Good vs. Evil

I just wanted to take a quick break from the resurrection to drop a truth bomb on anyone who cares to read my blog.  One reason I came to believe in God is the question of "Good and Evil" or "Right and Wrong. The question is simple.  What is the difference between good and evil? How do we know which things are right, and which are wrong?

Consider this  the next time you look at a situation and say "That’s not right." or "That man is a good person". What are you basing that determination on? What is good? What is Evil? Honestly, it is really hard to define when someone asks you, but you know the answer intuitively when you are presented with a situation to judge.

The dictionary provides vague definitions that don’t really mean much of anything.

Bad:

1. not good in any manner or degree.

2. having a wicked or evil character; morally reprehensible:

Right. So you're saying that bad..... is not good? Okay fine, lets try to define good.

Good:

1. morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious

Thanks for the help dictionary.com. So like I said, it is hard to define, but we know it when we see it. Or do we?

It is my thesis (and many others) that there is no such thing as right and wrong, if God does not exist.

Notice what I did not say. I DID NOT say that you have to believe in God in order to do good things. Quite the contrary. Many atheists do good things every day. What I AM saying is that the whole concept of good and evil is an illusion and is not real, if there is no God.

If you take an atheist worldview then you are also forced to take the view that right and wrong are simply constructs of our brains. Nothing is objectively wrong, it is only wrong to the person perceiving it to be wrong. The concept of wrong is just something that humans invented. Atheists, who don’t believe in anything but the natural world CANNOT rationally believe in objective good or evil.

But no one, not even the atheist, lives this way. Indeed, there is such a thing as right and wrong. Everyone knows this fact instinctively. For example, we all instinctively know that torturing a child for fun, is wrong.  You say - well Adam, that’s an extreme example, obviously that’s wrong, hardly anyone in the world would disagree with that. Well yeah, that’s kind of my point, but lets try something a little less obvious in today’s modern world.

It is objectively true that discriminating against someone based on race or gender is wrong, true or false? I would say that is true, as I am sure many of you would. Try going to Iran or any other nation under Sharia law and saying the same thing.  In Iran, millions of people agree that women should not have the same rights as men. Are they wrong to believe this? Again, I say yes! Of course yes! But how do you explain this to them if right and wrong are just made-up constructs, and not real?

As a Christian theist I have a very good reason why they are wrong to believe this:

Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them"

In other words, God created both men AND women in his own image, and they have the same worth, because their worth is derived from the same place, namely, God.  Men have no more or less value than women and therefore women should not be discriminated against because of the fact that they are women.

How does an atheist explain to the Iranian law makers why discriminating against women is objectively wrong? I'm not sure how they can.  After all, we don’t get mad at adult male gorillas for killing any other male gorilla in their territory just for being male.   If humans are just animals, how much sense does it make to call a man who does this kind of thing "evil" or "wrong"?

The fact is that if we know some things are good/right and other things are bad/wrong, we need to also be able to determine where the idea of good and evil comes from.      This is called the axiological argument for the existence of God, and its one of my favorites.   Comments, challenges, suggested readings?