A reader writes:

I’ve been impressed with your argument that atheist materialists have no basis on which to ground their morality if they deny the transcendent. For example:

So where do we get this deep conviction that all are created equal? Not from empirical evidence but from a purely mystical doctrine found in the Judeo-Christian tradition and expressed in numerous ways: God is no respecter of persons. Man and woman–not just white men, not just white men and women, not just Jews, not just Christians, not just Americans–but man and woman are made in the image and likeness of God. It’s on this basis and this basis only that we based our belief.

How does that argument square (or does it square) with arguments that we can reach various moral truths through reason alone (i.e., that certain moral truths are written on our hearts as part of the natural law)? What prompted this question is the recent interesting article in the New York Times about Robert George , who is making a strong public push for the argument that same-sex marriage can be shown to be wrong as a matter of right reason and natural law.

I can think of at least a couple possible ways to reconcile the two views:

(1) the equality of men can be derived only from revelation, but other doctrines of morality are not (but that would tend to undermine the force of the argument that atheists have nothing on which to ground any morality )

(2) it is possible to reach the conclusion that all men are created equal through reason and without divine revelation, but today’s atheists take such an extreme materialist position that there’s no room even for reason to derive moral truths in their system (but that would suggest that human equality is not really derived from a purely mystical doctrine).

(3) reason and the natural law rely, at least at some level, on an acknowledgement of the transcendent, even if they don’t require acceptance of the specific revelation of Jesus Christ (but that would undermine George’s claim that reason alone is sufficient to support his moral claims).

I’m sure there are others, but I was interested in your views.

I suspect some combination of 2 and 3 is at work. There can be arguments made for human equality on the basis of pre-Christian pagan philosophy, much as some pagans could get as far as monotheism. But from a practical aspect, the only thing that ever gave the notion cultural legs and established it as a civilizational norm was Christianity. It made it *such* a norm that even atheist materialists took it for granted. On the continent, that started to change with notions of the Superman and social Darwinism. Given the success story that was Continental Racial Theory in the 20th century, it has been slower to catch on among the nations that had to fight Hitler. But its seeping in now with all deliberate speed and, as we jettison our Christian roots, we are losing our capacity to stop it. But what capacity we have come from our reverence for purely mystical dogmas inherited from Christendom and enshrined in purely mystical dogmatic statements like “We hold these truth to be self-evident: that all men are created equal”.

The problem with saying that “it is possible to reach the conclusion that all men are created equal through reason and without divine revelation” is the word “created”. Atheist materialism is absolutely committed to the denial of it and “creation” is emphatically a category of revelation, not reason. All we’re left with is empiricism. And, as guys like Steve Sailer are happy to point out, empiricism makes it clear that we are all unequal in terms of stuff you can weigh and measure. Sailer frequently get called a racist for noticing that different racial groups have different characteristics. But it’s no racist per se to notice that. It is only racist to conclude that differing characteristics mean differences in dignity. I don’t know enough about Sailer to know if he thinks that. But I do know that lots of people, untethered from the Christian tradition *do* think this, not the least of them being the members of minority groups who, also untethered from the Christian tradition, conclude that because their dignity lies in empirical measurements about test scores and not in the love of God, spend a lot of time trying to deny the test scores.

So yeah, in the end, I think reason and natural law, in normal human terms unafflicted by dogmatic materialism, rely in an unconscious way on an acknowledgement of the transcendent. I don’t know that this really undermines George’s argument particularly, since he appears to be simply working with the assumption of the average American that any argument about morality which does not invoke the Pope or the Bible is an argument from Pure Reason. Most people are too sane to *really* rely on Pure Reason in moral arguments, because they remain human and human reason relies on all sorts of pre-rational and faith-based commitments like “civilization is better than savagery” and “My son should not be sacrified and harvested for medical experimentation even if it would save a million people from death” and “I love my wife” and “There are some things I just will not do”. All of these things get thrown into the soup when natural law is discussed. And that goes for atheist materialists as well as everybody else. So I don’t think atheist materialists are immoral per se and I think Christian argument which insist they are to be foolish. I think they simply can’t account for their morality in a coherent way because they are borrowing (usually unconsciously) from the Transcendent God who wrote the law in their hearts. They are thieves, but more or less honest ones. And God is happy that they steal from him as much as they do. If anything, I suspect he would like them to keep stealing more and more from him till they awaken and realize they are borrowing constantly from a Source that cannot accounted for in their philosophy because you can’t derive Ought from the Materialist universe of Is. I also suspect that such an awakening to the source of natural law and natural reason is, paradoxically, a work of grace. Such a work of grace is not necessary in normal people, because normal jolly pagan people haven’t killed their awareness of the Transcendent by ruthlessly suppressing it with dogmatic materialism. But for those who have, something needs to be brought back to life.

Dunno if that helps. Thanks for an interesting question.