![\"Calgary](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2019\/07\/800px-Calgary_skyline_cloudy_2004-08-30.jpg\")
<\/a>The city has grown considerably since this photograph was taken in 2004.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I originally published this column in the Deseret News<\/em> on 13 March 2014:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m an atheist,\u201d the late actress Katherine Hepburn once told an interviewer, \u201cand that\u2019s it. I believe there\u2019s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for each other.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Plainly, atheists can be, and often are, good people. It\u2019s wonderful that Katherine Hepburn knew those things. I believe that she did know them; I hope that she acted accordingly. But how did she know them? It\u2019s one thing to believe in moral principles; it\u2019s quite another to be able to justify them, to give an account of their source. And this seems to me a particular problem for atheists.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMorality,\u201d writes the evolutionary atheist philosopher Michael Ruse, \u201cor more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God\u2019s will \u2014 or in the metaphysical roots of evolution or any other part of the framework of the Universe. In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Ethics is produced by evolution but is not justified by it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Once I\u2019ve recognized that morality is an illusion, though, why should I feel bound by it \u2014 especially when I can safely ignore it?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe are survival machines,\u201d says the British biologist and vocal \u201cNew Atheist\u201d Richard Dawkins, nothing more than \u201crobot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat natural selection favors,\u201d writes Dawkins, \u201cis rules of thumb, which work in practice to promote the genes that built them. Rules of thumb, by their nature, sometimes misfire. In a bird\u2019s brain, the rule \u2018Look after small squawking things in your nest, and drop food into their red gapes,\u2019 typically has the effect of preserving the genes that built the rule, because the squawking, gaping objects in an adult bird\u2019s nest are normally its own offspring. The rule misfires if another baby bird somehow gets into the nest, a circumstance that is positively engineered by cuckoos. Could it be that our Good Samaritan urges are misfiring, analogous to the misfiring of a reed warbler\u2019s parental instincts when it works itself to the bone for a young cuckoo? An even closer analogy is the human urge to adopt a child.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But does adoption \u2014 or contributing to relief for unrelated poor people in distant countries, or risking one\u2019s life to save a stranger \u2014 really represent mere evolutionary error?<\/span><\/p>\n To his credit, Dawkins himself recoils from the idea. He calls such acts \u201cprecious mistakes.\u201d But why are they \u201cprecious\u201d? What does that mean beyond the mere fact that he likes them, as he might like broccoli or the Beach Boys?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe universe that we observe,\u201d he\u2019s also written, \u201chas precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n On what objective grounds, if any, can someone holding this view say that failure to help a child or fight Third World hunger is \u201cwrong\u201d? On what basis, even, can such a person condemn murder, rape or child abuse? If somebody else endorses them, on what basis can a Dawkins disagree? The Nazis regarded killing Jews and Gypsies and enslaving Slavs as good things. Are these only matters of opinion?<\/span><\/p>\n Another way of looking at them involves what members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> call \u201cthe light of Christ,\u201d something given to every human. It provides both basic moral intuitions and, ultimately, the grounds for holding all of us morally accountable. As the apostle Paul wrote, \u201cGentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law \u2026 which shew the work of the law written in their hearts\u201d (Romans 2:14-15<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n A simple argument can be formulated this way:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. If there is no God, objective morality and moral obligations don\u2019t exist.<\/span><\/p>\n 2. But objective morality and moral obligations do exist.<\/span><\/p>\n 3. Therefore, God exists.<\/span><\/p>\n The logic of the argument is valid, and I suspect that most people intuitively believe both of the premises. If they are granted, the conclusion follows.<\/span><\/p>\n Note: This column was inspired and influenced by essays by William Lane Craig and Chad Meister in William Lane Craig and Chad Meister, eds., \u201cGod is Great, God is Good\u201d (Downers Grove, IL, 2009).<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 I originally published this column in the Deseret News on 13 March 2014: \u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m an atheist,\u201d the late actress Katherine Hepburn once told an interviewer, \u201cand that\u2019s it. I believe there\u2019s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for each other.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n