If you need a law to be good, you must be wicked

I remember an argument along the following lines:

“I don’t need a god to tell me what’s right and wrong.”

“Just how immoral must you [the ethical theist] be? So if God didn’t command you, you would just go out doing all these bad things? Have you no self-control? You have to have a god control you? How pathetic!”

The God-rejector, sitting atop that typical throne of moral superiority, letting the ethical theist know how much more better he or she is. You could just bask in the glory and splendour of his righteousness.

But as the book of Proverbs warns us, you should not respond to a fool according to his foolishness so that you don’t end up like him. Instead, if you feel like it, answer him so that he doesn’t seem wise (Mishlei [Proverbs] 26:4-5).

Now the way I deal with this will seem like I’m beating a dead horse, having spoken about the abyss which is atheism in similar ways, but, hey, … what else are dead horses for, except to be beaten?

Don’t answer that!

Anyway …

I choose not to simply respond to such criticisms but to look at what they rest upon, their presuppositions. If there is a good foundation for an argument or complaint, then it’s worth time and investigation. But if there is no such foundation, then it has as much sense as the babblings of a rabid babboon.

The issue here is right and wrong, good and bad. The God-rejector thinks it irrational, silly, stupid for a person to base their standard of right and wrong, moral good and moral evil, on what “a god” commands or says. Before the ethical theist even takes that challenge on board, it is necessary to know the standard of the God-rejector uses to measure morality.

So in a world of no volitional universal creator, no Judge above all – let’s pretend that’s possible – what is morality and who decides and how? That’s the crux of the issue. What is morally right? No, what is the basis of such an idea? The outpouring of the chemical reactions from a deluded, unintelligently-evolved (in other words, stupidly made), slightly removed from simian animal? The brain of just another dude? Without that Objective Standard, just what right does anyone have to deciding right and wrong for anybody? Yes, we’re back to meaningless subjectivity.

A rock is eroded by the weather so that it crumbles and falls on another rock. Just something bouncing off something else. The rock smashed a bug, or crushes a bird. Just something bouncing off something else. The wind blows and then it dies down. So what? A woman smashes a hammer through the skull of a child, just something going through something else, life comes and goes, and it always goes. So what? The child would have died anyway sooner or later, just as everything comes and goes. The struggle for survival in an indifferent universe when the fate is just death, one way or another.

What basis does a person have for morality without an objective standard? Don’t go pointing to some manmade law, because all you would have done is shifted the argument from one god controlling and dictating right and wrong to another god (the people who made the laws).

In order for the atheistic argument to have any meaning, there must be a standard for “right” or else we’re talking about nothing more than individual tastes, which is no more a basis for morality than the colour of the sky.

The point is that, without any introspection required on the part of the ethical theist, the question is meaningless. The arguments become as follows:

“I don’t need a god to tell me about things that have no basis in my worldview..”

But since they have no basis there, what the hell are you talking about?

“Just how different must you be? So if God didn’t command you, you would just go out doing all these different things that I may not like, but it’s all up to anyone anyway? Have you no self-control, even though there’s no objective reason to have any? You have to have a god tell you to do something different to my personal tastes? How pathetic!”

The argumentation itself becomes pathetic. Why is the atheist complaining about something different when differences are everywhere? What is wrong with being control when “wrong” is up to the brain producing it? It’s all just empty nonsense. The foolishness of the fool needs no answer, just a deconstruction. The house had no foundation so it wasn’t worth anything.

It goes back to the point that there is little of substance to argue about with such people until they accept the Basis. Until then, it’s just a person shouting at the wind.