The Thoughts of Ryan-C

In this chapter, Keller argues that we as humans have moral obligations that lead to a knowledge in God. As previously stated in other chapters, saying that morality is ultimately relative is futile. It is common for people to say no one should impose their moral views on others, because everyone has the right to find truth inside him or herself, but Everyone will eventually admit that they believe people are doing wrong things in the world that they would like to put an end to (marginalizing women, child labor, sex trade, etc…) generally due to ‘human rights’ or something to that effect.

Here is what sociologist Christian Smith has to say about morals…

“Moral… is an orientation toward understandings about what is right and wrong, just and unjust, that are not established by our own actual desires or preferences but instead are believed to exist apart from them, providing standards by which our desires and preferences can themselves be judged”

All human beings have moral feelings that we call a conscience. It governs what we believe to be right and wrong, and often prevents us from doing harm to ourselves and from others. We believe there are standards and believe there are things that should not be done regardless of how a person feels about them within their own person. Even though we have been told that all moral values are relative to all people, we cannot practically live like that. We cannot stand by and say that the Nazis were doing the world a favor, because they weren’t and as human beings we know that isn’t true.

The evolutionary theory says that altruistic people had a larger survival rate and thus their genes were passed down over the years and that is why we as humans feel that unselfish behavior is ‘right’. But when we examine this belief in relation to the theory it comes up short. A person’s self sacrificing behavior towards his or her family could in-turn lead to a greater survival for their clan, but for evolutionary purposes, hostility toward all people outside of one’s group should be just as widely considered moral and right behavior. Yet, we believe that altruistic behavior is ‘right,’ especially for people ‘not of our kind’. If we see a total stranger fall into a river, we jump in to save them. We would even feel obligated to go after them even if they were our enemy. Based on strict evolutionary naturalism, these traits would have died out due to the process of natural selection, but these traits or more pervasive in our world now than ever. Some may argue that it has survived because of the bettering it has done for societies, but natural selection does not work for populations as stated in evolutionary theory.

There are three basic thoughts on where rights come from; Natural law, human law, or God. For our purposes God will not be an option as of yet. People argue that natural law, once examined, will reveal that some behaviors are fitting and are correct, but most things in the natural world survive on violence and survival of the fittest. This does not allow for the conclusion of the dignity of individuals from the way nature works itself out. If human rights are made by the law makers, what if they decide that it is not in their interests to create human rights? If they do create human rights, of what use are they. “If human rights are created by majorities, of what use are they? Their value lies in that they can be used to insist that majorities honor the dignity of minorities and individuals despite their conception of the ‘greater good.’ Rights cannot be created, they must be discovered or they are of no value… if we want to defend individuals rights, we must try to discover something beyond utility that argues for these rights.”

Philosophers like Neitzsche and Sartre would argue that God is dead there is no good reason to be kind, or loving, or to work towards peace. This is what Yale Law Professor Arthur Leff has to say on the issue, “In the absence of God…each…ethical and legal system…will be differentiated by the answer it chooses to give to one key question: who among us…ought to be able to declare ‘law’ that ought to be obeyed? Stated that boldly, the question is so intellectually unsettling that one would expect to find a noticeable number of legal and ethical thinkers trying not to come to grips with it….Either God exists or he does not, but if He does not, nothing and no one else can take His place….” If there is no God it is impossible to that something is moral or immoral, but only “I like this.” Some will argue that the majority has the right to make the law, but if the majority votes to exterminate the minority, they will respond “no that is wrong,” and they will be back at square one. It is rather hard to justify moral obligations apart from God, yet we still know they exist.

In the book, Keller has yet to try to prove the existence of God to the reader, but rather show the reader that they already know God is there. The nonexistence of God is more than an intellectual problem. It make moral choices meaningless and it goes beyond that negating the meaning of life.

I will end this with a quote from Arthur Miller’s play After the Fall,

“For many years I have looked a life like a case at law. It was a series of proofs. When you’re young you prove how brave you are, or smart, what a good lover; then a good father; finally, how wise, or powerful or [whatver.] But underlying it all, I see now, there was a presumption. That one moved…on an upward path toward some elevation, where…God knows what…I would be justified, or even condemned. A verdict anyway. I think now that my disaster really began when I looked up one day… and the bench was empty. No judge in sight. And all that remained was the endless argument with oneself, this pointless litigation of existence before an empty bend….Which, of course, is another way of saying–despair.”