Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 46

Challenge: Exclusivity Is Petty and Dangerous

For this week's challenge, here���s an atheist���s objection that ���It���s Offensive to Claim Jesus Is the Only Way to God���:

[E]xclusivity is petty and dangerous. Many people do get upset when told their religion is not as good as the next guy's���this is why Jews, Muslims and Christians have been slaughtering each other in Palestine for centuries. So it occurs to me that exclusivity runs contrary to the general moral character of Christ, as people tend to portray him at any rate, and I can't imagine him being particularly happy with his followers preaching it with such vehemence.

Is preaching Jesus as the only way ���contrary to the moral character of Christ���? How would you respond to this challenge? Give us your answer in the comments below, and we���ll post Brett���s video response on Thursday.

[Explore past challenges here and here.]

Live Broadcast Today

Greg is still out of town, but J. Warner Wallace from Cold Case Christianity is hosting the program today.  His guest the second hour is Abdu Murray, author of Grand Central Question: Answering the Critical Concerns of the Major Worldviews and speaker/author at Embrace the Truth.

Call Jim with your questions 4 p.m. PT at (855) 243-9975.  Listen live.

Why Do Christians Care More about Same-Sex Marriage than Divorce?

Regarding public policy, Greg explains why many Christians are currently more focused on same-sex marriage than other sins.

Religions Are Not All Basically the Same

Historian Rodney Stark explains why the theology of God in different religions produces very different religions. All religions cannot basically be the same because their gods are not the same; some religions don���t even have a deity. The kind of god one believes in determines whether or not morality is part of the religion (some religions have no moral guidelines) and whether or not we are meant to have relationship with the deity. Some gods, as conceived by various religions, just are not capable of being moral or having a relationship with human beings. Stark explains in For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery:

Whether religions generate moral culture depends greatly upon their image of God. Not only are divine essences unable to issue commandments; they cannot sustain any concept of ���sin.��� The Tao does not advise humans to love one another, nor does the ���First Cause��� tell us not to covet another���s spouse. Paul Tillich���s ���ground of our being��� is not a being and consequently is incapable of having, let alone expressing, moral concerns. Only Gods���conscious supernatural beings���can desire our moral conformity. Even that is not sufficient. Gods can lend sanctions to the moral order only if they are responsive and dependable���if they are concerned about, informed about, and active on behalf of humans. Moreover, to promote virtue among humans, Gods must themselves be virtuous���they must favor good over evil. Finally, Gods will be more effective in sustaining moral precepts, the greater their scope���that is, the greater the diversity of their powers and the range and duration of their influence. Besides lacking scope, the many Gods of polytheistic systems are often not conceived of as responsive and dependable, or as necessarily favoring good over evil. Among the Indians of the Northwest Coast, the Gods (such as they were) did not concern themselves with morality, and magic dominated ritual life. Aside from those involved in ascetic sects, most Greeks and Romans believed that their Gods could hear their pleas, but that they mostly didn���t listen and didn���t care. Aristotle taught that the Gods were incapable of real concern for humans���lust, jealousy, and anger, yes, but never affection. Such Gods may require propitiation, and it may sometimes be possible to bargain with them for favors. But they are not to be counted on, and it is quite uncertain that it is even wise to attract their attention. Indeed, the Gods of Greece and Rome (and of polytheisms in general) sometimes kept their word, and sometimes they provided humans with very valuable rewards. But they often lied and did humans great harm for very petty reasons���..

It may have been worthwhile to periodically offer such Gods a sacrificial animal or two (especially since the donors feasted on the offering after the ceremony), but they were not worth more. Consequently, they could not ask more. In contrast, the immense Gods of the monotheisms ask much more and get it. In return for the otherworldly rewards they promise, and to enable humans to avoid the terrible punishments they threaten, these Gods uniformly impose sets of demands. And all of these sets include extensive codes of human conduct, not only toward the sacred, but toward one another���.

Recently, a substantial body of anthropological and experimental evidence has been assembled to explain that variations in the importance placed on ritual precision reflect differences in the capacities attributed to the supernatural agents to which (or whom) the rituals are directed. When, as in the case of magic, the supernatural agent is an unconscious entity or is a supernatural creature of very limited capacity (such as a demon or an imp), it will be assumed that each ritual must be performed with extreme precision because the supernatural agency lacks the capacity to know the intent of those performing the ritual and is unable to overlook errors in ritual performance. As Justin Barrett put it, ritual precision is required in dealings with ���dumb gods.��� This same logic applies, if to a somewhat lesser extent, to religions based on Gods of limited scope. They, too, may take note not of the intent of rituals but only of their execution. Indeed, there is a substantial element of compulsion in interactions with small Gods, as well as with the creatures that are sometimes invoked by magic (see the introduction). Here, too, the rituals must be perfect; otherwise the supernatural agent will not find them binding. In contrast, the omnipotent Gods of monotheism are thought to be fully aware of the intentions of the supplicant. Consequently, rituals are far less important, and precision is barely an issue when humans deal with Gods conceived of as all-seeing���if the priest errs, Jehovah knows what was meant, and the efficacy of a prayer does not hinge on precise adherence to a sacred formula.

The Nature of Moral Obligations: Sociability

Reflection on moral guilt (see yesterday's post) leads us to discover another feature of moral obligations. Moral guilt seems to alienate people from one another. If one fails to live up to one���s obligation to uphold the laws of the land, alienation from individuals or even from a group of individuals will ensue. For example, someone who takes innocent life will experience alienation from that person���s loved ones, maybe a spouse or child. Such persons will be angry and may direct hatred toward the murderer. In addition, the murderer will be alienated from society-at-large and subsequently locked away. However, such alienation can be alleviated. Moral guilt can be removed by forgiveness from the appropriate party. Implicit in this discussion is the social nature of moral obligations.

The instantiation of moral obligations is internally related to personhood. Moral obligations only obtain between persons. In contrast, we don't have obligations to inanimate objects. If I see a piece of wood lying on the ground, I'm not necessarily obligated to refrain from taking a hammer to it and breaking it into pieces. The proponent of naturalism may reply that if the piece of wood in question were part of someone���s house, then I would be obligated not to destroy it, and thus, I would be obligated to an inanimate object. However, my obligation obtains only in virtue of that piece of wood���s relationship to a person. My obligation is not to the wood itself but to the person, namely the owner of the house to which the wood is attached.

The proponent of naturalism may respond in a second way, arguing we have moral obligations to non-persons because we have obligations to creatures in the animal kingdom. We are obligated to care for and not harm animals. My first response is a question: Are we obligated to animals in the same way we're obligated to human persons? The answer must clearly be no. Certainly there is a distinction between killing an innocent cow to eat and killing an innocent human to eat. If hungry packs of wolves were killing deer populations in a particular region of woods, would we send in the military to intervene? No. Indeed, we refer to such action as killing but refrain from using moral terms like murder. However, when we see human genocide, the world community recognizes an obligation to act.

Secondly, if our supposed obligations to animals are unlike our obligations to other persons, maybe they're not obligations at all. Given a theistic framework, our moral obligation to care for animals is not an obligation to the animals themselves but rather an obligation to the personal Creator who brought them into existence and has charged human persons to rule over and be good stewards of His created order.

The social nature of moral obligations makes sense of the first feature, moral incumbency. Imagine a teenager who is preparing to play scrabble. She opens the box containing the scrabble board and tiles and proceeds to dump the pieces on the kitchen table. However, her attention is quickly diverted by the sitcom playing on the living room television. She wanders in that direction. Now imagine that she returns to the kitchen table and discovers the following words formed by scrabble tiles: ���Take out the trash.��� If the teenager comes to discover the words were formed by her chance dumping of the pieces on the table, there would be no moral incumbency behind this command. However, if she discovered this was her dad���s humorous way to communicate his commands, the incumbency of her moral obligation to obey dad would press in on her. Thus, moral obligations obtain when there are at minimum two persons involved.

But one more thing must be said. Imagine this teenage girl discovered it was not dad who arranged the tiles but rather her six-year-old brother. The moral incumbency would not come into play because the younger brother is not a person with the requisite authority to make such commands. Thus, a moral obligation has incumbency when a command is issued by an appropriate authority.

Again, we turn to the naturalist for an account. How do moral obligations that arise by a chance collision of atoms obtain in the actual world? How would naturalism account for moral obligations, with their requisite social nature, in virtue of purely material and non-social processes? Impersonal forces cannot give rise to personal ones. Moreover, how could non-rational physical processes be the basis of authority for moral obligations? Thus, another feature of morality further presses in on the naturalist because given naturalism, there's no appropriate personal authority to ground moral obligations.

Given these four features of morality���immateriality, incumbency, guilt, sociability���what's the best explanation? Naturalism can't provide adequate ontological grounding for morality. Our moral obligations go much deeper than naturalism���s accounting. So, if moral obligations can't be properly grounded in a nonreligious view of the world, then we should move in the direction of a theistic worldview that offers us a much more plausible explanation.

Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford Press, 1999), p. 239. 

The Nature of Moral Obligations: Moral Guilt

Persons who do not fulfill their moral obligations are subject to adverse judgment. If I choose to refrain from a morally obligatory act, I am guilty. But let's distinguish between two types of guilt. First, guilt may be thought of in terms of a subjective emotion moral agents experience when they fail to fulfill their obligations. The failure results in deep ethical pain or discomfort. Feelings such as regret, remorse, or resentment may accompany one���s moral failings.

While an account of guilty feelings may be useful, for my purposes I will only concern myself with a second sense of guilt. In this sense, guilt refers to an objective state-of-affairs. In virtue of an agent���s moral failings, he has done something wrong, and as such, deserves appropriate blame and just punishment. The guilty person in this sense may not recognize or admit guilt, but the objective fact of their guilt remains nonetheless. Guilty feelings may or may not accompany the agent���s actions, but they're not necessary in order to levy some punishment against an objectively guilty person.

Indeed, punishment is one of the things that distinguishes the rational ought from the moral ought. I may have a rational obligation to hold that 2 + 2 = 4, but if I fail to live up to it I'm not subject to punishment. However, if I fail to fulfill my moral obligation not to abuse young children, then appropriate punishment seems clearly justified. Rational wrongs require a correction of the error, while moral wrongs require the correction, or punishment, of the person.

We turn again to naturalism for an accounting of this feature of moral obligations. The naturalist may explain the existence of guilt with some kind of evolutionary account that claims it has survival value for the human species. Moral guilt compels continued cooperation among persons, and as a result, human beings are able to pass on their genes to the next generation. However, such an account only works by reducing obligations to feelings that somehow connect to patterns of action that help us survive. But remember, our primary concern is not with guilt feelings but an objective state of guilt resulting from a failure to fulfill moral obligations. Indeed, guilt feelings may not be absurd in a naturalistic world, but moral obligations that have no survival value would be absurd in such a world. Thus, moral guilt is another feature of morality that seems to resist naturalistic explanations. 

The Nature of Moral Obligations: Moral Incumbency

In discussions of morality, we often use phrases like ���John ought to do X��� or ���John ought not to do Y.��� But what is this oughtness we refer to? What can be said of it to help us better understand the nature of morality? The oughtness of a moral obligation is what philosophers call incumbency, and as we explore the nature of moral incumbency, four observations arise that seem to resist naturalistic explanations.

First, the incumbency of moral obligations demands something from us and binds us to something. Moral obligations have an external force that presses in on us and compels us to act or refrain from acting in certain ways. We may be more acutely aware of this invisible demand when we're alone. For example, imagine I'm at a convenience store to purchase a Snickers candy bar, and the lone cashier informs me he has to use the restroom in the back of the store and subsequently departs from the cash register. Prior experience informs me this convenience store has no security cameras, and a quick observation helps me to determine no one else is in the store and no cars are in the parking lot. At this point a temptation to take the Snickers without paying for it may come rushing into my mind. However, the temptation is accompanied by a second experience, an awareness of what I ought to do. My awareness of an obligation not to take what does not belong to me presses in on me with such force that it compels right action. Therefore, I stand at the counter with my Snickers, waiting for the cashier to return.

The objector may claim that not everyone experiences this incumbency. But what follows from this? Certainly my experiences or feelings are irrelevant to the actual state-of-affairs. My claim is not that the experience of moral incumbency is universally felt, but that one���s incumbency to moral obligations obtains in the actual world.

Second, moral obligations are unconditional imperatives. They're incumbent upon us whether we desire them or not, agree to them or not, or recognize them or not. There's no opting out of our moral obligations. We simply must obey. And no one thinks you are excused if you choose not to fulfill them. Indeed, we're justified in considering such a person to be morally reprehensible or deficient and deserving of punishment. This is why fathers who don't desire and consequently refrain from paying child support are called ���dead-beat dads��� and sent to jail.

Third, this incumbency applies not only to one���s actions but to the underlying motives as well. I may have an obligation to help a little old lady across the street, but my obligation reaches deeper than just the action itself. I also have an obligation to be properly motivated in doing so. If I help the old lady across the street because I believe we ought to take care of weaker individuals in society or because I believe she has dignity and value in virtue of her being a human being, I am properly motivated. However, if I'm motivated by a desire to get some money from her in the end, I would be considered morally repugnant. Thus, moral obligations make demands not only on the observable action but on the unobservable motive as well.

Finally, moral obligations place demands on us prior to any action. It is neither necessary nor sufficient for one to be in the midst of action to experience the incumbency of obligations. We may simply reflect on a given behavior and experience the demands of our moral obligation. I reflect for a brief moment on the act of child abuse, and I am immediately aware that I ought to refrain from such behavior.

So what is the naturalist to make of moral incumbency? It would seem such a feature of moral obligations do not fit a naturalistic view of reality. Moral obligations have an invisible external force that makes demands not only on our actions but on our motives as well, and those demands come into play prior to any action. At the same time, such obligations may be counterproductive to our good. If naturalism is true, it would be very difficult to account for the fact of moral incumbency.

I will expand on the notion of deserved punishment in tomorrow's post.

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), p. 166.

 

A Reformation the Church Doesn't Need

Sometimes the best remedy for a moral/theological controversy is simply a good old-fashioned, down to earth, nothing buttery, search-the-Scriptures to-see-if-it���s-so, Bible study. Of course, because of ambiguities in the text, not every challenging, contentious biblical dispute can be settled this easily. Frequently, though, a careful, close look at the Scripture is all that���s required to resolve what might seem at first to be a difficult dispute.

That���s the approach Alan Shlemon and Greg Koukl take to respond to one of the most severe challenges to Christian orthodoxy the church faces today. The question: What does God really think about homosexuality? This isn't only a dispute over morality. It's a question of what God teaches us in the Bible and its authority over how Christians live and what we teach. Some Christians, such as Matthew Vines, suggest that the church has misunderstood the Bible's teaching on homosexuality for 2000 years. In this first part of a two-part series, Alan and Greg show how these claims are not what the Bible teaches.

Read Solid Ground

The Nature of Moral Obligations: Immateriality

I���ve always found the argument from objective morality to God���s existence compelling. When we push deeper into our explanations of the nature of morality, I just don���t see how naturalism provides any kind of satisfactory account. In particular, four features of or related to our moral obligations seem irreducible to naturalistic explanations:

Immateriality
Incumbency
Guilt
Sociability

So for the next four days, I want to explore these features in order to strengthen our argument from morality to God.

Let's begin our discussion with the following question: ���What is the ontological status of a moral obligation?��� What constitutes a moral obligation? First, it seems moral obligations are immaterial substances. More specifically, a moral obligation is a relation of being obligated to perform or refrain from a particular action. Moral obligations are only instantiated between persons, and thus, they are a relation between two persons. More on this in part four, as we discuss the social nature of moral obligations.

But certainly an obligation is not a physical feature of the world. You do not trip over moral obligations in the hallway or bump into them on the street. They have no weight, and they do not extend into space. Yet we know them to be real. We feel their force everyday. 

However, naturalism requires that we confine our moral discussion to physical properties. Indeed, moral obligations would have to reduce to some kind of physical property. But physical properties do not constitute anything about moral obligations, let alone morality in general. Moral obligations seem, on almost any reading, to be about something other than physical or material reality. A naturalistic view cannot provide an ontology of immaterial substances and thus does not have the resources to account for moral obligations.

Dallas Willard, ���Naturalism���s Incapacity to Capture the Good Will��� in Philosophia Christi 4, (2002): 9.

How Were the Books of the Bible Compiled?

How did the early church decide which books to include in the New Testament?