underlying ethical orientation.

So, atheists are only moral because enough “Judeo-Christian” morality has rubbed off on us! We are all indebted to the work of previous generations, but I daresay, given the above discussion, what exactly is this “Judeo-Christian moral captial”? Does it include Deuteronomy 23:2?

If anything, lack of divine restraints seems to send man’s compulsion to prey (not pray) upon his fellow man into overdrive. One only need to look at the histories of regimes with an explicit antipathy towards the God of the Bible such as Soviet Russia, Red China, and Nazi Germany.

Right…but let’s not forget how far more troublesome a firm convinction in divine dictates have been, historically, than a lack of divine restraint: religious wars and persecutions, terrorism, and all the other trouble religious certainty brings. Neither Soviet Russia, Red China, or Nazi Germany suffered because their regimes were zealously devoted to too much rationality, logic, and evidence. And one only need to look at the God of the Bible itself, within the pages of the Old Testament, for a figure that is more brutal and more murderous than all of those regimes combined.