The Reason Rally has inspired me to write a new section on my blog. Every Tuesday I plan on looking at a common atheist argument and responding to it in a quick paragraph to show why it doesn’t work in the argument against Christianity or the belief in God. Atheists, especially the ones I met at the Reason Rally, use a lot of strong and angry rhetoric. Quite often it is just to score a rhetorical point, but can be easily refuted. These are not arguments for Christianity, these are just simple refutations of common arguments against Jesus or the belief in God.
Today’s post is inspired by a statement made by an atheist that I follow on Twitter, although I heard a lot of the same kind of statement at the Reason Rally. Judging from her blog page this atheist is quite intelligent and obviously a careful thinker. That being said, she still makes the common mistake of not fully understanding the Christian position on a subject, and thus attacking and knocking down a “biblical position”, that is not biblical at all.
The statement in question was offered via Twitter: “Questions to worry Christians. If you don't know right from wrong without the Bible, how do you know Satan didn’t write it.” The implication here is that Christians claim that one cannot know right from wrong without the Bible to explain it. If something is morally good or evil only because the Bible says it is, it would seem to be arbitrary. If it is arbitrary, then is good really good at all? The tweet also makes it clear that the author’s intention is “to worry Christians” and is hashtagged accordingly.
At the Reason Rally, I saw a similar point being echoed throughout the day as hundreds of people proudly displayed signs with the words “Good Without God!”. The implication being that religion’s claim is that you cannot do good things, unless you believe in God.
So do Christians have a reason to worry here? Have atheists identified a real problem with Christian philosophy?
Unfortunately for my new Twitter buddy and the “Good Without God” folks, the Bible does not teach that a person cannot know right from wrong without the Bible. The Bible, in fact, teaches the exact opposite of this. I am going to quote a verse from The Message, a Bible paraphrase written in easy to understand modern day language. This passage can be found in literal translations at Romans, Chapter 2, Verses 12-16.
“When outsiders who have never heard of God's law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God's law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God's yes and no, right and wrong.”
The more literal translations say that “…the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness.”
Biblical teaching clearly affirms the idea that you do not need the Bible to know right from wrong. Christians know right from wrong, Muslims know right from wrong and Atheists know right from wrong.
Now, it is worth mentioning that there may well be Christians out there teaching that you need the Bible to know right from wrong. This is not a position that can be defended biblically, therefore, those who teach this are in error on this point. But for anyone who has heard someone try to use this error to attempt to undermine the Bible’s truthfulness, do not be troubled. You are not stuck believing that good and evil are the arbitrary whims of a god who has given us a book as the only way to know the difference. This is not a Christian position, nor a position any of us should try to defend when talking with atheists.
I think your analysis really misstates the core argument of non-believers though, and turns it into a nit-picky argument about the authorship of the bible. The argument that we non-believers have regarding morality really isn't about the bible per se, it's about the reliance on a belief in a great supernatural whozits up in the sky as the basis for one's morality. And an objection to the contention that seems to follow from that belief: that those of us who don't believe in supernatural forces can't possibly be truly moral people, or have any real basis for our morality and moral actions.
ReplyDeleteI think you're missing the point. The point isn't that morality comes from our belief. It is that morality is built into all humans from the beginning, believers and non. You know what's right and wrong instinctively. You don't need to read the Bible or believe in God to know that it's wrong to murder babies, you just know. Whether or not you're a moral person has nothing to do with being a believer or not being a believer.
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