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<\/a>We held our quarterly Interpreter Foundation board meeting today \u2014 technically, it\u2019s our annual<\/em> board meeting (so, among many other things, we voted to continue our officers<\/a> as they had been constituted) \u2014 and our book committee met this afternoon. \u00a0There are, I\u2019m happy to report, some very good things on the horizon. \u00a0I\u2019m so grateful for all of those who contribute time and effort to make Interpreter work \u2014 notably including the members of our board \u2014 and for all of those who have provided the financial support that is indispensable to our efforts.<\/p>\n Last night, in preparation for today\u2019s meeting, I got a first look at the initial rough English version \u2014 it is also being produced, simultaneously, in French \u2014 of a half-hour segment of our Not by Bread Alone<\/em> film project<\/a>. \u00a0This particular portion of the project relates the story of Elder Willy Binene, who currently serves as a member of the Third Quorum of the Seventy, and of his wife, Sister Lilly Binene, and of the Church in Luputa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. \u00a0They have overcome many almost unimaginable adversities but have remained faithful. \u00a0It\u2019s an inspiring story.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been reading Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality<\/em>, by David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). \u00a0Here\u2019s a very early passage that I marked:<\/p>\n In 1979, . . . Yale law professor Arthur Allen Neff published an essay in the Duke Law Journal that probed the fragile foundations of postmodern morality. \u00a0He began his essay by identifying \u201ctwo contradictory impulses\u201d that he thought were present in most people. \u00a0On the one hand, we want to believe that there is a complete set of transcendent propositions that direct us how to live righteously, propositions that he characterizes as \u201cfindable\u201d because they exist objectively and independently of us. \u00a0On the other hand, we want to believe that there are no such rules, that we are completely free to decide and choose for ourselves what we ought to do and be. \u00a0\u201cWhat we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and perfectly free, that is, at the same time to discover the right and the good and to create it.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n Leff\u2019s article concludes on a memorable, if somewhat despairing note as he acknowledges the dismal prospects if we ourselves are all we have when it comes to morality. \u00a0His final lines are as follows:<\/p>\n As things now stand, everything is up for grabs. They provide an example:<\/p>\n Consider the analysis of sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, who contends that centuries of debate have left us with just two fundamental options with respect to morality: the \u201ctranscendentalist\u201d option and the \u201cempiricist\u201d option. \u00a0The former holds that moral principles exist outside human minds and are true independently of our experience, while the latter holds that they are the inventions of human minds, and can be explained in terms of biological and cultural evolution. \u00a0(3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The always interesting and worthwhile\u00a0Thomas V. Morris<\/a> wrote the foreword to the book. \u00a0Here\u2019s a paragraph from that foreword\u00a0that (in my judgment) lays the central issue out rather clearly:<\/p>\n To put the question as simply as possible: \u00a0What would be the objective, ontological nature of a moral principle, or moral standard, in a world where mind, soul, and personhood were completely reducible to materialistic entities \u2014 whether finally spelled out in the language of matter or physical energy? \u00a0It is difficult, if not just impossible, for these critics of theism to come up with an answer that seems any less \u201cstrange\u201d than the ultimate components of the philosophical worldview they are urging us so passionately to avoid. \u00a0But, notoriously, rejecting any objectively metaphysical basis for moral judgments reduces them to some form of \u201cI don\u2019t like it\u201d or \u201cMy peer group\/cultural context\/posse of fellow skeptics doesn\u2019t like it.\u201d \u00a0And this takes a considerable amount of the sting out of any moral outrage that\u2019s being shown, to put it mildly. \u00a0(x)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In closing, I leave you with five chilling reports of unashamed and \u00a0fiendish evil from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122:<\/p>\n \u201cChurch of Jesus Christ Donates Medical Supplies and Food to Victims of Tanker Explosion in Liberia: 89 killed and nearly 100 seriously wounded in Totota disaster\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cChurch Leaders Minister to Liberian Mayor Whose Son Died in Explosion:\u00a0Last month\u2019s gas tanker explosion killed 89 people and severely burned nearly 100 more\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWorld Food Programme and Church Leaders Meet Liberian Officials to Reduce Food Insecurity\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nNevertheless:
\nNapalming babies is bad.
\nStarving the poor is wicked.
\nBuying and selling each other is depraved.
\nThose who stood up to and died resisting Hitler, Stalin, Amin, and Pol Pot \u2013 and General Custer too \u2013 have earned salvation.
\nThose who acquiesced deserve to be damned.
\nThere is in the world such a thing as evil.
\n[All together now:] Sez who?
\nGod help us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/a>