A Question I Was Asked:
'An atheist said this to me, “What - believe in God? But if God should exist I should have to accuse Him of being immoral! Look how the wicked treat good people – look how they prosper on the misery of millions! I can take consolation in my atheism because God offends me!'
Isn't this comment completely nonsensical?'
My Reply:
Yes, it is not only a nonsensical comment but it actually defies the laws of logic!
This man appears (in this comment) to show moral outrage towards God, and he (presumably) prefers the claims of evolutionism. So he is prepared to believe that humankind are a meaningless bio-chemical accident - yet if he should be correct (which he most certainly is not), then he has no possible grounds for any claim on morality! In other words, if we all evolved from slime by some random mutative processes (and of course it would have taken countless trillions of improbable “mutations” to get the human race from some sort of primeval slime!) then we are all an accident of random and meaningless processes! Just think for a moment what this would mean...
There can be no such thing as good and evil or of right and wrong; life has no meaning, therefore moral outrage is completely meaningless!
So this man must support the view that moral outrage is completely meaningless, but then - in contradiction and unbelievable arrogance -he accuses God of being 'immoral' – yet if moral outrage is meaningless how may one then accuse a God (which one does not believe in!) of “immorality”?
So you are right: the comment is completely nonsensical as well as being illogical!
But - hey! -don't be surprised!
Atheists who firmly support Darwinism have filled whole books with moral indignation directed toward a God they don't even believe in! In other words, such people will say things like, 'But if God exists why would He allow this/allow that etc.,' and their protestations are usually built on moral grounds - yet if evolutionism should be true then there can be no concept of morality! In other words, the moment they talk about 'morality' they are immediately accepting at least some religious claims! Of course, they will strive to wriggle out of this but they have already forfeited their argument on logical ground.
Of course evolutionary psychology admits that – for them – morality is meaningless and they have developed a way of explaining the presence of an apparent sense of morality among people – only trouble is, the explanation just does not hold water. No. One can go further: the explanation is completely ludicrous. Here is their explanation:
Morality is meaningless, yet people have developed what can seem like a sense of morality, but its only purpose is to perpetuate their own gene pool! Huh?? Did you get that?
Apparently, in our human quest for the survival of the fittest, our very genes make us behave as though we love and care and have moral concern - but its all a ruse in order to help us procreate as much as possible!! In other words, the underlying purpose for “morality” (which is not morality at all) is to have sexual intercourse as much as possible!!
If you think that
that “explanation” of apparent morality (which
is now seriously being put forward by evolutionary psychologists)
makes no sense then you are not alone!! After all, one would
think that if one desired as much sexual activity as possible in
order to continue one's own 'gene pool' it would be im-morality
which might just be of more assistance than
morality!
If am not a Roman Catholic but I can think of few more selfless people than the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta. This lady renounced worldly goods and the pleasures of the flesh in order to give her life to serving people more needy than herself; yet apparently (according to this argument) her genes only really wanted to perpetuate/increase themselves and her “apparent morality” was the means to accomplish this goal - ???? Yet Mother Teresa truly renounced the pleasures of the flesh because she would allow nothing to get between her and her vision of helping poor people! Such an example shows us how utterly ludicrous this argument really is.
But some evolutionary psychologists go much further than this! They say that we are only “higher animals” and have no more genuine morality than animals and our lives are not necessarily any more intrinsically important or precious than that of a monkey, dog or horse! The trouble is: these people must deny their own arguments in their everyday lives. If they do not do so, they would have to uphold the teaching that their own wives and children have no intrinsic value - so why protect them?
Most often people seem to develop a heightened sense of morality as they get older; a typical man or woman falls in love, they marry, have children and those children grow and grandchildren come along. As one grows older, love and moral concern seem to broaden to a wider and wider circle. As that man or woman reaches their 50s they may well develop an interest in causes which can in no way personally benefit them. They may decide to give financial support to various charities, they may join a church; they will watch the evening news and express moral anger that people are dying of hunger in parts of Africa while their corrupt governments are speading huge sums of money in fighting a civil war! Typically, older people develop a very heightened sense of moral outrage at needless suffering, waste, thoughtfulness and immorality! Yet such older people obviously become increasingly unconcerned at procreation. So here too we have a very strong argument against the evolutionists claim that moral concern is only a trick of the genes to assist personal procreation.
Okay, I have digressed quite a bit here but my overall point is this:
It is nonsensical to claim to be an atheist and to support evolutionism but then to complain about morals or express moral outrage. ALL MORAL TEACHING IN THIS WORLD HAS A RELIGIOUS BASE, that is, a belief in God (It is true that modern atheistic Humanism has come up with a set of "humanist ethics" but these are either liberal - i.e., morality has been carefully extracted - or else stolen straight out of our Judeo-Christian heritage). If evolution and atheism are correct (literally thank our Lord that they are not!) then theft, robbery, rape, murder and the molestation of children cannot be claimed to be “immoral” since the concept of immorality immediately becomes meaningless. At least the new brand of evolutionary psychology writers have had the courage to face up to the fact that moral standards become meaningless when God is removed from the scene, but their explanation as to why people appear to be concerned about moral standards is an absolute nonsense which every such psychologist must deny in their everyday lives.
Robin A. Brace, 2005.