C.S. Lewis, a former atheist, wrote in Mere Christianity,
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents — the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms.
And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts — i.e., of materialism and astronomy — are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.
First Point: If you’ve not already done this, go buy a copy of Mere Christianity. And then read it about three times in a row. It’s short, brilliantly reasoned and worded — and life changing.
Second Point: Lewis begins his argument with the meaninglessness of existence as defined by atheism. Consider this: if we’re the product of nothing but random processes repeated so many times that we — as well as unspeakable trillions of other worlds — are an inevitability, then we mean nothing. Our self-awareness is an accident of nature. Our ability to consider our purpose — or purposelessness — is just a series of DNA sequences that appeared by accident.
Maybe it has some kind of survival advantage (although philosophers aren’t really noted for their survival skills), but even so, we still mean nothing and there is no point to our existence.
Hence, like the Epicureans in Ancient Greece, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1Co 15:32 ESV). If there is no ultimate purpose, then there is no ultimate good. We should worry only about ourselves. And as N. T. Wright is fond of arguing, this is very much the philosophy of the West today. You can see it in our national policies: our national debt, our unconcern for the impact of our policies on future generations, and in countless other national policy debates.
And this is not a problem of this or that party. It’s a problem of our culture, and so both American parties adopt short-sighted, we’ll-worry-about-tomorrow-tomorrow policies. We are a self-centered, self-indulgent people acting as though no one matters but us.
But Christianity makes a very different claim. According to Christianity, everyone matters, born and unborn, present and future. Christianity teaches that we’ll all be judged by God according to standards plainly announced, for which we are all accountable.
So which is right? The dominant political and personal culture of the West — we live for ourselves only — or Christianity, which seeks to transform its practitioners to become selfless, loving people?
Well, surely I seem to be tipping the scales. There are good and virtuous people among nonbelievers and there are criminals and frauds in the churches — even running some of the churches. Which is true. So we have to go a little deeper.
Lewis writes,
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?
Both Christians and unbelievers, theists and atheists, believe in a right and a wrong. We may disagree about the particulars, but we agree that we are bound by standards bigger than ourselves.
Some might teach that morality is relative, so that each culture defines its own morality, but when we look at someone else’s culture, we can’t help but judge its morality. If a culture refuses to educate girls, engages in female “circumcision” so that girls can’t have sexual pleasure, turns 10-year old boys into soldiers, or obtains nuclear weapons that threaten others, we don’t hesitate to declare such actions “wrong.”
We don’t just say that they violate international law or offend our relative cultural sensibilities. We say that this conduct is intolerable regardless of one’s religious or cultural beliefs.
What about evolution? Maybe we evolved concern for our fellow man as a survival mechanism? Well, if so, then it’s a fortunate accident that we should throw away whenever inconvenient to our survival. No one should risk his life — or even his comfort — to help girls being sold into sexual slavery because their survival has no obvious link to our own survival.
It really is a pretty brutal choice. If we were created solely by evolution and there is no God, no universal morality, no reason to care, then we should act according to whatever best helps us survive and reproduce. That may mean pretending to care about others or it may mean killing whoever gets in my way. But the sociopaths have it right. Conscience is just an accident of evolution that sometimes gets in the way.
Now carefully note that this conclusion does not follow from a God-directed evolutionary process — only from a Godless form of evolution. It’s not evolution itself that leads to this conclusion but the absence of a moral, creator God.
So other than sociopaths, whom we consider mentally ill for their lack of a conscience, everyone has a moral compass. Some of those compasses are badly askew. Some are very poorly educated, but all sane people have consciences.
And all such people seek to impose their moral beliefs on others. No one manages to consistently declare that, while I am unwilling to steal, it’s okay if someone else considers theft moral and steal from me. It just doesn’t happen.
As Paul wrote,
(Rom 2:1-3 ESV) Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. 2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. 3 Do you suppose, O man– you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself– that you will escape the judgment of God?
Not only do we feel moral outrage when someone steals from us, we occasionally steal from others. We may not break into houses and cars, but we steal credit at work, we steal ideas, sometimes we plagiarize. And those who commit the same immoral acts that they condemn in others — that is, every single one of us — stand self-condemned.
Moreover, we stand aware that something bigger and more powerful than atheistic evolution create our consciences in us — and our deeply seated sense that there is a right and wrong, that others are accountable to the same laws we feel accountable to, and that we all violate those same laws.
Finally, notice this: We have the ability to judge our own morals. If morality were purely instinct bred into us by evolution as a way to allow humans to form families and societies to better reproduce, then we would be bound by our own morality. Just as a stone has no choice but to fall at the acceleration imposed by the Law of Gravity and arctic terns must migrate as their instincts dictate, we should always, invariably follow our instinctive morality. But we don’t. God has given us the ability to stand outside of our consciences and instincts and ask what is truly good and what is truly wrong — often disagreeing with each other but fully agreed that there are some things that are wrong and some things that are good.
And this cannot be explained by atheistic evolution.
Here is a link to a downloadable version of Mere Christianity: http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/free-resources-pastors/152257-free-ebook-mere-christianity.html
Up until recently(not sure about the latest polls) the vast majority of US citizens were not in favor of abortion on demand, not in favor of gay marriage, most wanted a balanced budget, and so many other ‘policies’ that either elected officials or judges saw to otherwise. The vast overwhelming number of US citizens say they are Christian, and yet the Bible cannot be taught or read in our schools. Who controls that? Not the people. Did the “people” want prayer taken out of schools? No. Govt. Policies and the “people” don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Do the people of the West have problems? Of course they do. Would you really want to live in another non-western country? Probably not unless you are a missionary or have loads of money. The West specifically the US out gives all other nations in charitable giving per capita. There’s a lot wrong with our policies, and a lot of good among our people. And the good has been undermined by a select few.
One train of thought has the Jews in mind exemplified in Benson:
“Therefore, &c. — The apostle, having shown that the Gentiles could not entertain the least hope of salvation, according to the tenor of the law of nature, which they violated, proceeds next to consider whether the law of Moses gave the Jews any better hope; an inquiry which he manages with great address. For, well knowing that on reading his description of the manners of the Greeks, the Jews would pronounce them worthy of damnation, he suddenly turns his discourse to the Jews, by telling them that they who passed such a judgment on the Gentiles were equally, yea, more guilty themselves, in that, with the advantage of the greater light of divine revelation, they were guilty of crimes as great as those he had charged on the Gentiles; and that therefore, by condemning the Gentiles, they virtually condemned themselves. Thou art inexcusable, O man — Seeing that knowledge without practice only increases guilt; whosoever thou art, that judgest — That censurest and condemnest; for wherein thou judgest another — Greek, τον ετερον, the other — Namely, the heathen, and pronouncest them worthy of condemnation and wrath; thou condemnest thyself — As deserving the same: for thou that judgest doest the same things. According to Josephus, quoted here by Dr. Whitby, the Jews of that age were notoriously guilty of most of the crimes imputed to the Greeks and Romans in the preceding chapter. “There was not,” observes he, “a nation under heaven more wicked than they were. What have you done,” says he, addressing them, “of all the good things required by our lawgiver? What have you not done of all those things which he pronounced accursed? So that,” adds he, “had the Romans delayed to come against these execrable persons, I believe either the earth would have swallowed them up, or a deluge would have swept away their city; or fire from heaven would have consumed it, as it did Sodom, for it brought forth a generation of men far more wicked than they who suffered such things. It was sport to them to force women: and they exercised and required unnatural lusts, and filled the whole city with impurities. They committed all kinds of wickedness, omitting none which ever came into the mind of man; esteeming the worst of evils to be good, and meeting with that reward of their iniquity which was proper, and a judgment worthy of God.” The apostle, Mr. Locke thinks, represents the Jews as inexcusable in judging the Gentiles, especially because the latter, with all the darkness that was on their minds, were not guilty of such a folly as to judge those who were not more faulty than themselves, but lived on friendly terms with them, without censure or separation, thinking as well of their condition as of their own. For he considers the judging, which Paul here speaks of, as referring to that aversion which the Jews generally had to the Gentiles, in consequence of which “the unconverted Jews could not bear with the thoughts of a Messiah that admitted the heathen equally with themselves into his kingdom; nor could the converted Jews be brought to admit them into their communion, as the people of God, now equally with themselves; so that they generally, both one and the other, judged them unworthy the favour of God, and incapable of becoming his people any other way than by circumcision, and an observance of the ritual law; the inexcusableness and absurdity of which the apostle shows in this chapter.”
While another has the Gentile upper class who smugly looked down on others(Jamison-Fausset-Brown):
“It is much disputed to whom the apostle directs his discourse in the beginning of this chapter. Some think that having discovered the sins of the Gentiles in the former chapter, he here useth a transition, and turneth himself to the Jews, and lays open their more secret wickedness and hypocrisy. But the particle ‘therefore’ in the front of the chapter, doth seem to intimate, that this is inferred from what went before, and is a continuance of the same argument. It is of the Gentiles then that he is still discoursing, and he begins by name to deal with the Jews, Romans 2:17. Some think he speaks more particularly of such as were judges and magistrates amongst the Gentiles, who, though they made laws for to judge and punish others for such and such crimes, did yet commit the same themselves. Some think he intends more especially such as were philosophers, and men renowned for virtue, as Socrates, Aristides, Fabricius, Cato, Seneca, &c., which last, as is said, was well known to the apostle. These, in their speeches and writings, did censure the evil manners of others, and yet were as bad themselves. As Cato is said to have used extortion, prostituted his wife, and to have laid violent hands upon himself; and yet he was affirmed by Velleius to be homo virtuti simillimus, a most virtuous man. But the received opinion is, that the apostle in general doth tax all such as censure and find fault with others, and yet are guilty of the same things themselves”.
Regardless, self-righteous hypocritical judging(condemning) is what’s in view here.
RJ,
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1: Chapters 1-8 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 30.
“During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.
“To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.
“No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” –Thomas Hobbes
There’s noting in context that suggests these were genuinely righteous moralists.