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Moving to ‘Damian Michael’ Website

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Hello Everyone,

Given that I have started publishing a number of books and articles under my name, and given that I have more books coming, I have decided that it is best if I consolidate all my work under one website. As such, all the content on this site has now been exported to ‘damianmichael.com’.

Please note that all my regular blogging and writing will be done at www.damianmichael.com.

Please join me there. Thank you.

Damian Michael

 

Atheists Cannot be Good without Belief in God

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The Reconquista Initiative

Presents…

Atheists Cannot Be Good Without Belief in God

In today’s day and age, it is often contended, and very often contended by Christians themselves, that while atheists might not, on their worldview, have an actual foundation that undergirds the objective moral rules and duties that they follow, they nevertheless can still be ‘good’ people without a belief in God. Indeed, it is argued that atheists are individuals who, though denying the existence of God and thus not having a sound basis for their belief in the existence of moral rules and duties, still feel the pull of morality on their hearts—for they live in a theistic universe, or so the theist contends—and so when atheists act in accordance with the moral law and do what is morally right, they can thus be counted as ‘good’ despite their lack of belief in God. And so, the thinking goes, unbelievers can be just as good as believers can be, despite their rejection of God and despite their lack of belief in Him.

Now, while this contention is often used as a means to build bridges with atheists by trying to placate the outrage that some atheists would feel if told that they are indeed not good due to their lack of belief in God, the fact is that a strong case can be made to show that atheists are not objectively good people, or at least not as good as theists are, precisely because atheists lack a belief in God and reject Him. Indeed, it is the atheist’s own willful atheism which ensures that he cannot be considered a ‘good’ person, or at least not nearly as good of a person as a believer can be. And the funny thing is that there is no way that the atheist can escape this conclusion, for it stays with him regardless of whether theism or atheism is correct.

Now the reason why the atheist cannot be considered good without a belief in God is two-fold. First—and for the sake of argument—consider what occurs if atheism is true. If atheism is correct, and if God really does not exist, then atheists cannot be considered good in an objective sense given that, on atheism, there are no objective moral rules and duties that would allow us to call atheists ‘good’ in some real or significant way. Indeed, as atheist Alex Rosenberg says in the first chapter of his book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions, the reality of atheism means that there is no difference between right and wrong, and that, concerning the answers to moral questions, anything goes. That, Rosenberg contends, is the inevitable reality of atheism. But if that is the case then while atheists, on atheism, might be considered ‘good’ in a trivial and essentially tautological sense—because on such a view, anything that atheists do can be considered ‘good’ by them—the fact is that on such a view, neither atheists nor anyone else can be considered good in an objective sense, for there is no objective good that people can be compared to. Indeed, only if there was some type of external standard of goodness against which the actions and behaviors of atheists could be compared, could we determine if atheists were good or not in some non-trivial sense; but since there is no such standard on atheism, then there is no objective way to label atheists as good given atheism. So if atheism is true, atheists are not ‘good’ in the way that we normally use that term.

But now, consider what occurs if atheists are wrong. Consider that if God—the creator and continuous sustainer of all that is—exists, and yet willful atheists do not believe in Him and do not acknowledge Him nor give Him the worship that He is due from His creatures, then, in a very real sense, atheists are morally failures in a very significant way. Indeed, in such a case, atheists are not being good, or at least they are not being good about a very fundamental issue, for they are failing to fulfill the most critical moral duty and commandment that they should be fulfilling:  namely, to love God with all their heart, and soul, and mind. Indeed, by failing to believe in God—so long as the lack of belief is willful and not due to some uncontrolled cognitive disability or ignorance—an atheist is morally deficient in such a vital and significant way that we would be very hard-pressed to call him ‘good’; and even if we could label the atheist ‘good’ in spite of his lack of belief, then, at best, he would most certainly be less good than a believer in God would be—all other things being equal, of course. Thus, if God exists, then the atheist’s wilful lack of belief in God is not a morally neutral issue, but rather it is a factor which gives us the grounds to question the atheist’s categorization as a ‘good’ human being, and it is also a factor that allows us to rationally see a believer as more moral than an atheist—again, all other things being equal.

And so, the long and short of it is this:  whatever way that atheists turn, they cannot be meaningfully considered good without a belief in God, for if atheism is true, then their actions are neither good nor evil, and so it is essentially trivial to call them ‘good’; but if God exists, and atheists fail to give God the acknowledgement and worship that He is due as their creator and constant sustainer, then this is a moral failing of such significance that it is, once again, hard to label anyone who fails in such as way as ‘good’. Thus, whatever way the atheist turns, he cannot meaningful be defined as good, or at least not as good as a God-believer is. Consequently, Christians should stop conceding the point that atheists really can be good without belief in God, for, as seen, a strong case can be made that atheists simply cannot be considered good without such a belief. But lest some Christians suddenly think themselves ultimately better than atheists given this conclusion, they themselves should heed the words spoken by Jesus Himself in Luke 18:19 and Mark 10:18: “No one is good—except God alone.”

Anno Domini 2016 11 26

Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam

Link: The Real War on Science – The Left has done far more than the Right to set back progress.

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Excellent Article:

My liberal friends sometimes ask me why I don’t devote more of my science journalism to the sins of the Right. It’s fine to expose pseudoscience on the left, they say, but why aren’t you an equal-opportunity debunker? Why not write about conservatives’ threat to science?

My friends don’t like my answer: because there isn’t much to write about. Conservatives just don’t have that much impact on science. I know that sounds strange to Democrats who decry Republican creationists and call themselves the “party of science.” But I’ve done my homework. I’ve read the Left’s indictments, including Chris Mooney’s bestseller, The Republican War on Science. I finished it with the same question about this war that I had at the outset: Where are the casualties?

Where are the scientists who lost their jobs or their funding? What vital research has been corrupted or suppressed? What scientific debate has been silenced? Yes, the book reveals that Republican creationists exist, but they don’t affect the biologists or anthropologists studying evolution. Yes, George W. Bush refused federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, but that hardly put a stop to it (and not much changed after Barack Obama reversed the policy). Mooney rails at scientists and politicians who oppose government policies favored by progressives like himself, but if you’re looking for serious damage to the enterprise of science, he offers only three examples.

All three are in his first chapter, during Mooney’s brief acknowledgment that leftists “here and there” have been guilty of “science abuse.” First, there’s the Left’s opposition to genetically modified foods, which stifled research into what could have been a second Green Revolution to feed Africa. Second, there’s the campaign by animal-rights activists against medical researchers, whose work has already been hampered and would be devastated if the activists succeeded in banning animal experimentation. Third, there’s the resistance in academia to studying the genetic underpinnings of human behavior, which has cut off many social scientists from the recent revolutions in genetics and neuroscience. Each of these abuses is far more significant than anything done by conservatives, and there are plenty of others. The only successful war on science is the one waged by the Left.

The danger from the Left does not arise from stupidity or dishonesty; those failings are bipartisan. Some surveys show that Republicans, particularly libertarians, are more scientifically literate than Democrats, but there’s plenty of ignorance all around. Both sides cherry-pick research and misrepresent evidence to support their agendas. Whoever’s in power, the White House plays politics in appointing advisory commissions and editing the executive summaries of their reports. Scientists of all ideologies exaggerate the importance of their own research and seek results that will bring them more attention and funding.

But two huge threats to science are peculiar to the Left—and they’re getting worse.

The first threat is confirmation bias, the well-documented tendency of people to seek out and accept information that confirms their beliefs and prejudices. In a classic study of peer review, 75 psychologists were asked to referee a paper about the mental health of left-wing student activists. Some referees saw a version of the paper showing that the student activists’ mental health was above normal; others saw different data, showing it to be below normal. Sure enough, the more liberal referees were more likely to recommend publishing the paper favorable to the left-wing activists. When the conclusion went the other way, they quickly found problems with its methodology. ….

Read the rest.  Just an excellent article.