“God is not Great”, By Christopher Hitchens
In his polemic against religion and God Himself entitledGod is not
Great,the late Christopher Hitchens asserts that religion does not make
people or the world better. Regarding the late Pope John Paul II’s
apologies for different wrongs inflicted by or supported by the Roman
Catholic Church in the past, Hitchens concludes, “This seemed to say that
the church had mainly been wrong and often criminal in the past, but was
now purged of its sin by confession and quite ready to be infallible all over
again.”[1]What Hitchens is protesting here is the acknowledgment of
wrongdoing while still being able to claim a moral code and a salvation to
be gained through therightandtruebelief in Christ and objective moral
values and duties. The question which must be asked of those claiming a
moral standard is the basis for such benchmarks and boundaries of
goodness and evil. How is one to judge what is right and wrong? What is
the measure? And how does one know the difference between the two?
McQuilkin and Copan explain, “Many secularists appeal to Kant as
offering an ethical system that can do just fine without appealing to
God.”[2]Many secularists would claim to be able to decipher a moral code
that would, in their estimation, lead to the greater level of “human
flourishing,” as the reasoning is often termed as. The strongest argument
for objective morality is that, without the objective standard, morality is
reduced to simply opinion, conjecture, and pragmatism. McQuilkin and
Copan point this out when they ask the secularist, “Finally, if humans
have duties or “oughts,” where did these come from in a universe of
electrons and self-replicating genes? How do we move from “is” to
“ought”?”[3]
Even the definition of human flourishing can and will vary from
person to person, culture to culture, and epoch to epoch. What I believe
helps me and mine to flourish could be the extermination of another
group. In such cases, who is morally right and who is morally wrong? The
secularist cannot answer that. The correct answer is found only in the
Creator. Morality flows from the character of God, and is contingent upon
His nature and existence. L. Russ Bush points out the dependence of all
things upon God by writing, “All parts of the world seem to be contingent
upon some other part or parts. None stands alone. Everything is related to
something else in such a way that it depends on that relationship. What
would the earth be without the sun? What would we be without the earth?
And so forth.”[4]The idea of right and wrong is borne by the Creator and
flow out from Him. Without Him, humanity would be unable to know the
difference and be able to make a decision one way or the other. In order
to be moral agents, there must be a moral, personal, and intelligent
Progenitor.
Word Count: 562
[1]Christopher Hitchens,God is not Great(New York: Twelve, 2007). 193.
[2]Robertson McQuilkin and Paul Copan,Introduction to Biblical Ethics:
Walking in the Way of Wisdom, 3rdedition(Downers Grove: InterVarsity
Press, 2014). 179.
[3]Robertson McQuilkin and Paul Copan,Introduction to Biblical Ethics:
Walking in the Way of Wisdom, 3rdedition(Downers Grove: InterVarsity
Press, 2014). 181.
[4]L. Russ Bush,The Advancement: Keeping the Faith in an Evolutionary
Age(Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2003). 100