Mr. T gets it right again! Watch out Chuck Norris!

On so many anti-theistic and atheistic blogs there are tons of image jokes about theists. Just thought I'd ebb the tide a little bit.

Question about Evolution

Honest And Open Question

I have always had a question for evolutionists of the Neo-Darwinian persuasion that I have yet to have cogently answered.

I thought of it when reading Coyne’s Why Evolution is True. Coyne states,

“if evolution meant only gradual genetic change within a species, we’d have only one species today—a single highly evolved descendant of the first species. Yet we have many… How does this diversity arise from one ancestral form?” It arises because of “splitting, or, more accurately, speciation,” which “simply means the evolution of different groups that can’t interbreed.” - Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 5-6.

Here is my question, if speciation involves mutation that creates a new species that can no longer interbreed (since otherwise all life really would all be one genetic species with only varied morphology), then how does an advantageous mutation get spread?

If parent species A births an offspring B with such a significant mutation as to be a new species and incapable of breeding with species A, then how would B reproduce? Would there need to be the EXACT same mutation at the same moment in history and in the same geographical location so that male-B would find female-B and copulate?

I really do hope that someone can explain this since this is one problem with evolution that just seems so fundamentally flawed that I doubt no one has addressed it. Any thoughts?

Logical Arguments for the Existence of God

There are many arguments for the existence of God that I believe are both valid and sound. However, some I think are more compelling (or should be) than others.

The following are what I believe to be the best logical arguments for the existence of God:



The Transcendental Argument:

1. Laws of logic exist and are binding on human thought.
2. If there is no God, 1 would not hold.
3. 1 does hold.
4. Therefore God exists.

(this is the abbreviated version. For a full version see: http://www.carm.org/transcendental-argument)



The Ontological Argument (Plantinga’s “victorious” model):

(Your understanding of this model will be greatly influenced depending on your understanding of modal logic.)

Definitions:

Maximal excellence: To have omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection in some world.

Maximal greatness: To have maximal excellence in every possible world.

1. There is a possible world (W) in which there is a being (X) with maximal greatness.
2. But X is maximally great only if X has maximal excellence in every possible world.
3. Therefore X is maximally great only if X has omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection in every possible world.
4. In W, the proposition "There is no omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being" would be impossible—that is, necessarily false.
5. But what is impossible does not vary from world to world.
6. Therefore, the proposition, "There is no omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being" is necessarily false in this actual world, too.
7. Therefore, there actually exists in this world, and must exist in every possible world, an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being.



The Moral Argument:

1. Real moral obligation is a fact. We are really, truly, objectively obligated to do good and avoid evil.
2. Either the atheistic view of reality is correct or the "religious" one.
3. But the atheistic one is incompatible with there being moral obligation.
4. Therefore the "religious" view of reality is correct.



The Argument from Conscience:

This is actually not a formulated argument, but a follow up to the moral argument if someone objects to real or objective morality. We can then point out that they will all, no matter their convictions, universally accept that we should obey our conscience. Besides the fact that this actually functions as a universal, objective, obligation (“we OUGHT to obey our conscience”) we can still ask where did conscience get such an absolute authority—an authority admitted even by the moral subjectivist and relativist? There are only four possibilities.

1. From something less than me (nature)
2. From me (individual)
3. From others equal to me (society)
4. From something above me (God)

Let's consider each of these possibilities in order.

1. How can I be absolutely obligated by something less than me—for example, by animal instinct or practical need for material survival?
2. How can I obligate myself absolutely? Am I absolute? Do I have the right to demand absolute obedience from anyone, even myself? And if I am the one who locked myself in this prison of obligation, I can also let myself out, thus destroying the absoluteness of the obligation which we admitted as our premise.
3. How can society obligate me? What right do my equals have to impose their values on me? Does quantity make quality? Do a million human beings make a relative into an absolute? Is "society" God?
4. The only source of absolute moral obligation left is something superior to me. This binds my will, morally, with rightful demands for complete obedience.

Thus God, or something like God, is the only adequate source and ground for the absolute moral obligation we all feel to obey our conscience. Conscience is thus explainable only as the voice of God in the soul.



The Argument from Desire:

1. Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
2. But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
3. Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.
4. This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."

Response to Werleman Post on Morality

A quick response to a blog posted by Courtenay Werleman on his blog (http://rationalists.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/morality-is-subjective-done/):

First, his summation of the theistic argument (known as the transcendental argument) is a poor representation (if “representation” is even a proper description) of the actual argument. Though any of you who are actually familiar with Werleman and his argumentation style should not expect anything else since he more often than not degenerates to ad hominems or straw men where he “summarizes” his opponents arguments in such a manner that makes them less than they actually are in order to be able to easily dismiss them.

Second, he then goes on to make his own hypothetical argument (I call it “hypothetical” because his premises do not function as premises but as unsubstantiable claims). He says that “if God exists, then it would would be in God’s interest and within his capacity for all human beings to know his ethics perfectly.” While it is within His capabilities, it is not necessarily true that it is “in his best interest.” This is something that Werleman would find convenient, but it is not a necessity.

It is also interesting that God HAS actually made his ethics known to all humanity. The fact that we do not know “God’s ethics perfectly” is precisely what, in Christianity, is called sin. Werleman wants to affirm heads while denying tails. The problem is that one comes with the other. God HAS revealed His will to all humanity AND we don’t know perfectly his will because of our sin. Werleman wants to create a false dichotomy that it is either one or the other when in fact it seems likely to be both.

Thirdly, Werleman shows that he claims to be a rationalist but in fact does not even understand basic logical forms. How so? When his 1st premise plays no function in the syllogism and is thus, by Occam’s Razor, unnecessary. Also his syllogism is set up in the following modus tollens:

1. If p then q.
2. Not-q
3. Therefore Not-p.

The problem is that premise 2 (not-q) is actually not a direct negation of q. Notice q is “then it would be in God’s interest…” while in premise 2, God’s interest is not mentioned. In order for the syllogism to be valid, premise 2 would have to be altered to read “It is not in God’s interest…”. This, while it would make the syllogism valid, however would make it blatantly unsound. It would argue that if God exists, it would be in his interest to do q. But in order to negate q, one must presuppose God’s interest in order to deny God’s existence. It would be unsound because one would necessarily presuppose God’s existence in order to say what is/is not in his interest, within an argument to deny his existence.


Fourth, Werleman argues that God revealing something to some and not to others is unfair and in contradiction to God’s benevolence. This again does not seem necessary. Justice does not always require uniform application to all people. Imagine the ramifications of this in our every day life if we really believed this to be the case. This is only a stipulation that skeptics pull out when they think it will help their argument. (Yet here we should again point out that God HAS in fact revealed his “ethics” to all both in the imago dei and in his revelation. Werleman wants us to ignore the 500lb gorilla in the room.)

Werleman then poses several dilemmas. By doing so he shows that he has actually not thought deeply about these issues and does not know the difference between objective moral values and situational ethics, where we have the dilemma of reconciling several objective moral values when they collide. See, what Werleman seems to miss is that these dilemmas are only dilemmas within a system of objective morals. Lets look at the Trolly example. Why is it a dilemma? Because we recognize that two objective morals are conflicting. But one could ask Werleman, who believes that morality is relative, WHY this is a dilemma if either response would be equally moral since both would be the absolute correct decision relative to the person? Werleman PRESUPPOSES objective morality even when he attempts to dismantle it.

Finally, Werleman shows, yet again, that he not only cannot dismantle the theistic argument, but that he really does not even understand it. Is the argument that the basis for morality is the Bible? NO! The argument is that the basis for morality is the ontological nature of God Himself. Werleman reveals nothing about the theistic argument or the nature of God, but rather that he is a fundamentalist for anti-theism who is completely unable, or maybe even simply uninterested, in dealing with the logical arguments, evidence, and reality that is placed before him.

Real Moral Objectivity and the Euthyphro Dilemma

Must Morality Be Objective to be Real? And Is God the Only Basis for Real Morality?

A common topic within the debate between Atheists and Theists down through the ages, but with a revitalized renaissance within the New Atheist Movement and the apologetical counter arguments, is the concept of morality: what it is, and what can account for and provide a basis for it. In this post I will argue that no matter what someone’s confession is, they will inevitably resort to objective morality, thus showing that all people believe in a kind of objective moral standard. In addition, I will argue that due to the fact that morality is universally accepted as objective, that the only possible basis for such a moral system is the eternal and immutable nature of God.

First, I must show that all people, regardless of what they may confess they believe about the nature of morality, will inevitably posit objective moral statements a) when they are backed into a corner logically, or b) when they are “asleep at the helm” so to speak. That is, when they are not conscious enough of the fact that they are making objective moral statements in order to maintain their counter position (such as relativism, subjectivism, or pluralism).

Let me first prove a). This can be done anecdotally (to show that they are not consistent with their own position) and logically (to show that each position actually leads to illusory morality and not real moral obligation) for each of the three major counter positions: Subjectivism, Relativism, and Pluralism.

Subjectivism – This is the position that morality is subjective to the individual. In my experience, those who hold this position will object profusely when they feel that they have been wronged. They are completely unable to maintain, consistently, their subjective position. Imagine that they were to have their car broken into. They would feel anger, violation, and victimized. But why should they feel that way if the robber is not under the same moral obligation that they are? If morality is only their own subjective reality, why should he expect that the robber should abide by his subjective moral code and not by the robber’s own code? Thus they are not consistent with their own position.

But how does this view lead to only an illusion of morality and not real moral obligation? Well if I am the measure of morality, why should I be expected to respect any other moral code? If I am the basis for my own moral code, then I am not even obligated to my own moral code let alone anyone else’s. I am not a being with the ontology or nature to create and mandate obligation. We see that Dahmer has an equal “moral” as his victims. His victims would be unable to say “you are wrong to eat me” because Dahmer was within his own moral code in doing so. The same goes for pedophiles, wife beaters, rapists, murderers, etc. When a moral theory can lead to the universalizing of moral right to actions such as murder, rape, and child molestation, then it seems obvious that no real morality exists.

We also see that even the subjectivist, not only in practice, but also in theory, end up positing objective morality. If you were to ask them why we must obey our own moral codes, they will form some kind of moral “ought” to answer. All people “ought” to obey their conscience. Now, the content of the conscience may have as many permutations as there are people, but notice that the subjectivist has actually sneaked moral obligation (and thus moral objectivity) in through the back door. We will see over and over again that when one removes God as the basis for morality, they remove the only possible basis for real morality.


Relativism – This position is similar to that of subjectivism, but is extended not to individuals but to culture, society, social contracts, classes, etc. So rather than being subjective to the individual, morality is subjective to a specific group (although those boundaries of the group may be vague). The relativist, like the subjectivist, is also unable to maintain a consistent practice of their position to varying degrees.

There are some who this can be seen with when they show their indignation at things like American Slavery, the Holocaust, Stalin and Mao’s purges, etc. Once they show their indignation they reveal that they believe there is a universal moral code that these other cultures are obligated to obey but had broken. Even though they may belong to 21st century, western, blue state, suburban culture, (for we must realize that “culture” is much more narrow than simply “American” or something of that order) they will find it completely acceptable to say that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc., had broken a universal moral code. Yet if moral codes are relative to the culture, then this should not be the case. They should be something like traffic laws; only those under the jurisdiction of the law is obliged to follow them. Why am I not guilty of the English traffic law every day that I drive on the right side of the street? Because I am not under the jurisdiction of the English traffic court. Why would Hitler not be obliged to keep our American moral sentiments about genocide? Because he is not a citizen of our culture.

Now, for some relativists who seek to be more consistent, they will actually admit that Hitler was moral in his own moral context. As was Stalin, Mao, and the American slave traders. This seems disingenuous however because you will only hear them toe this line when backed into a corner to defend their position. When they are not on the defensive or talking specifically about morality, they will often call down curses, so to speak, on the ills of the world and the crimes against humanity. They may seek justice for the oppressed in other cultures, they may support America’s actions in WWII, the Gulf War, or our Invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, within the New Atheist movement, and I have found this multiple times in my debates in the blog-o-sphere, the antitheist will actually say in the same post that Hitler was morally right within his own context 60 years ago, but that that God is morally repugnant for his actions 3000 years ago that are presented in the Bible. The inconsistency of these two positions should be obvious.

Even if that were not the case, as before, it seems that any moral system that leads to the logical conclusion that Hitler was morally right to slaughter 6 million Jews, for Stalin to kill, either directly or by consequences, nearly 100 million people or for American slave traders to forcibly relocate millions of Africans and force them into possibly the worst kind of slavery the world has ever known, just seems to be an invalid moral system because it allows such morally repugnant actions to be on par with helping an old woman across the street, sacrificial love, and generosity.

Furthermore, it is not only the adherents that cannot maintain a consistent application of their position, the position itself is untenable. Why? It again is inconsistent with itself in its attempt to create moral obligation. Why am I obliged to obey what my culture says? Is it because what is best for the culture? But why should I seek to do what is best for the culture just because the culture says so? The answer predictably comes, “because we ‘ought’ to seek the good of the society.” But notice that this comes in a form that is universal and objective. That all people ‘ought’ to act in such a manner that it benefits the culture at large. But in positing this universal statement, they must necessarily contradict their relativism.


Pluralism – This is the view that while there are objective morals, there are adjacent objective moral systems that are all equally valid. In this case the adherent is much more likely to maintain a consistent position because they are holding to what they believe to be objective morality. Yet their problem arises, just like the others, when they must practice moral evaluation. If each moral system is objectively true, but that the moral systems clash from time to time, what is the governing moral system that allows for one objective moral system to evaluate another? The argument here seems to be “morals are objective, except when they aren’t… but even then they are.” This position, it seems, tries to have its cake and eat it too.

And it again cannot account for its own moral obligation. What is the basis for the moral objectivity of each of the morally objective systems? What if one system says lying is objectively moral and one says that it is objectively immoral? The problems with this view abound, but I think the most problematic areas are that it is simply so muddled that it is beyond the pale of reason.


In his recent blog (http://rationalists.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/morality-got-god/) my frequent opponent, Courtenay Werleman, made the following argument. From his comments, I will launch into the body of my argument. The form will follow that of a negative rebuttals to the statements made by Werleman followed by a positive argument for my position.


He writes:

“With brevity in mind - here is the slam dunk against the argument that without God there can be no universal objective basis for morality:

1. Rape is morally wrong! FACT. Even if some group residing somewhere on the planet thinks otherwise, they are wrong.

2. Rape is morally wrong because it causes harm to another person. Inflicting physical and emotional pain. These harms are not justified by any benefit to anyone else. This an objective observation.

3. God commands us not to rape, in the Bible. But why should we obey God's commands? The theist will answer that God has good reasons for his commands and that we should obey. Thus God commands us not to rape because it harms another person, the victim. But then it is the harm that makes rape immoral not the command. Therefore rape would be just as harmful without God, and just as immoral without God.

Conclusion: Rape is immoral and God is superfluous.”


Now, does Werleman’s “slam dunk” argument actually achieve what he believes that it does?

Rebuttal #1. Notice that Werleman actually assumes his conclusion in his first argument. He concludes from “Rape is morally wrong” (objectively) to the fact that morals are objective without God. To those who are not familiar with logical fallacies, let me point out that this is what is called begging the question. Here the question being asked is “Why is morality objective” to which he answers “because morality is objective.” He has actually not accomplished anything for himself in the first argument. He assumes the rape is wrong absolutely and universally (for all people, in all places, at all times). Anyone who thinks otherwise are simply wrong. Now, while the theist would agree with this conclusion, the question that Werleman is supposed to be answering is not “what,” but “why.”

Rebuttal #2. Do the ends justify the means? We all know the cliché. No, they don’t. Is rape only wrong because it hurts someone or because rape, in and of itself, is wrong? If harm is the standard of moral wrongness, then there are many things that we know are actually very good that would then be turned bad. Tell someone the truth, though it may hurt them, would be immoral. Self-sacrifice would be wrong. War would always be wrong. etc. We could also imagine several scenarios where we could commit theft, lying, or any number of immoral actions that would not cause any known harm to another, that would then be morally justifiable.

Rebuttal #3. Werleman uses rape as his example, I assume (I could be wrong) because of a previous argument that he and I had on rustylime.com. He had argued for an evolutionary basis for morality to which I gave this example:

Imagine a culture (prior to modern medical science) where all the women refused to have sex with the men. (Maybe they believed that their tribal deity demanded it in order for the crops to grow; a kind of a-fertility god.) In order for a society to survive, there must be offspring (the Darwinian mandate) and so the men raped all the women. While this may have been harmful to the women, it was the only way to keep the society (and more importantly the genetic lineage of its people) alive. Thus if evolution is the basis for morality, then rape is not a wrong action, but only wrong as determined by its context and it would be logical to say that mass rape would actually be a moral imperative.

I imagine that this is the reason for Werleman’s use of rape as his example. The problem however is that the objection remains unanswered. He gives pragmatics as the basis for morality, but no reason to assume that his narrow use of pragmatics is the only game in town so to speak. Why should societal pragmatics not take precedent over personal ones.

Rebuttal #4. Notice that He also sneaks moral objectivity in through the back door. Why is rape morally wrong? Because it hurts someone. Why is it morally wrong to hurt someone? ….cricket…. cricket… “because it just is!” He has actually not provided a basis for moral objectivity, he has only provided an example of a moral objective that basis another moral objective, thus merely pushing the problem back a step.

Rebuttal #5. He then makes God to be a god in his own image, that is, because Werleman is a pragmatist, he makes God a pragmatist as well. Why does God command us not to rape? Werleman answers, “because it harms another person, the victim.” Thus he assumes the truth of his own position and at the same time sets up a strawman of the theistic argument, for that is not the position of the theist. We do not say that God commands what is good based on the outcome.

Rebuttal #6. He then posits his own version of the Euthyphro Dilemma, also called the Divine Command Theory (although Werleman’s version is noticeably weaker than other versions of the argument.) For those unfamiliar with the dilemma, it is as follows.

P1) Is an action good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good.
P2) If it is the former, then it is arbitrary because god could have commanded otherwise.
P3) If it is the later, then God is not the ultimate basis for morality since there is a moral code outside of him that he ascribe to.
P4) Thus God is not necessary as the basis for morality.

Before dealing with this problem in the next rebuttal, let me first address another strawman that Werleman sets up when he puts words into the theist’s mouth. According to him, the theist can only responds to the dilemma by stating “that God has good reasons for his commands and that we should obey.” This is actually not the response of most theists familiar with the dilemma.

Rebuttal #7. This rebuttal will actually take the form of three responses (A, B, and C) to the aforementioned dilemma.

Response A – The dilemma is actually a false dichotomy. It only allows in two options for the relationship between morality and God. It assumes in the first case that something is good virtue of it being commanded by God, or that if God commands something that is good, that it is because that standard of what makes it good lays elsewhere from God. Neither seems to be the case. Is something good because God commands it? No, something is good insofar as it aligns with the immutable and perfect character of God. So then when God does command what is good, because it is in fact good, the standard is not something exterior to himself but is rather his own nature.

Response B – If God commands something, it does not necessitate that he could have commanded otherwise. As we say in the previous response, what God commands is actually very much established by his eternal and immutable nature. Thus God could not command something that is contrary to his nature. Since his nature is eternal and immutable, he could only have ever commanded honesty, love, mercy, etc. and forbade lying, stealing, murder, etc. because those are what are in-line with or contradictory to, his immutable nature. Thus the claim of the arbitrary nature of God’s commands s invalid.

Response C – The conclusion, then, no longer follows because the argument is no longer sound. But just because this argument fails, does not win the case for the theist. It simply means that the Euthyphro Dilemma is not a valid critique.

Rebuttal #8. Imagine that Werleman were correct in his assertion that morality is determined by its consequences. We would then never be able to act, because we would never be able to determine the value differential between the positive and the negative outcomes. This is the common response to all forms of philosophical pragmatism. We would need a kind of pain/happiness calculator and an exhaustive knowledge of the future to know what outcomes would be derived from our every action. Could I be moral and lie if I was almost certain no one would find out? Could cannibals kill and eat a person because their amount of cooperate joy outweighs one persons anguish? Say there are 30 fat and happy cannibals after they eat and only one dead person who is dead an no longer suffers. This does not even begin to address things like bio-ethics, media-ethics, and environmental-ethics.

Rebuttal #9. Werleman’s conclusion no longer follows from his false premises above. It assumes the truth of his position (that morality is determined by the volume of harm that results) in his premises and then argues to that conclusion.



My Position. Rape is objectively wrong. This is not because of the say so of culture or society, but because the act itself is immoral. It will always be immoral because it is a violation of a universal, immutable, absolute, and eternal moral standard; namely, the nature of God. This is the only possible basis that offers us real morals and not just the illusion obligation. It is the only position that can be consistently maintained that does not lead to contradictions in practice or in reasoning, and it is the only one that can establish real moral obligation without simply sneaking it in through the back door, but by actually providing a real causal basis for it.

For more on this, please comment with a specific comment or question and I will try to respond as promptly as possible.

I've been Censored by a "Free-thinker"! Ha

On Courtenay Werleman's blog (rationalists.wordpress.com)I have been officially censored. Why? Was I being rude or crass? No. Was I being obnoxious, or constantly delving into rabbit trails that have nothing to do with the posts? No. Was I making Ad hominems or or disturbing the peace? No, not at all. Well what was my offense? It was being of a different position than that of the blogger. When he made arguments such as that Matthew did not know Hebrew because he capitalized the second kurios in a citation, and I responded by showing that this was an ENGLISH translation issue since Matthew would have written either entirely in caps or entirely in lower case, I was guilty of showing that the blogger was well outside of his educational range. When he made citations from a study that over 16% of America are Atheists, and I pointed out that 14% of those were "no preference" and would encompass people who believe in God but do not ascribe to a specific organized religion and that 1.4% were made up of agnostics and secularists, and that only .6% were actually identified as dyed in the wool atheists, I was guilty of showing that Mr. Werleman is an ideologue who was willing to distort any fact to grind his axe even though he has no basis what so ever.

But dont take my word for it. When pressed why I was censored, this was his response:

"Unlike yourself I do not have the time to be constantly replying to your perpetual around the clock BS. To be constantly correcting your blatantly false assertions is time I do not have the luxury of. I can't reason with a guy that thinks Matthew was a disciple of Jesus or that Jesus was not an apocalyptic Jew. These are just facts! Get over it. Seriously get a life buddy. Blaze your own trail and cease trying to define your existence through me. I'm over you, so please get over me."

In other words, "I dont have time to have someone actually call me to account for the fallacious posts on my blog and so rather than engage in open and public debate, I will simply try to peddle my book and make it appear as though no one disagrees with me by making sure that they will not be allowed to post." What is most telling is that he calls "facts" the very issues that are up for debate. In order to avoid open and public debate, he makes the other position false by definition and then suppresses it.

From my experience, those people who are convinced of their position AND the supporting evidence for it, simply do not act in this manner. It is those who know that they are on thin ice who seek to suppress the opposing voice.

But the major irony is that a blog, supposedly dedicated to "free-thought" and "rationalism" is so biased and ideologically driven that it must silence the opposition in order to maintain a solid front.

I encourage all of you Atheists or skeptics who find this to be a blight on your usually intellectually honest enterprise, to voice your protest. In the same manner that I would stand and oppose the tactics of my fellow theists who veer into a similar kind of argumentation, I would think that anyone with even a shred of intellectual integrity would see that suppression of the opposing voice is not a course that should be taken in intellectual interchange.

Logical Problems with Philosophical Naturalism

I saw this great video. It is a nice survey of SOME of the logical problems with Philosophical Naturalism. Any objections?

New posts coming soon!

I am working on a couple book reviews, some posts on what I considered the best logical arguments for the existence of God and a 6 part series on the epistemological necessity of worldview and presuppositions. Keep a look out as they will start to flow in shortly.

But for now, here is a funny joke. For those of you familiar with presuppositionalism... this will be even funnier.

One day a group of atheists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one atheist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.

The atheist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the atheist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this, let's say we have a man making contest." To which the atheist replied, "OK, great!"

But God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."

The atheist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"

Cruel Logic

Found this great video by Brian Godawa. What happens when a atheist who believes morality is evolved or some kind of social contract is FORCED to defend their position? While the video is admittedly a bit twisted, the point is clear... "Ideas have consequences." To deny God, is to deny the only possible basis for objective morality. Some people are fine with objecting to objective morality in theory, but they will ALWAYS sneak it in through the back door. Even if their theory states that morality evolved to help the species survive so that we care for our genes, they sneak in the moral obligation that we ought to care for our genes. But that is the point... what is the basis for the ought? If it is evolved then it may be helpful, but it can never be obligatory.

The Summum Bonum of Life

The Summum Bonum of Life

If any one book from the entire Bible was to be selected as the best description of the condition of the American way of life, it is quite possible that Ecclesiastes would be such a book. Even the American dream, the promise of opportunity and success for those who are willing to work, is only an honorable way for a person to earn money in order to eat, drink and be merry. We are constantly in an obsessed race to earn more money, in order to acquire more material possession or to do more of the activities we dream of doing, so that, we hope, we can feel more satisfied with our lives. We measure our success by the size of our bank accounts, the extent of our learning or intellectual prowess, and even by the strength of our relationships to those in our lives. It is in these same ways that we seek to classify or value the worth of other humans, whether intentional or not. Yet when one comes to the book of Ecclesiastes, the meaning and worth of all of this is repeatedly called “vanity.” Some thirty or more times, “the Preacher” rails against the concept of the intrinsic value of our everyday activities and possessions.

“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Ecc. 1:2) Under this category of “vanities” the Preacher will include the cycles of the earth and the toils of man, both the rich and the poor, the wise and foolish, and everyone in between. It seems that no person’s life is left unassailed by the apparent meaninglessness of life’s activities. Yet if this were the entire message of the book, it no doubt would have long been removed from our canon. For if the only meaning that could be found in this text is that every part of our life is utterly meaningless and futile, and that if the preachers is right in stating that all will end up in the same place after death, the ramifications of this would contradict the entire message of the Bible. Indeed, throughout Scripture the destinies of the righteous and the wicked are contrasted and they both end up in drastically different eternities. Not only are their destinies after this life distinct, but the manner in which they live their lives are significantly varied as well. One is planted firm as a tree, the other is as chaff in the wind (Psalm 1:3-4). It would do violence to the point of the book to say that the Preacher simply looks at life, declares its meaninglessness, and then calls it a day.

The author in fact does bring our attention to the ultimate meaning and reality of life. He does not drag us down into the gutters of despair just to leave us there to pull ourselves up by our own boot straps. Nor does he expect us to stop working or to stop seeking wisdom in order that we can throw our lives into ragged living because all truly is vanity. The message of the book rather, as we shall see, is that any life, no matter how successful or wise, is as futile as the most wasted life, if it does not center and glorify the God who created us.

The Westminster Larger Catechism begins with a question addressing this very concept. It asks, “What is the chief and highest end of man?” The answer is not all that different from the conclusion that we arrive at in Ecclesiastes. “Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and to fully enjoy him forever,” is the answer that is provided. It is not success, not wealth, not wisdom, and not even a loving family. The answer is that the chief good and highest end of man is to glorify the one true God and to enjoy a right relationship with him forever. In Ecclesiastes, the Preacher frames it this way: “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” While the two answers are framed differently, they actually say very much the same thing. For what brings God more glory in our lives than when we honor and obey Him? And what relationship can be enjoyed with God apart from this lifestyle of glorifying God? It seems that the opinion of the Preacher is that only a life lived for God will have any ultimate meaning. This is because meaning is only found in its eschatological importance, that is, only in what happens after we die since everything will pass away when we die.

The Preacher begins by showing several examples from nature that show us the cyclical and pointlessness of this life. He reminds us that one generation, no matter how great, is quickly forgotten by the subsequent generations. Every day the sun rises and then falls just to rise and fall the next day, and the streams flow to the ocean just to be renewed at the head of the stream to flow to the ocean once again. Nothing new is gained. This leads the Preacher to conclude that “there is nothing new under the sun.” We can look at this in our own technological advancements. We may feel like there are new innovations, but they are merely more convenient forms of old concepts. A cell phone is just a more advanced form of communications that accomplishes more quickly the old role of messengers and smoke signals. Cars simply fill the function of travel more adequately than horses. Microwaves merely cook food faster than fire. These too will all be replace by even better and faster methods and ultimately all of them will fail to affect our eternal destiny. For the Preacher, they are meaningless.

Next he goes on to show that even things that we may prize and highly valuable are simply more vanities of this life. He goes on to state that he had set his heart to find all wisdom of what occurs on the earth. He became wiser than all on the earth, a fact attested to even by the narrator of 1 Kings 3 which tells of the great wisdom Solomon attained as a gift from God. Yet even this wisdom, which was given by God, was “a striving after the wind” because “in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (Ecc. 1:17, 18). For the Preacher, wisdom only showed him more and more what he was lacking. Later he would add, “all the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied” (Ecc. 6:7). He means by this that no matter how hard we work, we will always be hungry the next day.

From here he moves on to indulgence and reckless living. The Preacher built houses, he planted vineyards, made great pools and bought many slaves. He ate his fill and drank much wine, and gathered more gold and silver and treasures than any king ever had before or after him. He had not an earthly care in the world and yet all of this came to nothing. He knew the old adage was true; he could not take it with him. It added nothing to the meaningfulness of his life.

We then come to the first of several interludes throughout the book where we see our first glimpse at the highest good, the summum bonum of life. Here the Preacher tells us that the ultimate reason why wisdom, riches, and pleasure are meaningless is because “for the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool!” (Ecc. 2:16). For the Preacher, our life this side of death only finds its meaning based on what it will receive on the other side of death. We see this explicitly in 8:12-13 where he states, “yet I know that it will be will with those who fear God, because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God.” In the final judgment, it will be the eternal destinies of the righteous and the wicked that determine the value of the life that had been lived.

It does not appear that the Preacher is a defeatist or believes that we should give up all hope of living life because there can be no meaning. His point is simply that the only life that does have meaning, will not find this meaning in the pursuits of man. He will not find it in his work, in his education, in his pocketbook or in his relationships. The only life that will find meaning is the life that will remember its creator (Ecc. 12:1) and thus will “fear God and keep his commandments” (Ecc. 12:13).

This brings us back to the answer provided for us by the Westminster Divines in their response concerning the first question of the Catechism. They respond that the summum bonum of life is to glorify God and to fully enjoy him forever. This is indeed the very response that Scripture gives concerning how we are to live our lives, not only in Ecclesiastes, but also in various places throughout the New Testament. For example, we see in Romans 11:36 that “from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.” Here Paul upholds the Reformed concept of Soli Deo Gloria in which God receives the glory for all things.
Later in 1 Corinthians 10:31 we see an even more explicit example of what is spoken of in Ecclesiastes. Here Paul speaks of the mundane activities of life and shows that they find their purpose and their meaning only when we do them to the glory of God. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” While in the context he is speaking to ceremonial eating and drinking, his universal application to “whatever you do” cannot be understated. Here Paul is clearly showing us that the only life that is worth living is the one that actively seeks to give glory to God with everything that it does; something he later hashes out in Colossians 3:17 when he says “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

We also see in the writing of the 73rd Psalm of Asaph, this idea of the life devoted to God being the only one that has meaning because of its culmination after death. Here Asaph writes,

Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.

The theme of glorifying God and enjoying him is so tangible in this passage that it almost does not even need to be stated. We see clearly that Asaph does enjoy a right relationship with God because he continually gives God the glory and the honor. We can observe that he too states that both the righteous and the wicked will die, his heart will fail just as the wicked heart will perish, yet he knows that he will not be far from God and that God will be his refuge. His life has meaning because it is centered on God.

It is clear from the teaching of the whole of Scripture, that the ultimate good, the summum bonum of life, is to glorify God and to fully enjoy him forever. In fact, something that we should find striking is that there is an all or nothing aspect to this highest good. Our lives either find their meaning in God, or they find no meaning at all. There is no gradation of meaningfulness that can be found in earthly possessions or in our work or even in our wisdom if they do not lead us to glorify the one true God.

Yet here also lies the promise of the gospel. For who of us is able, by our own ability to live a life of full surrender to God? Which one of us is capable of fully glorifying God when we drink, when we eat, when we work, when we sleep? We are depraved to the core and incapable of living this life that fulfills its highest good. It is only by the perfect life lived for us, by the righteousness of Christ that is imputed to us, that we are able to find this meaning of life. We may do it imperfectly, but Christ did it perfectly on our behalf.