C. S. Lewis, poet, novelist, apologist, and author, was at one point in his life much like many of those who fall into the category of Atheist in our time. He was anything but civil in his views of Christianity and made a point to mock and belittle Christians any time the opportunity presented itself. In his search for understanding he eventually realized that Christianity was the only worldview that made any sense (corresponded with reality) and gave any meaning or order (comprehensive worldview) to life.
As many of you have heard me say or read, it was morality that seemed to drive the nail in the coffin of Materialism (the idea that reality is only made up of material objects – no room for anything immaterial, such as a soul, laws of logic or mathematics, etc.). The Materialistic or Naturalistic (I’ll use these interchangeably within this discussion) perspective, the perspective held by orthodox Atheists, leaves no room for moral judgements either.
As author and apologist Ravi Zacharias puts it, “Natualism does not give you an ought.” What I mean by that is that this perspective of reality will never give you the ability to make moral judgements. You cannot, if you hold to this perspective, make a differentiation between what is good and what is not good. You can’t examine morality within a laboratory. If we are merely animals with chemical reactions telling us what to do, then no moral law exists – we’re merely animals, or as Richard Dawkins put it, “DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.” C. S. Lewis puts it this way in De Futilitate, “In a word, unless we allow ultimate reality to be moral, we cannot morally condemn it.”
How does this translate into our lives?
Well, if morality doesn’t exist, then we cannot condemn Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot for their atrocities against humanity. If Naturalism is true, then these men were merely exercising their Darwinistic right as the stronger animal. In a world where morality doesn’t exist, might makes right. He that has the biggest weapon rules and can make up his own morality as he goes. In fact, if Naturalism is true, then we ought to applaud these men for exercising their dominance because it will only further the evolution of a stronger human species, right?
Just to bring this a little closer to home. If Naturalism is true, then any person has the right to kill you or anyone else or even take your wife and reproduce with her if he is the stronger animal.
Now, any thinking person will see that to take this perspective is absolutely ludicrous. Even Atheists attempt, unsuccessfully, to claim a kind of morality, but why? They do so because they, even if they will not acknowledge it, are “made in the image of God” and the “law is written on their hearts” – they are, as all people are, hard-wired by God to make moral judgements. They know morality to be objectively true, but attempt to give a reason for it from their point of view, which crumbles underneath a close examination of its logical consistency. It simply just can’t hold up within their worldview.
Can Atheists be moral? Absolutely! In fact, I know of many Atheists whose morals are far better than many Christians that I know. Many of them that I’ve had the pleasure to talk with have reacted to being burned by those in the Church or have observed hypocrisy among Christians. They know that people ought to be moral, so they make a sincere effort to be morally superior to those they’ve encountered, which begs the question, why are they trying to be moral at all if morals don’t exist within the Atheistic framework?
Question: Why do you think people ought to be moral? Do you believe that morality exists?