The intellectually honest person who is not committed to Christian theism on evidential grounds can only appeal to subjective feelings (conscience) and arbitrary consensus if he or she wishes to make probabilistic claims about having moral obligations. Mere theism does not establish that the existence of moral obligations is even probable (it is possible for an amoral deity to exist), and religions like Islam contain moral contradictions that render them incapable of being true [1].
It is a basic fact of moral epistemology that human preference is entirely irrelevant to the existence and nature of morality. If morality exists, it is not because humans hope it does; if it exists, human awareness and comfort do not make particular behaviors obligatory. The existence of morality is tied to the existence of a deity with a moral nature--if God does not exist, morality cannot exist, but if God does not have a moral nature, morality likewise does not exist.
That there is evidence for the veracity of Biblical Christianity means there is evidence for Biblical morality. The Biblical description of moral epistemology aligns with what reason reveals: moral obligations, if they exist, must be tied to God's nature, and only God can reveal moral obligations to humans that are otherwise lost in the irrelevant subjectivity of conscience (Romans 7:7). In light of this, a theonomist Christian might wonder how God will punish the many documented nations which expired before the revelation of Mosaic Law or that came into power afterward but were not exposed to that moral revelation.
There is no historical evidence that all cultures have had equal access to the Bible, much less awareness of the historical evidence for the Bible. Nevertheless, it would be unjust to overlook abominations like slave trading, sexism (against either gender), sexual abuse, and militarism simply because a culture had no access to the evidence suggesting those things are morally wrong. Ignorance and innocence are completely separate conditions!
Mercy is by definition never deserved, and an atrocity is still an atrocity even when it is perceived positively by an entire culture. These two facts require that people still deserve destruction even if they have absolutely no evidence that they are in moral error--something that is the case when a person has only conscience and culture to look to. Even though numerous people have lived without access to Mosaic Law and the evidence that supports Christianity, there is no ultimate excuse for wrongdoing.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/quranic-punishment-surah-538.html
No comments:
Post a Comment