8
Inconsistencies
Truth does not ask to be believed. It asks to be tested.
—Dan Barker, Godless1
It is our sincere hope that we have so accurately represented the atheist thus far that he might be able to say, “Yes, that is what I believe.” After all, we have tried to let the atheists speak for themselves. Here, where the discussion transitions into scrutiny, we take great reassurance in knowing atheists to be lovers of the rational. It is somewhat difficult to appreciate those who dismiss these sorts of questions as irrelevant. On the other hand, we admire those who extend the invitation to dialogue, those who recognize the importance of the questions. Atheists and Christians share the same playing field, as Sam Harris puts so well: “So let us be honest with ourselves: in the fullness of time, one side is really going to win this argument, and the other side is really going to lose.”2 What this levelness presupposes is that there exist shared rules that, when violated by either side, need to be reiterated. In this sort of dialogue, of course, the rules are those of rationality. We wish to crystallize our findings thus far by exposing two logical inconsistencies within atheism as it has presented itself.
Inconsistency 1: The Problem of Moral Evil versus the Problem of Divine Intervention
Recall the initial argument against the existence of God presented by the atheist. The atheist thinks God ought to fix the problem of moral evil. However, the atheist also values human autonomy, a value that helps us understand why the atheist rejects any interventions into the problem of moral evil that would threaten that autonomy. Thus, he ends up calling for freedom from submission and favor, death and faith, guilt and rules, punishment and pardon, hell and heaven. Recall the three categories of possible ways God could fix the problem of moral evil:
A (“All”)—Forcible prevention of all moral evil
B (“Bad”)—Forcible intervention into the most egregious cases of evil
C (“Conscience”)—Voluntary intervention at the mental/spiritual level
From their writings, we learn that when the atheists say God should fix the problem of moral evil, they are suggesting A- or B-level interventions, both of which limit human freedom considerably. Yet in calling for freedom from the ten interventions, they rebuke God for merely C-level interventions. Astonishingly, they reject C-level interventions as too smothering, yet because God does not impose A- or B-level interventions, they charge him with neglect.
The contradiction is more pronounced than merely requesting help and then demanding freedom. As we have already mentioned, the ten interventions from which the atheist desires freedom are precisely the means by which the Christian God fixes the problem of moral evil. In this section, we will make the connection unmistakable; that is, the interventions being rejected do, in fact, help to fix the problem of moral evil. Furthermore, we will read from atheists themselves that such methods are effective in fixing the problem of moral evil. The only reason they might not seem effective enough, in the eyes of atheists, is that they are uncompromising in leaving freedom intact, something the freethinker should appreciate. In short, we will find that the atheist demands God fix the problem of moral evil while at the same time demanding freedom from the very methods God would use to fix it. Before proceeding, however, note once again that these are God-in-the-Dock (GITD) arguments. It might be tempting to deride the kind of morality produced by the following methods as, for example, too compliant or prostrate. Such valuations are beside the point, for the morality of the Christian system as a whole is under attack. God’s existence, which is part of the system being attacked, makes such a worshipful morality not a vice but a virtue simply because there is, in fact, a Being worth worshiping.
Submission
First, the posture of submission so ridiculed by atheists yet so beloved to God is one of the very means by which God fixes the problem of moral evil. Humility before God not only pleases God but restores the sense of righteousness in people. Psalm 25:9 says of God, “He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.” Proverbs 8:13a says, “The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil.” James 4:7–8 connects submission with resistance to evil and purity of heart: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” Even Dan Barker links submission to obedience, though recoiling from obedience as if it were a loathsome thing:
One of the most damaging ideas in the Bible is the concept of Lord and Master. The loftiest biblical principles are obedience, submission and faith, rather than reason, intelligence and human values. Worshippers become humble servants of a dictator, expected to kneel before this king, lord, master, god—giving adoring praise and taking orders.3
However, would not reason compel us to celebrate that which attempts to fix the problem of moral evil?
Favor
Where the atheist sees the arrogance of the saved, the Bible sees the gratitude of the once arrogant. Though it is definitely possible for beloved children to become spoiled, one of God’s primary aims behind grace was moral transformation. And the Bible sets out at once to expose the shameful absurdity of any believer’s arrogance. Romans 2:4 says, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” In 1 Corinthians 15:10, Paul made clear what motivated him: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” Even the sardonic Christopher Hitchens links appreciating God’s special favor with furthering God’s work in the world:
Religion teaches people to be extremely self-centered and conceited. It assures them that god cares for them individually, and it claims that the cosmos was created with them specifically in mind. This explains the supercilious expression on the faces of those who practice religion ostentatiously: pray excuse my modesty and humility but I happen to be busy on an errand from God.4
Jesus too deflated religious errands that were calculated to bring attention to oneself (Matt. 6:1). Yet Jesus was against neither favor from God nor errands for God. On the contrary, Jesus joined the two. It is when he calls his followers “light of the world” that he then commissions them to “let your light shine before others,” not to be glorified, but “so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:14, 16).
Death
Was it really immoral of a reluctant God to permit death into his once-perfect world? Genesis 3:22–23a imagines what might have happened if he had not: “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—’ therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden.” “How vengeful!” it might be exclaimed. On the contrary, how merciful: that is, if God cares about morality. Death was God’s way of limiting the evil that had broken out. C. S. Lewis admits, “Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse—so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.”5 The inevitability of death has a sobering effect on one’s choices, as Hebrews 9:27 implies: “[J]ust as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” It certainly effected a repentance in the thief on the cross who went from mocking Jesus to correcting his fellow thief, as Luke 23:40–41 records: “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”
Even atheists recognize the possibility that serious concern about one’s death can effect a profound change in how one lives. Hitchens writes, “We are reconciled to living only once, except through our children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse.”6 In fact, immortality would encourage lazy living, something that death’s reality helps correct, says Barker: “We atheists believe in life before death. . . . What matters is that we are alive now. These living, breathing, hurting, singing, laughing bodies are worth something, for their own sake. Since there is no life after death . . . we have to make the most of it now, before it is too late.”7 In other words, death’s surety helps to fix the problem of moral evil.
Faith
As hideous as faith is said to be, it is doubtful that its role in remedying the problem of moral evil will soften the atheist much. Yet the atheist cannot fairly deny at least that positive characteristic. Hebrews 11 lists faithful ancients who, precisely because of their faith, performed acts of sacrifice (v. 4), obedience (v. 8), rescue (v. 23), and justice (v. 33). James 2:18b connects faith to good works for the Christian: “I will show you my faith by my works.” Though disapprovingly, Michel Onfray notes how inextricably faith in God is tied to obedience to God’s moral instruction: “It all began with that ancient lesson from Genesis: man is forbidden to seek awareness; he should be content to believe and obey. He must choose faith over knowledge, suppress all interest in science, and instead prize submission and obedience.”8 Though “great faith” can be synonymous with terrorist hijackings, it should be recalled that, biblically, those with the greatest faith are those with the most love (James 2:14–17; 1 John 3:23).
Guilt
Just as the imperiled body needs pain to wake it up to danger, the culpable person needs guilt. Hitchens makes this clear:
If I was suspected of raping a child, or torturing a child, or infecting a child with venereal disease, or selling a child into sexual or any other kind of slavery, I might consider committing suicide whether I was guilty or not. If I had actually committed the offense, I would welcome death in any form that it might take. This revulsion is innate in any healthy person, and does not need to be taught.9
But why is something as unpleasant as innate revulsion said to be healthy? It cannot be good for its own sake. As Barker asks, “What worse psychological damage could be done to children than to tell them that they basically are no good? What does this do to self-image?”10 Rather, this innate revulsion must be healthy because of something it accomplishes, but what? For one thing, acute guilt can prevent the guilty one from doing the action again. For another thing, it might compel him to do whatever he can do to make things right for those he hurt. Moreover, if the revulsion had been strong enough, it might have prevented the offense from taking place in the first place.
In other words, guilt helps remedy the problem of moral evil. After repentance comes righteousness. This concept was foundational to Jesus’s mission. He said in Mark 2:17, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” In other words, only those who recognize their sickness are able to be healed. Jesus could do nothing for the sins of smug saints, as his rebuke in John 9:41 makes clear: “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.” Adulterer and murderer King David experienced the transformative power of guilt, as he explains in Psalm 32:3, 5: “[W]hen I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. . . . I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” If you imagine how mangled a body would be without the sense of pain, then you get a picture of a soul without a sense of guilt.
Rules
It is almost laughable that a paragraph would be needed to show that having rules from God aids us in being more moral, but it is definitely conceivable that certain atheists might be cantankerous enough to dissent. Remember, however, because these are GITD arguments, the challenger must not insert unchristian assumptions, but must take everything into consideration as is. Thus, biblical sins such as idolatry, blasphemy, and such cannot be dismissed as victimless and thus illusory crimes. Even without this stipulation, however, atheists admit that at least some of the biblical rules help fix the problem of moral evil, even though these rules are supposedly superfluous to the truly good people who already knew them. Harris admits, “It is true, of course, that Jesus said some profound things about love and charity and forgiveness. The Golden Rule really is a wonderful moral precept.”11 God’s rules do help fix the problem of moral evil, whether against God or humans.
According to Deuteronomy 6:24–25, the aim of the law of Moses was to help fix the problem of moral evil: “And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us.” In fact, it seems the primary reason the commandments were so treasured is that they helped to fix the problem of moral evil. Psalm 119:11 says, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” Psalm 119:127–28 says, “Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold. Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right; I hate every false way.” Psalm 119:172 says, “My tongue will sing of your word, for all your commandments are right.”
Punishment
It might seem difficult to make a case that the judgments in the Bible help fix the problem of moral evil. After all, the problem passages often seem to record a punishment that goes one step further than the refiner’s fire so that the punished ends up burned to a crisp. However, there are two ways those sorts of judgments helped fix the problem of moral evil. First, they served as a future warning. “And he called out, ‘Yet forty days, and Ninevah shall be overthrown!’ And the people of Ninevah believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them” (Jonah 3:4–5). Christians are not exempt from such warnings, as in Colossians 3:5–7: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.”
The second way the punishments in the Bible help fix the problem of moral evil is as a past example. Referring to the Israelites who dropped dead in the wilderness on the way to the promised land, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:6, “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” Likewise, recalling a plague in which twenty-three thousand people died, Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:11 says, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction.” Verse 12 applies all this: “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Those who take such judgments seriously can be expected to try to live more morally. Though he invalidly divorces the ethical endeavor from the motivation to please God, Barker basically agrees: “People who believe they are living under the thumb of such a vain and petty lord are not guided by ethics; they are guided by fear. The bible turns out to be not a moral code, but a whip.”12 Barker calls it a whip, but after all, whips get results, which is precisely what the problem-of-evil atheists are asking God for. In fact, one might even argue that at last God is almost reaching B-level interventions.
Pardon
Can the cross really help fix the problem of moral evil? Does it not merely let us off the hook, fueling our irresponsibility while God takes responsibility for the wickedest crime in history? In other words, does it not make both God and humanity more immoral? Such questions forget the nature of love. First of all, Jesus was no mere servant, the unfortunate victim of a master’s thoughtless planning. Immanuel means “God with us.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). That was God himself on the cross. Second, love begets love. According to Hitchens, “Once again we have a father demonstrating love by subjecting a son to death by torture, but this time the father is not trying to impress god. He is god, and he is trying to impress humans.”13 And does it work? For those who truly reflect on what happened there, the only two appropriate responses happen to be the only responses you would say to a marriage proposal. Recklessly firing out a “Sure, sounds good. Let me get back to my video game” is not an option. Such embarrassingly extravagant love can only be rejected or requited. Those who love him back will live the rest of their lives in gratitude.
So yes, being forgiven of one’s sins through such conspicuous love encourages righteousness. After all, Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Paul summarizes the process in Ephesians 2:8–10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” That is, we are saved not just from our sins but from our sinfulness, so that we can finally and truly do good works. To feel the burden of one’s sinfulness drop is such glorious freedom, as Barker’s atheist father mentions but misapprehends: “I’m much happier now. To be free from superstition and fear and guilt and the sin complex, to be able to think freely and objectively, is a tremendous relief.”14
Hell
We turn now to two methods God uses that, much like punishment, work on the conscience before they actually take place. In that sense, they are C-level interventions in this life. Does the anticipation of hell’s reality help fix the problem of moral evil? Yes, says atheist Keith Parsons. Recall his words:
Not only will the threat of hell prompt you to become a Christian, it will lead you to be a submissive one. All the stuff about faith, hope, and charity aside, obedience has always been the prime Christian virtue. . . . “There is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey,” says the old hymn. Indeed, the threat of hell will motivate not just external obedience but internal self-control as well.15
The Bible agrees. A passage that sobers any serious-minded Christian is Matthew 25:41–43, 45b:
Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. . . . As you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”
Does that passage motivate loving action? Of course! As easy as it is to brand oneself “a loving person” without actually doing anything for anybody, it is a good thing for the world that there are some authoritative reinforcements. Likewise, Galatians 5:20–21 lists “idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these,” and adds, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Heaven
There is no effort at all in explaining how the promise of heaven can motivate good behavior. After all, says Jesus in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” And even though Richard Dawkins calls it “just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky,”16 it still effects moral change. Of course, according to the atheists, it is not the right kind of change, but it is change in the right direction nonetheless. But could this futuristic reward motivate the “right” kind of change?
Recall what heaven is. The Bible hints with imagery, but what we know for sure is that heaven is where God is. As Revelation 21:3b envisions, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” Who would not want to sign up? Unfortunately, many would willfully decline, and not just atheists. After all, when Jesus came the first time, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory” (John 1:14a ), and yet, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). Why? “[T]his is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). Biblically, the primary, if not the only, reason people reject heaven is that they love evil more than they love God. The treasure of heaven is simply not treasured by many people because heaven’s treasure is not a mansion but a Person. And only “the pure in heart . . . shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). C. S. Lewis explains,
We are afraid that heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motivations. A man’s love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.17
That is why heaven not only encourages righteousness but also satisfies the righteous.
As we have seen, the atheist claims that God is not perfectly good or all-powerful because he has not fixed the problem of moral evil. Yet the atheist desires freedom from the very tools God naturally uses to fix the problem of moral evil, even charging God to be immoral for employing them. To fix the problem of moral evil and yet keep free will intact, God employs C-level interventions, which the atheist detests because they threaten his autonomy. Yet the same atheist thinks it immoral that God does not employ A- or B-level interventions to fix the problem of moral evil. What we have here is a self-refuting position. Put simply, the atheist is complaining that “God should fix the problem, but he shouldn’t touch anything.” “He should take away our freedom but in such a way that he doesn’t take away an ounce of freedom.” “He’s never around; what’s more, he never leaves us alone!”
Inconsistency 2: Divine Intervention versus Societal Intervention
The first inconsistency lies in calling God too negligent for not fixing the problem of moral evil and then calling his interventions that go to fix moral evil too smothering. Thus, the atheist overrules the argument based on moral evil by arguing against the morality of divine interventions. In a second inconsistency, the atheist seems to reverse stances on the immorality of the divine interventions. Whereas he argues scathingly against the morality of these interventions at the divine level, somehow these interventions turn out not to be problematic at the societal level. In this section, we will review the atheist’s aversion to each of the divine interventions before summarizing the reversal of each attack when applied to the societal level.
Submission and Favor
It would seem that if there were a God, he could view creatures in two possible ways. First, all creatures would start out as servants, doing the kinds of things they were created to do. It seems that the Creator-creature relationship demands this sort of subordination by definition. Second, however, it is conceivable that a God could elevate a servant to a higher rank of some kind, perhaps even up to being a sharer in some qualities of divinity, such as freedom. But at root, this elevated creature will, or at least ought to, always be a servant, though an elevated one. If the atheist decries the role of submissive servant as too demeaning, it would seem he would logically favor the only other option, the divine favor—freedom, image of God, redemption—offered humanity by the Christian God. But the atheist wants neither of these possibilities, exclusive as they are. The atheist cannot denounce submission without embracing favor, and he cannot denounce favor without embracing submission. Yet he attempts both.
Death and Faith
Then there is the confusion about the first chapters of Genesis. While theologians dispute the meaning of the word day, atheists contemplate a more pragmatic question: Is the garden of Eden a paradise or a prison? That is, would I want to enjoy or escape? Perhaps the atheist even dismisses the question as absurd: “You don’t expect me to believe that fairy tale!” However, recall that these are GITD arguments; the atheist cannot challenge the morality of the system God set up by caricaturing the system as a fairy tale. So back to the garden of Eden we go. The atheist says that it is immoral of God to permit the entrance of death into the world. According to Genesis, yes, it was immoral, but not of God. He had set up a system of reliance on him, called faith. The first humans chose to unchain themselves from the Source of life. Death was warned by God, yes, but it is only logical that death would have inevitably followed the transgression even without the decree. True, death and faith were the only two options presented in the garden of Eden, but would not the two options—binding or unbinding yourself from the Source of life—be the only two conceivable options in dealing with God regardless?
Yet the atheist rejects both death from God and faith in God as despicably immoral. When it is suggested that the two are exclusive and the atheist must choose one or the other, suppose the atheist counters that the whole setup itself is immoral, a case of “choose your poison.” In response, first, if God exists, both options do seem to be the only logical alternatives, regardless of how they taste. Second, however, recall what we learned in chapter 4, that the atheist has no real difficulties with death or faith, provided God is not involved. “Objection!” protests the atheist, for the problem he has is not with death as such but with death by God’s hand. There is a moral difference between someone dying by smallpox and by murder, after all. But is God really actively administering death? Check the story. There is no divine execution; Adam and Eve live. They simply lose access to immortality, something that logically could only be sustained by the relationship they severed. If the atheist denounces the one alternative, he ought to embrace its opposite. Yet both are somehow simultaneously immoral.
Guilt and Rules
As we saw in chapter 5, even atheists believe guilt is necessary where there is culpability. Of course, atheists dispute where to draw the line, but when someone has crossed that line, guilt is recognized as only healthy. Yet God is somehow immoral for simply making us feel guilty, even within a system in which culpability is shockingly real. How dare he be so petty and cruel! On the other hand, his proposed path to sidestepping guilt is equally immoral, for as a rule, his prescriptions are always flawed. Any rules we would not obey are, of course, not worth obeying. Any rules we would obey anyway he plagiarized. (Plagiarized from what? As if the infinitely and necessarily rational God would need to copy tiny bipedal sages! If there really are timeless, discoverable moral truths, where do you think they came from?) Whatever the case, the atheist desires to ignore the rules and yet be counted blameless. In the end, the atheist rejects both of the logical possibilities in dealing with a moral God—obeying the rules and reaping the guilt—as immoral.
From their writings, it seems clear that many atheists read through the Bible like proofreaders, looking for errors. A disproportionate number of checkmarks seem to always cluster toward the front, in the history passages of the Old Testament. The flood, the plagues, the conquest of Canaan—with guilt itself as immoral, the next step of actual punishment is unspeakable. It matters not that every inclination of man’s heart “was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5b). God is still the bad guy of the story. This tells us that no matter how evil anyone gets, it is never moral for God to punish. Never mind the many atheists who advocate retribution against the monsters among us, especially since September 11, 2001. If judgment is necessary in some cases, would not an all-just God be permitted, even compelled, to administer punishment in some cases? For some reason, he is not.
So a just God cannot carry out justice. He cannot treat people fairly. Can he, therefore, treat them unfairly? No, because that violates his nature. But what if God were to treat people unfairly in a way that is still fair to his perfect justice? Romans 3:26 tells us that the purpose of the cross was to demonstrate “[God’s] righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” The voluntary cross is the means by which God justifies the guilty and yet remains just. Yet the red blood of such passages mingles with the red pen of the atheist. In the end, a just God cannot judge lest he be judged, and a merciful God can show no mercy.
Hell and Heaven
First of all, it must be reiterated that the afterlife is not an afterthought. Since God’s existence is part of the Christian system being attacked, the atheist cannot caricature the afterlife as if God did not exist. If God exists, this life is as dependent on the next as a novel is dependent on its author’s mind. Heaven and hell are not merely tacked on to this life like an epilogue. Eternity with and without God are the two basic, mutually exclusive types of reality; this life is merely our time to choose between them. Thus we can see how foolish it is to say, “It is immoral of God to send us to hell or to bring us to heaven,” as if the best thing is to be left alone in the so-called real world. Out there is the real world, and with or without God seem to be fairly straightforward, inevitable options. Yet the atheist wants neither hell nor its far-more-hellish opposite.
Reversal
And yet, are these interventions truly as immoral as all that? As decisively as the atheist denounces the divine interventions as immoral, one would think that the interventions themselves must be truly despicable. Yet when the atheist considers the concept behind these interventions played out in a societal context, we find the atheist excusing them as not immoral in the least. Submission? Recall with Dawkins that were we to be contacted by highly evolved extraterrestrials, “A pardonable reaction would be something akin to worship.”18 Favor? Recall with Bertrand Russell that “[f]or in all things it is well to exalt the dignity of man.”19 Death? Recall with Barker that “[t]he scarcity and brevity of life is what enlarges its value. . . . If life is eternal, then life is cheap.”20 Faith? Recall with Russell that “[i]n this lies man’s true freedom: in determination to worship only the God created by our own love of the good, to respect only the heaven which inspires the insight of our best moments.”21 Guilt? Recall Hitchens’s candor that “[i]f I was suspected of raping a child, or torturing a child, or infecting a child with venereal disease, or selling a child into sexual or any other kind of slavery, I might consider committing suicide whether I was guilty or not. . . . This revulsion is innate in any healthy person.”22 Rules? Recall with Russell that “[w]hat we have to do positively is to ask ourselves what moral rules are most likely to promote human happiness.”23 Punishment? Recall with Harris that “[s]ome propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.”24 Pardon? Recall with Dawkins that there is an entirely appropriate type of pardon God could learn from humanity: “If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment.”25 Hell? Recall with Elizabeth Anderson that in any healthy society, “We deal with people who refuse accountability by restraining and deterring their objectionable behavior.”26 Heaven? Sounds great! Recall with Russell that “[t]he knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured.”27 However, as is the case with all ten of these so-called problems, “The chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion.”28 Like an enormous mountain in the path of an expanding railroad, God is in the way. The problem is decidedly not the interventions themselves; the problem seems to be not merely aggravated but basically caused by the fact that God proposes them. These ten things are fine in themselves. The problem is the God who turns heaven into hell and whose absence makes hell seem almost heavenly.
As we have seen, the atheist is not at all shy insisting on what he wants, and yet isn’t quite sure what he wants after all. He wants neither a thing nor its opposite, even though together they present the only possible alternatives. Moreover, the things he calls immoral he then calls moral. We apologize in advance for jerking this out of context, but Dawkins’s question seems appropriate: “Why don’t they notice those glaring contradictions?”29 Yet there is a way to sidestep each inconsistency—namely, to simply be rid of God. Unfortunately, it is precisely in trying to sidestep God that the atheist entangles himself in these inconsistencies in the first place.