>In an article published in the Washington Post titled “What Atheists Can’t Answer,” Michael Gerson asks this questions: “If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?” His article deals what the issue of what would happen to our world if “God were dethroned as the arbiter of moral truth.”

Gerson wrote:

“How do we choose between good and bad instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.”

“Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma.”

According to Gerson,

“America’s Founders embraced public neutrality on matters of religion, but they were not indifferent to the existence of religious faith. George Washington warned against the ‘supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” The Founders generally believed that the virtues necessary for self-government — self-sacrifice, honesty, public spirit — were strengthened by religious beliefs and institutions.”

Gerson concludes:

“Atheists and theists seem to agree that human beings have an innate desire for morality and purpose. For the theist, this is perfectly understandable: We long for love, harmony and sympathy because we are intended by a Creator to find them. In a world without God, however, this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature — imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment, just as we are destined for oblivion, on a planet that will be consumed by fire before the sun grows dim and cold.”

Read the article by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Atheism, God, Theism