In this post I examine some of the faults and flaws inherent to atheism and moral relativism, and I also examine the real reasons why Christians elect to do what they do. I wrote this post as a general response to many things that I have heard and seen concerning morality, moral relativism, and the respective immorality of atheism and Christianity as viewed by either side of the morality debate. More particularly, I wrote my post in direct response to a selection from Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion. While I do attempt to refute some of his conclusions, I find that he raises several valid points which are worth considering by religious people, agnostics, and atheists alike.
I have deliberately avoided addressing the arguments of atheists in the past, as I do not consider it to be a productive use of my time, especially since I think that atheists and religious people should agree to disagree and get on with making the world a better place. I chose to address this quote from Mr. Dawkins in this post in part because I think that he promotes some false assumptions that even some Christians may think that they believe, but I wrote it mainly because I believe his argument opens the door for the discussion of an important Christian principle.
"If there is no God why be good? Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: "Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? that's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap in your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought. As Einstein said, "if people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.' Michael Shermer, in The Science of Good and Evil, calls it a debate stopper. If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would 'commit robbery, rape, and murder', you reveal yourself as an immoral person, 'and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you'. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good. I suspect that quite a lot of religious people do think religion is what motivates them to be good, especially if they belong to one of those faiths that systematically exploits personal guilt.
It seems to me to require quite a low self-regard to think that, should belief in God suddenly vanish from the world, we would all become callous and selfish hedonists, with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would deserve the name of goodness." (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 259)
