On Sat, 20 Dec 1997 12:28:59 -0500 (EST), Gordon Simons wrote:
GS>This concerns an extended dialogue between Steve Jones (Hi Steve. Nice to
>find you're posting again.) and Tom Pearson, later entered by Burgy (J.W.
>Burgeson).
Hi Gordie. Nice to be back in the bar room brawl! ;-)
GS>Steve's point (later refined a bit):
>
>SJ>>If I were convinced that there was no God, the logical thing for
>me to to do would be to screw everyone as much as I could (including
>lying, stealing and cheating), but all the while pretending to be a
>nice guy so they couldn't retaliate. That would maximise my
>advantage while minimising my disadvantage.<<
GS>Tom challenged this suggesting that Steve's position:
>
>TC>>makes a mockery both of orthodox Christianity and of ethics. It
>may resemble some sort of Moral Re-armament, but it shares nothing
>with the Gospel.<<
GS>Then Burgy, after disagreeing with some of Tom's more personal
>remarks, added:
>
>JB>>But you make a reasonable point...How is one to behave if he is
>a convinced atheist or agnostic...? Since I was one -- once --
>myself, I think I can speak to that situation. I did not behave as
>Stephen described -- but I did not behave either as a Christian
>ought to do. To the extent I avoided lying & cheating and all that
>stuff it was -- largely -- a pragmatic decision -- at one time I
>"cleverly" avoided the payment of sales tax to the State of Ohio and
>felt no particular guilt or remorse for so doing -- it was too easy
>to do and 0 chance of being caught! (Two years later, having become
>a Christian, I made restitution -- it was simply not possible to
>ignore! But that is another story!)
>SJ>I did not claim that atheists/agnostics are unethical. Just that
>their belief system gives them no reason to be. Your attitude in
>avoiding sales tax without guilt confirms my point. You were
>consistently living by the 11th commandment - "Thou shall not get
>caught"!
>JB>But, by and large, I behaved ethically, as I assume the above
>mentioned people do. For that seems to be the best (pragmatic) way
>to go through life. .... <<
GS>Now to my points, mostly questions:
>
>Q1: Does not the *true* paradigm matter? (Does not God's existence, or
>lack of existence, matter in this discussion?)
There is a brilliant lecture by Phil Johnson which I have on tape, called
at "The Modernist Impasse". Its available on the Internet at
http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/LIBRARY/JOHNSON/nihilism.html. In it Johnson
argues that the so-called death of God leads to moral relativism
and ultimately nihilism:
"Yale Law Professor, Arthur Leff, expressed the bewilderment of an
agnostic culture that yearns for enduring values in a brilliant lecture
delivered at Duke University in 1979, a few years before his untimely
death from cancer. The published lecture - titled, "Unspeakable
Ethics, Unnatural Law" - is frequently quoted in law review articles,
but it is little known outside the world of legal scholarship. It happens
to be one of the best statements of the modernist impasse that I
know. As Leff put it,
`I want to believe - and so do you - in a complete, transcendent, and
immanent set of propositions about right and wrong, findable rules
that authoritatively and unambiguously direct us how to live
righteously. I also want to believe - and so do you - in no such thing,
but rather that we are wholly free, not only to choose for ourselves,
individually and as a species, what we ought to be. What we want,
Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and perfectly
free, that is, at the same time to discover the right and the good to
create it.'
The heart of the problem, according to Leff, is that any normative
statement implies the existence of an authoritative evaluator. But with
God out of the picture, every human becomes a godlet - with as much
authority to set standards as any other godlet or combination of
godlets. For example, if a human moralists says "Thou shalt not
commit adultery", he invites the formal intellectual equivalent of what
is known in barrooms and schoolyards as 'the grand sez who?'
Persons who want to commit adultery, or who sympathise with those
who do, can offer the crushing rejoinder: What gives you the
authority to prescribe what is good for me? As Leff explained:
`Putting it that way makes clear that if we are looking for an
evaluation, we must actually be looking for an evaluator, some
machine for the generation of the judgements on states of affairs. If
the evaluation is to be beyond question, then the evaluator and its
evaluative processes must be similarly insulated. If it is to fulfil its
role, the evaluator must be the unjudged judge, the unruled legislator,
the premise maker who resets on no premises, the uncreated creator
of values ... we are never going to get anywhere (assuming for the
moment there is somewhere to go) in ethical or legal theory unless
we finally face the fact that, in the Psalmist's words, there is no one
like unto the Lord ... The so called death of God turns out not to
have been just His funeral; it also seems to have effected the total
elimination of any coherent or even more-than-momentarily
convincing, ethical or legal system dependent upon finally
authoritative, extrasystematic premises.' "
(Johnson P.E., "Nihilism and the End of Law", First Things, No. 31,
March 1993. http://id-
www.ucsb.edu/fscf/LIBRARY/JOHNSON/nihilism.html)
GS>Q2: Will it not affect the behavior of someone who is convinced
>that God does not exist?
Surely it must to some extent? "For as he thinketh in his heart, so
is he" (Pr 23:7 KJV). The Scriptures trace a real connection between
belief in God and moral behaviour (Ps 14:1; Rom 1:21-32). This does
not mean that any individual atheists is necessarily immoral, but the
*tendency*, is for atheism, over time to lead to moral decline. You
cheated on your tax when an atheist/agnostic, but made restitution
when you became a Christian. The real, objective existence of God
made a real, objective difference to your thinking and behaviour.
GS>Q3: Can one expect such a person to act by pure logic alone,
>independently of cultural norms, and independently of whether the
>Christian understandings are true or false?
No one acts by pure logic alone. My point was not that if I was an
atheist that I would necessarily lie, cheat and steal, but that it
would be *logical* for me to do so, providing I did not get caught.
Whether I would have the courage to consistently act on my
convictions is another matter.
GS>Q4: If Satan exists, and an atheist is prepared, in the main, to
>accept and act upon the ethical culture of a (formerly)
>Judeo-Christian society, can not Satan be perfectly content to leave
>him there?
I would have thought that Satan would never be content to leave some
good in the world - he would always try to make good bad, and bad
worse.
GS>It seems to me that if God and Satan exist, along the lines of
>Christian understands, then an atheist is not as free as he might
>think to act by logic alone. As a corollary, we make a mistake to
>assume that "abstract logic" has anything to do with the behavior of
>atheists.
See above. There seems to be a bit of confusion here. The fact that
it would be logical for an atheist to try to get the maximum advantage
for himself, by any means, just short of getting caught, does not
mean that atheists necessarily do it. God's common grace ensures
that the world does not become a complete hell-hole.
GS>Likewise if life is purely mechanistic, and perceived truth is an
>illusion (just a product of biological accidents), then, again,
>logical behavior is suspect. Still I see no reason to believe that
>the atheist's behavior would take the same form as under the
>previous paradigm.
In Wonderful Life Gould claims that we are the product of a long
series of accidents, therefore we are on our own to make up our own
values as we go along:
"And so, if you wish to ask the question of the ages-why do humans
exist?-a major part of the answer, touching those aspects of the issue
that science can treat at all, must be: because Pikaia survived the
Burgess decimation. This response does not cite a single law of
nature; it embodies no statement about predictable evolutionary
pathways, no calculation of probabilities based on general rules of
anatomy or ecology. The survival of Pikaia was a contingency of "just
history"...We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own
paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes-
one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximal
freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way." (Gould S.J.,
"Wonderful Life, 1991 reprint, p323).
GS>Finally, I note that there are animistic cultures, that know
>nothing of Christianity, for whom Steve's characterization is
>approximately correct in that lying and deceit are accepted as
>virtues.
OK. But one does not have to look to animistic cultures. Machiavelli
in 16th century so-called `Christian' Italy, taught that lying and
deceit were virtues of rulers!
Happy Christmas!
Steve
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