 |
| Detroit |
Once again, to refresh our memories: If God does not exist, good and evil do not exist.
Many intellectual atheists understand this (hence, their retreat to utilitarian ethics, which says nothing of good or evil, but only pleasure or pain).
Richard Dawkins understood this. In River Out of Eden Dawkins writes:
"The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
(I read his book The Blind Watchmaker back in the 1980s. BW contains similar thoughts, and attempts to debunk William Paley's teleological argument for God's existence. I discussed it with some professor-scientists who were in my church at Michigan State University.)
Theistic philosopher William Lane Craig agrees with Dawkins, as do I. Craig writes:
Theistic philosopher William Lane Craig agrees with Dawkins, as do I. Craig writes:
"If there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved by homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. After all, what is so special about human beings? They are just accidental by-products of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time." (Craig, "Can We Be Good Without God?")
I agree with Dawkins and Craig. An atheist who makes moral proclamations is the metaphysical equivalent of a hobbit who claims the Shire is in Detroit.
