A Moral Slippery Slope

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

Well, Washington State has hit the national news, thanks to the PC-driven decision to allow an atheist-designed placard to be included in Olympia’s Christmas Holiday display. The placard reads, “There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.” Ebenezer Scrooge would be proud. (“Christmas! Bah! Humbug!”) Now the fact is that this placard is as much a statement of faith as John 3:16, because this is not an issue that can be settled through the scientific method. But it does make me want to ask a few questions.

Perhaps I’m just one of those whose minds are enslaved, but it seems to me that if there is no objective, absolute standard of good and bad, right and wrong, the ultimate destination at the end of this train of thought is pretty disturbing. For example, how do you justify to your children what they “shouldn’t” do? Because you said so? Because you’re bigger and stronger than they are? What happens, then, when they finally become bigger and stronger than you? Do you appeal instead to the standards of the society we live in – the rules we’ve agreed upon that allow us to live together in peace?

But if “right” and “wrong” is solely determined by societal consensus as expressed in the laws we pass, there’s another problem: not all societies agree. Some, for example, believe that women are nothing more than property and forbid them from leaving their homes without being accompanied by a male relative, that amputation is an appropriate punishment for thievery and stoning for adultery, that it’s perfectly all right to kill people who won’t accept their point of view, and furthermore that their duty is to impose their society on everyone until it controls the entire globe – by force if necessary. In the absence of absolute standards, who is to say our society is “superior” to that one, or any other. How can you even mount a basic argument for the dignity of man without any justification for why man “should” be entitled to any?

How then do you judge between societies? It's all well and good to say that societies "should" win or lose in the arena of ideas, and that the "best" society is the one whose ideas appeal to the greatest number of people, but...says who? Why should that be the standard of judgment? What if the majority opinion-holders are not the strongest? Why should their opinions win out over those who are stronger? Why not simply say that the society with the strongest military is the best - since we obviously have societies in our world that are not content with competing in the arena of ideas and believe that they have a duty to advance their society by any means possible?

If a society is bent on bringing the entire world under its control, and has the military might to do so, why shouldn’t it? How can anyone say it’s “wrong” for them to attempt it, if there is no absolute standard of what “wrong” is? Ultimately every value judgment can be rebutted with, “Says who?” and at the bottom of this slippery slope of moral relativism is the law of the jungle…and I don’t see how you can avoid ending up there if you’re intellectually honest. Because an appeal to any kind of objective standard, as opposed to the subjective consensus of some group of people, puts you unavoidably on my side of the argument.

It seems to me that the logical survival strategy for a truly atheistic society would be to amass as much military might as possible, always be watching for other societies that may pose a threat, and squash them like bugs before they’re able to mount one. (Hmmm… sounds a lot like the philosophy of the old Soviet Union.) Of course, one of the great ironies of our world is that the same people who refuse to recognize any absolute moral authority in their own lives seem to also be the ones who refuse to make value judgments between societies, and who – contrary to all available evidence – adhere to the “if we’ll just be nice to them, they’ll be nice to us” approach to foreign policy. This intellectual inconsistency seems to me to be disingenuous at best, and just plain dumb at worst.

A lot of people simply want to be able to do what they want to do and not have anyone else make moral judgments about their behavior. I get that. But for Christ’s sake, people (and I mean that literally), at least be honest with yourselves about your motives. Because, by your own way of thinking, why shouldn’t you be judged and criticized by other people? What gives you the “right” not to be? It isn’t “fair?” Says who?

I’ll take a message of hope and “glad tidings of great joy” over that world view any day. And I thank God every day of my life that I am privileged to live in a society whose founders were wise enough to understand where the basic rights of mankind come from: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” That is the world view that set this nation apart from any other that had ever existed on the face of the planet and that led to its greatness.

Thanks for listening.