Dominican vs. New Atheists

I love it when Dominican common sense is brought to bear on goofy moral ledgerdemain from the New Atheists. Basic message: New Atheists live as though God exists anyway (while pretending he does not) and continually steal moral precepts from the theistic worldview, assuming their transcendent authority. That’s not intellectual coherence. That’s sleight of hand or extraordinary dim-wittedness.

Let’s hear again from Richard Rorty, who is a *real* atheist:

“Anybody who thinks that there are well-grounded theoretical answers to [the question “Why not be cruel?” … is still, in his heart, a theologian or a metaphysician. He believes in an order beyond time and change which both determines the point of human existence and establishes a hierarchy of responsibilities.”

Translation: an atheist moralist is not so much immoral as a thief: he’s cribbing from the supernaturalist moral tradition and is either unaware of it or in denial about it.

You can’t derive Ought from an impersonal materialist Is. You can only derive Ought from Him who is I AM.