Morality and Secular Foundations

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When dealing with professing atheists, many make the claim that they can be "good without God." Misotheists can live apparently moral lives for the most part, but they tend to make exceptions for personal benefit.

And they cannot explain their foundations. Laws? Laws change. Evolution? Not hardly! Some atheists accuse creationists of lying about evolution (a ludicrous charge*), but they cannot coherently explain why, if such a charge were true, lying would be wrong in an atheistic worldview! There have been several attempts in secular philosophy to pin down morality without God.

Broken foundation, RGBStock / Adrian van Leen
Various secular frameworks have been proposed for morality, but they have internal inconsistencies. Some are arbitrary, so good and evil are based on following a set of rules that are incomplete in dealing with human experiences. Some appeal to higher standards outside themselves — when an atheist says that lying about evolution is wrong, they are appealing to a higher authority themselves. They also show that secular morality is self-refuting. There is a higher standard. This highest standard comports with reality.
“Is there still any up or down?” This question rang from the haunted star of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Parable of a Madman, which quoted a man who glimpsed the implications of humanity rejecting God. If “God is dead,” as the madman proclaimed, then the ultimate, self-existent Source and Reference Point for reality—including moral reality—has vanished. Consequently, is there still any right, wrong, up, or down in ethics?

This question introduces the “moral argument” for theism. Like several other common arguments for God’s necessity, the moral argument shows how a concept essential for coherent thinking and living—in this case, the concept of morality—must refer to and rest upon something outside itself. To avoid problems of arbitrary circular reasoning or infinite regress, that something must be transcendent, eternal, and self-existent: not something, but Someone.

You can read the rest of this extremely interesting article by visiting "Is There a Secular Foundation for Morality?"

*Creationists lying about evolution, or the "liar for Jesus" accusation, are simplistic ad hominem attacks. Consider: Lying to get someone to believe in God who hates lying? C'mon man. That's malarkey!