De moralitate atheorum

Elsewhere, the Usual Suspects brought up a perennial question, and it amused me to take the counterarguments and the sed contra from what seem at first unlikely sources.

Question: Whether those who do not believe in God may act morally. 

Objection 1. It would seem not, because  as Jean-Paul Sartre held in "Existentialism is a Humanism, there disappears with God all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that 'the good' exists, that one must be honest or not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men.

Objection 2.  Furthermore, as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in The_Twilight_of_the_Idols,   "when one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands."

Objection 3. In addition, the atheist philosopher Richard Rorty wrote, in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, "For liberal ironists, there is no answer to the question 'Why not be cruel?' - no noncircular theoretical backup for the belief that cruelty is horrible. ... Anyone who thinks that there are well grounded theoretical answers to this sort of question - algorithms for resolving moral dilemmas of this sort - is still, in his heart, a theologian or metaphysician.  He believes in an order beyond time and change which both determines the point of human existence and establishes a hierarchy of responsibilities." 

Objection 4.  Also Voltaire did not believe in God but wanted his butler to believe because he thought he would then be robbed less. And Rousseau thought that a nation needed a religion if it was to accept laws and policies directed at the long term future. Without religion, people would insist on immediate gain, to their eventual cost. Clearly, they believed that without religion there would be no morality, save among the Enlightened. 

Objection 5. Also Alex Rosenberg, in "The Disenchanted Naturalists Guide to Reality, asserts that naturalism denies the existence of objective moral value, of beliefs and desires, of the self, of linguistic meaning, and indeed of meaning or purpose of any sort. All attempts to evade this conclusion, to reconcile naturalism with our common sense understanding of human life, inevitably fail, and we just have to learn to live with that. A belief in meanings and purposes is what puts us on a “slippery slope” to religion.

On the Contrary, St. Paul writes in Romans 2:11-16, "There is no partiality with God.  All who sin outside the law will also perish without reference to it, and all who sin under the law will be judged in accordance with it.  For it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who observe the law will be justified.  For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law unto themselves...  They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people's hidden works through Christ Jesus." 

Come, Let Us Reason Together

            .
What is odd about this report?

LiveScience reports.

"Warming temperatures are melting patches of ice that have been in place for thousands of years in the mountains of the Canadian High Arctic and in turn revealing a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools,"

They cite as examples:

In 1997, sheep hunters discovered a 4,300-year-old dart shaft in caribou dung that had become exposed as the ice receded. . . . [Archaeologist Tom] Andrews and his team (including members of the indigenous Shutaot'ine or Mountain Dene) have found 2,400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years.

So what does this dire news add up to?  Prizes -- the adulation of other correspondents here in the Siberia of the Internet -- to the first correspondent who spots it.......

Oderint dum Metuant

For your amusement, a short draft passage from In the Lion's Mouth

In this passage, Donovan is a passenger on the ship of Gidula, one of the leaders of a revolution among the Shadow-agents of the Confederation.  The rebels are trying to convince Donovan to join them.  Present are Donovan (whom the rebels call "Gesh"), Gidula, and Gidula's servant Podiin, who has just brought some appetizers and drinks.  Gidula calls citizens of the Periphery "Peripherals," and praises Confederal society thusly:

A Disturbing Headline to Read in Your Morning Paper

"Locusts on Pizzas a 'Tasty' New Topping"--headline, Metro.co.uk, April 21

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Words cannot describe:

Religious Congregations as Political Beasts

Religious Congregations as Political Beasts

Beware Theocracy!  The White Evangelicals are Coming!  The White Evangelicals are Coming! 
Oh, wait.  No, they're not.  Duke University did a survey.  The results are:


The most politically active congregations are Black Protestant and Catholic.  The article says that synagogues are in line with this.  Both mainline and evangelical white Protestants are by contrast less engaged.
Duke University

The Breeze Wafts Tidings of Great Joy

The USPS delivered up to me a cheque from Tor in prompt payment for the publication of Up Jim River.  It is now up to you to do your part by buying a sufficient number of copies to repay this investment, lest the Lords of Publication decide I am too paltry a writer to be worthy of their beneficence. 

In the same envelope, an unexpected Easter Egg, a lagniappe; to wit, an additional cheque for additional sales of the audiobook of Eifelheim.  Eifelheim is indeed the gift that keeps on giving.  It was not much, but it was not nothing.  I thank you and the IRS thanks you. 


Alas, the royalty statement for the audiobook of The January Dancer yielded no new dollars; one reason I suppose why they passed on the sequel, the audiobook of which will be done by Tantor, a different company.  www.tantor.com/BookDetail.asp