But the substantive obligations of such a morality are not what most activist atheists claim they can justify. Arent nonbelievers evil? In Chapter 2, Professor Smith asks the question Does Naturalism Warrant Belief in Universal Benevolence and Human Rights? And his answer to that latter question is forthright; indeed, its already stated quite early in the book: Naturalism may well justify many important substantive moral responsibilities but not, as far as I can see, a commitment to honor universal benevolence and human rights.7. However, the problem is also apparent in far less heroic or dramatic situations, in everyday cases. Lying to, stealing from, and murdering other members? Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here. use a simple mysterious approach that is existing beyond their understanding? Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and man is consequently abandoned, for he cannot find anything to rely onneither within nor without. Probably, if God does not exist, humans would not possess objective moral knowledge. But those associations appear to be limited in scope. Perhaps they should actually, maybe even cynically, encourage ordinary people to believe that morality reflects some sort of natural law, or the Will of God, or the laws of karma, while (of course) they themselves believe nothing of the kind. Any meaning or purpose that exists for humans in a naturalistic universe is constructed by and for humans themselves. One day, when the conversation turned to certain occasionally frustrating aspects of life in Egypt (e.g., traffic, and traffic signals that were taken as unsolicited and mostly unheeded advice rather than as commands), the husband, who was an engineer, hastened to assure me that, compared to the west African city in which he had previously resided, Cairo was a virtual utopia. Happily, we here at the Interpreter Foundation dont live in an atheistic, naturalistic universe. Beyond them, however, I see no compelling obligation to promote the well-being of other people who are irrelevant for all practical purposes to my own life, happiness, and welfare.13, Now, we might be inclined to call such a skeptic bad, selfish, egocentric, or self-centered, but name-calling isnt a convincing argument. However, a person is at absolute liberty to perform, whatsoever one wants to in the non-existence of God because one does not regard anything as right or wrong in absence of objective moral principles and does not fear any Divine judgement. Objective moral values do exist 3. But if God does not exist, as Dostoyevsky famously pointed out, "If God does not exist, then everything is permissible." And not only permissible, but pointless. At worst, as I discuss shortly, human life will more closely resemble that of the state of nature portrayed by Thomas Hobbes in the thirteenth chapter of his 1651 classic, Leviathan: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.1. These also just happen as they happen. Do we have ways of seeing-good which are still credible to us, which are powerful enough to sustain these standards? So, in order to make them do it, a larger "sacred" Cause is needed, something that makes petty individual concerns about killing seem trivial. Is this not Dostoyevsky's version of "If there is no God, then everything is prohibited"? (Presumably, not everything said by Iago or Macbeth or Richard III represents the views of Shakespeare.). When he was young, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov was a and man who liked money and women too much. All content by The Interpreter Foundation, unless otherwise specified, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. a. His god, to the extent that he actually had one, was Nature.14). Is atheistic naturalism capable of supplying a foundation for morality? So it is not that you can just "do whatever you want" - your love for God, if authentic, guarantees that, in what you want to do, you will follow the highest ethical standards. If God Does Not Exist, Is Everything Permitted? It is an admission by theistic apologists that they have no actual evidence to support a rational belief in whichever deity they were most likely indoctrinated from a young age to believe in a. If there is a god, then in context, the petty morals by which we live our lives mean nothing. According to Sartre, we can be free and responsible only if God does not exist. In the beginning, God created a perfect world ( Deuteronomy 32:4) as part of His perfect plan. Although raised an Evangelical Protestant, by the way, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 2011. For him the death of God meant cessation of belief in God, and hence meant that man is free to be master of his own destiny (The Joyful Wisdom, 1882). Absent a grounding in the divine, so the argument goes, human moral systems are without foundation and, thus, are likely to crumble in the face of human self-interest, error, and corruption. There are, of course, good reasons for individual members of a species to cooperate with each other, reasons that enhance the quality of an individuals life or the prospects for an individuals or a familys survival or, at least, increase the likelihood that certain genes will be transmitted into the future. Without such transcendental limits - so the story goes - there is nothing ultimately to prevent us from ruthlessly exploiting our neighbours, using them as tools for profit and pleasure, or enslaving, humiliating and killing them in their millions. He regards it as highly unlikely. Thus, tendencies toward in-group cooperation would undergo genetic selection, becoming more prevalent in the population. This was what the people there expected; it was the way things had always been. Most people today are spontaneously moral: the idea of torturing or killing another human being is deeply traumatic for them. Perhaps they should tell what Plato, in the third book of his Republic, called a , a gennaion pseudos or noble lie., Early in that book, Platos fictionalized Socrates announces that, in the ideal, utopian, authoritarian state that hes undertaken to describe, its appropriate for the rulers, if for anyone at all, to lie for the benefit of the city in cases involving enemies or citizens, while all the rest must not put their hands to anything of the sort.21, His interlocutor agrees to this, and they proceed. It is in The Brothers Karamazov, the last and most complex of Fyodor Dostoevsky's philosophical novels, that we encounter the riveting aphorism, "If there is no God -then everything is permitted."With the twentieth century behind us, many would now contend that these words ascribed to Ivan Karamazov reveal a penetrating truth not to be dismissed. It is precisely if there IS a god, that everything is permitted. Sartre believes that "we can abolish God with the least possible expense.". "God's existence is proven by scripture." This argument presupposes its premise. First, if God does not exist, life has no meaning. A careful reading of [such] moralists reveals good reasons why atheists should be motivated to be good to a limited set of people who matter to them. Theres nothing intrinsic to green lamps that says Go! and nothing intrinsic to red lamps that means Stop! Requiring cars to travel on the righthand side of the road rather than on the left is purely arbitrary. Christ rejected this temptation by saying "Man cannot live on bread alone," ignoring the wisdom which tells us: "Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!" "An empty universe . They are simply the givens of physics and mathematics, elemental facts of natural reality lacking inherent meaning or purpose or normativity. Hence the god commands the rulers first and foremost to be of nothing such good guardians and to keep over nothing so careful a watch as the children, seeing which of these metals is mixed in their souls. Accordingly, Socrates soon introduces what is often called the myth of the metals., Could we, he asks, somehow contrive one of those lies that come into being in case of need some one noble lie to persuade, in the best case, even the rulers, but if not them, the rest of the city?, Ill attempt to persuade first the rulers and the soldiers, then the rest of the city, that the rearing and education we gave them were like dreams; they only thought they were undergoing all that was happening to them, while, in truth, at that time they were under the earth within, being fashioned and reared themselves, and their arms and other tools being crafted. Failure to understand the scientific principles guiding the creation and development of the universe does not mean that a deity must exist to explain the natural world. This brings us, again, to Smiths question, which I cited earlier: If we in fact live in the naturalistic cosmos that atheists and much of science tell us we occupy, do we have good reasons for believing in universal benevolence and human rights as moral facts and imperatives?26. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. By just about whatever measure of societal health you choose, the least theistic countries fare better than the most God believing. If God Does Not Exist, Is Everything Permitted?, Complexities in the English Language of the Book of Mormon 2015, https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/hobbes/Leviathan.pdf, https://infidels.org/library/modern/andrei-volkov-dostoevsky/, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3107641/, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Given the distinction between (A) having reason to think a certain proposition is true, and (B) having reason to induce belief in that proposition, taking steps to generate belief in a certain proposition may be the rational thing to do, even if that proposition lacks sufficient evidential support. It is Christianity that teaches judgement and punishment based in part on a moral set of criteria including the moral obligation for the strong to protect the weak. So let us consider the position of a reasonable skeptic whose starting point is something like this: I can see why, even without God, and understanding moral norms to be mere human inventions, I should be motivated to behave ethically and be good to the people around me who could affect my well-being. Im hoping that at least some of you will take a look at it yourselves, because I think that it has much to offer. Sartre claims that everything is permissible if God does not exist. If you are truly free, not even God would have the ability to predict what choices you could make. The public interest in high-quality medical care would certainly not be served were all medical students to cheat their way to graduation. , All of you in the city are certainly brothers, we shall say to them in telling the tale, but the god, in fashioning those of you who are competent to rule, mixed gold in at their birth; this is why they are most honored; in auxiliaries, silver; and iron and bronze in the farmers and the other craftsmen. All research and opinions provided on this site are the sole responsibility of their respective authors, and should not be interpreted as the opinions of the Board, nor as official statements of Latter-day Saint doctrine, belief or practice. The Christian God is not a transcendent God of limitations, but the God of immanent love: God, after all, is love; he is present when there is love between his followers. Let me say it again. Perfect plan Belief in Universal Benevolence and Human Rights can be free and responsible only if God not. 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