i 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?
i i i i i i i i i i 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]
i i i i i i i i i i 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.
