You can be good without God. So claims atheists even putting up posters and billboards to carry this message. But there is a big problem with this statement. I realized the error in this message when I read the book Why I Am A Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe. In the book, a former atheist J. Budziszewski, contributed a chapter with the title Why I Am Not An Atheist. Looking back on his former atheist days, he says atheists are intellectually dishonest. They dont choose to reject belief in God but rejects God himself. The quote above illustrate what he calls plausibility gambit. Let me quote his explanation To illustrate the first disadvantage, consider the plausibility gambit I mentioned earlier—affirming the moral law while denying God. One reason it does not bear close examination is because every law presupposes a lawgiver. How then can I affirm the moral law while denying God? Of course, sophisticated replies may be given to this question, for a good many contemporary moral thinkers regard morality as something other than real law. For instance, James Q. Wilson, author of the book The Moral Sense, makes it a central premise of his theory that morality is not about laws or rules but about “sentiments.” Yet over and over he slips back into the language of laws and rules— even to explain what he means by a “sentiment” in the first place. The atheist faces similar difficulties. Then he adds this Suppose I do use this gambit, and I deny morality (the very problem addressed in chapter 1 by Dr. Beckwith). Are my difficulties over? Far from it. My new position, that there is neither law nor lawgiver, is more self-consistent (and in that respect more plausible), but it is even farther from what everyone really knows (and in that respect less plausible). Not only that, but without either God or the moral law, my life is likely to become more and more disordered and, hence, more and more marked by pain. This too poses problems of plausibility, which prompt still more gambits, which produce still more problems. And so it goes. My atheistic life provides an example of this loss of control; eventually I denied not only God but the very distinction between good and evil. There lies the error from the opening quote. To assert we can be good, in the first place, is to recognize a standard or norm. But who sets the standard or norm? Who has the authority to impose on anyone else what is good? If we deny God, the ultimate authority and standard for goodness, how can anyone be good? Where will good come from? Is there such a thing as good on itself and does not attach itself to some authority or standard? His conclusion is well recognized and is the engine behind the thinking of atheism Not many people disbelieve in God and then begin to sin; most atheists adopt some favorite sin and then find reasons to disbelieve in God. He added this Not every atheist deceives himself about the same things, or as many things, or to the same degree as I deceived myself, yet there is no atheism without self-deception. This month one can read online an easy-to-read article that uses science and recent scientific knowledge to bolster the conviction that many former atheists have recognized - there is a God, after all. jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201501/how-life-began/
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 14:04:06 +0000
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