I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (28 page)

An honest look at the facts suggests creation, not macroevolution, is true. As we have seen, atheists have to work really hard not to conclude the obvious.
That’s why they need to have a lot more faith than
we do.

Finally, we have a proposal to help resolve the debate in this country over what should be taught in the public schools regarding creation and evolution. What would be wrong with teaching them what we’ve just covered in chapters 3 to 6? Notice we haven’t been quoting Bible verses to make our points. We’ve been citing scientific evidence. So this isn’t a battle of science versus religion; it’s a battle of
good
science versus
bad
science. Right now, most of our children are being taught bad science because they’re being taught evolution only. It doesn’t have to be that way. What would be unconstitutional about teaching the SURGE evidence, showing them the complexity of the simplest life, making the distinctions between micro- and macroevolution and between forensic and empirical science, or exposing the problems with macroevolution? Nothing. So why do we continue to indoctrinate our children in a flawed and crumbling theory that is based more on philosophical presuppositions than on scientific observations? Why don’t we give our children all the scientific evidence—pro and con—and let them make up their own minds? After all, shouldn’t we be teaching them how to think critically on their own? Of course we should. But Darwinists will go to great lengths to ensure that that doesn’t happen. Darwinists would rather suppress the evidence than allow it to be presented fairly. Why? Because this is the one area where Darwinists lack faith—
they lack the faith to believe that their theory will still be
believed after our children see all the evidence.

7

Mother Teresa
vs. Hitler

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

—THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

I
S
T
HERE A
S
TANDARD
?

My friend Dave and I were just finishing dinner at a dockside restaurant in Portland, Maine, when the conversation turned to religion. “I don’t think one religion can be exclusively true,” Dave said. “But it seems like you, Frank, have found a center. You have found something that’s true for you, and I think that’s great.”

Playing along with his premise that something can be true for one person but not another, I asked, “Dave, what’s true for you? What makes life meaningful for you?”

He said, “Making money and helping people!” Now Dave is a very successful businessman, so I pressed him a little bit more.

I said, “Dave, I know CEOs who have reached the pinnacle of business success. They’ve planned and achieved great things in their business life, but have planned nothing and achieved little in their personal lives. They’re now facing retirement, and they’re asking themselves, ‘Now what?’”

Dave agreed and added, “Yeah, and I know that most of those CEOs have experienced nasty divorces, mostly because they ignored their families in pursuit of a buck. But I’m not like that. I will not sac rifice my family for money, and in my business I want to help people as well.”

I commended him for his commitment to his family and his desire to help people, but questions still remained. Why should we be faithful to our families? Who said we should “help people?” Is “helping people” a universal moral obligation, or is it just true for you but not for me? And to what end should you help them: Financially? Emotionally? Physically? Spiritually?

I said, “Dave, if there’s no objective standard, then life is nothing but a glorified Monopoly game. You can acquire lots of money and lots of property, but when the game is over, it’s all going back in the box. Is that what life is all about?”

Uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, Dave quickly changed the subject. But his sense that he ought to “help people” was correct; he just had no way of justifying it. Why did he think he should “help people”? Where did he get such an idea? And why do you and I, deep down, agree with him?

Stop and marinate on that point for a minute: Aren’t you just like Dave? Don’t you have this deep-seated sense of obligation that we all ought to “help people”? We all do. Why? And why do most human beings seem to have that same intuitive sense that they ought to do good and shun evil?

Behind the answers to those questions is more evidence for the theistic God. This evidence is not scientific—that’s what we’ve seen in previous chapters—but moral in nature. Like the laws of logic and mathematics, this evidence is nonmaterial but it’s just as real. The reason we believe we ought to do good rather than evil—the reason we, like Dave, believe we should “help people”—is because there’s a Moral Law that has been written on our hearts. In other words, there is a “prescription” to do good that has been given to all of humanity.

Some call this moral prescription “conscience”; others call it “Natural Law”; still others (like our Founding Fathers) refer to it as “Nature’s Law.” We refer to it as “The Moral Law.” But whatever you call it, the fact that a moral standard has been prescribed on the minds of all human beings points to a Moral Law Prescriber. Every prescription has a prescriber. The Moral Law is no different. Someone must have given us these moral obligations.

This Moral Law is our third argument for the existence of a theistic God (after the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments). It goes like this:

1. Every law has a law giver.

2. There is a Moral Law.

3. Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver.

If the first and second premises are true, then the conclusion necessarily follows. Of course, every law has a law giver. There can be no legislation unless there’s a legislature. Moreover, if there are moral obligations, there must be someone to be obligated to.

But is it really true that there is a Moral Law? Our Founding Fathers thought so. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “Nature’s Law” is “self-evident.” You don’t use reason to discover it, you just know it. Perhaps that’s why my friend Dave hit a roadblock in his thinking. He knew “helping people” was the right thing to do, but he couldn’t explain why without appealing to a standard outside himself. Without an objective standard of meaning and morality, then life is meaningless and there’s nothing absolutely right or wrong. Everything is merely a matter of opinion.

When we say the Moral Law exists, we mean that all people are impressed with a fundamental sense of right and wrong. Everyone knows, for example, that love is superior to hate and that courage is better than cowardice. University of Texas at Austin professor J. Budziszewski writes, “Everyone knows certain principles. There is no land where murder is virtue and gratitude vice.”
¹
C. S. Lewis, who has written profoundly on this topic in his classic work
Mere Christianity,
put it this way: “Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.”
²

In other words, everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations. An absolute moral obligation is something that is binding on all people, at all times, in all places. And an absolute Moral Law implies an absolute Moral Law Giver.

Now this does
not
mean that every moral issue has easily recognizable answers or that some people don’t deny that absolute morality exists. There are difficult problems in morality, and people suppress and deny the Moral Law every day. It simply means that there are basic principles of right and wrong that everyone knows, whether they will admit them or not. Budziszewski calls this basic knowledge of right and wrong “what we can’t
not
know,” in his book by that title.
³

We can’t not know, for example, that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings for no reason. Some people may deny it and commit murder anyway, but deep in their hearts they know murder is wrong. Even serial killers
know
murder is wrong—they just may not
feel
remorse.
⁴
And like all absolute moral laws, murder is wrong for everyone, every-where: in America, India, Zimbabwe, and in every other country, now and forever. That’s what the Moral Law tells every human heart.

H
OW
D
O
W
E
K
NOW THE
M
ORAL
L
AW
E
XISTS
?

There are many reasons we know the Moral Law exists, and we will present and discuss eight of them. Some of these reasons overlap one another, but we will discuss them in this order:

1. The Moral Law is undeniable.

2. We know it by our reactions.

3. It is the basis of human rights.

4. It is the unchanging standard of justice.

5. It defines a real difference between moral positions (e.g., Mother Teresa vs. Hitler).

6. Since we know what’s absolutely wrong, there must be an absolute standard of rightness.

7. The Moral Law is the grounds for political and social dissent.

8. If there were no Moral Law, then we wouldn’t make excuses for violating it.

1. The Moral Law Is Undeniable—
Relativists usually make two primary truth claims: 1) there is no absolute truth; and 2) there are no absolute moral values. The Road Runner tactic will help you defuse their first claim: if there really is no absolute truth, then their absolute claim that “there is no absolute truth” can’t be true. You can see that the relativist’s statement is irrational because it affirms exactly what he’s trying to deny.

Even Joseph Fletcher, the father of modern situation ethics, fell into this trap. In his book
Situation Ethics,
Fletcher insisted that “the situa-tionist avoids words like ‘never’ and ‘perfect’ and ‘always’ . . . as he avoids the plague, as he avoids ‘absolutely.’”
⁵
Of course, this is tantamount to claiming that “One should never say ‘never,’” or “We should always avoid using the word ‘always.’” But those very statements do not avoid what they say we must avoid. Relativists are
absolutely
sure that there are no absolutes.

Like absolute truth, absolute values are also undeniable. While the claim “There are no absolute values” is not self-defeating, the existence of absolute values is practically undeniable. For the person who denies all values, values his right to deny them. Further, he wants everyone to value him as a person, even while he denies that there are values for all persons. This was illustrated clearly a number of years ago when I (Norm) was speaking to a group of affluent, well-educated Chicago suburbanites. After I suggested there are such things as objective moral values to which we all have an obligation, one lady stood and protested loudly, “There are no real values. It’s all a matter of taste or opinion!” I resisted the temptation to make my point by shouting, “Sit down and shut up, you egghead. Who wants to hear your opinion?!” Of course, if I had been so rude and discourteous, she would have rightly complained that I had violated her right to her opinion and her right to express it. To which I could have replied, “You have no such right—you just told me such rights don’t exist!”

Her complaint would have proved that she actually did believe in a real absolute value—she valued her right to say that there are no absolute values. In other words, even those who deny all
values
nevertheless
value
their right to make that denial. And therein lies the inconsistency. Moral values are practically undeniable.

2. Our Reactions Help Us Discover the Moral Law (Right from
Wrong)—
In the above scenario, the lady’s reaction would have reminded her that there are absolute moral values. A professor at a major university in Indiana gave one of his relativistic students the same experience not long ago. The professor, who was teaching a class in ethics, assigned a term paper to his students. He told the students to write on any ethical topic of their choice, requiring each student only to properly back up his or her thesis with reasons and documentation.

One student, an atheist, wrote eloquently on the topic of moral relativism. He argued, “All morals are relative; there is no absolute stan dard of justice or rightness; it’s all a matter of opinion; you like chocolate, I like vanilla,” and so on. His paper provided both his reasons and his documentation. It was the right length, on time, and stylishly presented in a handsome blue folder.

After the professor read the entire paper, he wrote on the front cover, “F, I don’t like blue folders!” When the student got the paper back he was enraged. He stormed into the professor’s office and protested, “‘F! I don’t like blue folders!’ That’s not fair! That’s not right! That’s not just! You didn’t grade the paper on its merits!”

Raising his hand to quiet the bombastic student, the professor calmly retorted, “Wait a minute. Hold on. I read a lot of papers. Let me see . . . wasn’t your paper the one that said there is no such thing as fairness, rightness, and justice?”

“Yes,” the student answered.

“Then what’s this you say about me not being
fair, right,
and
just?”
the professor asked. “Didn’t your paper argue that it’s all a matter of taste? You like chocolate, I like vanilla?”

The student replied, “Yes, that’s my view.”

“Fine, then,” the professor responded. “I don’t like blue. You get an F!”

Suddenly the lightbulb went on in the student’s head. He realized he really
did
believe in moral absolutes. He at least believed in justice. After all, he was charging his professor with
injustice
for giving him an F simply because of the color of the folder. That simple fact defeated his entire case for relativism.