What about morality? Is it inherent to mankind or subjective?

Shifting the focus more specifically to moral values, Murray notes that, just as most Secular Humanists believe in the intrinsic value of humans, most also believe in objective moral values and duties – and that no religious connection is necessary. Here is a representation of their views:

Bernard Williams, an English philosopher, stated that the secular “utilitarian outlook”—a popular ethical position wherein the morally right action is defined as that action which effects the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure for the greatest number of people—is “non-transcendental, and makes no appeal outside human life, in particular not to religious considerations. Williams also argued that, “Either one’s motives for following the moral word of God are moral motives, or they are not. If they are, then one is already equipped with moral motivations, and the introduction of God adds nothing extra. But if they are not moral motives, then they will be motives of such a kind that they cannot appropriately motivate morality at all … we reach the conclusion that any appeal to God in this connection either adds nothing at all, or it adds the wrong sort of thing. [My retort: Williams assumes that if man possesses moral motives, he got them without God. Second, he introduces an absurd option – that a person without moral motives would choose to follow the moral word of God, which is self-contradictory.]

Peter Singer, philosopher and professor of bioethics at Princeton, has said: “Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning of ‘good’ is nothing other than ‘what God approves’. Plato refuted a similar claim more than two thousand years ago by arguing that if the gods approve of some actions it must be because those actions are good, in which case it cannot be the gods’ approval that makes them good. The alternative view makes divine approval entirely arbitrary: if the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our neighbors, torture would have been good and helping our neighbors bad. Some modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture; but these theists are caught in a trap of their own making, for what can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved of by God?” [My retort: God is good means He is morally right and righteous. By definition, a good God will approve of those things which are good – He agrees that they are good – He is not making them to be good. The reason a theist would say that good is nothing other than what God approves is that, by definition, a good God would only approve of good things, and yes, God is self-aware. He approves of Himself because He is good.]

The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics states that religion and morality “are to be defined differently and have no definitional connections with each other. Conceptually and in principle, morality and a religious value system are two distinct kinds of value systems or action guides.”

Popular atheist author and Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens remarked on the program Uncommon Knowledge: “I think our knowledge of right and wrong is innate in us. Religion gets its morality from humans. We know that we can’t get along if we permit perjury, theft, murder, rape, all societies at all times, well before the advent of monarchies and certainly, have forbidden it… Socrates called his daemon, it was an inner voice that stopped him when he was trying to take advantage of someone… Why don’t we just assume that we do have some internal compass?”

An admission from some prominent atheists

But there is a growing number of Secular Humanists who believe there is no grounding for objective morality without a transcendent authority like God. Morality, if it exists, at any given point in time must therefore be that which is accepted by society, and is subjective – not absolute. In the words of Joel Marks, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New haven, “The long and short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality. Like many other atheists, he once believed that one “could be an atheist and still believe in morality.” But, he said, “I experienced my shocking epiphany that the religious fundamentalists are correct: without God, there is no morality. Thus, since he remains an atheist, he states, “Hence, I believe, there is no morality.”

In support of this view, Murray points out philosopher Michael Ruse’s belief that, if we are here by Darwinian evolution, morality is just an illusion that serves as a survival characteristic. Quoting Ruse, “Morality is a biological adaptation no less than hand and feet and teeth…Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction….and any deeper meaning is illusory. ”

Also, recall what Dawkins said above, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no, design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” No evil and no good imply no morality.

According to Murray, many “Secular Humanists have rallied behind the banner of reason to find the mooring for Morality.” He says, “The argument goes something like this; Through the use of our reason and sense of empathy, we can see that it is generally preferable to be happy rather than sad, comfortable rather than in pain, and alive rather than dead.; morality is just the set of guiding principles that allows us to maximize the greatest amount of happiness, comfort, and life for the greatest number of people. Through pure reason, unaided by divine revelation, we can know that rape is wrong, murder is wrong, and helping others good.”

But, Murray argues, “it is utterly unreasonable to believe this.” He agrees that we use reason to recognize these truths, but reason does not establish their truth. He uses the analogy of the eye and light – the eye lets us see the light, but the eye did not cause the light.

Those who support reason as the basis for morality would not disagree with this observation. But, they could simply say the source of morality was evolution, where our conscience “learned” it, and that morality aided man’s survival.

I would add that the last sentence of the “reason argument” above is inconsistent with the first sentence. The first sentence says it is through a combination of our reason and a sense of empathy that we can see, whereas, the last sentence states it is through pure reason. By adding “sense of empathy” we imply a conscience. It is like saying we have morality because of our conscience and we have a code of moral principles guiding us (our conscience) because morality exists. This is circular logic and adds nothing. It seems the “reason argument” should have left out the phrase “sense of empathy. Thus, it would say, “Through the use of our reason alone, we can see that it is generally preferable to be happy rather than sad, comfortable rather than in pain, and alive rather than dead.” Reason is based on fact or assumed fact. Here, it is from an atheistic assumption that chance evolution created humanity. Thus, using my definition of the reason argument, it says, assuming evolution is a fact, “It is reasonable that morality evolved in mankind if indeed it aided his survival.”

Can science provide an atheist’s answer for morality? According to science philosopher Ernest Nagel, humanity “is an episode between two oblivions.” Science’s best answer is that morality evolved in mankind because it improved his survivability. Morality is valuable because it is a tool that helps man survive and reproduce himself – propagation of the human DNA. It is not valuable in and of itself – again, it is valuable because it is a tool that helped mankind survive. Thus, by definition, it is not intrinsic but an extrinsic, subjective value – the same as humanity’s dignity and purpose – if one assumes there is no God.

Comparison to the Christian Gospel

While the atheist/secular humanist starts with the assumption that there is no God, Christianity starts with the staunch belief that God exists and is the one who created the universe and all life including mankind. No scientific fact or discovery has proven that God could not be the cause of the universe and our existence. As late as the latter half of the 20th century, scientists’ theory about the universe was that it had always existed- it had no beginning. Then new scientific evidence showed that to be untrue – that the universe did have a beginning they now term “the big bang.” The Bible begins with the words, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” From nothing, God created the universe, and you can imagine what a big bang that must have been.

Atheists challenge believers to prove the existence of God, but they accept only the present scientific method of proof, which allows only physical empirical evidence consistent with the laws of physics. But, at the moment of the big bang, they concur it started from a singularity – a physical phenomenon in space at which the laws of physics as we know them do not hold. Yet, they “believe in” the singularity without the same empirical evidence using the laws of physics they are demanding from theists. How would one prove God? Any one of the miracles Jesus performed would prove there is something, someone who has authority over nature – but by definition, the scientific method excludes miracles from consideration.

Scientists have also discovered that the laws of nature are extremely fine-tuned to support life. Scientists have calculated the odds of a universe so finely tuned coming to be are infinitesimally small. Their only explanation is a speculative theory that there must have been an infinite number of universes that have come and gone, and one finally came to be with the right laws to support life.

Despite science’s attempt to come up with a better answer, the best explanation for our existence, the one that coincides with all known facts of nature, is that we had a creator. That, of course, raises the question of where did God come from? The Bible again accurately defines the kind of being that the original creator must be. He must be a being that always was; he must not be a created being himself:

The World Designed for a Purpose

Is the universe so finely tuned to support life an accident? To be finely tuned implies a tuner or designer. Atheists deny that there was an intelligence behind it – they believe it all happened by chance and that life started from a primordial soup. But Murray notes that “the theory that DNA formed by random chance has all but been abandoned in academic circles because the probability of amino acids forming even a single protein by blind chance is less than 1 in 10 to the 125th power.” Murray also points out the statement from committed atheist Francis Crick where he admitted that “the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have been to have been satisfied to get it going.” The Christian view is that a more reasonable answer is that the world indeed had a designer, and he was God. And the evidence is that it was designed to support life. But not just animal and plant life. God didn’t stop until He created mankind.

One might ask, if God created the universe to support the existence of mankind, why the vast expanse of galaxies in a universe 27 billion light-years across? That doesn’t make sense for the existence of one small planet -earth. But, that is thinking small. God has to be outside the physical realm and must have unlimited power regarding the physical. With unlimited power, efficiency is no virtue or concern. I like to imagine God holding the entire universe in the palm of his hand – just to help me have perspective on his size and greatness. It is possible there could be other life out there, but the immense size of the universe does not require it. It could very well be true that He created it all for us. Certainly, He created the earth for us.

Mankind Created for a Purpose

That God designed and created the world for mankind is an indication of the worth man has in God’s eyes. One answer to the secular humanist’s Grand Central Question is that man has very high inherent value and worth to our Creator. Not for what we have done or what we could do but for who we are – a person. Further, the Bible describes God’s creation of us:

“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the [a]sky and over every living thing that [b]moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:27-28

“For You formed my [a]inward parts,

You wove me in my mother’s womb.

I will give thanks to You, for [b]I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Wonderful are Your works,

And my soul knows it very well.

My [c]frame was not hidden from You,

When I was made in secret,