Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions (19 page)

To say that something is evil is to say it is not the way it is supposed to be. This makes no sense unless things are
supposed to be
different. Yet this is precisely what the relativist denies.

This waitress promoted two rival concepts at the same time
—subjective
morality and
objective
evil. The objections compete with each other. They were siblings in rivalry. G. K. Chesterton saw the problem over half a century ago:

[The modernist] goes first to a political meeting where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts. Then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. . . . In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality, and in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men.
³

The belief that objective good and evil do not exist (relativism) is in conflict (rivalry) with a rejection of God based on the existence of objective evil.

Just
Doin
' What Comes Naturally

If homosexuality is morally neutral because it's natural, then adoption by same-sex couples must be wrong because for homosexuals, parenthood would be unnatural. The same principle governs both issues. If nature dictates morality
,
⁴
and the natural consequence for homosexuals is to be childless, then it's unnatural — and therefore immoral — for homosexuals to raise children.

Artificial insemination of lesbians or adoptions by same-sex couples would be wrong by the logic of their own argument. This is a Sibling Rivalry suicide.

INFANTICIDE

I have saved Infanticide suicide for last because it is the most difficult to understand. Let me start with an example. Think for a moment about how this simpleminded father closed a letter to his son in college: "Son, if you didn't get this letter, please let me know, and I'll send another. I made a copy."

This makes us chuckle for a reason. The son would have to receive the letter in order to ask for a copy, but then he wouldn't need it. If he never got the original, he wouldn't know to ask for a replacement. There is a certain dependency relationship in play here that is at the heart of Infanticide.

Sometimes an objection (the "child") is dependent on a prior notion (the "parent") that must be in place for the challenge to be offered. For example, saying, "Vocal chords do not exist" is not internally contradictory.
But since it requires vocal chords to
say
it, making the statement results in contradiction.
The parent concept (vocal chords) devours the child (the claim there are no vocal chords). That's why I call this variation "Infanticide" suicide.

If a claim cannot be made unless the parent concept on which it depends is true, yet the claim denies the parent concept, then the argument commits Infanticide. The child is destroyed by the parent it relies on.

Bowling and Badness

The most powerful example of Infanticide that I know of has to do with the problem of evil. We looked at one complaint by
relativists
related to evil that was compromised due to Sibling Rivalry. When
objectivists
argue that God cannot exist because of evil, however, their view fails in a different way. It commits Infanticide.

Surprisingly, instead of evil being a good argument against God, I am convinced it is one of the best evidences for God.

The first question the atheist must answer is, "What do you mean by 'evil'?" His impulse will be to give
examples
of evil (murder, torture, oppression, etc.). But that misses the point. Why call those things evil to begin with? One must first know
what
evil is before one can point to
examples
of it.

I want you to think about the concepts of "good" and "bad" for a moment. How do you know the difference between, for example, a good bowler and a bad one? Only one thing matters in bowling.
The person who knocks down the most pins wins.
It's the score that counts.

Knowing the difference between mediocre and masterful in anything requires a way of keeping score. There must be some standard of perfection by which to measure a performance. In bowling that standard is 300 — every pin down in every frame (some people have done this). If you are a golfer, one stroke per hole—a hole-in-one with every swing — is golfing perfection (no one has ever done this).

Notice that even when perfection is not attainable (a golf score of 18 on an 18-hole course), a scoring system is still necessary to differentiate between excellence, mediocrity, and abject failure. In the same way, moral judgments require a way of keeping score to distinguish virtue from vice.

Earlier in the chapter I observed that we use the word "evil" when we see things that are not the way they are supposed to be. We have a standard in mind — a moral scoring system of sorts — that allows us to recognize moral shortfalls. The reason we say some things are evil is we realize that they score low on the goodness scale. If there were no standard, there could be no error. C. S. Lewis notes:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call something crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.
⁵

This is precisely the problem for the atheist. He must answer the question: Where does the moral scoring system come from that allows one to identify evil in the first place? Where is the transcendent standard of objective good that makes the whole notion of evil intelligible? Are moral laws the product of chance? If so, why obey them? What—or who — establishes how things are supposed to be?

A moral rule is a command. Commands are features of minds. Ethicist Richard Taylor explains: "A duty is something that is owed . . . but something can be owed only to some person or persons. There can be no such thing as a duty in isolation. . . . The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain, but their meaning is gone."
⁶

There seems to be no good way to account for a transcendent standard of objective good — the moral rules that are violated by people who commit the evil in question — without the existence of a transcendent moral rule maker. In the movie
The Quarrel,
Rabbi
Hersh
challenges the secularist
Chaim
on this very point:

If there's nothing in the universe that's higher than human beings, then what's morality? Well, it's a matter of opinion. I like milk; you like meat. Hitler likes to kill people; I like to save them. Who's to say which is better? Do you begin to see the horror of this? If there is no Master of the universe, then who's to say that Hitler did anything wrong? If there is no God, then the people that murdered your wife and kids did nothing wrong.
⁷

A morally perfect God is the only adequate standard for the system of scoring that makes sense of the existence of evil to begin with. Since God must exist to make evil intelligible, evil cannot be evidence against God. The complaint commits Infanticide.
⁸

Ironically, evil does not prove atheism. It proves just the opposite. There can only be a problem of evil if God exists. It is a problem only a theist can raise, not an atheist. When an atheist voices the concern, he gets caught in a suicidal dilemma.
⁹

Notice that this difficulty is a little different from the Sibling Rivalry problem with evil mentioned earlier. In that case, two incompatible contentions rested
side by side:
The first is that true evil
does not
exist because morality is relative; the second is that evil
does
exist, so God's existence is in question. When someone simultaneously holds that evil
does
and does not exist, there is an irreconcilable conflict—a sibling rivalry. One or the other has to go.

With Infanticide, however, the notion of morality (with its corresponding concept of evil)
rests upon
the prior foundation of God's existence. God's existence seems to be necessary in order for any conversation about evil to be coherent. Thus, it can never be used to refute God, because without God the objection would have no meaning.

Moral Atheists?

Christians who grasp that God is necessary for morality sometimes make a blunder. They mistakenly conclude that atheists cannot be moral. Michael
Shermer
, atheist editor of
Skeptic
magazine, fires back, "Look, I'm an atheist, and I'm moral."

Both the criticism and the response miss the point. The question is not whether an atheist can
be
moral, but whether he can
make sense of
morality in a universe without God. Gravity still works even when people have no explanation for why it works.

The "why it works" question is what philosophers call the grounding problem. What grounds morality? What does it stand on, so to speak? What explanation best accounts for a moral universe? What worldview makes the most sense out of the existence of evil
or
good?

Atheism is a
physicalist
system that does not have the resources to explain a universe thick with nonphysical things like moral obligations. Neither can Eastern religion, by the way. If reality is an illusion, as classical Hinduism holds, then the distinction between good and evil is meaningless.

Someone like the Judeo-Christian God must exist in order to adequately account for moral laws. Theism solves the grounding problem for morality. This explains how even an atheist like Michael
Shermer
is capable of noble conduct: He still lives in God's world.

More Scientific Suicide

I want to revisit a problem that came up earlier. In
chapter 7
I showed how the idea that science is the only source of reliable truth committed what I called Formal Suicide. However, this notion is doubly dead because it commits Infanticide, too.

The term "scientism" describes the view that science is the only reliable method of knowing truth about the world. Accordingly, "Everything outside of science is a matter of mere belief and subjective opinion," says J. P. Moreland, "of which rational assessment is impossible."
¹⁰

Here is how scientism self-destructs. Imagine you wanted to collect all knowledge in a box. Let's call it the "Truth Box." Before any alleged truth could go into the box, it must first pass the scientific truth test (the claim of scientism).

The problem is that your knowledge project could never get started because some truths need to be in the Truth Box first before science itself could begin its analysis. The truths of logic and mathematics must be in the box, for example, along with the truth of the basic reliability of our senses. Certain moral truths — like "Report all data honestly"—must be in the box. In fact, the entire scientific method must be in the box before the method itself can be used to test the truthfulness of anything else.

None of these truths can be established by the methods of science, because science cannot operate in a knowledge vacuum. Certain truths—known through means other than science — must be in place before science can begin testing for other truths. Since the notion of scientism (the child) is inconsistent with the presuppositions that make science possible (the parent), scientism as a comprehensive view of knowledge commits Infanticide.

THE TACTICAL GOAL OF SUICIDE

When I use any form of the Suicide tactic, I have a specific goal in mind. I want to show the person that there is a fatal inconsistency in his beliefs. This is a problem I think he would correct if he really understood it. Furthermore, the contradiction suggests that deep down he does not really believe everything he has said.

For example, when he says "There is no truth," he actually believes there are some truths, but is doubtful about others (probably the one you are talking with him about). When he says, "
It's
wrong for you to push your morality on others," it's clear he doesn't think this is always wrong, only sometimes (probably in your case).

I think you can see how the Suicide tactic is not an end in itself, but can be used as a bridge to further questions. What kind of evidence is adequate to give us confidence that something is true? Under what circumstances might we legitimately impose our morality on someone else? Do those circumstances apply here?

WHAT WE LEARNED IN THIS CHAPTER

We finished our look at the Suicide tactic by considering two final ways that views self-destruct: Sibling Rivalry and Infanticide.

Sometimes objections come in pairs that are logically inconsistent with each other. Like children fighting, they are in opposition, siblings in rivalry. Since they contradict each other, both objections could not be legitimate complaints. At least one can be eliminated by pointing out the conflict.