The thoughts that followed went something like this: Religious people often claim that atheists have no morals because they have no moral guide. It went on to say, for instance, if you’re a Christian, you’d probably say that the Bible is your moral guide. But which parts, are your moral guide, the good parts you accept or the horrendous, violent, portions you reject?
The person in the video went on to say, if you want to live under the morality of Mosaic law where people are stoned for the most insane and ridiculous of reasons, you might as well go and live under a tyrannical religious system where they still stone adulterers, children who insult their parents–or where they cut of the hand of a poor man who steals a loaf of bread.
The video concluded, saying that those who believe they are moral because they affirm the morality of the God of the Bible are deceiving themselves. They are really being their own higher power by accepting some moral positions of the Bible while rejecting others. That means, says the speaker, that the Bible is really not your moral guide. You are. You have a conscience, and you need no god but yourself to see the difference between moral right and wrong, even in the Bible.
Seems to me that such a defense of atheism is important to think about not only because it is articulate and compelling, but because it’s a reminder of the kinds of assumptions that we should not make about ourselves and others.
We are not necessarily more moral than atheists because we have the Bible as a moral guide. The Bible itself argues that people without the Bible can be moral because God has written his laws in everyone’s heart (Romans 2:14-15).
Furthermore, the Apostle Paul goes on to say in his letter to the Romans that those who have the Bible don’t necessarily keep the law any more than those who have no Bible (Rom 2:17-24).
So in more than one sense, the advocate for moral atheists is right. You don’t have to have the Bible as a moral guide to know the difference between right and wrong. It’s also true that today the morality of Levitical law sounds more like the worst case scenarios of oppressive religious systems that still exist—chopping off hands, and stoning people who break the laws of tyranny.
So going forward, here’s what I’m thinking. If we believe in the Bible, let’s not posture ourselves as better than anyone else because of our own moral practice. Neither does it make sense to argue that those without the Bible cannot have the moral guidance of their own conscience.
Just as importantly, let’s not read the Bible the way the person in the YouTube video does—as if the Bible is simply a collection of statements floating in a timeless limbo, without a storyline that gives sense, perspective, proportionality, and explanation to what we now recognize as the parts of the Bible that we either accept or reject for the betterment of ourselves and others…
PS Philosophical arguments about whether true moral guidance exists apart from the real existence of a God who has revealed himself to us is a different issue.