Atheism: Philosophically Incompatible with Intrinsic Value

In a recent blog post titled "Those Mysterious Atheists", Maclin Horton wrote about the incompatibility of morality and atheism:

Anyone who wants to take a serious look at atheism and morality must ask this question: on what grounds can one say that even physical survival, much less co-operation, altruism, or any other mode of behavior, is good in any definite and permanent way?
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Evolution simply has no logical means for speaking of right and wrong, only of what works, and that only with reference to the production and survival of offspring. It can’t, as the saying goes, move from is to ought.That we should concern ourselves with building a better world is either an abstract principle independent of our wishes or it is a mere subjective preference. And if it’s a subjective preference there is no reason why it should be binding on anyone other than the person doing the preferring. Atheists tend to say that moral questions are indeed a matter of personal preference until you come up with an example that they don’t prefer.
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The fact is that most people including atheists experience the sense that some things are simply right because they’re right and other things are wrong because they’re wrong. Of course there are many differences about the specifics, but almost everyone knows the sensation I’m describing, and the rare exception would be considered sick or evil in any society.

Evolution can offer an explanation of these feelings by asserting that they were conducive to survival, and insist that “right” and “wrong” are simply names for feelings of attraction or aversion to behavior that either does or doesn’t facilitate survival. It can’t say that anything is in fact right or wrong, and it must deny that the sense of right and wrong is what we all experience it to be: a reference to some standard outside our selves and our species. In short, the atheist must deny his own direct experience in order to maintain his intellectual consistency.

This dovetails nicely with an essay by Chesterton (which I just happened to be reading) called "Is Change Improvement?" where he addresses the idea of an evolving morality.

If everything changes, including the mind of man, how can we tell whether any change is an improvement or no?
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Now, nobody can possibly say which of those two evolutionary changes is the better, unless he keeps some standard that cannot be changed. He cannot tell...unless he has some principle...that does not evolve at all.
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What I want to know is, how is the evolutionist to tell whether this is a forward step or a retrograde step, if his ethics are always changing with his evolution?...But how is the unhappy doubter to decide which of these two version of true progress is really true? He can only do it if he has the test of some truth that remains true. The mind is fluid and changing, as the body is fluid and changing. On this principle we may be able to say of the future that it will be a change. But we cannot say it will be an improvement: for that implies that there will always be something in common between us and our descendants; something that we are all trying to improve. Why should that something not change like everything? Is that outside the laws of evolution? Is that a special creation? Is that a miracle? Is that common standard of conscience a thing of divine origin? Dreadful thought!

I would put it in terms of intrinsic value. As Maclin states, evolution cannot account for anything being good, as in, possessing intrinsic value--objective transcendent value in itself. And realizing this was the major impetus which moved me from unbelief back to belief: I could not deny my experience that some things really are beautiful, that some things are good (and conversely that some things are evil). Some answer that that's just my subjective experience/preference...but that's not what I experience. The whole reason I experience something as good or beautiful or evil is because I experience it as objectively so. I don't experience the wrongfulness of Aushwitz as a preference, but as an objective fact. . . it is the experience of its objective evil that gives me my preference for hating it. Atheism cannot account for objective values of this sort, because, as Maclin and Chesterton points out, it requires something to exist outside the universe of change And so the atheist can only account for morality as preference and, in doing so, as Maclin says, he "must deny his own direct experience in order to maintain his intellectual consistency."

There are only 5 ways anyone can respond to an argument.

This is a good reminder with all the political discussions going on these days.

The Five Ways to Respond to an Argument

• The first three are based on the three essential checkpoints in the structure of any logical argument
• Terms: Are the terms accurate or ambiguous?
  
• Premises: Are the premises true or false?
  
• Reasoning process: Does the conclusion logically follow from the premises?
  
• All the check points have been passed and the conclusion cannot be denied, so you admit it.
  
• All the check points have been passed and the conclusion cannot be denied, but you refuse to admit it. You disagree without really knowing why. Although this is stupid it makes you feel safe against an argument you don't like.

From Peter Kreeft's lecture series, Faith and Reason: The Philosophy of Religion

Just One Issue

A business acquaintance and I were talking about the current financial crisis last weekend when he asked, "You're voting for Obama, right?" "No," I said, "I'm staunchly pro-life." "But that's just one issue," he said.

Was slavery just one issue? Was the holocaust just one issue? Whenever a government declares an entire class of persons (based on skin color, religion, or size and place of residence) undeserving of the protection of the law—that's the issue which trumps all other issues, more important than the economy, foreign policy, or any other human rights issue; for without the right to be born, all other rights are moot. The right to life is the very condition of all other rights.

How can one declare the annual slaughter of 1,250,000 innocent human beings just one issue? It never made sense to me. I suppose that this mentality is virtually unanimous among liberals (what's liberal about killing babies, by the way?) because of an Emperor's New Clothes phenomenon—where “every man surrenders his fancy to a general tone which is itself a surrender” (G.K. Chesterton). Or, as C.S. Lewis wrote, "The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed."

For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with “they say” or “don’t you know that?” or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.
—G.K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce

Abortion is the issue this year and every year in every campaign. Catholics may not turn away from the moral challenge that abortion poses for those who seek to obey God’s commands. They are wrong when they assert that abortion does not concern them, or that it is only one of a multitude of issues of equal importance. No, the taking of innocent human life is so heinous, so horribly evil, and so absolutely opposite to the law of Almighty God that abortion must take precedence over every other issue. I repeat. It is the single most important issue confronting not only Catholics, but the entire electorate.
—Bishop James Timlin, Pastoral Letter on Respect Life Sunday 2000