A common claim of atheists is that they “don't need ‘a book’ to tell them how to be a good person.” The purport of this claim is that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, and virtue and vice, are in some sense self-evident and readily accessible to reason. If, however, this claim is examined more closely, then its emptiness will become clear.
In order to make this problem more clear, the concept of canon will prove illuminating. It is not a word which is often heard in day to day speech, and so deserves a brief explanation. One standard definition of the term canon is “a general law, rule, principle, or criterion by which something is judged.” It comes from the Greek, kanon, and calls to mind a measuring stick like a ruler or “any straight rod or bar; rule; standard of excellence.”
The notion of canon is important, especially in things requiring measurement, for without an objective standard of measure, a canon, there is no way to have any certainty regarding the true dimensions of any object of inquiry. An additional consequence of having no accurate measurement means that one will also be unable to squarely fit any additional pieces together. Thus if one wants, say, to lay the foundation for a house, fit a pipe, or build a bridge, one must have an objective canon, a fixed measure or criterion by which to ensure that the construction does not fall apart.
A similar situation obtains in ethics. For example, if there is an ethical prescription, say, against theft, meaning the forbidding of a claim to ownership of any property that is not rightfully one’s own, i.e. to not steal, then this prescription serves as a canon, a criterion, a measure by which to evaluate whether or not an act can be regarded as theft. Without this objective canon, however, nothing is objectively ethical, and therefore it would be impossible to measure whether or not an action was ethically forbidden and thus wrong. It is the criterion which makes this evaluation possible. In other words, a canon is the organizing principle that makes ethics possible.
An additional factor impacting the concept of canon is that of authority. This is made obvious in the differences between the US standard and the metric systems. For example, when people design parts for a machine, they will measure according to one or the other system. When a system is chosen and put in place, the various manufacturers can produce size-matching products. Although in this example the systems of measure are each equally valid, it is clear that uniformity of measure is what makes complex integration of many machine parts feasible, and that the imposition of this measure by an authority that makes its feasibility actual. In other words, the canon becomes effectual because it is established by an authority (whether this be initiated by an academic institution, scientific academy, or governmental organization, etc.).
Without an authority there is no foundation upon which to establish the consistent criterion requisite for effectual compatibility. No authority means no canon; no canon means no organizing principle. The problem, therefore, for the atheist, is that there is neither an objective criterion nor authority, and therefore no possibility for establishing any stable, non-arbitrary ethical system.
Atheism can equally produce anything from a principle of hedonism to total permissiveness to one of eugenics-inspired genocide to one of killing all humans in order to preserve the environment, and anything inbetween. But within atheism there is absolutely no authority that can be appealed to which states one is objectively right and the other objectively wrong. The appeal will be to reason, desire, force (alas), precedent, survival, democratic processes, various philosophers, studies, aesthetics, psychology, or any number of other things, but canonically none of them will agree with each other or be able to establish a certain foundation or principle of integration for ethics.
Atheism can equally produce anything from a principle of hedonism to total permissiveness to one of eugenics-inspired genocide to one of killing all humans in order to preserve the environment, and anything inbetween. But within atheism there is absolutely no authority that can be appealed to which states one is objectively right and the other objectively wrong. The appeal will be to reason, desire, force (alas), precedent, survival, democratic processes, various philosophers, studies, aesthetics, psychology, or any number of other things, but canonically none of them will agree with each other or be able to establish a certain foundation or principle of integration for ethics.
Christianity, however, as regards ethics, has an explicit, unquestioned authority in the Lord Jesus Christ, and as such He establishes both the canon and the authority for determining what is right and wrong. For example, if a man hates his enemy, one can immediately point to Christ who stated unequivocally to love one’s enemy (Matthew 5:44; Romans 13:9; 1 Corinthians 13; Galatians 5:4; 1 John 2:9, 2:11, 4:20). The atheist, however, has no fixed reference to point to. He may point to this or that atheist philosopher, idea, or ruling authority, either individual or collective, perhaps a Hegel, a Rand, or a Stalin, a survival of the fittest, but ultimately they all will prove arbitrary starting points for ethical thinking, each unable to escape the ethical subjectivism which ultimately destroys all ethics. He can compel conformity, certainly, but virtue remains unknown.
Of course, very many atheists have claimed that they have a system for distinguishing right from wrong, and for identifying virtue, but without a canon these are by nature arbitrary and accidental virtue. Atheism, when it comes down to it, cannot determine whether it has produced virtuous or vicious acts, and, what is worse, there is no mechanism that in principle can inform them. It could be moral to kill inferior races, to lie to further a political cause, to destroy humanity in order to save the planet, to sterilize those deemed undesirable, or the opposite, they cannot really know. They will borrow ethical momentum from Christian civilization, of course, and arbitrarily claim it as self-evident, but without Christ these borrowed virtues will lose their center and become increasingly distorted, grotesque caricatures.
And so atheists are incorrect when they state they don’t need an authoritative source for being a good person. Without an authoritative source there is no objective canon, and with no canon there is no ability to truly distinguish right from wrong. They philosophically cannot know what a good person is or does, and so any virtue they practice is necessarily arbitrary and accidental. Virtue is not self-evident, and therefore the atheist’s claim to have it while having no means to certainly identify it and distinguish it from vice is empty.
See the following article for continued analysis.
See the following article for continued analysis.
