August 2019

Atheist: Objective morality can be arrived at with reason alone and we should all be obligated to live by it. Right is simply what makes the most people happy.

Response: I am not sure you understand the implications of your assertions. Given your worldview you have no reason to believe in a moral imperative that is true for everyone. Who decides? And to whom is everyone accountable? And by what standard? In an accidental universe, whatever happens, just happens. Chemical reactions simply follow the law of physics.

To claim that morality is OBJECTIVE is like saying that they are like the laws of logic, which are true for everyone, regardless of where they were born and what culture they were brought up in. The law of non-contradiction, for example, is true regardless of whether you were born in Mexico or Indonesia. And, as you know, these abstract and immaterial laws of logic do not change with time and are always true without exception. Is that what you mean by objective morality? And what is to prevent your neighbor from creating a different morality than you? Why should your view be the accepted view?

In an accidental universe why would there be universal standards? Therefore it is quite plain that morality could never be objective in a strictly atheistic material universe. To claim something like right is something that makes the most people happy is to make an arbitrary assertion. Why should people be obligated to follow THAT particular preference? And even if they did, they might have a different definition of happiness. And how could one chemical reaction be morally obligated to another? If we are merely the reaction of chemistry over time why does anyone deserve respect?

What do Christians mean when they say that people need to be "saved"?

Do we mean that people need to just modify their behavior and obey God's law? It would be great if it were that simple, but that is not what we mean. 

It means, rather, that human beings are prisoners, captives and slaves to their idols, to their own lusts, to the world system and to the devil. That we cannot extract ourselves from these things because, like those who have Stockholm syndrome, we have fallen in love with our captors, i.e. we love those things which are doing us the most harm. And while we all vaguely recognize that something is not right in the world and with the nature of human beings, we tend to shrug this off, suppress and ignore it, and willingly come under the illusion that we live in freedom. We cling to the falsehood of human progress and and think human ingenuity will somehow deliver us from ourselves and our problems. 

We pridefully hold to the false idea that we are something and can do something to make things right. But in the end we cannot extract ourselves from our captivity. No wisdom, no plan, no power, no understanding, and no technology can do so. The problem runs far too deep in us for that. Like the Hebrews in Egypt we are slaves needing rescue from our captivity. The tyranny of our idols and lusts are too powerful for nature to conquer. We need redemption from the outside. 

So salvation is not behavior modification. No. We are too entangled in the web of our own making to get out. We first need supernatural intervention by One like us who breaks the bonds and leads us out of slavery. Then, and only then, after being freed from our captors are we free to do right, to love mercy and do justly and to walk humbly with our God.

by Thomas Boston

Observe the providence of God in the dispensations of it, about the man Christ, the most noble and august object of it, more valuable than a thousand worlds. Did not Providence keep this course with Him, first humbling Him, then exalting Him, and lifting Him up? First bringing Him to the dust of death, in a course of sufferings thirty-three years, then exalting Him to the Father's right hand in an eternity of glory? "Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the throne of God. " "And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him." The exaltation could not fail to follow His humiliation. "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?" And He saw and believed it would follow, as the springing of the seed does the sowing it. There is a near concern the humbled in humbling circumstances have here.