Atheists Have No Basis for Morality

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Monday night at UNC Wilmington, despite no cooperation from the school (see my last post), just over 200 people showed up for part 1 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.  Several atheists asked questions– actually made statements– and struggled greatly when I asked them to offer some objective basis for morality from their atheistic worldview.   They kept trying to give tests for how we know something is moral rather than why something is moral.  One atheist said “not harming people” is the standard.  But why is harming people wrong if there is no God?  Another said, “happiness” is the basis for morality.  (After I asked him, “Happiness according to who, Mother Teresa or Hitler?,”  he said, “I need to think about this more,” and then sat down.)  This says nothing about the intelligence of these people– there just is no good answer to the question.   Without God there is no basis for objective morals.  It’s just Mother Teresa’s opinion against Hitler’s.

The atheists’ responses to the cosmological and design arguments– the arguments that show us that the universe exploded into being out of nothing and did so with amazing design and precision– were “we don’t know how that happened.”   This is simply an evasion of the evidence that clearly points to an eternal, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal and moral First Cause of the universe.   Since nature itself was created, this Cause must be beyond nature or “supernatural.”

We got plenty of encouraging comments from the believers who attended. And there will be a lot more written about this event when popular columnist Mike Adams posts his next column later this week.  Just to give you a preview: during the Q&A Mike, who was our host, asked all faculty members to stand up.  Only one person other than himself did.  Out of 400-500 professors at UNC Wilmington– a school where the faculty claims to be champions of “diversity”– only two show up to a talk about the most important subject anyone could discuss (God)? Adams will have a field day with this.  Track his columns on Townhall.com here.

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You can’t legislate religion, but you must legislate morality!

Here is a great column by my friend David Limbaugh in response to those who criticize people such as Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney for allegedly infusing their religious views into politics.  But, of course, Huckabee and Romney are not trying to legislate religion on anyone– they want to legislate morality which is what everyone in politics is trying to do (including political liberals).

Religion has to do with our duty to God, but morality has to do with our duty to one another.  No one wants to require by law when, where, how, or if you must worship.  That would be legislating religion.  But everyone in politics is trying to tell you how your ought to treat one another, and that’s legislating morality.

Even on abortion– the most divisive issue of the day– both sides want to legislate or impose morality.  The pro-life side wants to impose continued pregnancy on the mother.  But the pro-abortion side wants to impose death on the baby whenever abortion is chosen.  Both sides argue from moral positions (a right to life/a right to “choose”) and want to impose it via law.  When Hillary Clinton, for example, argues that a woman has a right to choose, she is arguing from a supposed moral position.  The problem for Hillary is that there should be no “right to choose” the death of another innocent human being. The right to life is the right to all other rights– if you don’t have life you don’t have anything.   What do you think Hillary would want the law to be if we could put her back into the womb?

The criticism of politicians like Huckabee and Romney could be answered if they would just distinguish between religion and morality.  Most moral principles are consistent with religious teachings, but that doesn’t prevent us from legislating them.  If you couldn’t legislate a moral value because it’s found in the Bible, then we couldn’t have laws against murder, rape and theft!  In fact, nearly every good law we have is in someway consistent with one of the Ten Commandments.

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