"Mortal Values" or "A How-to Guide to Banana Worship"

"Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's sucking up." -Richard Dawkins, "The God Delusion"

Most of the Christians I speak with talk of doom for the human race if we stray from biblical morality. "I can't imagine a world where people didn't believe in God," they say. "There would be no basis for moral values. I mean, everyone would just be making up whatever they think is right or wrong."

But do we need God to be moral? Certainly not. Of course, there are millions of good people in the world without a belief in a god. And somewhere in that haze between Christianity & Atheism, somewhere between Nihilism, Existentialism, & Humanism, I realized that being a Christian, an Atheist, or a Banana Worshipper made little to no difference in how "good" of a life I actually lived.

The point I want to make here is to respond to this notion that Christians have some "corner" on morality -- that they subscribe to "God's Law" and other people "make up their own moral values." But that's just simply not true.

The fact is that WE ALL DECIDE OUR OWN MORAL VALUES. We all decide what is good and what is bad on our own, apart from God, whether we believe in him or not. Christians make up their own morals using their own brains just like atheists. In this sense, there is no difference between Atheists, Christians, or those elusive Banana-Worshippers.

Christian's think their moral decisions are based on God's law. But they are wrong. When they first picked up a Bible and read, "thou shalt not kill" they said, "this is a moral principle I think is good, so I will live by it." But by what standard did they decide that was a good moral principle? (insert Final Jeopardy song here) That's right, they used their brains. They made a moral decision based on WHAT THEY THOUGHT WAS RIGHT, just like anyone else would in deciding what is good and bad.

Christian's cannot take the high ground here because "our morality comes from God." They can't say, "Well, I don't make up my morals, I just go by what the Bible says." They can't really say that because before they bought into God's Law, they had to decide that God's Law was worth buying into.

In other words, even assuming that a God was so kind as to send us a book with an Absolute & Perfect Moral Law each person would still have to make a judgment call - "Should we live by this?" We did this when we became Christians. We did this when we rejected it. You did it as well when you chose to adhere to your moral code. And if you think Bananas, not God, hold the key to morality, that's a decision you'll have to make on your own too.

All moral values are mere mortal values - they're all based on mortal, not divine, decisions about what is right and what is wrong.

Related Post: John W. Loftus "Can I Judge the Judge?"