Atheists, secularists, and agnostics of all stripes have all come together to promote a single dogma that is foundational to their cause – the belief that morality is possible absent the existence of God. They call this proposition humanism, which the American Humanist Association defines as:
Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good,
Humanist International defines as:
Humanism is a democratic and ethical lifestance which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethics based on human and other natural values in a spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality,
and which The Humanist Society of Western New York explains is, “A joyous alternative to religions that believe in a supernatural god and life in a hereafter.” As Joseph C. Sommer explained, humanism is a replacement for religion and in opposition to all faiths; “Humanism maintains there is no evidence a supernatural power ever needed or wanted anything from people, ever communicated to them, or ever interfered with the laws of nature to assist or harm anyone. Humanism’s focus, then, is on using human efforts to meet human needs and wants in this world.” If this all makes you think humanism is nothing more than an atheist religion that replaces the worship of God with the worship of Man, you’re absolutely right. As Bette Chambers, former President of the American Humanist Association, testified:
Humanism is the light of my life and the fire in my soul. It is the deep felt conviction, in every fiber of my being that human love is a power far transcending the relentless, onward rush of our largely deterministic cosmos. All human life must seek a reason for existence within the bounds of an uncaring physical world, and it is love coupled with empathy, democracy, and a commitment to selfless service which undergirds the faith of a humanist.
All previous quotes
Not only does Chambers outright bear testimony that humanism is her faith as if it were a church testimony meeting, the language she uses to do so is taken completely from religious language. For example, the phrase “every fiber of my being” phrase is taken directly from the American Christian culture. Their faith is that through a rejection of all religion and a complete reliance upon the mental and physical powers of humans, dogmatically (and erroneously) called “reason” and “science” in their religion, humans can live a moral and meaningful life.
The problem with these arguments is that, when you apply reason to the subject, it quickly becomes clear that any system or morality is impossible without a belief in God.
Despite their declarations otherwise, it is clear that they can’t even come up with a basic definition of Good or Evil without God and constructing anything like an actual moral code of right and wrong is a completely fruitless endeavor.
An Example
I was recently listening to Lex Fridman’s interview with history-enthusiast podcaster Dan Carlin. Both of their podcasts are really well done. Fridman does a great job of interviewing his guests without trying to force them to fit a specific ideological mold. His recent interview with the libertarian and pro-free market President of Argentina Javier Milei is a great example of Fridman’s style working perfectly. In contrast, Carlin is a bit more bombastic. He isn’t a historian, but someone who has read history deeply and is trying to tell you the story of historical events as he best understands them. His recent podcast on the history of Philip II of Macedon (Alexander the Great’s father) is a great example of his storyteller style. I say all this to help you understand that these are both intelligent men whose contributions to society should be valued and enjoyed by a wide range of people.
During the interview, Fridman discuss the nature of evil, individual agency, the accountability of soldiers, and what defines heroism. All without recourse to God. Let’s evaluate their discussion as an example of morality absent God’s laws and see where it leads us.
On Evil
Here is their conversation on evil:
Lex: Let’s start with the highest philosophical question do you think human beings are fundamentally good or are all of us capable of both good and evil? And it’s the environment that molds how we see the trajectory that we take the life.
Dan: How do we define evil, evil seems to be a situational eye of the beholder kind of question. So if we define evil, maybe I can get a better idea of and that could be a whole show could defining evil. But when we say evil, what do we mean?
Lex: That’s a slippery one. But I think there’s some way in which your existence, your presence in the world leads to pain and suffering and destruction for many others in the rest of the world. So you you steal the resources and you use them to create more suffering than there was before in the world. So I suppose it’s somehow deeply connected to this other slippery word which is suffering as you create suffering in the world, you bring suffering to the world.
Dan: But here’s the problem, I think with it, because I fully see where you’re going with that and I understand it. The problem is, is the question of the reason for inflicting suffering. So sometimes one might inflict suffering upon one group of individuals in order to maximize a lack of suffering with another group of individuals or one who might not be considered evil at all, might make the rational, seemingly rational choice of inflicting pain and suffering on a smaller group of people in order to maximize the opposite of that for a larger group of people.
Right from the start we see both of these every intelligent and thoughtful men fail to answer even a simple question. Having no foundational morality, no source from which right and wrong and definitely defined, having no God, these men are unable to take a stance on one of the most easily answered questions. Neither man can’t even describe what evil is or what evil looks like. And failing to define what evil looks like, neither can define what good looks like either. After all, if good is the opposite of evil (or vice versa) and you cannot define one of those things, here evil, then you can’t for certain say what the opposite may be. Carlin even suggests that evil may not truly exist at all, that it only looks bad depending on your point of view. Though he never outright says this, and he would certainly oppose it if asked, his logic ultimately concludes in holocausts, ethnic cleanings, and genocides. After all, when you’re talking about the well-being of 66 million people, then how can the suffering of a minority population of 500,000 even register? Or 6 million people, for that matter?
Like most post-moderns, with the inevitable outcomes of their logic bared in this obvious way, Fridman and Carlin have had to resort to the weakest form of morality to avoid justifying the Holocaust – the morality of pleasure. Something is good if it decreases suffering, makes life more pleasurable, and is bad if it increases suffering, makes life less pleasurable. Ease and comfort, hedonism, become the basis of morality. This of course doesn’t even really forestall the descent into madness and genocide. With no direction other than fulfilling your urges and no identity beyond selfish pleasure-seeking, society spins ever fasters around itself, consuming its own tail as the gyre widens and things collapse inward. In this chaos, the only thing that makes sense is to get as much for yourself and yours as you can and damn anyone who gets in your way or even dares to disagree. They’re evil for even questioning your choices.
Failing to define what evil looks like, neither can define what good looks like either. After all, if good is the opposite of evil (or vice versa) and you cannot define one of those things, here evil, then you can’t for certain say what the opposite may be. This becomes an obvious problem when they turn to talking about heroism.
Agency and Heroism
Fridman brings up the topic of heroism:
Lex: You’re making me realize that in my upbringing and I think upbringing of many warriors or heroes, you know, to me, I don’t know where that feeling comes from, but to sort of die fighting is is an honorable way to die.
[Carlin explains that he makes the distinction between police, firemen, and soldiers on the ground and the military-industrial complex, with the former being heroes and the latter often not being so. And then says this:]
Dan: The people on the ground, the people on the ground could be any of us and have been in a lot of you know, we have a very professional sort of military now. It’s a very a subset of the population. But in other periods of time, we’ve had conscription and draft and it hasn’t been a subset of the population. It’s been the population. And so it is the society oftentimes going to war. And I make a distinction between those warriors and the entities either in the system that they are part of the military or the people that control the military at the highest political levels.
…I actually look at the victims of this as the soldiers we were talking about. If you if you set a fire to send firemen into to fight, then I feel bad for the firemen. I feel like you’ve abused the trust that you give those people. So when when people talk about war, I always think that the people that we have to make sure that a war is really necessary in order to protect are the people that you’re going to send over there to fight, that the greatest victims in our society of war are often the warriors.
So in my mind, you know, when we see these people coming home from places like Iraq, a place where I would have made the argument and did at the time that we didn’t belong, to me those people are victims. And I know they don’t like to think about themselves that way because it runs totally counter to the to the ethos. But if you’re sending people to protect this country shores, those are heroes. If you’re sending people to go do something that they otherwise probably don’t need to do, but they’re there for political reasons or anything else you want to put in that’s not defense related.
[Carlin then uses the example of fighting in World War II as an example of heroism.]
If you kill and you kill a lot. You don’t just oh, there’s a sniper back here. So I shot him. It’s we go from one position to another and we kill lots of people. Those things will change you. …When you’re down at that front 100 yards, it is often boiled down to a very small world. So your grandfather was at the machine gun. He’s concerned about his position and his comrades and the people who he owes a responsibility to. And those it’s a very small world at that point. And to me, that’s where the heroism is, right. He’s not fighting for some giant world civilizational thing. He’s fighting to save the people next to him and his own life at the same time because they’re saving him, too, and that there is a huge amount of heroism to that.
The worst victims of the Second Iraq War were the American soldiers invading and occupying Iraq? Are we sure that the 2.4 million+ Iraqi men, women, and children that have been shot, stabbed, starved, and blown up since the 2003 invasion aren’t the actual victims? And that doesn’t account for innumerable amounts of people who have been severely injured, maimed, or crippled by American bullets and bombs. American soldiers assaulted Iraqi civilians, starved them, covered them in human feces, forced them to breathe through cloth saturated in urine, poured acid on them, dragged them around with cords attached to their genitalia, water boarded them, raped them repeatedly, and murdered them. And these are but a few of the horrific things done to Iraqis by American soldiers. Frederic Wehrey, an American soldier who fought in Iraq, came home and wrote about what he saw. He shared the following story about visiting accused terrorist Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in the hospital to interrogate him:
Even more disturbing than this non-revelation [that al-Ani hadn’t been involved in a recent attack] though, was his account of his capture that summer by US special operations forces and the reason for his hospitalization. Snatching him from his Baghdad home at night, US soldiers had bound his wrists, covered his head, and forced him to lie on the floor of a Humvee for the long trip to a detention facility. Within fifteen minutes of his confinement in the vehicle, he felt an unbearable burning sensation. A Humvee’s engine is located in the front and conducts heat to the rear bed, where al-Ani was lying facedown on the bare metal. He twisted and writhed from the pain, but his American guards thought he was resisting. One of the soldiers stepped harder on his back with his boot. “Jesus, Jesus, please,” he’d cried, he told me, hoping that this invocation in English would get them to relent.
In front of us in the hospital, he lifted his gown to show us the results: severe burns, in dark-hued patches, covered his stomach, thighs, feet, and palms. As a consequence, al-Ani would endure three months of hospitalization, which involved multiple skin grafts, as well as the amputation of his thumb and the loss of movement of a finger. … To my knowledge, nobody was ever disciplined or punished for al-Ani’s mistreatment.
And I’m supposed to think the soldiers who did this are the victims? There aren’t words to describe the insanity of such an argument. War itself is insane, which is why we are indoctrinated into accepting it at such a young age and fed a steady diet of propaganda our entire lives to reinforce that indoctrination. And that indoctrination is on full display when Fridman says he doesn’t know why he feels like dying in combat is honorable and Carlin tries to ignore the agency of soldiers and the fact that they willingly perpetuate the evils they carry out. They’ve swallowed the lies whole hog and are regurgitating them to one another as a way to try and justify the unjustifiable.
Sending men and women to murder and slaughter each other is evil, actually murdering and slaughter each other is evil, and willingly complying with it makes you accountable for the blood on your hands. You cannot blame others for your wickedness and evil. The politician in a suit only told you to go kill. You are the one who actively chose to go murder for them You cannot blame anyone else except yourself when you decide to torture and slaughter men, women, children, and babies for those in power. Your excuses – patriotism, serving the country, nationalism, etc. – excuse nothing. Neither Fridman nor Carlin, having rendered themselves intellectually infantile by their incapability to define evil, can recognize these obvious examples of evil in action.
They can’t even understand heroism. Heroism is not killing in battle. It may require bravery or courage to fight in war, but not heroism. Heroism is doing what is morally right because it is the morally right thing to do, even when you suffer or die for it. Mary Dyer was a heroine. William Lloyd Garrison was a hero. Joseph Smith was a hero. The pioneer women who defied the government and went to prison to protect their rights to marry were heroes. Soldiers killing and/or oppressing others are not heroic. They are perpetuating some of the most horrific evils in human history. They do not deserve praise. They deserve derision. They are not heroes and heroines. They are vile murderers. They are villains.
Final Thoughts
The truth of the matter is that in order for morality to exist, humans must have a source outside their own authority for that morality. Anything humans can invent and justify we can also invent reasons and justifications for disobeying. Worse, without a fundamental example of that which is good, i.e. God, we find ourselves incapable of even defining what Good and Evil are and what they look like. As both Fridman and Carlin show, we’re incapable of defining it because we’re incapable of intellectually distinguishing good from evil. Therefore, we have to abandon reason for emotion. The best we can come up with is enshrining pleasure seeking as righteous, which makes anything we don’t like or don’t enjoy as evil. That which is enjoyable is good and that which we find unpleasant is evil. It is nothing more than self-centered selfishness masquerading as something noble. Devoid of understanding and meaning, people turn to human powers to provide their lives direction and meaning, but that only exacerbates the problem of meaninglessness.
With God though, the entire situation changes. Good and Evil are no longer situational relationships based on fictional identities made up by human organization to further their own agendas. God defines what is and what is not Good in a unambiguous manner. Because God is Good then what God commands is Good. God’s directions for how to live a moral life, known colloquially as His commandments, are the base definition of Good. They are also clearly known and provide the foundational rock upon which a person can build his or her life. As one’s way of thinking, speaking, and acting – one’s way of living – more closely follows God’s commandments, the more Good a person becomes. As one’s way of living veers away from or violates God’s commandments, the more Evil a person becomes. Disobeying God’s commandments is Evil because those actions are in opposition to what is Good. When hardship, tribulation, or confusion rear their heads, the individual who strives to follow God’s commandments is able to understand what he or she should do in order to act in a virtuous and moral manner.
The storms of life are unable to destroy such a person because he or she is built upon the rock. He or she knows what Good and Evil, right and wrong, are and lives accordingly. Importantly, because the individual has a fundamental source of Good outside his or her self, the individual is far less likely to fall into selfish hedonism. Doing what is right is not always easy and not always enjoyable. Sometimes it even out right hurts. Christ was not being hyperbolic when He compared a moral lifestyle to carrying your cross to your own crucifixion. Such sacrifice for God, for your family, for your community as God’s commandments necessitate binds you to Him and to them, producing a meaningful and satisfactory life.
Doing what is right should be done because it is the right thing to do creates joy . And, when he or she fails to live morally, that person knows what must be done to correct the error and what to do in order to become moral again. In other words, he or she knows how to take accountability for his or her actions and how to repent and correct the error and its consequences as much as is possible. This restores the balance of life and a return to joy as soon as possible.
All of this makes the conclusions inevitable:
God is absolutely necessary for someone to live morally or even to know what is or isn’t moral.
Post-Script
One of the things that Fridman and Carlin do get right is the power of nonviolence. It isn’t that they understand the morality of nonviolence. They both understand the power of nonviolence and why governments oppose it so strenuously and violently. Fridman says that he believes in the power of love to change society and Carlin responds:
Let me ask you something. And boy, this is the ultimate doom caster thing of all time to say when you think of historical figures that push things like love and peace and and creating bridges between enemies. When you think of how what happened to those people, first of all, they’re very dangerous. Every society in the world has a better time, easier time dealing with violence and things like that than they do nonviolence. Nonviolence is really difficult for governments to deal with.
For example, what happens to Gandhi and Jesus and Martin Luther King. And you think about all those people, right? When they’re that it’s it’s ironic, isn’t it, that these people who push for peaceful solutions are so often killed, but it’s because they’re effective and when they’re killed, the effectiveness is diminished. Why are they killed? Because they’re effective. And the only way to stop them is to eliminate them because they’re charismatic leaders who don’t come around every day.
And if you eliminate them from the scene, the odds are you’re not going to get another one for a while. I guess what I’m saying is the very things you’re talking about, which would have the effect you think it would. They would destabilize systems in a way that most of us would consider positive. But those systems have a way of protecting themselves. And so I feel like history shows the history is pretty pessimistic.
Carlin is right about how governments, based on violence as they are, use violence to try and destroy nonviolent leaders and nonviolence movements. But he is wrong to be pessimistic. History definitively proves the effectiveness, power, and superiority of nonviolence to violence and that the effectiveness of nonviolence has only increase over the last century. There are reasons to be optimistic now more than ever.