The Wright Perspective: Why Christianity is More Logical Than Atheism
My latest is up at Every Joe:
http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/05/28/politics/why-christianity-is-more-logical-than-atheism/
I was taught my whole life that the Christian Church was a bastion of unreason, not just a nursery where men believed in superstitions as rank as a belief in Santa Claus, but also a lunatic asylum where men believed three equaled one and dead men could live again. Hence, no surprise was greater to me than to discover that not only was the Church not illogical, but that atheism had a weaker claim to logic and reason than she did.
I am not here claiming the atheist model is illogical. Rather, I claim that the Christian story of the universe is a better story than any atheist story. More to the point, I claim it is also a better model than any atheist model, in that it explains more with more parsimony of assumption.
There are many brands of atheism, but they all have some points in common. First, one common point is that none have a rational explanation of the objectivity of moral rules.
Not all cultures agree on what priority to place on various moral rules, but one thing that is so obvious about moral rules is that they are objective. When guilt pricks us, it does not say we betray a matter of taste or opinion; the feeling of guilt is the feeling of having offended a law. When injustice rankles, we do not accuse those who trespass against us of having breached a matter of taste or opinion; we refer to a standard we expect the other to know and acknowledge. We cannot help it.
In all human experience, everything is open to doubt but this. No man with a working conscience can escape the knowledge. It is the one thing we cannot not know. And yet atheists are at a loss to explain it.
I do not call atheists immoral, but I note they cannot give a rational reason to account for morality.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
