Theistic Misuse of the Concepts of Meaning, Value and Purpose

A common ad hominem tactic used by Christian apologists against non-Christians (and particularly against non-theists) is the claim, made one way or another, that life without the Christian god has no meaning. In this blog I will examine this claim and several interpretations of it, to determine whether or not such claims have any merit to recommend them. If such claims are determined to have various integral problems, as I argue that they do, then non-believers are wholly justified in rejecting them.


The Concept of Meaning

Famed Christian apologist Cornelius Van Til wrote the following:

Our existence and our meaning, our denotation and our connotation are derived from God. We are already fully interpreted before we come into existence. God knows us before and behind; he knows the thoughts of our hearts. We could not have existence and meaning apart from the existence and meaning of God. All this is the road from God to us. (The Defense of the Faith, p. 40)

Now it’s not exactly clear to me what statements like this are supposed to mean. The term ‘meaning’ here is being used in a most idiosyncratic manner so far as I can tell, one which apologists routinely take for granted and tend not to explain. Regardless, it is apparent that this pronouncement – that “we [Van Til presumably has all human beings in mind here] could not have… meaning apart from… God” – is not intended to be complimentary to non-Christians and the philosophical positions open to them given their non-belief in the Christian god.

What is noteworthy about such pronouncements is that, as Van Til’s quote exemplifies, they are typically made without any argument whatsoever. Apologists seem to believe that it is sufficient for them to simply assert that “meaning” depends on their god, and apparently this alleged truth is supposed to be self-evident once it’s been pointed out. But Van Til did claim that he could demonstrate this. In his pamphlet Particularism and Common Grace, Van Til writes:

Yet we can show negatively that unless the objector will drop his objections and stand with us upon the Scriptures of God and hold with us to the God of the Scriptures there is no meaning to his experience.

Unfortunately, in spite of this chest-pounding, I have been unable to find where Van Til in fact shows that disbelieving the claims of Christianity and being convinced of certain objections against it result in one’s experience having no “meaning.” Again, it seems that we are left with mere assertions at this point.

Van Til does not seem to be saying that, without belief in the Christian god the non-believer has no experience at all. Rather, he seems to be allowing that non-believers do in fact have experience in spite of their non-belief, but that this experience has no meaning, that his experience is real, but nonetheless meaningless. But this is a strange statement to make. In fact, it seems that “meaning” is simply the wrong term to be used here. If it is allowed that the non-believer has experience, then it would have to be admitted that the non-believer’s experience at least has identity; otherwise, this allowance would seem to be self-contradictory: how could something be said to exist and included in the denotation of a category (‘experience’) and yet that thing admitted to exist is also said to have no identity? What, then, would justify including it in the denotation of the concept ‘experience’? And if it is admitted that the non-believer’s experience has identity (which the apologist would be forced to admit, if he admits that the non-believer does in fact experience things), then what is to prevent the non-believer from identifying his experience, especially if he is conscious and possesses the faculty needed to identify things? Only at this point, once the non-believer has begun to identify his experience in conceptual form, would concern over “meaning” seem to be appropriate. But at this point it's too late for the apologist, for he has already conceded the fundamentals which the non-believer needs to meaningfully identify and understand his experience.

This is because, technically speaking, meaning is a property of concepts and symbols. That is, meaning is epistemological, not metaphysical. But Van Til is clearly using the concept ‘meaning’ as if it applied directly to metaphysical phenomena. Typically one does not pick up a rock from the ground and say “what does this rock mean?” The rock simply exists, and is not a symbol for something else. Only with the addition of an enormous context of prior mental integrations can an informed individual (such as a geologist) take his discovery of the rock and its location to make inferences about, for example, what its composition is, where it came from, how it got there, etc.

So I question the conceptual validity of what Van Til is saying to begin with. It seems, rather, that Van Til and others who make the charge that non-believer’s experience is meaningless would be better off saying something like, “without God one’s experience has no purpose,” or “without God one’s experience has no value” or “without God one’s experience has no importance.” Either of these alternatives would make the charge clearer, and thus give all parties something more substantial to consider. The charge that “without God one’s experience has no meaning” is simply too vague for its own good, and suggests that the apologist is simply confused on what he is trying to say.

So let’s consider these other alternatives, assuming that they are more accurate in interpreting the apologists’ accusation.

The latter two variants – “without God one’s experience has no value” and “without God one’s experience has no importance” – are easily dispatched.


The Concept of Value

Consider the first claim: “Without God one’s experience has no value.” Whenever the concept ‘value’ is invoked like this, it is needful to ask: “of value to whom?” For the concept ‘value’ presupposes someone capable of valuing whatever object is in question (in this case, a human being's experience). This claim ultimately assumes that the only one who can value a human being's experience is not the human being who has the experience, but a deity which vicariously observes a human being's experiences. Van Til's claim seems to be that, if this deity does not exist, then there’s no one to value the experiences which the non-believer has in his life. But why should anyone accept such a claim? I have found no argument in the apologetic literature which defends this assumption (which is not surprising), but I think there are good reasons to reject it. For one, there are good reasons to suppose that a human being who experiences things in life is fully capable of valuing his own experiences. If this is the case, then clearly it would be wrong to say that his experiences have no value. If a human being values his own experience, what would be the basis for someone else to say that experience has no value at all? It may be the case that those making such claims do not have a very good understanding of what values are in the first place. So again, it is important to define our terms.

Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. It should be easy to understand why human beings are capable of valuing things (including their own experiences in life). Human beings are biological organisms, and as such they face a fundamental alternative: to live or die. The life of any biological organism (including human beings) is conditional: they are not immortal, indestructible, eternally existing phenomena. In order to live, for instance, a man must act in order to acquire those values which his life, by virtue of its delicate conditionality, requires. His values are not automatically given to him. He needs to act in order to acquire things like food, water, shelter, happiness (which, as an incentive to continue living, is a most profound value), etc. If he does not act, he will not have food to eat, water to drink, shelter to protect him from the elements, etc., and he will die. I’ve never met a living Christian who does not act in order to procure those values which make his life possible. So even Christians should recognize this basic nature of the concept ‘value’. The point here is that we are capable of valuing things because we consciously face a fundamental alternative. If we did not face this fundamental alternative, we would be like rocks in the earth: having no need to act in order to achieve values.

So if it is granted that the non-believer is in fact a human being, then it is granted that he is a biological organism consciously facing a fundamental alternative, namely life vs. death. And if this is granted, then it is also granted that, if the non-believer wants to live (a choice he alone can make for himself), then he has no choice about the facts that he needs certain values in order to live, and that he must take those actions necessary to achieve those values. This all means, and incontestably so, that the non-believer is capable of valuing his own experience in life, for it is through his experience in life that he learns how to hone his abilities to achieve those values which his life requires, given its conditional nature.

Moreover, it is questionable at best to suppose that the Christian god could value anything at all, let alone someone else’s experiences. Unlike biological organisms (such as human beings), the Christian god is said to be immortal, indestructible, eternally existing, impervious to harm. The Christian god has no physical body whose skin can be lacerated or whose bones can be broken, whose organs can become diseased or whose heart can stop. It does not need food, it does not need water, it does not need to shelter itself from the elements, it does not need any incentive to continue existing, because it cannot die and does not need motivation to take actions necessary to allow it to continue existing. The Christian god, given what Christianity claims about its nature, could simply sit on its hands for all eternity in unending idleness, and still be what it is. It would have no reason to be anything but utterly indifferent to anything else that exists. In short, it would have no metaphysical basis for valuing anything at all, which can only mean that the theist has no objective basis for assuming that it does value anything at all. And Christian soteriology implicitly concedes this point: the Christian god has no onus to save anyone, but does so out of purely arbitrary choice (cf. Psalms 115:3). So when the theist assumes that his god values anything, that his god is the basis of values, or that his god’s existence is a precondition for anyone else valuing anything, he is committing the fallacy of the stolen concept, which invalidates such pronouncements. (For more in depth argument on behalf of these points, see Anton Thorn’s article Why an Immortal Being Cannot Value.)

Therefore, it is indefensible to assert that the non-believer’s experience in life, given his non-belief in the Christian god, has no value. The non-believer can certainly value his own experience, and it is nonsensical to suppose that the Christian god is needed for the non-believer’s experience to have value, given the inherent fallaciousness of such suppositions.


The Concept of Importance

Essentially the same point can be made against the claim that the non-believer’s experience, given his non-belief in the Christian god, has no importance. Again we must ask the question: importance to whom? The above points about the non-believer’s nature as a biological organism conscious of his own fundamental choice between life and death, make it clear that he is capable of considering his own experiences important (they’re certainly important to himself), for the very reason he considers it valuable: it is from his experience that he can develop his skills at values-achievement and life-preservation. Additionally, we can ask: why would the Christian god be needed to give the non-believer’s experience importance? The Christian god certainly would not find the non-believer’s experience important for any reason. Indeed, according to the Christian storybook, the bible, the Christian god need not hesitate in annihilating any human life it wants to destroy, regardless of whether he believes or not. According to the sacred writings of Christianity, the Christian god “destroyeth the perfect and the wicked” (Job 9:22), and “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt. 5:45). Why would the Christian god hesitate to carry out its destructive wrath on anyone? It has nothing to lose by destroying human beings, and has nothing to gain by protecting their lives. So on what basis would the Christian god place any importance on any human being's experience? Blank out.

Now the Christian apologist could respond to all this and say that, when the non-believer values his own experience or considers his experience important to his life, this simply does not count. In other words, he can simply deny that this has any relevance or significance in the context of what he charges against the non-believer. But this would constitute an autobiographical statement: not only does he find it necessary to deny relevant facts, his denial indicates his own lack of value for other human beings – i.e., for things which actually do exist – in preference of something which he can only imagine. If the Christian finds it so easy to dismiss the non-believer’s ability to value and the relevance this ability has in consideration of his apologetic accusations, then the non-believer should find it just as easy to dismiss the apologist’s baseless charges and stolen concepts. Indeed, the non-believer would have full justification for doing so, given the fallacies identified above.


The Concept of Purpose

Now Van Til or his followers could of course rephrase his charge to say that the non-believer’s experience, given his non-belief in the Christian god, serves no purpose. This is in line with the assumption commonly made by defenders of Christianity, that without the existence of the Christian god, nothing could have any purpose at all. On this view, the Christian god’s existence is a precondition for any purpose whatsoever. Such a view seems to stem from the supposition that there must be an “ultimate” or “absolute” purpose to everything comprehensively (i.e., to the entire universe) in order for any particular activity or thing to have a purpose. Along these lines, Van Til tells us that

there must be a comprehensive purpose with history if there is purpose anywhere in history. Without a comprehensive purpose, every act of purpose on the part of man would be set in a void. And if there must be absolute purpose, it goes without saying that all the evil must one day be abolished. All unrighteousness will one day have to be punished. God will accomplish his purpose with the universe, or he would not be God. (Introduction to Systematic Theology, chapter 9, section B)

What Van Til gives us here is, at best, an argument from (presumably) undesirable consequences. Who wants to suppose that any purposeful act he engages is “set in a void”? Well, according to Van Til’s claim here, if you want to suppose that your choices and actions have any grander purpose than the immediate moment, then you need to frame your purposes within the context of “a comprehensive purpose,” and this can only be achieved by considering the individual's activity in the larger context of "history" (i.e., something for which no single individual is exclusively responsible), which relegates any individual's actions to a mere passing ingredient in a conglomerate of historical events. To have any purpose at all, one's choices and actions need to be in line with something that transcends any individual's experience. According to such a view, every individual must see himself as a servant to a summary whole which by definition is beyond his own life, something he can never see but can only imagine, something that can at best one day be recorded in history books, written well after the fact by persons who onstensively would not be participants in said history. Such criteria can only be achieved on the basis of Christian theism, since allegely only on the basis of Christian theism can such overarching intensions be possible.

There is a hint of truth hidden behind all this, but it is not what Van Til would have us believe. Van Til would have us believe that human activity could only be purposive if it is set within the context of the “comprehensive purpose” which the Christian god allegedly has for all of human history as a whole. The hint of truth here is that one’s particular actions do need a context broader than each individual action to roll them up into a systematic whole. But this context is already provided by man’s nature as a biological organism. What Van Til is denying here is man's inherent individualism; man's life cannot have any purpose unless he is part of a collective effort whose significance extends well beyond his individual contributions to that effort. This is how the Christian conception of purpose is inherently collective in nature: it views the human individual as simply a cog in a wheel vastly larger than any individual's own life, a wheel to whose purposeless turning he must devote his existence.

Notice how the hysteria of such prescriptions is so easy to repudiate: Since purpose is properly understood as goal-oriented endeavor, the metaphysical basis for man’s purpose is the conditionality of his life qua biological organism. Specifically, then, purpose for man is inherently related to his need for values. Since values are those things which one acts to gain and/or keep, purpose is the “conscious goal-orientedness in every aspect of one’s existence where choice applies” (Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 298). Thus the concept of ‘value’ is integral to the concept of ‘purpose’. It is here, in the concept of ‘value’, that we must look for the “comprehensive purpose” which gives an individual’s specific choices and actions the systematic relevance which Van Til mistakenly attributes to his theistic paradigm.

As we learned above, the bases of man’s values are the facts that he, as a biological organism, faces a fundamental alternative: to live or die, and that living his life depends on his achievement of certain values which make his life possible. This summary goal – to live – is the comprehensive purpose which provides an individual with the necessary context for the specific choices and actions which he makes. Balancing my checkbook, for instance, is not an end in itself; it serves a larger purpose, namely to keep me abreast of those transferable values which I do possess and have at my disposal. Transferable values of course are of value because I can exchange them for other values which my life requires, such as to purchase food, to pay my mortgage, to keep current with my electric bill, etc. So the mere act of balancing my checkbook, far from being “set in a void” (i.e., performed apart from some larger context which provides its results with value), does in fact serve a larger purpose, a purpose outlined by my need for values, a need which I have given my nature as a biological being. Purpose, then, contrary to what religion teaches, is in fact concurrent with biology: the actions of a biological organism are, generally speaking, summarily organized by its inherent need for values. (There are, of course, exceptions to this, in the case of irrational human beings; however, these are not counterexamples which disprove the rule, but rather exceptions which in fact prove the rule: if a human being does not govern his actions rationally, he is apt to destroy those values which his life requires.)

But clearly a god possessing the characteristics ascribed to it by Christian theism, could have no use for balancing a checkbook. Given the points which I have secured above about the Christian god not needing any values to begin with, whether or not any and every checkbook which has ever existed were balanced, the Christian god – given its attributes of immortality, indestructibility, eternality, imperviousness to harm, etc. – would not be affected by it in the slightest. The theist may or may not grant this, but surely he would need an argument for denying this. Would his god, in the end case, need any checkbook to be balanced? If so, why? I thought the Christian god had no needs. Why all of a sudden would it have a need for someone’s checkbook to be balanced? What purpose would it serve, and why would that purpose need to be met?

I raised similar questions in my debate with a presuppositionalists who (ironically) calls himself “Truthseeker,” in the comments section of this blog. In our exchange, Truthseeker asserted (without argument) that “Ayn Rand and her disciples have a faulty understanding of concepts.” When I inquired about this, I had asked Truthseeker what he understands a concept to be, and what he thinks its purpose is. There’s that ugly word: “purpose.” Supposedly non-Christians are not supposed to invoke it for fear of conceding the whole farm to the Christian theist. Truthseeker did not give an answer to this question, but instead sought to redirect our discussion, asking “When you ask what it's purpose is, do you believe it has purpose?” Truthseeker would have to be stupid to suppose that I didn’t think concepts served a purpose, and I don’t think he’s stupid. So this question seemed rather baiting to me. And of course I think concepts serve a purpose, specifically a purpose suited to man’s consciousness – i.e., a consciousness which is neither omniscient nor infallible, as I explain in my blog Would an Omniscient Mind Have Knowledge in Conceptual Form?.

Now Truthseeker had stated that, “For my worldview looking into yours I really can’t see purpose.” Of course, Truthseeker does not explain what exactly he’s looking for in order to find purpose in my worldview. So I explained that purpose, as my worldview understands it, has to do with goal-orientation. In response to this, Truthseeker interviewed me on the topic with a series of questions, which I answered, and which I quote here:

Truthseeker: “Who organized these goals?”

In the case of autonomic biological functions (such as the digestive processes of an ameba, the beating of a heart, etc.), no one did. The goal-directedness of biological functions is inherent in biology as such. Life is conditional, and the goal of these functions is to preserve an organism’s life. They were not put in place by some magic worker. Contrast biological functions to a rock rolling down a hill. The rock has no goals; its existence does not require goal-directed activity. It just rolls until it comes to a stop. It can sit in one place for years and years and still be what it is, a rock. But when it comes to biological organisms, we’re dealing with entities which face a fundamental alternative: life vs. death. This fundamental alternative is the ultimate goal-setter for living organisms. Goal-directedness, or purpose in the broader sense, is concurrent with biology. An entity which faces no fundamental alternative of life vs. death would have no basis for one goal as opposed to any other goal. (Incidentally, this is why ascribing “purpose” to the Christian god commits the fallacy of the stolen concept.)

Truthseeker: “Who gives things purpose?”

Notice that your first two questions about “purpose” presuppose that [it is] assigned by an entity possessing consciousness (a “who”). The answer to your present question depends on what things we are talking about. I don’t think rocks exist for a purpose; they simply exist. They are part of the metaphysical given. As for biological organisms, as I pointed out above, purpose (or goal-directedness of self-initiated actions, including autonomic functions) is concurrent with biology, given the fundamental alternative (life vs. death, existence vs. non-existence) which they face. In the case of man-made objects, like paper, scissors, stereos, computers, skyscrapers, etc., their creators and users give them their purpose. Typically human beings give these things the purpose of helping them live and enjoy their lives. Again, no need to point to some invisible magic being to understand purpose.

Truthseeker: “How do you account for purpose and goal-orientation in you worldview?”

It’s not always clear what a Christian means by “account for” in such interrogations (since appealing to an invisible magic being settles the question in his mind). But I think the points I gave above will give you some indication of what I mean by purpose and its metaphysical basis. For more insight, I would suggest Dr. Harry Binswanger’s book, The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts. By “teleological concepts” Binswanger has in mind things like goal, purpose, end, etc., and he argues in this book quite clearly how these concepts have (as the title suggests) a biological basis (as opposed to a storybook basis, for instance).

Truthseeker: “Again I don’t see any purpose or goals standing from your worldview shoes just things that happen with no intelligence behind them.”

I don’t think you’re “standing from [in?] [my] worldview shoes” to begin with, if all this needs to be explained to you, as these points are pretty basic in Objectivism. I suspect you’re standing in your worldview’s shoes looking for what your worldview conceives “purpose” to be, which you have not stated for the record. It’s clear that your concept of purpose is underwritten by the primacy of consciousness, which is why you probably think there’s no conceptual problem in ascribing purpose to your god. But as I indicated above, the presence of a stolen concept at the root of one’s view of something invalidates that view in toto.

If purpose is generally conceived as the goal-oriented action of biological organisms (especially in the case of consciously chosen actions which man initiates), then clearly we have an objective basis for this concept, namely the facts relevant to meeting the conditions of life set by the nature of the specific organism in question (such as man’s need for values). According to Objectivism, man does in fact have an ultimate purpose, and that purpose is to live and to enjoy his life. It is this ultimate purpose which provide an objective summary context for all his choices and actions. Apologists who say that they cannot “see” purpose in the Objectivist worldview may be suffering from self-inflicted blindness.

The Christian may not like Objectivism’s conception of man’s purpose, but his dislikes do not constitute a refutation. Nor can he deny the fact that this is a goal for which any normal human individual may strive. While Christians can be expected to malign this conception of man’s purpose as providing justification for vicious social behavior such as rape or murder (activities which have not been identified as condoned), they in fact actually reject this proposal, not because it will lead to unethical behavior, but because it is too obviously selfish, allowing an individual to make himself the primary beneficiary of his own actions instead of the Christian god. Underlying the Christians’ objections is a false dichotomy: either man surrenders his life and mind to the Christian god, or he rapes and murders others. It never seems to cross their mind that men are fully capable of governing themselves in a manner which allows them to achieve and preserve their values without infringing anyone else’s right to do the same, even though the vast majority of individuals do just this. Ultimately, Christians want men to treat their god as the primary beneficiary of their actions, even though it is incoherent to suppose that the deity which they describe could benefit from anything in the first place. They would prefer that men hold as their supreme purpose their own sacrifice to the Christian god, which demands man’s sacrifice but would have no need for it in the first place. At any rate, to live and enjoy one’s life is undeniably a lifelong goal-oriented project, and thus satisfies man’s requirement for a comprehensive purpose. If the Christian objects to this by saying one’s life is unimportant and therefore unworthy of life-long effort to preserve and adore, he is telling us about his own values hierarchy, specifically that he sees other individuals as ultimately worthless and consequently as merely disposable lumps of flesh. The Christian’s objections to man considering his own life as an end in itself also seems to conflict with the broader motivations which any believer would naturally have for putting his hopes in the notion of eternal salvation. Would he be so eager to defend his god-beliefs if he believed that he would spend the afterlife broiling lake of fire, in spite of his devotion to his god? Believers often carry on as if service to their god were their ultimate goal, but it seems that eternal security from death is really what it’s all about. Isn’t this just as selfish (albeit irrationally so) as enjoying one's life on earth as an end in itself?

Furthermore, as I pointed out to Truthseeker, to attribute purpose to the Christian god and its actions is, because of the characteristics which Christianity ascribes to its god, a fine example of the fallacy of the stolen concept on display. Since purpose presupposes the conditionality of biological life, a non-biological entity would have no objective basis for governing its actions purposefully. This would be all the more true in the case of the Christian god, for reasons identified above: since it does not face the fundamental alternative of life vs. death, its continued existence would not depend on achieving certain values, and thus it would have no basis for goal-oriented action. For instance, while man must procure for himself food and refrain from stepping into the path of oncoming locomotives, the Christian god does not need food to begin with, and cannot be harmed by collisions with speeding vehicles. This can only mean that it is conceptually incoherent for Christians to point to their god as the standard of purpose, or to claim that their god's existence is the precondition of purpose. The precondition of purposeful action is in fact the conditional nature of biological existence. Without the fundamental conditions of biological existence, there would be no basis or need for goal-oriented action.

As for what Christians say about the purpose of man’s life, any brief examination of their position will reveal it to be an unending wild goose chase, taking the form of a series of arbitrary goals and unproductive duties which keep the believer psychologically distracted. When asked, for instance, what the purpose of concepts are according to his Christian worldview’s theory of concepts (a theory which he never laid out), Truthseeker answered:

The purpose would be to function and interact with God's creation.

When asked what would be the purpose of “functioning and interacting with God’s creation,” Truthseeker answered:

To be created beings made in Gods [sic] image and likeness.

But what would be the purpose of being “created beings made in Gods image and likeness”? Truthseeker’s answer:

If we were not functional we would not be made in the image and likeness of God and we would not be able to rule over the earth.

But again, this too does not identify an end in itself: What would be the purpose of ruling over the earth? And round and round we go. Given such answers (and these are not atypical by any means), one gets the impression that “purpose” for the Christian consists in performing ancillary chores for an invisible magic being which, given its alleged omnipotence, could accomplish whatever goals they supposedly satisfy by simply commanding that it be done. I suspect that Truthseeker and any other Christian would continue this charade indefinitely without ever identifying an ultimate purpose, an end in itself, which would provide all these incidental tasks they point to with a comprehensive context in which they would “make sense.” Unless they can do this, their claim that purpose “makes sense” in their worldview rings ever hollow. In my interview with Truthseeker, he provided nothing which would qualify as an end in itself (such as man’s enjoyment of life is in the Objectivist worldview). In fact, it seems that such an idea couldn’t be further from their worldview’s teachings. According to the New Testament, “the first and great commandment” for men to obey is “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Mt. 22:37-38). But why would one need to do this? Blank out. The second commandment is: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mt. 22:39). Again, why would one need to do this? Blank out again. Is the concern to please the Christian god? Again we must ask: why do this? What end would this serve? Is the Christian god unhappy? If so, it is said to be an eternally unchanging being, so if it is unhappy, it is eternally unhappy, for it cannot change. Does the believer think that his obedience to such purposeless commandments is going to have an impact on the mood of an eternally unchanging, transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient and infinite being? And non-believers are called “arrogant”?

In all honesty, I do not think I am in any way misrepresenting Christianity here by probing its conception of purpose for man’s life. Again, I see nothing which comes close to an ultimate purpose for man, unless of course the his ultimate purpose is to play the role of a pawn and eventually sacrifice himself. But as I indicated above, this does not cohere with Christianity’s promise of the reward of salvation (cf. Mt. 5:12: “for great is your reward in heaven”), which is dangled before the believer as the final prize for his devotion (cf. Mt. 16:27: “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works”).

Now if the Christian responds to all this and says, “Well, it’s ultimately for your own good that you do what God has commanded,” then we’re getting somewhere. In fact, whether he realizes it or not, the Christian admitting this is tacitly validating the very selfishness of Objectivism’s conception of man’s purpose which Christians typically (and are confessionally expected to) resent. But then it’s a matter of rational consistency: man’s life is conditional in nature; if he does not take the actions necessary to achieve those values which his life requires, he will die. The inherent selfishness of one's attendance to this fact is imperative. By contrast, the Christian god is said to be eternal, immortal, indestructible, impervious to harm, completely free from any needs whatsoever such that it does not face the fundamental alternative of life vs. death that man faces. So why would anyone need to do anything on behalf of such a deity, and why would anyone need to abandon his own need for values in order to please it? The Christian worldview fails to answer these fundamental questions, and in fact plays a shell game with the concept of purpose such that the believer is left groping for answers when he is asked to provide a reason for the hope he claims to have (so much for I Peter 3:15!). For Christians to turn around and claim that non-Christian worldviews are incapable of providing man with "meaning" in life is the epitome of hypocrisy and absurdity.

by Dawson Bethrick

The “Necessary Being” vs. “Contingent Being” Argument

This is an analysis of an argument which Justin Hall encountered in the field and brought to my attention in the comments section of my blog Non-Cognitivism or Metaphysical Primacy: What’s the Better Strategy?

The argument which Justin posted is not unlike many that I’ve seen before. It clearly seeks to trade on a distinction between “necessary existence” and “contingent existence,” a dichotomy which I think is unjustifiable. I strongly suspect that it has its roots in Anal Phil, which seems to run away with itself in “modal logic” with passionate abandon. If we begin with the fact that existence exists, what necessitates dividing the concept ‘existence’ into two opposed categories like this?

The argument dwells a lot on which of these categories can “cause” the other. It does not ask whether existence as such is caused, but whether one or the other category (“necessary existence” or “contingent existence”) can be caused, and if so, by which category.

The argument affirms the following premise:

Nonbeing Cannot Cause Being (Non-B>B) The Principle of Causality.

Now this is not what I understand the principle of causality to say. The principle of causality makes a positive affirmation, while the conception of causality given here is purely negative. Of course I agree that “nonbeing cannot cause being” or that something which does not exist cannot cause existence to exist. But this is because I start with the fact that existence exists rather than with nothing and then need to explain the fact that existence exists. My understanding of the principle of causality has to do with the relationship between an entity and its own actions, and according to the principle of causality this is a necessary relationship, since the actions of an entity necessarily depend on the acting entity’s nature. A crow can fly because it has wings and can use them to achieve lift; a crow cannot be poured into a glass and conform to its shape like water or orange juice can. As for existence, I don’t think it is caused; the concept of causality presupposes the concept of existence, and causality as a metaphysical phenomenon is only possible if things exist in the first place. To put causality prior to existence, then, would commit the fallacy of the stolen concept. So perhaps it would be educational to know why the defender of this argument thinks that “nonbeing cannot cause being.” Would it be for similar reasons?

Look at the next premise:

Contingent Being Can't Cause Contingent Being (Bc>Bc) Dependency.

Really? Would a human parent be an example of a “contingent being”? And isn’t a human parent the cause of his child’s existence? And isn’t the child another example of a “contingent being”? I am a parent and I know that both I and my wife played our respective roles in bringing our daughter into the world. The same is the case with me with respect to my parents, and my wife with respect to her parents. Biological organisms have the ability to reproduce. It seems that, if we accept the “necessary existence vs. contingent existence” dichotomy, that I as an offspring of my parents am a “contingent being” and my daughter as an offspring of both my wife and me is yet another “contingent being.”

The next premise only compounds the problem:

Only Necessary Being Can Cause a Contingent Being (Bn->Bc) = The Positive Principle of Modality.

So presumably my daughter is a “contingent being,” since she has not existed eternally and her existence was caused by some factor prior to her existence. So did I as an originally “contingent being” somehow turn into a “necessary being” at some point before fathering my daughter, so that I could be in compliance with this argument’s premises? Perhaps so: in the case of my daughter’s existence, I was very much a necessary factor, just as my wife was. But I do not see any premise in this argument which allows something that was at one time a “contingent being” to become a “necessary being.” There seems to be no permission to switch sides, as it were. So there seems to be a defect here. Or perhaps I was born a “necessary being” from the very get-go, and did not have to undergo any kind of transformation from a “contingent being” to a “necessary being.” It’s not clear to me, because the argument strayed from my understanding of the universe well before we got to this point. So it’s up to the defender of such an argument to untangle this imbroglio.

Then the argument affirms the following premise:

Necessary Being Cannot Cause a Necessary Being (Bn>Bn) = The Negative Principle of Modality.

Why is this? What if the “necessary being” is omnipotent? Or is omnipotence not allowed by these premises? It seems that a “necessary being” which is not able to “cause [another] necessary being” would not be an omnipotent being. But of course, theists like to call their god both a “necessary being” as well as an omnipotent being. Then again, many apologists define omnipotence as the ability to do anything that is “logically possible,” and such individuals would probably say that causing a “necessary being” to exist is “logically impossible.” But why? It seems to me that the concept “necessary” here has no contextual basis or meaning. Above I pointed out that my existence is certainly necessary for my daughter’s existence to be a reality. My daughter does in fact exist, so this is a fact which needs to be dealt with. I exist and so do my parents. Likewise my parents’ existence was necessary for me to exist. On my view, the use of the concept ‘necessary’ in this manner is valid; how would my daughter be able to exist without my existence and participation in her conception? So I think the concept ‘necessary’ has a context to it which is being dropped or ignored in the proposed argument.

This hints at an important reason why I think the proposed distinction between “necessary existence” vs. “contingent existence” is fallacious. The concept existence (by itself, that is) is axiomatic; it is an irreducible primary. What the concept 'existence' identifies does not depend on anything prior to it; there is nothing prior to existence. Existence exists, and there’s no contest here. The test for this is the fact that the concept ‘existence’ is not defined in terms of prior concepts. Its definition is ostensive, not conceptual. That’s one reason why it’s an axiomatic concept: it’s conceptually irreducible. There is no concept which is more fundamental in our hierarchy of knowledge than the concept of existence.

But the concepts ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent’ are not like this. They are not axiomatic. They presuppose the validity of prior concepts. The test for this is the fact that these concepts are defined in terms of prior concepts; that is, in terms of concepts which are more fundamental in our hierarchy of knowledge. These more fundamental concepts inform the concepts ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent’ with the context which makes them meaningful. Since these are not axiomatic concepts (for instance, they do not name or identify something which is directly perceived), they need to be informed by prior concepts in order to have meaning, This is one reason why it’s so ironic, in my view, when Christians affirm arguments of this nature, which try to draw such hefty conclusions from notions like “necessary existence” and “contingent existence”: Christians say their worldview is necessary for “meaning,” and yet here we have concepts employed in an manner which allows them no meaning. If they have meaning, what is it? Well, what are their definitions? If they have definitions in terms of prior concepts, then they are not themselves conceptually irreducible; they depend on more fundamental concepts in that case. And yet the premises of this argument put them on the same level with an axiomatic concept. We have essentially a double package-deal here which couples an axiomatic concept with two higher-level concepts as if they were themselves axiomatic. This simply doesn’t work. It’s really an attempt to pair an axiomatic concept with two stolen concepts, a move which completely invalidates the argument employing such a monstrosity.

The next premise simply confirms the imbroglio which I mentioned above:

Every Contingent Being is Caused by a Necessary Being (Bn->Bc) = The Principle of Existential Causality.

So again, my daughter is a being whose existence was caused by something prior, thus presumably making her a “contingent being.” Both I and my wife are the cause of her existence (I don’t know how anyone could argue against this), which, according to what we’re told by the premises of this argument, means that both my wife and I are each a “necessary being.” But both my wife’s and my existence were caused by our parents, which would mean that we’re “contingent beings,” which defies our necessary role in the “contingent existence” of our daughter. As an Objectivist, I’m sure glad these aren’t my problems!

Then there’s another problematic premise:

The Necessary Being is similar to the similar contingent being it causes = The Principle of Analogy (Bn-similar->Bc)

Really? Again I don’t think this is always the case. Yes, my daughter is similar to my wife and me in various respects, some of them fundamental. For instance, both our daughter as well as my wife and I are biological organisms, we have physical bodies, we possess the capacity to perceive objects and are thus conscious of things in the world; as biological organisms we face a fundamental alternative (life vs. death) and thus can live only if certain conditions are met (e.g., food, water, shelter, protection from the elements, etc.), etc. In other words, we need values in order to exist. But this is not the case for everything that I cause. If I make a mess in the kitchen – say I spill the coffee grounds on the kitchen floor, is what I caused similar to me? Yes, coffee grounds are physical and have a specific nature, just as I have. But the similarities pretty much end there. The coffee grounds are not a biological organism; they do not possess consciousness; they do not face the fundamental alternative that I as a biological organism face; they do not need values in order to exist, etc. I see no reason why the thing caused should be expected to be similar to the thing that caused it.

In the case of the Christian god, the problematic nature of this premise is evident in other respects. The Christian god is supposed to be a “necessary being,” while everything it has created (i.e., “caused” to exist) is “contingent being.” Naturally the arguer has in mind the “contingent being” known as man. Other examples of “contingent being” certainly seem as dissimilar to the Christian god as one could get. Dirt, for example, is supposed to have been “caused” by the Christian god, but how is dirt as a “contingent being” at all similar to the Christian god as a “necessary being”? The Christian god is supposed to be non-physical, supernatural, indestructible, infinite, omnipotent, infallible, not a composite of more fundamental materials, etc. But can we say this about dirt? I don’t think so. Dirt is physical (not “non-physical”), it’s natural (not “supernatural”), destructible (it can be eroded or disintegrated into dust and blown away, or solidified into sandstone, etc.), finite (it is what it is, and only what it is, not something more than what it is), not omnipotent, not infallible, a composite of more fundamental materials (e.g., atoms and molecules, silicates, carbonates, etc.), etc. In every respect, this “contingent being” is quite dissimilar to the “necessary being” which Christianity holds as its cause. Other counterexamples could be cited. For instance, rocks, rivers, planets, quasars, moons, comets, flowers, ice crystals, quartz, clouds, dung, etc. But all of these things are supposed to be examples of “contingent being,” and yet seem to enjoy no relevant similarity with the “necessary being” that is said to be their cause.

In the case of man as “contingent being,” there are still problems to contend with. For instance, man is a biological organism. But the Christian god is certainly no biological organism. Unlike man, it is said to be “incorporeal” – i.e., it has no body. It has no stomach, liver, pancreas, gall bladder, even a heart. It doesn’t even have a brain. Yes, that’s right, Christians worship a brainless being. (And it’s still unclear to me how a brainless being can be “intelligent.”) Also, the Christian god does not face the fundamental alternative which man as a biological organism faces, i.e., life vs. death. The Christian god is supposed to be eternal, immortal, indestructible. Unlike man, then, the Christian god’s continued existence is not dependent upon its actions: it does not need to seek food, water, shelter, or other values. Man’s existence, on the other hand, is dependent on the procurement of values; without the values of food, water, shelter, etc., he will die. But since the Christian god does not face this fundamental alternative, it would have no need for any values to begin with; in fact, it's not supposed to have any needs whatsoever. “Needs” are a symptom of a “contingent being,” a being dependent upon something for its existence. So in what way is the Christian god as “necessary being” similar to man as “contingent being” which it is said to have caused to exist?

Christians may cite man’s capacity for rationality, spirituality and holiness as points of similarity with the Christian god. But even here we encounter problems. Rationality is not only volitional in nature (it is a chosen commitment), it also has a conceptual nature. Rationality is the commitment to reason as one’s only means of knowledge and his only guide to action. Reason is the faculty by which an individual identifies and integrates what he perceives. What is the form in which man identifies and integrates what he perceives? It is in the form of concepts that he does this. It is in the form of concepts that man develops and retains his knowledge. But I have already shown that the Christian god, as an omniscient consciousness, would not possess its knowledge in the form of concepts (see for instance my blog Would an Omniscient Mind Have Knowledge in Conceptual Form?). So already we’re seeing a fundamental dissimilarity here: rationality presupposes conceptual knowledge, and the Christian god, qua omniscient mind, would not possess knowledge in conceptual form. The other two proposed categories likewise follow suit. The Christian god’s capacity for both spirituality and holiness are informed by omniscience and infallibility, while even in the most optimal of conditions man’s capacity for these same would not be so informed. Man is neither omniscient nor infallible, conditions having to do with one’s nature of consciousness which are more fundamental than either spirituality or holiness. So upon closer inspection, the claim to similarity here is simply a mirage.

The application of the argument proposed by its defender offers another category of similarity: emotion. He states:

I am a rational, emotional and spiritual person.

Therefore, the one prior to me must also be rational, emotional and spiritual since we are similar (#12)

Well, what is emotion? Emotion is an automatic reaction to new information as it concerns one’s values. If I get a phone call from a hospital, for instance, and on the calling end is the voice of a nurse telling me that my wife has been admitted to the emergency room, my emotions are needless to say going to be on high alert. My mind would consequently be racing: Was she in an auto accident? Was she the victim of a crime? Is she injured in some way? Is she going to be okay? What the hell is going on? The new information (the call from a nurse at a hospital telling me that my wife has been admitted to the emergency room) measured against my values (I am deeply in love with my wife) would immediately and automatically cause a spike in my emotions. When the nurse tells me that my wife is okay (new information), my emotions are calmed a bit. But why has she been admitted to the ER? The nurse tells me that she twisted her ankle at work and her team lead insisted that she be brought to the ER for X-rays (more information). A twisted ankle? Well, that’s a lot less serious than some of the alternatives I could imagine, which is all I’d have to go on if more information were not forthcoming.

Now what does this entirely realistic scenario tell us about the nature of emotions? It tells us that emotional experience presupposes non-omniscience. Had I been omniscient, I would have already known that my wife was admitted to the ER, and why, and that she was not in any immediate danger. So there’d be no causation for a spike in my emotional experience. But since I am only a man, and have my non-omniscient, fallible mind to work with, I’d have no way of knowing any of this before the nurse called to tell me about it. Furthermore, my emotions in such a case are dependent on my value of my wife. I value my wife because she’s important to me, to my wellbeing, to my existence. Without her, I would have a completely different view of life. But if I were eternal, immortal, indestructible, facing no alternative between life and death, having no needs, etc., the wellbeing of my wife would have no objective significance to my existence or conscious experience. Without the need for values, there'd be nothing to threaten me, so I would be completely indifferent to her wellbeing. Emotions, then, presuppose the very conditions which, on the Christian view, make us “contingent beings”: non-omniscience, fallibility, mortality, destructibility, dependence upon conditions being met, contingence, etc.

These are some of the points I would raise in response to this argument. The upshot is that it is deeply problematic, both from an objective understanding of the world, and also from a Christian viewpoint. But it is most problematic from an objective understanding, an understanding without which it would have no meaning to begin with.

There is of course something entirely and conspicuously missing from the argument, and that is any consideration for the proper relationship between a consciousness and its objects. It is this relationship which is the make-or-break consideration when it comes to the principle of objectivity. The argument clearly wants to assume objectivity (since it seeks to affirm how things are, independent of anyone’s wishing, preferences, ignorance, etc.), but it does not proceed from an informed understanding of what objectivity involves. This is clear from its conclusion, which posits something which is supposed to be a conscious being (the Christian god) as the cause of everything else. By what means did it bring everything else into existence? By means of conscious activity, e.g., an act of will. This is not stated explicitly in the argument, but that’s because it deliberately avoids dealing with the issue of metaphysical primacy. It makes no attempt to consider the proper relationship between consciousness and its objects, but its conclusion could not survive without the assumption that a consciousness could have the ability to “create” its own objects, or by some conscious activity bring them into existence ex nihilo. Why else would the distinction between “necessary existence” and “contingent existence” have any significance for the arguer?

As always, readers' comments are welcome.

by Dawson Bethrick

Non-Cognitivism or Metaphysical Primacy: What's the Better Strategy?

In the comments section of my blog ”Ultimate Questions”, Madmax asked:

Your method of challenging theistic apologetics is to expose the theist's commitment to metaphysical subjectivism. This is a powerful approach because it shows the theist's contradictions for what they are. But I wonder if Rand's argument that 'God' isn't even a valid concept isn't a more devastating approach… Rand's argument was, in essence, her own version of the argument on non-cognitivism (or the meaningless of religious discourse) based on her theory of concept formation.

This is a good question, though there are some points to consider. But to give a direct answer to this question, my view is that the contention that “God” is not a valid concept is really a side issue, one which is philosophically subordinate to the issue of metaphysical primacy and consequently the charge that theism is at its root committed to metaphysical subjectivism. I hold this position because, regardless of whether or not “God” is a legitimate concept or not, the underlying problem with god-belief is its commitment to metaphysical subjectivism, as I have argued here. In fact, a theist could rightly admit that “God” is not, on his view, supposed to be a concept in the first place. In such a case, pointing out that “God” is not a valid concept would probably have little debating value. But the underlying issue still remains the distinction between the objects of one’s consciousness, and the conscious activity by which one identifies or refers to those objects, or whether or not the activity of consciousness has been confused with or superimposed on the objects of one’s consciousness. To understand this, let’s review the pertinent facts.

In the case of the fact that “God” isn’t a valid concept, here’s what Rand had to say:

Prof. D: … And what common features of particulars are retained in order to get the concept “God” –

AR: I would have to refer you to a brief passage about invalid concepts [page 49]. This is precisely one, if not the essential one, of the epistemological objections to the concept “God.” It is not a concept. At best, one could say it is a concept in the sense in which a dramatist uses concepts to create a character. It is an isolation of actual characteristics of man combined with the projection of impossible, irrational characteristics which do not arise from reawlity – such as omnipotence and omniscience.

Besides, God isn’t even supposed to be a concept: he is sui generis, so that nothing relevant to man or the rest of nature is supposed, by the proponents of that viewpoint, to apply to God. A concept has to involve two or more similar concretes, and there is nothing like God. He is supposed to be unique. Therefore, by their own terms of setting up the problem, they have taken God out of the conceptual realm. An quite properly, because he is out of reality. (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 148)

I’m not sure if this is the passage which Madmax had in mind when he mentions “Rand’s argument that ‘God’ isn’t even a valid concept,” but this is what came to mind when I read his statement. If he had something else specifically in mind, I’d like to know what it is.

So given this, one can rightly point out that “God” is not a valid concept, but the theist – if he’s aware of these distinctions – could easily agree and say that “God” is a proper name rather than a concept integrating two or more similar concretes. This of course does not stop theists from treating “God” as a concept – in fact, many times apologists treat their god as if it were a concept. Consider the following statement:

The basic structure of Christianity – creation, fall, redemptive revelation, redemption, and final judgment – can be directly deduced from the concept of an absolute God… (Mike Warren, Christian Civilization is the Only Civilization – In a Sense, Of Course)

Concepts are mental phenomena; they are psychological. They are the form in which the human mind economizes the vast array of perceptions one experiences in his conscious life. Statements like “the concept of an absolute God” may actually constitute an unwitting admission that one’s object of worship is all in the mind, like the things one imagines.

Of course, theists will resist this interpretation of their statements, and if called on it will likely insist that their god is not just a concept. I’m reminded of the following exchange between George H. Smith and Greg Bahnsen in their radio debate. Smith asks Bahnsen an important question:

Smith: “Is God an abstraction, Greg?”

Bahnsen: “Uh no, God is a personal, non-physical being.”

Smith: “Non-physical? Could you be more specific? I mean, non-existence is non-physical as well. So how do we distinguish God from non-existence?”

Bahnsen: “Well, obviously, you uh distinguish God, a non-physical being, from say the concept of love, or say the concept of number, or the laws of physics or the laws of logic, you distinguish them according to their characteristics. God is a person, makes choices, and does things. Numbers do not.”

Here Bahnsen is explicitly asked to address the question of whether or not “God” is an abstraction. Bahnsen’s response is “Uh no” in this case. But it seems difficult for Christian apologists to avoid treating their god conceptually, i.e., as if it were a concept. For instance, in his book Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, Bahnsen makes the following statement:

It should be particularly noted, therefore, that only a system of philosophy that takes the concept of an absolute God seriously can really be said to be employing a transcendental method… The opponent of Christianity will long ago have noticed that we are frankly prejudiced, and that the whole position is "biblicistic." On the other hand, some fundamentalists may have feared that we have been trying to build up a sort of Christian philosophy without the Bible. Now we may say that if such be the case, the opponent of Christianity has sensed the matter correctly. The position we have briefly sought to outline is frankly taken from the Bible. And this applies especially to the central concept of the whole position, viz., the concept of an absolute God. Nowhere else in human literature, we believe, is the concept of an absolute God presented.,, It thus appears that we must take the Bible, its conception of sin, its conception of Christ, and its conception of God and all that is involved in these concepts together, or take none of them. (p. 517; italics original)

Other examples can be produced, but this one passage should be sufficient to show how casually Bahnsen treats his god as if it were in fact conceptual in nature, in spite of his answer to Smith when explicitly called upon the matter. Of course, I raise this point because on my view, concepts are abstractions, since concepts are formed by a process of abstracting from specific objects (i.e., from objects possessing specific measurements which are omitted – or “despecified” as Porter puts it – in the process of forming concepts). My view is that theists implicitly tend to treat their god as something conceptual because it is ultimately psychological, specifically rooted in the believer’s imagination. This would explain the believer’s willingness to flip back and forth between treating his god as something conceptual on the one hand, and as something concrete and specific on the other.

Either way, though, there is a problem in so far as Objectivism is concerned. And this is not a problem which the theist can simply dismiss as internal to Objectivism, since the problem is rooted in the manner in which the human mind works, and everyone must work with his mind. Whether “God” is supposed to be a concept or a proper name, it is being used as a mental symbol to refer to something that is supposed to be extra-mental, something supposedly existing independent of the mind of the believer. It’s supposed to refer to something which exists objectively, rather than to a figment of the believer’s imagination. So right here the theist is employing the primacy of existence whether he realizes it or not, and in so doing he is in a sense “borrowing” from a non-Christian metaphysical position.

Given these facts, certain questions come up which need to be contended with, whether or not one is an Objectivist. For instance, to what specifically is this mental symbol supposed to refer? The theist will of course say it refers to a supernatural conscious being which has all sorts of various attributes and accomplishments, such as (in the case of attributes) omniscience, infallibility, absolute sovereignty, infiniteness, etc., and (in the case of accomplishments) the creation of the universe, the atonement for sins, etc. So the word “God” (whether concept or proper name) is supposed to refer to or denote this supernatural thing which is said to exist independent of any human being’s consciousness.

The question then becomes: by what means does the theist have awareness of this supernatural being? One issue needs to be clarified at this point: does he claim to be aware of this supernatural being directly? Or, does he just “know of” it by means of inference from other things of which he has direct awareness? It’s not always clear which position a particular theist holds given certain statements he may make, or his treatment of the matter. Some seem to act as if they have direct awareness of their god, as you and I have direct awareness of objects we perceive with our senses. If the theist says he has direct awareness of his god, by what means does he have this direct awareness? Presumably it cannot be by means of sense perception, since the word “God” is supposed to refer to something imperceptible to human beings: it’s invisible, it’s immaterial, we cannot see it, we cannot touch it, we cannot hear it (though various biblical passages, particularly in the Old Testament suggest that some individuals, such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc, did have the ability or opportunity to see this god or hear its voice). The point here is that, if we cannot have direct awareness of this supernatural being by means of sense perception (and descriptions of the Christian god preclude this ability), then by what means does the believer have direct awareness of it (if he claims to have such awareness of his god)? This is a question for the believer to answer. Whatever answer he gives, supposing he sticks with the position that he has direct awareness of his god, we should inquire as to how we can distinguish the means which he proposes from his imagination, and how we can reliably distinguish between what he calls “God” and what he may merely be imagining. This is a common course of inquiry in my writings, and so far I’ve not seen any good answers to it from theists. It should be pointed out at this point, in the interest of answering Madmax’s question, that this leads back to the issue of metaphysical subjectivism: is the theist confusing the contents of his consciousness (some of which may have an imaginative basis and therefore subjective in nature) with what actually exists, with reality?

The alternative to having direct awareness of this alleged supernatural being, would be to infer its existence from other things of which one has direct awareness. This leads us to argumentation. When individuals like William Lane Craig present arguments which are intended to conclude that a god exists, they are implicitly acknowledging that we do not have direct awareness of what they call “God,” that we need to infer its existence by some course of reasoning, by implication of certain premises which they put forward and endorse (e.g., the universe is not eternal and needed a cause, or the world exhibits design and therefore there must have been a designer, etc.). An argument of course consists of premises which are supposed to support a conclusion. So at this point it’s fair game to ask the believer what his starting point is. Some seem to think that “God” is their starting point. But this would render any argument intended to conclude that a god exists viciously circular; it would beg the question, since the existence of their god is admittedly assumed from the very beginning. That takes us back to the previous alternative: does the believer claim to have direct awareness of what he calls “God”? If the believer identifies something other than his god as his starting point, what is it, and how does he traverse from what he identifies as his starting point to the conclusion that his god exists? At this point, we can raise the issue of metaphysical primacy, and ask if he is aware that there is a proper relationship between consciousness and its objects, and whether or not everything he is telling us is consistent with the inescapable implication present in any affirmation of a truth that the objects of consciousness exist independent of consciousness. After all, to say “God exists,” is to make a statement about reality which presumably obtains independent of the speaker’s wishes, preferences, imagination, ignorance, etc. So again the issue of metaphysical primacy is in play here. How does the theist address it? Is his assumption of the primacy of existence (such as when he makes a statement about reality which is not supposed to reflect anyone’s wishing or preferences about the state of affairs it references) consistent with his god-belief claims? I don’t think it is.

Madmax asked:

Do you think it is better to show that the god-concept is a meaningless term that literally refers to nothing (as no positive attributes can *ever* be attached to it) first and then get into the argument from the primacy of existence? Or do you think that the fundamental argument against theism is to establish the primacy of existence first?

Again, this is a good question. Keeping the pointers given above in mind, I still think that focusing on the issue of metaphysical primacy is equivalent to “going for the jugular” in examining theistic claims. Whether or not “God” is a concept, a proper name, or paramount to meaningless grunting, the issue at hand ultimately reduces to the relationship between consciousness and its objects, any way you slice it.

But this does not mean that non-cognitivism is off limits by any means. If a theist invokes the word “God,” it’s certainly valid to ask what it is supposed to denote. If the theist objects to this, it may be that he’s trying to hide something. Why else would he have a problem with this? He could take the Reformed route and claim that we already know his god, but this would simply be another claim for him to validate. Now he not only has to validate his claim that a god exists, he now has to validate the claim that everyone knows his god. If the theist has a hard time explaining what the word “God” refers to, this alone would seem to indicate a problem for the claim that everyone knows his god.

My only point is that such discussions are apt to delay getting to the more fundamental issue, which is the issue of metaphysical primacy. It should be borne in mind that the primacy of existence is the root of the concept of objectivity, and any claim about reality attempts to draw on the concept of objectivity as the proper orientation between consciousness and the universe of objects, whether legitimately (as in the case of mundane claims about the world, such as “human beings exist” or “there’s a sale at Penny’s”) or illicitly (such as god-belief claims).

To recap, the basic questions you might pose to theists include the following:

1) To what is the word “God” supposed to refer?

2) Does the theist claim to be directly aware of what he calls “God”? If so, can he identify the means by which he thinks he has direct awareness of what he calls “God”? If not, then question 3) below:

3) Does the theist claim to infer its existence from something else of which he has direct awareness? If so, what is this something else of which he has direct awareness and from which he has inferred the existence of his god?

4) If the theist neither has direct awareness of his god nor claims to have inferred its existence from something else of which he does have direct awareness, then can he identify some alternative to these as the means by which he has knowledge of his god? (E.g., did he just read about it in a storybook?)

5) In regard to whatever answer the theist gives to any of these questions, what do his answers assume to be the proper orientation his consciousness and the objects of his awareness? Does he assume that his claims are true because he wishes that they are true? Or that he believes them to be true? Or does he claim to believe them because he thinks they are true independent of what he wishes and believes? If this latter position is the case, how does he explain this in light of the specifics of his god-belief claims, which portray the universe of objects as conforming to the dictates of a supernatural consciousness?

Of course, if a non-believer raises the criticism of non-cognitivism, the theist might reply by challenging the non-believer to “account for” cognition to begin with? Of course, there’s nothing to fear in such challenges if one is armed with the primacy of existence and a good theory of concepts, both of which Objectivism supplies. But I would see this as an attempt to deflect the discussion away from the criticism rather than to answer it.

Madmax wrote:

I ask because it seems to me that the epistemological argument against the god-concept itself might be a better place to start before getting to the metaphysical arguments that deal with the subject-object relationship.

While I see objection to posing questions to theists about the meaning of the word “God,” I’m not sure it’s the case that the epistemological argument against the notion of a god is a better place to start before raising the issue of metaphysical primacy, i.e., the proper orientation in the subject-object relationship. Perhaps there are reasons which recommend this sequence of criticisms which I’m not presently aware of. The subject-object relationship is a precondition to any epistemological concerns, since epistemology has to do with how we know things, and this presupposes awareness of objects to begin with. Questions about the proper orientation between a subject and its objects are more fundamental than the intricacies of epistemological inquiries of this nature. It would seem to me that delving into complicated epistemological issues may leave vital metaphysical ground untilled, perhaps even ceded in the mind of the believer. And in the case of presuppositional apologists, who think the dispute between believers and non-believers rests in one’s “presuppositions,” it seems to me that the wisest strategy would be to focus on the believer’s starting points. I know mine, and I would argue that my starting points would have to be true even for the believer to imagine that his god exists, let alone claim or believe it exists (see for instance my blog Theism and Its Piggyback Starting Point). It is deliciously ironic that apologists who call themselves “Presuppositionalists” seem most unprepared when it comes to discussions about starting points, or “ultimate questions.” In that case, Chris Bolt still has not addressed my “ultimate questions” which I posed to him in early April.

Madmax asked:

Lastly, have you ever heard of any "good" objections to the non-cognitivism argument?

None that I can think of. In fact, I’m not aware of any good objections from theists to any worthy criticisms of theism to begin with. I tend to see from theists a lot of red herrings raises against criticisms of theistic beliefs, such as in the form of arbitrary distinctions. Arbitrary distinctions, such as the Calvinist assertion of proximate vs. ultimate causes in order to outrun theism’s inherent determinism, are often introduced in order, not only to avoid dealing with the implications of a particular theistic position, but also to cast the objector as confused or careless. Another example that comes to mind gives the Christian god two different wills, e.g., “God’s decretive will” vs. “God’s preceptive will.” Divisions of this nature are required, not because they are something one discovers in the world, but because a contradiction inherent in theism needs to be smoothed over.

I’m not sure if this will satisfy Madmax’s questions. But hopefully it will inspire further discussion, which is why I am responding to his questions in a separate post.

by Dawson Bethrick

"Ultimate Questions"

Back in March, I saw a post by Chris Bolt on a blog called Choosing Hats, a blog dedicated to the presuppositional method of defending the Christian faith. The post was titled Your Thoughts Welcome.... In this blog Chris posted an illustration of the antithesis between Christianity and “Non-Christianity” as Christians are supposedly expected to understand it.

Given the title of this post, I thought I’d submit my comments in response to this. In my comments, I had raised the criticism that, according to the illustration which Bolt published, non-Christian philosophies were being grouped together by a trivial, non-essential characteristic, namely “ultimate commitment to human [independence] from God.” In fact, I dispute the claim that non-Christian worldviews could reasonably be characterized as founded upon or motivated by an “ultimate commitment to human [independence] from God.” I gave my reasons for this in my exchange with Chris Bolt, which spilled into subsequent blogs which he posted in response to my comments (see here and here). Chris of course sought to defend the division which his illustration portrays, but seems to have had difficulty answering the points I raised against it.

In his post Bahnsen Burner’s Presuppositional Apologetic for Objectivism, Part 1, Chris made the following comment:

There are only so many ultimate questions available to any worldview with a finite number of “possible” answers.

While I am happy to entertain this proposal, I was looking forward to seeing the questions which Chris thinks are “ultimate” and for any reasons why he would characterize them as such. Unfortunately, Chris has not identified those questions which he considers “ultimate.”

So to encourage further interaction between ourselves, I proposed a few of my own “ultimate questions” for Chris to consider in a comment which I posted on April 1. The first two questions are:

1) What is your starting point? and

2) What is the proper orientation between the subject of consciousness and its objects?

Now my first question – What is your starting point? – should be easy to understand for anyone who has given his worldview a significant amount of thought. If he does not know what his starting point is, I’d say he has some unfinished business and is defending his position prematurely.

With respect to my second question, many thinkers (perhaps most?) do not seem to understand what it is asking right off the bat. My question is intended to allow a thinker to reveal his position with regards to metaphysical primacy, i.e., the relationship between consciousness and its objects. In fact, however, this is such a fundamental concern that most thinkers do not even recognize it as an issue, let alone explore it, and pass it over in their haste to pontificate on higher-level matters. So I proposed three additional questions to help Chris and anyone else who might want to consider them:

3) Are you conscious? (yes or no)

4) If you are conscious, are you conscious of any objects? (yes or no)

5) If you are conscious of any objects, what is the relationship between yourself as a subject of consciousness, and any object(s) of which you are conscious?

Questions 3) and 4) should not need any explanation. They are quite basic, they use common terms, and they seek simple yes-no answers. The answer to question 3) of course should be yes. If one were not conscious, he could not consider the question in the first place, since consciousness of the question is a precondition to considering it. The answer to question 4) should also be yes: in considering a question, one is obviously conscious of that question. A question can be an object of one’s consciousness. He is likely conscious of many other things as well, such as the computer monitor on which he’s pulled up the page bearing the question, things on the desk around him, the seat he is sitting in, noises that may be sounding during the time he’s considering the question, such as the whirring of his computer hard drive, a ticking clock on the wall, a car passing by on the street in front of his house, birds chirping in trees outside his window, etc. All of these things would be objects of his consciousness if in fact he is aware of such things.

Now with respect to question 5), I can understand that this may be new territory for many thinkers. But it focuses on the most fundamental issue in all philosophy. The answer which a worldview gives to this question determines whether it is objective or subjective, rational or irrational, suitable for man’s life on earth, or unsuitable. Of course, once one does answer this question when he finally does consider it, it remains to be seen whether or not the views he endorses are consistent with the answer that he gives.

Perhaps I’m just naïve, but I was really hoping that Chris would take a few moments and consider these questions, and post his answers to them. After all, as he himself points out, there are only so many ultimate questions one can ask, and only a finite number of possible answers. My questions are intended to penetrate to the very core of one’s worldview, to the most fundamental level of one’s “presuppositions.” I would think that presuppositionalist apologists would relish questions of this nature. It’s been nearly a month now since I posed my questions to Chris. Perhaps he’s still thinking about them.

by Dawson Bethrick

Q and A on Atheism

I had seen these questions for atheists some time ago, and had even written up a set of responses to them. However, I must have forgotten about them because I never did post them. While I was rummaging through some files recently, I came across these and decided to finally put them on my blog. Enjoy!

1. Question: “Why do you not believe in God?”

Answer: Because I’m honest.

2. Question: “Where do your morals come from?”

Answer: From existence.

3. Question: “What is the meaning of life?”

Answer: Meaning is a property of concepts and symbols. Perhaps the questioner meant to ask, “What is the purpose of life?” In that case, broadly speaking, the purpose of man’s life is to live and enjoy it.

4. Question: “Is atheism a religion?”

Answer: No. Atheism is an individual’s absence of god-belief.

5. Question: “If you don’t pray, what do you do during troubling times?”

Answer: I use my mind and deal with the situation. Those who choose to pray to an invisible magic being are simply announcing with this action the fact that they have given up on their own minds and are seeking a substitute to do their thinking for them.

6. Question: “Should atheists be trying to convince others to stop believing in God?”

Answer: Not necessarily, and here’s why. That one is an atheist does not mean that he ascribes to or promotes a rational worldview. Many atheists hold to a worldview which is little more than a secularized form of religion, a worldview which is built on subjectivism (the primacy of consciousness), mysticism (anti-reason), self-sacrifice, “duty,” the primacy of the state, etc. Such individuals are in no position to provide a suitable alternative to the irrationalism of religion. Now if the atheist happens to ascribe to a rational worldview, he will likely have an interest not only in educating others about this prize possession of his, but also be eager to model it to others in his own choices and actions. Such an individual recognizes the facts that every individual has the right to govern his own mind according to his own conscience, and that no individual can be forced to believe or disbelieve anything. He also does not give primary importance to what others believe or not believe. His own life is more important to him.

7. Question: “Weren’t some of the worst atrocities in the 20th century committed by atheists?”

Answer: I don’t have a list of 20th century atrocities by rankings. But again, atheism is neither a religion, nor a worldview. That one is an atheist only tells us what he does not believe. It does not tell us what he thinks is true. The atrocities of the 20th and other centuries were committed by individuals whose worldview sanctioned the initiation of the use of force against other individuals. I know of no religion which can consistently prohibit this, and many secular worldviews, themselves influenced by religion, likewise fail to prohibit the initiation of the use of force.

8. Question: “How could billions of people be wrong when it comes to belief in God?”

Answer: Quite easily, in fact. The billions of people who have subscribed to one form of god-belief or another have been let down by the philosophers, who should have recognized and understood the fundamental distinction between consciousness and its objects, and consequently the distinctions between the real and the imaginary, the factual and the fictitious. Without understanding of these fundamental distinctions, expect a lot of errors in one's philosophy.

9. Question: “Why does the universe exist?”

Answer: This question commits the fallacy of the stolen concept.

10. Question: “How did life originate?”

Answer: By a causal process.

11. Question: “Is all religion harmful?”

Answer: Yes, very much, particularly if one attempts to practice it consistently. Fortunately few in the west try to do this. But this does not lessen its threat to man.

12. Question: “What’s so bad about religious moderates?”

Answer: That depends on the individual case. But a so-called “religious moderate” is likely to stand for very little, and when more serious religionists assert their numbers, moderates are usually the first ones to yield. They are less likely to be philosophically consistent in their views, and thus more likely willing to strike a compromise on serious issues. It is also important to keep in mind that every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator.

13. Question: “Is there anything redeeming about religion?”

Answer: Not that I have found.

14. Question: “What if you’re wrong about God (and He does exist)?”

Answer: I’m not wrong.

15. Question: “Shouldn’t all religious beliefs be respected?”

Answer: This is like asking, “Shouldn’t all lies be respected?” The answer is a most resolute no.

16. Question: “Are atheists smarter than theists?”

Answer: I don’t see it as an issue of intelligence so much as it is a matter of choosing to be honest to reality.

17. Question: “How do you deal with the historical Jesus if you don’t believe in his divinity?”

Answer: The stories of Jesus that we find in the bible are legends.

18. Question: “Would the world be better off without any religion?”

Answer: Simply ridding the world of religion would not be enough. Human beings still need a philosophy suitable to their life on earth (and anywhere else in the universe for that matter). That is why I promote and defend Objectivism. The alternative to Objectivism is some form of subjectivism, of which religion is the chief model.

19. Question: “What happens when we die?”

Answer: Typically someone buries us.

by Dawson Bethrick

Three Questions on the Resurrection

Here are three penetrating questions for those who wish to defend the claim that Jesus rose from the dead to consider:

1) Do we have any physical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection?

2) Does anyone purported to have been a witness to Jesus' resurrection claim to have seen Jesus actually rise from the dead?

3) Do people ever lie?

Please submit your answers and be prepared to discuss.

by Dawson Bethrick

Was Jesus a "Great Moral Teacher"?

Like the uninventive refrain on an over-enthusiastic toothpaste jingle, we’ve all heard it so many times: “Jesus was a great moral teacher.” It is repeated over and over, most gleefully of course by Christians, with the most uncritical zeal one can summon for a bad idea.

Statements like the following are not unusual in Christian cheerleading sources about Jesus:

Almost all scholars acknowledge that Jesus was a great moral teacher. In fact, his brilliant insight into human morality is an accomplishment recognized even by those of other religions.... Jesus' Sermon on the Mount has been called the most superlative teaching of human ethics ever uttered by an individual. In fact, much of what we know today as "equal rights" actually is the result of Jesus' teaching. (Great Moral Teacher?

Similarly, another site states:

Many non-Christians have no problem believing that Jesus actually existed and that He must have been a very moral person and a great teacher (since He has had such an impact on the world even after 1900 years).

Then, in a paper which explicitly acknowledges the deontological nature of Christian morality (some Christians I’ve encountered have actually denied this!), we have Christian apologist J.P. Moreland, who writes:

It has long been recognized that, irrespective of one's religious views about Jesus of Nazareth, He is one of the world's leading ethical thinkers and teachers. Indeed, as late as the second world war, most moral thinkers in the West — secular or not — did their best to show that their moral theories yielded results in keeping with the ethics of Jesus.

Christians like to tell everyone else how impressed they are with the moral teachings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. They have to be: it’s part of “giving God the glory.” So regardless of whether or not they have any better understanding of morality, they are compelled by virtue of their confessional investment to give wholesale praise to the moral teachings in the New Testament, especially those found in the gospel narratives attributed to Jesus, because that is one of the things that they as Christians are called to do: anything Jesus says and does is supposed to receive the highest accolades, regardless of what it might be. It may very well be the case that some Christians really do think the moral teachings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament are spectacular in some way. However, it seems that the praise given to the actions and statements attributed to Jesus in the gospel narratives, is not due to any special insight they might contain or judgment which motivated them, but bestowed at any rate because of their alleged source: Jesus. If Jesus says it, it must be the highest because Jesus said it. This is at odds with a sober understanding of moral principles, which recognizes their worth regardless of who might have first formulated them.

Another noteworthy point, made clear in the quote from Moreland above, is that Christians very often like to extend their enthusiasm for the teachings attributed to Jesus to non-Christians. Not only Christians praise Jesus’ moral teachings, but so does everyone else. Many would have us believe this. An appeal to numbers is usually never far from even the most robust defenses of Christianity. (How often do we hear about what the “majority of scholars” in “peer-reviewed journals” think of some particular claim in question?) The concern at this point is to “puff up” the bandwagon of support in order to make any individual detractor feel insignificant and overwhelmed by the tide of opposition. It’s all part of the tactic of arguing from intimidation.

Of course, it may very well be the case that some non-Christians may repeat the claim that “Jesus was a great moral teacher.” It is ironic that Christians would be so interested in pointing to non-Christian approval of the teachings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. Many Christian apologists (see for instance this blog are on a mission to show the world just how stupid “unbelievers” are (and this coming from people who worship a contradiction). It is readily conceded that many non-Christians have little understanding of what constitutes sound morality as well. In fact, the few that I’ve run into who endorse the moral teachings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament seem to be just as unknowledgeable on the issues of morality as Christians. It may just be that they’re simply repeating this refrain uncritically, as many Christians do, without having critically examined the issues, without giving a good look at the teachings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. Then again, most self-identifying non-Christians whom I’ve encountered seem to have at least some criticisms of the moral teachings put into Jesus’ mouth in the gospels. Critical literature both in print and throughout the internet universe abounds in varying degrees of discriminating examinations of many New Testament teachings, including moral teachings said to have come from Jesus. So it is misleading to give the impression that everyone - both Christian and non-Christian – thinks that Jesus was a superb instructor on issues pertaining to morality.

In spite of the availability of damning exposés of Christian morality on the internet and elsewhere, the assumption that Jesus was a “great moral teacher” is almost always taken for granted among Christians. This assumption is often made for the purposes of shadowboxing against the view that he was only a great moral teacher, yet still very much only a man, as opposed to a deity incarnated as Christians believe. Christians like this kind of argument, inspired by CS Lewis who gives it a central place in his “moral argument,” because defending the claim that the moral views which are attributed to Jesus in the New Testament is a much more difficult task. It’s easier to take the assumption that his moral views were superior to anything else in the moral marketplace for granted, and argue from that basis that he actually was “God incarnate.”

Rather than go through all the teachings which the New Testament does attribute to Jesus one by one and evaluate their worth, I take a different approach. Since Jesus is claimed to be this “great moral teacher,” the bar has already been set. The concern at this point is to see if the teachings attributed to Jesus meet it. This approach is valid because the meaning of the concept of “moral teaching” is broader than just what we’ll find in the teachings attributed to Jesus (as should be evident when someone says one set of moral teachings is better than another), and there have been hundreds of other moral teachings throughout history, before and since the days of the early Christians. So the proper approach at this point is to understand what should be present in those teachings, given the lofty touting Christians repeat, and then to see if those teachings actually include what should be there, given the repeated high praise they’ve received. So I have prepared a short list of key questions that should be asked of any moral treatise whose original framer is said to be “great.”

They are as follows:

1) What is the proper definition of the concept ‘morality’?

2) What is the purpose of morality?

3) Does man need morality?

4) If he does, why does he need it?

5) What is the relationship between morality and values?

6) What exactly does Jesus say about values?

7) Does Jesus tell us what values are?

8) Does he tell us whether or not values are important?

9) If he says they are important, to whom are they important and why?

10) Does Jesus teach us how to identify those values which we should pursue?

11) Does Jesus teach us the proper way to go about obtaining those values which are important?

12) Should we protect those values which we have achieved?

13) What if one person has one set of values, and another person has a different set of values? What is Jesus’ teaching for overcoming such conflicts?

These are questions I would ask in regard to anyone said to be the source of “superlative teaching of human ethics ever uttered by an individual.” Jesus is touted as such by Christians. So I ask Christians to address these questions, and give specific citations to support their answers.

For instance, a Christian might contend that my questions 10) and 11) are answered by verses like Matthew 6:33 (which reads “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”). That would be a start. But then we would need to ask how “the kingdom of God” could qualify a real value to anyone when it is accessible apparently only by imagining it? Why would one think it’s important? How does one go about achieving it? How does seeking “the kingdom of God” first result in all these other things being “added unto you”? Etc.

So simply citing an isolated verse here and there in answer to these questions is probably not in itself going to be sufficient to justify the claim that one is a “superlative” teacher of ethics or authority on morality. Once those answers have been submitted, they need to be examined for their relevance and validity. Unfortunately, I do not see where these questions are addressed in the New Testament, the wellspring in which we find moral teachings attributed to Jesus. In fact, there seems to be a conspicuous lack of rigor on Jesus’ part, if we go by what the New Testament says. For instance, I do not see where statements attributed to Jesus provide any definition to the concept ‘morality’ (the word ‘morality’ does not even seem to show up on a keyword search of the New Testament to begin with!). Wouldn’t he know what morality is? Each moral code tends to define the concept a little differently, but Jesus apparently chose to withhold what his system might mean by this frequently used term.

As for ‘value’, the concept is sometimes used (see for instance here), but it is neither defined nor explained in terms of a developed theory, suggesting that it is simply taken for granted that “everyone knows” what ‘value’ means. But the history of western civilization, with institutionalized sacrifice, slavery, tyranny, coercion and fraud, much of it in the name of Christianity, is (to say the least) hard to reconcile with this flippant presumption. In regard to my question about the purpose of morality, what does Jesus have to say? What precisely does Jesus say the purpose of morality is? I find no explicit answer to this question in the New Testament, but I suppose Christians might attempt to eek out a response to this question from certain bible verses. What I’ve typically seen on this score is the citation of yet another commandment, and as such it presumes one’s motivation to do things that are said to be “moral” on the Christian account. In the case of Matthew 6:33, for instance, why should anyone have any interest in “seek[ing]... the kingdom of God” in the first place? Is it because, if one does so, “all these things shall be added unto you”? In other words, is “seek[ing]... the kingdom of God” a shortcut to achieving other things beyond it that one might want, or value? If so, it seems that Christianity is teaching that there are shortcuts in morality. Is that really so? Do Christians really think that “seek[ing]... the kingdom of God” is just a means to acquiring something else? Is it not supposed to be an ultimate end?

Although Jesus apparently does not address the question of what morality even is, does he address the question of whether or not any human individual has a need for morality? And if so, why he might need it? A great portion of the New Testament’s moral teachings focus on behavior in the context of interpersonal relationships. But would a man all alone on a desert island have a need for morality according to Jesus’ teachings? Although these questions strike me as wholly rudimentary to an informed understanding of morality, I cannot find where they might be addressed in an intelligent manner in any of the speeches attributed to Jesus in the New Testament (or elsewhere in the bible, for that matter). It seems that Jesus has a tendency to base his moral precepts on threats, as opposed to a penetrating understanding of the nature of morality and any individual’s need for it. If you disobey, you will meet with doom, because you have disobeyed what you’ve been commanded to do. This is not the same thing as warning someone not to touch a hot stove or light a match near an open gas tank. In such cases, we are pointing out the causal consequences of an action which would likely result in injury or even death. Rather, what the bible presents as a moral code essentially reads, “obey, or else!” and holds up a stick. The concern is not for one’s safety, but for keeping him in line with an invisible magic being’s desires.

Now although the Christian believer’s cognitive starting point, according to the bible itself, is fear (cf. Prov. 1:7), threats causing fear do not tell the whole story of Christian morality. Fear is not enough. Something else is needed, and Christian morality (if it is taken seriously) supplies it. Instead of a code of values which guides a man’s choices and actions (see here), the moral teachings found in the New Testament consist of psychological sanctions. Consider the following point made by George H. Smith:

A physical sanction, if successful, causes the emotion of fear. A psychological sanction, if successful, causes the emotion of guilt. A man motivated by fear may still retain an element of rebelliousness, of determination to strike back given the opportunity. A man motivated by guilt, however, is a man with a broken spirit; he will obey the rules without question. A guilt-ridden man is the perfect subject for religious morality, and this is why psychological sanctions have been extremely effective in accomplishing their purpose. (Atheism: The Case Against God, p. 301)

To support the psychological sanctions which inform their morality, Christians need to stress the notion of sin, which is the wellspring of guilt in the Christian mind. Christians are people who take the notion of sin against their god seriously, and are consequently crippled with guilt. This guilt can be powerful enough to motivate a man to obey any commandment. And the moral teachings of the New Testament are designed to exploit this to its fullest. Guilt, then, is the precondition of Christian morality. Without it, it’s just a bunch of silly injunctions serving as a primitive worldview’s version of morality.

The conclusion at this point is already obvious: when someone, Christian or otherwise, makes a statement to the effect that Jesus was a “great moral teacher,” such a statement can only suggest that the individual making it does not have a good grasp of morality. Jesus did not define basic terms; he did not explain why morality is important or why one would have any need for it; he did not clarify what values are or why they have moral significance; he did not explain how one should go about identifying those values he might need or the actions needed to achieve them. All this is at best taken for granted (since it is clear from several of Jesus’ injunctions that one sacrifice his values, that one has already achieved them somehow), but is undercut by the underlay of psychological sanctions, fear and guilt which serve as the precondition for his moral system. At the same time, many Christians look at various non-Christian worldviews and apparently find only moral relativism and moral nihilism. It is true that many non-Christians have been influenced by the moral vacuity of Christianity. That this might surprise Christians is baffling. It shouldn’t surprise them, since Christianity has influenced so much in western civilization. So a distorted view of morality is what can be expected to find in a worldview which has borrowed in some way from Christianity. However, Christian apologists typically like to characterize defective moral views held by non-Christians as a logical outcome of their atheism, as if atheism itself were a worldview with its own fundamentals and positions on such matters. This is a smearing ploy, and the apologist invokes it ultimately to make him feel better in his mystical delusions, which he nurtures in order to assuage his deep-seated guilt.

by Dawson Bethrick