Erick Erickson: As people move further from God, they become "less than human"

[Deus Naturae]

I think he is wrong, though I guess I agree where he is coming from. God is the source of human morality, and moving away from God is equivalent to adopting a subjective moral code that can have disastrous consequences. He is dead wrong in his use of the term “human.” Humans are inherently evil; regardless of our relationship with God, we are incapable of being sinless. I don’t see how atheist are any less “human” than a Christian.

   

You could at least post a statement that can actually be proven factual, couldn't you?

In my view, human morality comes from empathy for others. If a definition of morality needs to come to you from a book of rules rather than your own conscience, you're a sociopath.

First of all, it was more of a philosophical, not a factual statement. Morality needs to be solid, and I have plenty of reasons why I believe a solid, spiritual source exists that can be explored later.

The statement that "morality comes from a book of rules" is just simply incorrect. Humans around the world, regardless of faith, know that killing a baby is wrong, for some reason. Where does this empathy for others come from? Clearly, it cannot come from humans alone. Humans would kill and eat a baby in a heartbeat if they arbitrated what is moral and what is not. A central source of all goodness in the world exists.

Christians do not worship the Bible; we worship a God. Regardless if it is the Christian God, the Muslim God, or just a spiritual entity in the cosmos that isn’t defined by any particular faith, a solid source exists. The moral code set by the Bible is followed by numerous religions. I can’t think of one religion that says “Thou shall kill.” You talk of empathy for others, but you dodge my key point that it has to come from somewhere other then yourself.

First of all, your claim about baby-easting savagery as the default of human nature seems dubious to me. Would someone who has been isolated their life and given little to no social education really turn into a toddler-chomping monster if released into society? Also, humans that lived prior to when you believe God "set down the rules" would not kill a baby for no reason (other than perhaps irrational superstition). They would certainly be more willing to let the baby die for the good of the tribe etc, but I'm not buying that prehistoric humans were just a bunch of stupid children, wandering blindly through the night.

Also, I don't know where you get the idea that no religion instructs its adherents to kill. That's just plainly untrue.

I’ll answer the last statement before I go, since it is the easier question to address. No religion directly instructs people to kill for it, with the exception of Islam (and I don’t think Muslims are bad people, by the way, nor do I have a negative opinion of Islam). Followers of religion, and more importantly, the human leaders, are the ones who bring such opinions and interpretations in. The Bible doesn’t endorse forced conversions, and you will not find one single instance of Jesus calling for a revolution of any type against the Roman occupiers of ancient Palestine. Christianity is a religion of peace, and it is a shame that the Bible thumpers of today have used it to create a twisted justification for intervention in the Middle East.

Before God “officially” laid down the rules, people existed, and the rules still existed. Judaism didn’t start on Mount Sinai. Regardless if you believe the Biblical story of Abraham’s life or not, it is clear that the Jewish faith has existed for a long time. Where and when did this code develop? It couldn’t develop on its own within humans. If morality was subjective, and each of us decided what is right and wrong, we would justify the most horrible crimes imaginable. That’s our nature-we seek to survive. I am not arguing that morality exists “because God says so.” I am arguing that we, as humans, cannot be capable of anything good and that morality must come from something (I believe it is a Deity, but it could be something else) beyond the basic realm of humanity.

I am not knowledgable about this, but I would be surprised if the Hindu religion did not have texts which advocate, prescribe, or glorify violence in various situations. Also, while the New Testament may be a peaceful document(s), the Old Testament is full of places where God commands killing or does it Himself. The Israelites frequently war with and slaughter other tribes, usually at the command and under the protection of God (or not, if they'd fallen into a period of immorality).

Your second argument doesn't really hold much water. We do not know the precise date when the ancient Greek mythos "began", or when the Sumerians first began to burn offerings in the Temple of Ur. However, anthropological speculation based on known socio-cultural factors and archeological evidence can help us to understand why these ancient people may have believed those things, and I see no reason why we cannot apply that same critical approach to the origins of the Hebrew religion (which, for an allegedly God-given set of truths, evolved quite a bit over time).

As for your "humans are incapable of doing good" statement, I honestly don't know what to say to that. Unless you're a Calvinist who believes that every positive human action (including conversion to Christianity) is taken solely because God has willed it, I don't see how you can reconcile that with the real world. Atheists and agnostics do good all the time. Human history is not all-encompassed by the Old Testament covenant cycle of "Affirm the rules, follow them for a time, fall into immorality, be punished by God, reaffirm the rules, repeat." Humans are far more complex than that. Personally, I think we've done a lot of good independent of the ancient strictures of a bunch of wandering nomads.

Also, I forgot to ask you in my first post, how do you determine which universal moral laws given by "the Entity" are in fact universal? Is there a minimum number of religious texts they have to be included in?