“If there is no God, if there is no Supreme Mechanism that governs the world, what makes right, right and wrong, wrong?”
“Who decides what is wicked, what is right, what is ethical?”
“Whoever’s in power at the time would decide what is wicked and what is not wicked, because there’s no real moral code because there’s nobody there to judge that.”
I’ve created no straw man here. These are Sharpton’s best arguments in his own words. Sadly, Hitchens failed to adequately address these arguments, and Sharpton probably won the debate by default.
http://www.slate.com/id/2166143/
Like all religionists, Sharpton creates a world consistent with the views of the ancients regarding the nature of a proper society. As all ancient books profess, a proper society is one governed by some absolute authority, a king or pharaoh, and that a just society is one ruled by some wise man, like Solomon or Mohammed. The ancients had no knowledge of the concepts crucial to liberty…popular sovereignty, limited government, individual rights; so, of course, the only structure for a society they could conceive of was authoritarian dictatorship. Is Al Sharpton attempting to preserve the ancient model here in the 21st Century? in America?
Surely, Sharpton understands limited government and individual rights. Is he arguing that man is unfit to determine what is good and what is evil? “Who decides what is wicked, what is right, what is ethical?” [Incidentally, this is not even a question…Who decides? What am I to do here, name someone? Right and wrong are not determined by anyone, divine or otherwise, by decree.]
“If there is no God, if there is no Supreme Mechanism that governs the world, what makes right, right and wrong, wrong?” Is Sharpton arguing that authoritarian government is good? Of course, this “Supreme Mechanism,” this decider of what is right and what is wrong, is a benevolent and good God. God’s a good dictator. But, that man is ruled over, that moral codes are handed down to unworthy man who is forbidden to judge, for Sharpton is self-evident.
Man, according to the religionist, is incapable of determining what is right and what is wrong, and that is why we need God. To judge.
Is there no Earthly standard upon which man can base a rational moral code? There is. The standard is your life. That which is good preserves your life. That which is evil destroys it. [Much more about this later.]
Funny thing is Sharpton nearly stumbled on the correct answer when he joked:
“If there’s nothing there to govern humanity, then what is ethical is whatever we decide is ethical because we’re in charge.”
That’s right, Al! Each of us is in charge of one thing…our lives. It is our Number One Value. It is the standard by which we are to judge all that we encounter while we live. Each man rules only one life: His own.
2 comments:
My dorm roommate from freshman year had this same point of view. No matter how much we debated he was convinced that without God, there could be NO morals whatsoever. He said, "If there was no God, then there would be nothing stopping me from shooting everyone in your family." It's a scary thought that a big guy in the sky is the only thing keeping a lot of Christians from lighting up their workplace.
Your mate's moral code is the one most accepted across the globe--God's altruism. Last time I checked there was a whole lotta people shooting up other people's families AND NOTHING's STOPPING THEM!
If you've actually read this far, you know collectivism-altruism is the seed of every genocide in history, every one of them carried out by God-fearing butchers.
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