Response to comment below

I wanted to pick up on something that was said in response to my blog about the now former governor of NY Eliot Spitzer, something that I mentioned last Sunday night in our discussion of what it means that humans are created in the image of God (rather than evolving from pond scum over millions of years!). If you want to read the comment in full, click on the 'comment' link beneath the previous blog, dated Tuesday, March 11. The comment lamented the lack of absolutes in our culture and raised the question of whether or not we, as a nation, are heading for anarchy without any kind of belief in absolutes.

Well, I think one of the reasons we have been and are seeing a decline in the belief in absolutes is that we have been and are seeing a decline in the influence and impact of the Christian worldview (Judeo-Christian too). It is undeniable, regardless of what atheists like Richard Dawkins try to claim, that without religion (namely Christianity), there is no basis for absolute right and wrong.

In order to say that there is such a thing as "right" and such a thing as "wrong," we have to admit there is such a thing as standard of right and wrong that allows us to recognize those things that are "right" and those things that are "wrong" and then to differentiate the one from the other. Otherwise, we have no way of knowing that murder is "wrong" and giving to the needy is "right." There has to be a standard, a law if you will, that enables us to label things "right" or "wrong" and to differentiate the one from the other.

If there is a standard that allows us to distinguish "right" from "wrong," then there also must be a transcendent standard-giver (i.e., God), who is not one of us, who stands above and outside of us, and who gives us the standard. If there is no objective and transcendent standard-giver, then there is no transcendent and objective standard (only the subjective opinions of those who concocted the standards). And if there is no objective and universally binding standard, then there is no objective and universally binding "right" and "wrong."

And if there is no such thing as objective "right" and "wrong," then the decision to murder millions of Jews CANNOT be said to be "wrong." The most that we can say is that it is not what we would choose to do.

The only way that we can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what Hitler did was objectively, absolutely, make-no-bones-about-it "wrong" is to embrace the Christian worldview. And the only way that we can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what Eliot Spitzer did (and too many others) was objectively "wrong" is to embrace the Christian worldview.

Only when that happens will we not have to debate about the meaning of "is"!