Who Cares What You Believe?
Feeling Strongly About Something Doesn't Make it True
One of the most famous lines from The Da Vinci Code is when Tom Hanks' character turns to the film's heroine and says: "What matters really is what you believe."
This is classic Frederich Nietzsche: "You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."
It has a superficial appeal to it, because it represents the epitome of moral relativism - something human beings are all too comfortable with. In fact, it appears to be the default view of a majority of Americans. According to the Barna Research Group, only 22% of respondents believe in absolute truth. For the rest, truth depends on one's circumstance or situation.
Popular and soothing though it may be, there is little rational basis for it. The consequent byproduct of this worthless, hopeless philosophy should be obvious to all. Society has little moral basis to judge child molesters, rapists, identity thieves, or greedy corporate embezzlers.
In response to this, most secularists and humanists settle on a broad, but vague idea that we can enforce a moral standard that prevents people from harming others. In other words, something becomes wrong if and when it transgresses the health, safety, and rights of another. But how do we define a "transgression"? And how do we establish what "rights" a person has to begin with?
Essentially, this becomes a circular argument. Humanists believe that humans should be governed by a moral value system developed by.....humans. This may work, and has worked, to some extent with our laws. But a legal system is ultimately based on a value system, and that leads you right back to the central moral and religious questions so many secularists try to evade.
Face it. You can't have a solid, dependable moral framework - upon which to live and operate - absent God. George Washington said as much in his Farewell Address:
And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
In other words.....no religion = no morality. But the wisdom of the father of the United States of America is insufficient to dissuade the stubborn atheism of many humanists. Says one: "Philosophers as diverse as Plato, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore, and John Rawls have demonstrated that it is possible to have a universal morality without God." This is the view of Theodore Schick, Jr, so expressed in an article for the Council for Secular Humanism. But Schick goes on then to say that "what our society really needs is...a richer notion of the nature of morality." He undercuts his own argument by acknowledging that the human race is STILL trying to find its way to moral stability without God.
Some atheists are rather defiant in their admission that we must make our way without God. In a 1994 issue of The Skeptical Review, an article declares:
God wasn't much help to us in discovering how to cure or prevent smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid, whooping cough, polio, measles, and dozens of other diseases. We had to do it on our own. God wasn't much help to us in making the scientific discoveries that led to the technology that now makes life so comfortable for us. We had to do it on our own. So if we did all these things without God, surely we can make the moral discoveries that are necessary for society to function in an orderly, beneficial way.
Of course, if the Bible is any indication at all of how God works, a five-year old can quickly see that God chooses to do most of His work through people. Thus, the fact that people led revolutions, discovered scientific laws, cured diseases, and so forth does not disprove God or reduce Him to a no-show.
Returning to the main point, few will argue with the fact that, outside of God, there is no authoritative, external, objective, and absolute standard by which to judge right from wrong or to establish what is true or false. Even the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre observed (correctly), "If God is dead, everything is permitted."
So....stop looking for ways to understand and interpret the world outside of God. It's time for all of us to humble ourselves and admit. We need God. It is only through Him that we can understand and know real, substantive Truth.
Published by Brian Tubbs
Brian Tubbs is the Feature Writer & Columnist for Protestantism at Suite101.com, the principal blogger for the American Revolution & Founding Era blog, and the founder and course manager for ChristianMarriag... View profile
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11 Comments
Post a CommentHaha. After reading and commenting on several of your other articles I had to laugh when I saw the title of this one. "Believing strongly in something doesn't make it true." That's how I feel about religion. While I think it brings some people a lot of comfort and helps them understand morality, that doesn't make it true.
Dear "Question," thanks for your comments. Of course, there are good and honorable people who don't believe in Christianity or even in God. And, yes, there are professing Christians who don't live according to the precepts of their faith. These observations, however, do not disprove the thesis of my article or what George Washington said in his Farewell. Ultimately, you need a framework or foundation through which to make judgments - "This is wrong" vs. "This is right." If you say that this is only a "personal choice," then you've opened the door to anarchy.
no relgion = no morality? I've seen plenty of good, moral people who had no religion... though maybe not quite as many as I've seen Christians whose behavior clearly lacks the "morals" that make up their religion. Morality, like anything, is a personal choice. Having a religion doesn't automatically instill it. Not having a religion doesn't automatically negate it.
If you want to bash the morality derived from unreligious sources, based on the notion that it isn't rooted in absolutes, then you must also (unless you are a hypocrite) bash God-based morality the exact same way. Even if you are a person who accepts that god should be the basis of morality (I most emphatically am not such a person), if you are honest with yourself you have to admit that that decision ITSELF must be made without the help of a god-based morality system in the first place. In other words, you have to first decide using your own mind that following god is good, and only after doing that can you then start using god-derived morality to make moral decisions. Thus the entire system of your morality STILL rests on that one crucial decision you made all by yourself. It's still derived entirely from yourself, just like it is for the atheist. The only difference is that atheists have no choice but to be up front about it.
Brian,
You are incorrect concering the golden rule... it is not rooted in Christianity, in fact, the same principle can be found in 8 of the world's relgions including Hinuism which is thought to be the oldest organized religion. "This is the sum of duty; do naught unto others what you would not have them do unto you." Mahabharata 5,1517. The concept behind the golden rule is a universal truth. The golden rule makes most people out to be hypocrites and that simple truth goes well beyond the confines of any one religion.
Mr. Skelton writes: "Let's dump the false piety of religion and adopt the golden rule." That proves my very point. The GOLDEN RULE was given to us by Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The most basic, sublime, and successful principle of successful living IN ALL HISTORY (the Golden Rule) is rooted in Christianity.
An atheist CAN live a moral life, but he/she does so IN SPITE OF being an atheist - not because of it. All moral principles and values that we, as humans live by, have their roots - at some point in time - in religion. That's the point George Washington makes in his Farewell Address.
First, it is a misrepresentation of Sartre to quote him out of context. And second, it is absolutely possible to understand and know real and substantial truth. In fact, god (religion) is the primary obstruction to learning truth. The most moral person alive is the atheist that lives well.
This is always been an interesting argument, "We need a God to tell us what is good and bad. Because otherwise, we make it up ourselves, and this leads to all kinds of bad things (which we somehow recognize w/o God showing us). Therefore, we need God to tell us what is bad."
However, as a humanist myself I must point out that humanism is not at all mutually exclusive with religion. In fact, religion if it is practiced sincerely IS humanism...humanism is simply a way of interacting; it's a philosophy and code of conduct. I have a very strong faith myself. The only conflict I can possibly picture is if you were, say, a satanist or something.