e In his polemic against religion and God Himself entitled God is not Great, the late
Christopher Hitchens asserts that religion does not make people or the world
better. Regarding the late Pope John Paul II’s apologies for different wrongs
inflicted by or supported by the Roman Catholic Church in the past, Hitchens
concludes, “This seemed to say that the church had mainly been wrong and often
criminal in the past, but was now purged of its sin by confession and quite ready
to be infallible all over again.”[1] What Hitchens is protesting here is the
acknowledgment of wrongdoing while still being able to claim a moral code and a
salvation to be gained through the right and true belief in Christ and objective
moral values and duties. The question which must be asked of those claiming a
moral standard is the basis for such benchmarks and boundaries of goodness
and evil. How is one to judge what is right and wrong? What is the measure? And
how does one know the difference between the two?
e e e e e e e e e e McQuilkin and Copan explain, “Many secularists appeal to Kant as
offering an ethical system that can do just fine without appealing to God.”[2] Many
secularists would claim to be able to decipher a moral code that would, in their
estimation, lead to the greater level of “human flourishing,” as the reasoning is
often termed as. The strongest argument for objective morality is that, without the
objective standard, morality is reduced to simply opinion, conjecture, and
pragmatism. McQuilkin and Copan point this out when they ask the secularist,
“Finally, if humans have duties or “oughts,” where did these come from in a
universe of electrons and self-replicating genes? How do we move from “is” to
“ought”?”[3]
e e e e e e e e e e Even the definition of human flourishing can and will vary from person to
person, culture to culture, and epoch to epoch. What I believe helps me and mine
to flourish could be the extermination of another group. In such cases, who is
morally right and who is morally wrong? The secularist cannot answer that. The
correct answer is found only in the Creator. Morality flows from the character of
God, and is contingent upon His nature and existence. L. Russ Bush points out the
dependence of all things upon God by writing, “All parts of the world seem to be
contingent upon some other part or parts. None stands alone. Everything is
related to something else in such a way that it depends on that relationship. What
would the earth be without the sun? What would we be without the earth? And so
forth.”[4] The idea of right and wrong is borne by the Creator and flow out from
Him. Without Him, humanity would be unable to know the difference and be able
to make a decision one way or the other. In order to be moral agents, there must
be a moral, personal, and intelligent Progenitor.
Word Count: 562
[1] Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great (New York: Twelve, 2007). 193.
[2] Robertson McQuilkin and Paul Copan, Introduction to Biblical Ethics: Walking in
the Way of Wisdom, 3rd edition (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014). 179.
[3] Robertson McQuilkin and Paul Copan, Introduction to Biblical Ethics: Walking in
the Way of Wisdom, 3rd edition (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014). 181.
