“But without heaven and hell, what’s to stop me from murdering or raping somebody right now?”
“Well, even without an afterlife, we must still live with purpose and meaning to make this world better.”
This was how part of a conversation went in college with an atheist friend of mine. I could not give a better response at the time, and I remember just repeating the same point over and over.
More than 10 years later, of course, I’ve had some time to think about it just a little bit more.
Back in college, I would argue that morality is impossible without an afterlife because then, there would be no way of holding ourselves accountable for our deeds on earth.
While I still agree with that point, it is no longer the foremost or the strongest in my mind.
More importantly, morality is impossible without an afterlife because the afterlife provides the groundwork and the foundation for morality to exist in the first place.
Atheists often use moral judgments against God in justifying their disbelief. One of the more famous quotes on this is from English comedian, actor, and activist Stephen Fry, in an interview he did on the Meaning of Life TV program that was broadcast in February 2015, saying, “It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?” He added, “It’s perfectly apparent that he is monstrous. Utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”
This naturally begs the question: How can we really know what constitutes goodness when this is just left for humans to determine?
Inevitably, disagreements will ensue, and when two people have conflicting ideas about what is good, how then can we settle which, if any, is right?
For something to be truly moral, it must be moral universally. But a world of mere human opinions cannot produce a universal morality.
Without God as a universal basis for goodness, everything is just a matter of opinion, including, ironically, Stephen Fry’s own moral judgments on God.
And if everything is just a matter of opinion, moral judgments are impossible because there would no longer be a true right and a true wrong.
My purpose in this column is not to give a theodicy in response to those comments by Stephen Fry. I include them to demonstrate the clear unsustainability of objecting to the existence of God on the basis of morality, when morality itself to be binding must be universal, which would be impossible if God does not exist.
The Christian position is that the afterlife reflects certain aspects of the character of its Creator, God. The afterlife is eternal because God is eternal. It has no beginning and it has no end, in the same way that God also has no beginning and has no end. There is an afterlife because there is a God.
The atheist, then, is actually philosophically unable to make moral judgments. Or at the very least, he cannot do so with any moral authority beyond the human person. He cannot claim any basis higher than human opinion. Every time he adjudges something to be universally right or wrong, he is forced to borrow concepts and ideas from believers with whom he disagrees.
Believers base their morality on the character and being of God. We are bound to certain standards of right-ness and good-ness because these reflect the righteousness and goodness of who God is, such that to contradict thereto is an act of rebellion against God himself.
That is why any moral claim by the believer based on divine revelation bears a basis and a source beyond the person making the claim, giving it the weight of something greater than mere human opinion.
It’s easy to see that morality is inescapable, and so is the afterlife.
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Author’s email: micahdagaerag@outlook.com
