An Atheist Responds : Christopher Hitchens Throws Down the Gauntlet to those who believe in God

It's uncommonly generous of Michael Gerson[" What Atheists Can't Answer," op-ed, July 13] to refer to me as "intellectually courageous and unfailingly kind," since (a) this might be taken as proof that he hardly knows me and (b) it was he who was so kind when I once rang him to check a scurrilous peacenik rumor that he was a secret convert from Judaism to Christian fundamentalism.

However, it is his own supposedly kindly religion that prevents him from seeing how insulting is the latent suggestion of his position: the appalling insinuation that I would not know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided by a celestial dictatorship, which could read and condemn my thoughts and which could also consign me to eternal worshipful bliss (a somewhat hellish idea) or to an actual hell.

Implicit in this ancient chestnut of an argument is the further -- and equally disagreeable -- self-satisfaction that simply assumes, whether or not religion is metaphysically "true," that at least it stands for morality. Those of us who disbelieve in the heavenly dictatorship also reject many of its immoral teachings, which have at different times included the slaughter of other "tribes," the enslavement of the survivors, the mutilation of the genitalia of children, the burning of witches, the condemnation of sexual "deviants" and the eating of certain foods, the opposition to innovations in science and medicine, the mad doctrine of predestination, the deranged accusation against all Jews of the crime of "deicide," the absurdity of "Limbo," the horror of suicide-bombing and jihad, and the ethically dubious notion of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice.

The RRRev-er-end (Limbaugh’s voice) Barry Lynn is a product of theological liberalism. Their beliefs are essentially that “Christianity is Myth” and that “Myth can be useful.”

Therefore, they talk with straight face about resurrection, prayer, faith, atonement, forgiveness, miracle, and all along they have been “beside themselves” speaking in our language but with their own meanings.

Many, who are not busy pastoring standard churches, will openly tell you that they believe all to be myth, but put them in a church where the next offering is important, and they suddenly go covert operative on you....wolf in sheep’s clothing.

No reflective Christian can ignore that prayer is speech and that all current religious issues confronting the legal realm are in truth free speech and free exercise issues and not establishment issues.

Therefore, Lynn lacks the “reflective Christian” piece. I daresay he is also devoid of the “Christian” piece.

Wonderfully said, dear brother in Christ!

As for the "establishment" issue: That word had a particular meaning to the Founding Fathers that the modern mind has evidently forgotten. To the Framers of the Constitution, the word "establishment" regarded the historical fact that, in the Old World, an "established" church was one in which church was indistinguishable from the order of secular government. Or to put it another way, a single privileged church was the only church acceptable to the political authority. And penalties — quite often severe — applied to those citizens of its polity who were not members of the government-approved church.

This goes back to ancient times, e.g., as in both Greece and Rome, where the state religion was deemed mandatory for all citizens, as a matter of state law. Dissenters to that established religion were deemed criminals, subject to capital penalties.

Then there is the famous modern example of Great Britain, which to this day has an established church: the Anglican rite. (Although no Muslims there have been civilly punished as dissenters yet, as far as I know. Or on any other basis that I can detect for that matter.) Not to mention Germany, which to this day taxes citizens in support of state-favored churches (mainly Lutheran, I suppose).

What the Establishment Clause does NOT do, however, is to erect a "wall of separation between Church [i.e., religion per se] and State." The Framers encouraged religious belief and moral life grounded in religious values and experience. If this statement is not true, then the Declaration of Independence makes no sense at all.

Good grief, Thomas Jefferson himself, when he became the third President of the United States, established regular, formal religious services in the Capitol on each Sabbath morning, with different pastors from different denominations (all Prottie at the time, I assume) to officiate at Sunday service in the halls of Congress itself. And then he had the temerity to spread this model of Christian devotion to the Post Office and other departments of the federal government in due course. Earlier, George Washington had established a national day of public thanksgiving to God. Later Abraham Lincoln did likewise.

In short, the "separation of church and state" is not a clause appearing in the Bill of Rights, nor does it demand that the government stamp out the free exercise of religion (the First Amendment explicitly forbids this), including free exercise in public places — such as, for instance, Congress. Or the Public Square.

They just said that religious "exercise" did not require government approval; indeed, government approval was the forbidden thing. Religious "exercise" did not depend on, or have anything to do with any kind of formal government charter of any particular religious creed; which entails that the government cannot legitimately "infringe" upon the free exercise of any religion at all. The government, though encouraging religious experience, does not command that such experience be experienced in any politically favored doctrinal way.

Underscore "free speech" here. And also "free conscience," and "free exercise." And also "free association".... All guaranteed First Amendment rights of the free citizens of the United States of America.

All these lawyers who want to tell us all about the "wall of separation" between church and state ought to go back and read the original sources, before they start shooting off at their mouths.

That they evidently don't suggests two possibilities to me: (1) They either find human history useless as a guide to human experience; or (2) it is so good a guide that they'd just as soon get rid of it — to clear the decks for their own utopian visions and innovations....

Me, I'll stick with what I know — my ancestors paid the dear price for that knowledge. I cannot possibly disparage it.

And God is in charge of all, from beginning to end. I place my trust in His Truth — so clearly discerned by the Founders/Framers of our nation.

May God ever bless you, dear pastor — May the Holy Spirit be with you, and inspire your flock through you, consecrated medium of His Holy Grace. JMHO FWIW.

There are a number of philosophies that are neither materialist nor theistic. For example, there are some that believe in Platonic forms, others that believe that concepts are neither matter nor merely an extension of matter. There are still others that believe intuitively in the existence of moral laws which were not promulgated by a lawgiver such as God.

That's pretty close to my position. As a Platonist, I believe, for example, in the objective reality of mathematical truth. Thus, 2+2 = 4 not just in our world, but in all possible words - it is a transcendent truth. But I don't believe that some divine being promulgated a law that 2+2 must be 4 - the truth is part of the nature of number.

Likewise, I believe in an objective, transcendent moral law, but do not believe this implies a lawgiver - as Plato said, The Good is part of the Platonic realm, along with the True and the Beautiful. Indeed, I would go further. If a moral principle is demonstrable by natural reason, it is binding on us, with or without a God to promulgate it. And if a moral principle is repugnant to natural reason, we are bound not to observe it, regardless of what any God may or may not command.

As an obvious example - I guess, as the obvious example - murdering ones own son in cold blood is objectively wrong, semper et ubique. It is an intrinsic evil, and there is no power in heaven or earth that can make it good, anymore than such a power could make 2+2 equal 5.

Now, I grant this is way insufficient as a foundation for a just society, just as a knowledge of mathematics is way insufficient as the blueprint of an habitable house. The rest of morality is contingent upon the nature of man, and established by, perhaps, some form of social contract theory. But I believe an objective moral law must be the bedrock, otherwise how do you prove one is obliged to adhere to the contract?

“Perhaps, a definition reference will help resolve this issue for you”

What issue. I don’t have an issue. Call me whatever you like. Call me a Shmoo if you like. (Err..., you might not be old enought to know what those are.) What’s with the labels? I told you what I believe, and couldn’t care less what label you’d like to put on it. Good grief!

Quite to the contrary, I know what Shmoo means as well as Btfsplk and many other, wonderful Al Capp inventions. (I used to read his delightful and insightful comics when I was younger… I suspect our ages may be fairly close.)

However, the real point is that to communicate unambiguously, we must have, at least, a minimum vocabulary that we agree upon. Without such, only confusion exists.

“... it is a statement of inference based upon premises ...”

Yes, it is your premises I do not accept.

Perhaps, you could specify exactly which premise(s) you refuse to accept…

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being.

One of the original question repeated for clarity: If there is no God, as you (the atheist) maintain, why should not the "law of the jungle" be the governing moral code of humanity?

“Morals are sets of rules intended to govern human behavior.”

No, morals, or better, ethical principles, are the means of determining correct choices, not a collection of prohibitions and admonitions.

Again, “Perhaps, a definition reference will help resolve this …”

mor·als

–plural noun

principles or habits with respect to right or wrong conduct.

eth·ics

–plural noun

the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Of course, the above definitions can become somewhat circular because of the definition required for right conduct. For example, most moral sources hold that it is not right conduct for one human to kill another. However, is it wrong to kill a human being if that is that is the only way that person can be stopped from killing another person? If so, then killing can be judged to be right conduct in some circumstances. Consequently, there is no moral absolute in this principle.

Again, most moral sources hold that it is not right conduct for a person to steal. Additionally, these same sources, also, hold that it also wrong to intentionally allow another person to die unnecessarily when you have the power to intervene to stop that death. Therefore, is it not right conduct for a person to steal if that is the only way that individual can stop another from dying? Again, it seems there is no moral absolute in this principle, either.

There are literally hundreds of dilemmas that could be posed showing that without resorting to a Divine revelation as a source of morals, everything is relative. If in deed, everything is relative, there are no moral absolutes. Therefore, an atheist (one who denies or disbelieves the Divine) has extreme difficulty proclaiming any behavior always right conduct leading to the conclusion that, for an atheist, there are no moral absolutes.

“Your assertion is patently false. First, if moral principles were absolutes, there would be no competing systems of morality ...”

“Silly! There were at one time competing views of chemistry, which is the state of moral research today. Just because you and others have not discovered the absolute moral principles does not mean they do not exist, it just means you’re still in the phlogiston stage of moral understanding. You haven’t discovered oxygen yet.

Please, allow me to point out that the study of chemistry, or the “views” thereof, has existed as a discipline for only a few hundred years. On the other hand, the study of human right conduct, or morality, has existed for millennia. Therefore, I submit that this discipline is far more mature as a field of systematic study than is chemistry. A great many learned philosophers studying this field through the millennia have all come to the same conclusion: absent an appeal to Divine revelation, any set of moral principles is relative… that is, there are no moral absolutes without God.

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