The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Welcome once again to Monday School – “The Easy Way To Burn Off All Those Nutrition-Free Claims Theists Like To Force-Feed Our Heads Around The Major Holidays.”

In recent days I’ve repeatedly encountered two theist claims which go more or less like this: “We need an absolute morality to guide our lives, and this morality can only come from God.” Although I’m not sure what theists mean by “absolute” morality, I assume it’s something like this: “A perfect, unchanging list of (or criteria for) right and wrong behaviors which may be used to judge the actions of all people, everywhere, at all times.” If you have a better idea of what they might mean, please let me know what it is.

What do I think of this?

1) We do not, in fact, need such an absolute morality in order to live good, meaningful lives. 

No more than we need to make or acquire an “absolute” set of traffic laws before we may safely travel on our roads and highways. If the British want to drive on the left side of their roads instead of the right side and it works for them, fine. Any American who goes to Britain and insists on driving his or her own way because it’s the “absolutely” right one is going to learn just how silly this is in a hurry.

Now, does this mean that we can never judge the traffic regulations of other societies by objective standards of safety and efficiency? Of course not. Those standards, however, must be rooted in scientific examination of the reality of specific times and places and not merely accepted because some Great Highway Engineer in the Sky says “Thou shalt always post School Zone signs 500 yards either side of school property.”

If we grant that the British may safely drive on the left side of the road, must we grant them the right to drive across lawns, into trees, or anywhere else they feel like it? Of course not. Reality itself determines what is and is not safe and permissible. As reality changes, different traffic rules may best apply. A safe dry road speed may not be safe when roads are wet or icy. There is no “absolute” safest speed. Even 0 MPH can be hazardous if you’re sitting in the center of an intersection at night with your lights off and no reflectors on your black sedan….

If we grant all this, must we grant that Aztec virgin sacrifices were OK because the Aztecs said they were? Of course not. One must simply come up with a more sophisticated way of objecting to such practices than saying “My God says you people are being VERY bad!” One may as well try to convince someone in the mall parking lot to get their vehicle out of your “God-given” parking space this holiday shopping season.

2) If we did need an “absolute” morality to guide our behavior, we sure couldn’t get it from God. 

Partly because God doesn’t exist, of course, but partly because – even if we grant for the sake of argument that a God exists – the question merely becomes “WHICH God-given set of absolute moral rules do we accept as genuine?”

Many Christians like to point to the Bible and say, “That’s all you need to know!” Many Muslims, however, point just as certainly to the Koran – a book which often contradicts the Bible. Other people believing in other gods point to other books and moral rules. Unless and until you can prove that your God exists and that He/She/They/It has in fact passed along the one good, true, and intelligible moral code, why should we prefer it over any other? Because it works in practice? Well, hey – if it works in practice, we don’t really need to believe in your God at all, do we? On the other hand, if it doesn’t work in practice, what does that say about your God?

Perhaps we ought to just go with the oldest God-given code of morality we know, hmmm? That code just might be the one the Sun God himself, Shamash, allegedly gave to Hammurabi almost 4000 years ago. Among its roughly 280 commandments are the following:

“2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.”

“108. If a tavern-keeper (feminine) does not accept corn according to gross weight in payment of drink, but takes money, and the price of the drink is less than that of the corn, she shall be convicted and thrown into the water.”

“110. If a ‘sister of a god’ open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall this woman be burned to death.”

“132. If the ‘finger is pointed’ at a man’s wife about another man, but she is not caught sleeping with the other man, she shall jump into the river for her husband.”

“145. If a man take a wife, and she bear him no children, and he intend to take another wife: if he take this second wife, and bring her into the house, this second wife shall not be allowed equality with his wife.”

“192. If a son of a paramour or a prostitute say to his adoptive father or mother: ‘You are not my father, or my mother,’ his tongue shall be cut off.”

“282. If a slave say to his master: ‘You are not my master,’ if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear.”

(For more: http://eawc.evansville.edu/anthology/hammurabi.htm)

Don’t like these “God-given” rules? What are you – an agent of Satan!?

3) If there is a God with an “absolute” moral guide we should follow, it sure isn’t the God of the Bible. 

The analysis of the Ten Commandments that I performed in my 6/13-18 and 7/31 entries reveal in detail exactly how useless the OT God is when it comes to morality. He is, after all, a deity who allegedly said “Thou shalt not kill” and then commanded the Hebrews to kill every living thing in whole cities. Enough said.

4) If we do need an “absolute” moral guide, we sure can’t get it from Jesus, the New Testament, or Christianity. 

Why not? Because Jesus and the NT are at least as contradictory as God and the OT. And it doesn’t help that the OT and the NT often contradict each other. First you have God laying down all these “absolute” rules in the OT, then you have Jesus and Paul ripping them up in the NT. To take but one famous example: The OT demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but Jesus says no, we should simply turn the other cheek. Where’s the “absolute” morality in that?

Beyond all this, there’s a very real sense in which Jesus and the NT actually and actively destroy morality as it is commonly understood.

Consider his famous words on adultery:

“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” – Matt. 5:27-28

He seems to be saying that the thought is as bad as the action. And because in this case the thought (lust) is an intrinsic part of our nature (which God allegedly gave us!), he seems to be saying we are all bad by nature no matter what we do. If that’s true, it doesn’t matter if we get an “absolute” moral guide or not. We’re inherently immoral sinners, none of whom deserves a pardon, yet some of whom (judging from what the NT says elsewhere) may be given one anyway out of the sheer goodness of God’s heart.

This basic separation of human action from just reward or punishment is stressed by Jesus repeatedly in his parables. The worthless son returns and is rewarded by his father in a way that the good, constantly faithful son never is (Luke 15). Laborers who do vastly different amounts of work are nonetheless all paid the same penny (Matthew 20). When the Pharisees try to be good Jews who obey and uphold the law, Jesus ridicules them and blithely goes about harvesting corn on the Sabbath (Matthew 12). Some may say Jesus was merely following a “higher” law. But exactly how does this differ in practice from his following no law at all? Once one puts thought, belief, faith, or anything else intangible above actions and their consequences in the here and now, it seems any act becomes pardonable, excusable – and essentially beyond human judgment. And how is that reconcilable with “absolute” morality?

Contrast what Jesus said about adultery with what Jefferson said about religious belief:

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

What another person thinks is of no concern to Jefferson. It’s what people do that counts. Jefferson’s approach naturally leads to freedom of religion, of conscience, and of speech as beliefs compete on their merits in an open marketplace of ideas. Jesus’s approach, in contrast, seems to virtually criminalize what we think, and it seems to have naturally inspired the Inquisition and the burning of heretics because of what they believed.

The flip side of this, of course, is that fiends like Jeffrey Dahmer (who confessed to killing 17 young men and eating some of them) can get into a heaven forever denied peaceful, loving pagans.

“It is very hard for anybody to believe that somebody who committed such terrible crimes could come to a faith in Christ that would result in their eternal salvation. It doesn’t seem fair to us as human beings… but… yes, indeed, a guy like Dahmer can be saved. It’s pretty amazing, but it’s what we believe.” – Jim Jewel, senior vice president with Prison Fellowship Ministries in Reston, Va., quoted in the Toledo Blade, Nov. 30, 1994

“Asked whether Dahmer, who was killed Monday in a prison bathroom, deserves to go to heaven, Mr. Ratcliff [Dahmer's minister] said, ‘No one deserves to go to heaven. It’s not a question of deserving it. If you think you get there by deserving it, you don’t understand that at all. All of us deserve hell. All sins are an offense to God. In a very true sense, of course he does not deserve [heaven], but then neither do you or I.’” – From the same article

I highly suspect that anyone who can look at this and see a wondrous absolute morality at work can also look into a dark well at midnight and see a blazing noontime sun….