Quote of the Day
| April 19, 2009 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Some [men] kill because their faiths explicitly command them to do so, some kill though their faiths explicitly forbid them to do so, and some kill because they have no faith and hence believe all things are permitted to them. Polytheists, monotheists, and atheists kill – indeed, this last class is especially prolifically homicidal, if the evidence of the twentieth century is to be consulted. Men kill for their gods, or for their God, or because there is no God and the destiny of humanity must be shaped by gigantic exertions of human will . . .
Men will always seek gods in whose name they may perform great deeds or commit unspeakable atrocities . . . Then again, men also kill on account of money, land, love, pride, hatred, envy or ambition.
Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.
David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions, 12-13
Can anyone possibly doubt that these claims are true. They are practically self-evident. Thus, the currency of the “religion is the cause of all violence” dogma currently fashionable among the new atheists is all but inexplicable on rational grounds.
261 Responses to Quote of the Day
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Wes Elsberry has a nice comment on how moral certainty contributed to the Holocaust.
Off-topic:
Gil, what happened to your LS-DYNA thread? There were already five or so comments. Now the post and the comments are both gone.
It is still available at
http://www.overwhelmingevidence.com/oe/news
Gil dismisses simulations of biological evolution which contradicts what Dr. Dembksi, Atom and others stated in the discussion of the Simulation Wars thread.
Deleting a new thread is bad enough; deleting it after people have posted comments is unconscionable.
I appreciate Hazel’s honest response on the other thread, and continue to ask Allen MacNeil to clarify.
—–Hazel writes, “So, no I don’t believe the things that CS Lewis, or anyone, mentions are objective truths. They are human truths, filtered through the human condition, and subject to all the complexity of both our human nature and the circumstances in which we find ourselves.”
That is an honest expression of a deeply held belief, and the contrast is fair enough. C.S. Lewis’s whole point was to prove that morality was not subjective or relative, but objective and universal, not conditional, but absolute. So, Lewis and Hazel disagree. Fine.
Allen, however, claims to agree with Lewis’s proposition. Yet, there is a problem here. To disagree about the origin or source of the natural moral law is to disagree on matters of vital substance. If I understand him correctly, Allen believes that the “natural moral law” is a function of human interaction. But Lewis’s whole point was that the “natural moral law” is that toward which human interaction is to be ordered. It is not something humans create or socially construct; it is something that humans discover through the use of unaided reason.
Also, Allen has stated many times that nothing is absolute, which means that the natural moral law would also have to be conditional. So, I question whether he believes in any kind of objective, unconditional morality appropriate to human nature, though I am sure he can disabuse me of that notion if I am wrong. Meanwhile, I don’t understand why he refers to Lewis’s exposition of the “natural moral law” as his position, since it appears that the only thing they do agree on is description of the code, which is something, but not nearly enough.
If I am being unfair, I will acknowledge my error.