Is God Necessary for Ethics?

 

I came across the above video in which Dr. James White and Pastor Jeff Durbin (Evangelicals), debate with Professor Deen Chatterjee and Chaplin Jared Anderson (atheists), on the question of whether “God is required for ethics”—James White and Jeff Durbin taking the affirmative side, while Deen Chatterjee and Jared Anderson taking the negative side. It is a long video, parts of which are a little bit incoherent, and it would be too tedious to attempt to unpack it all, and reply to it in detail; so I am going to confine my comments on it to one general observation.

The debate is supposed to be on the question of whether “God is required for ethics?” James White and Jeff Durbin, however, have turned it into an incongruous monologue affirming that unless you are a “Christian,” you cannot be ethical, or have ethics! Their contention throughout is that it is impossible to be moral, ethical, virtuous; kind, compassionate, loving, merciful, charitable; honest, truthful, a man of integrity etc., if you are not a Christian! It is impossible even to be logical or scientific, if you are not a Christian! It is impossible to create or appreciate beauty and art, if you are not a Christian! That is their line of argument throughout, especially of Jeff Durbin. And it is a monologue, not a debate.

The answer to that is that there are hundreds, if not thousands of nations and societies across the world, large and small, who are (and historically have been) very moral and ethical—and they are not Christians. Don’t the Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Janes, Shintos, Muslims etc. have ethics? Are they not moral, ethical people? Don’t they believe in love, kindness, mercy, and charity etc.? Don’t they believe in honesty, truth, and integrity? Of course they do! And they are not Christians. Even the Bible acknowledges that. According to the Bible, you don’t have to be a Christian to be moral and ethical—and be approved by God and be saved:

Acts 10:

34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:

35 But in every nation [and religion] he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.

Romans 2:

11 For there is no respect of persons with God.

12 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;

13 (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.

14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:

15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another; )

16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

Prior to becoming a Christian, Cornelius was visited by an angel informing him that God had observed and approved of his ethical conduct and charitable behavior, and his alms to the poor:

Acts 10:

1 There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band,

2 A devout man, and one that feared God [according to his pagan tradition] with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway.

3 He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius.

4 And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.

Cornelius was a Roman centurion and a pagan when he received this angelic visitation. How many such angelic visitations have Jeff Durbin and James White received? I doubt if any! So it looks like Cornelius the pagan had been a lot more “ethical” than Jeff Durbin and James White have been!

I personally accept the proposition that in the ultimate sense, God is required for ethics. But that does not translate into saying that unless you are a Christian, you cannot be moral or ethical—which is the line of argument that they are adopting. So on the whole, I have to conclude that the atheist side won the debate—not so much because all of their propositions are correct, but because of the incompetence and lack of coherence of the opposing side.

Deen Chatterjee comes across as a measured, respectful, considerate, logical and reasonable debater. I am not necessarily agreeing with all of his conclusions, but I respect the civility, reasonableness, open mindedness, and his willingness to engage and be persuaded otherwise by reasonable arguments with which he expresses his views, and engages in debate. It is in stark contrast to the arrogance, belligerence, and conceit of the opposing side. Jeff Durbin especially comes across as belligerent, argumentative, antagonistic, and contentious. That is not how you engage in a respectful dialogue and debate. You would only want to adopt that tactic if you are not sure of the logical basis and validity of your own argument, so you adopt the tactic of shouting at the other side instead. That is not how to “win friends and influence people”. It is not how you win debates either. So on the whole, I would have to conclude that the atheist side won the debate. They presented better arguments, even though I don’t agree with all their conclusions. The following is a short extract from the debate, depicting a brief exchange between Dr. Chatterjee and his interlocutors, that illustrates my point. The extract starts at the 1:36:33 timestamp into the video (emphasis added):

Jeff Durbin: “You ask the question of why would we brainwash our children in the Christian faith? Why would we teach them things like empathy, love? Why when we talk about things like beauty, truth, goodness, knowledge? And I am going to say, Dr. Chatterjee, because apart from the biblical worldview, all of those concepts have absolutely no meaning. Without the Christian worldview, there is no true love. Without the Christian worldview, there is no beauty. Without the Christian worldview, there is no foundation that satisfies the preconditions of intelligibility necessary for science, for Logic, for ethics, for truth, for beauty, for goodness; and so we talk to our kids about these things because they are the truth. And so I know you use the word brainwashing, but it really comes down to we are all teaching, ‘Who is teaching something that is in accordance with the truth?’”

Chatterjee: “Look, why do you believe that love, empathy, good ideas, meaning in life, all those things, you have to be only a Christian to have that? What about the whole big world? Christianity is just one tiny part of it. If we believe that way, you have to give some reason, you are simply repeating yourself going in a cycle. I don’t understand that.”

Jeff Durbin: “Now let me try to make it clear. I did have it in my opening statement, so perhaps you missed some of it. But what I said in the opening statement is that I provided the justification, or a philosophical warrant for the claims that I was making; and I based them upon the Triune God of Holy Scripture. He has revealed himself in nature, through prophets and apostles, and ultimately through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ in history. In other words, Dr. Chatterjee, the Christian claim is that God has spoken; and the claim of scripture is that apart from the Christian God, if you reject him you become a fool, intellectually, morally; and apart from the Christian God, you can’t prove anything. I will give you one example, Dr. Chatterjee, so you can see what I am aiming at. When we challenged you to provide a foundation or justification for why we should be rational, given your worldview, you haven’t given one, and you can’t give one in your worldview; because your worldview is a naturalistic worldview, where all you have is matter and motion. But laws of logic are immaterial, invariance, universal laws and truths that we are all supposed to be holding on to. The Christian worldview can provide a foundation for those concepts and those truths, but your system cannot. So reject Jesus, and reject the laws of logic; reject Jesus, and reject science, the uniformity in nature, the principle of induction. Reject Jesus, and say things like, it might be okay to eat your neighbor rather than love them.”

Chatterjee: “Well, I have the highest respect for Christianity, Christian God; but I don’t like people being close-minded. If we believe that way, I would like to see some reason for that, because there is a bigger world outside of Christianity. I didn’t see any reason why we have to confine ourselves to Christianity; give some reasons. In fact, I perhaps I can give you more, better reasons as to why Christianity is such a wonderful religion than what we have been hearing from you that is beside one thing, okay?”

James White: “If I could answer that, Dr. Chatterjee. When you say, there is so much more outside of Christianity, if Jesus was who he claimed to be, then what could be outside of Christianity? He is described in Colossians chapter one: “for by him were all things made were in heaven and earth, visible invisible principalities, Powers, dominions, or authorities, all things created by Him, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together, they consist.” So if Jesus is actually the Incarnate Creator, what could be outside of him? That is the whole point. We are saying, we have our creator has entered into his creation and said, This is how you live, this is how you have life. So you have to say, Jesus had to have been wrong. You literally have to make an epistemic claim that Jesus was not who he claimed to be, to say there is something outside of the realm of his authority.”

Except that that is not what Chatterjee is saying. He is presenting a valid argument, but he is not articulating it very well. His point is that history, society, and culture in the “big world” out there tells us that you don’t have to be a Christian to be ethical. That is a valid point, and destroys their argument completely. Their argument is not that “God is necessary for ethics”. If that is what they were arguing for, the debate might have taken a different turn, and possibly more in their favor. But that is not what they are arguing for. Their argument is that you cannot be ethical if you are not a Christian—which history, societies, and experience (and even the Bible) proves to be untrue. That destroys their argument completely. It is a failed debate from the start. And notice especially the civility, humility, and respect for Christianity with which Dr. Chatterjee conducts his debate. It is in stark contrast to the arrogance, belligerence, and conceit of the opposing side. It is a disaster of a debate, a train wreck from the Christian side. The atheists have won the debate hands down—thanks to the incompetence and arrogance of Jeff Durbin and James White!