Church Voices

For what seems to be an eager desire to parallel one absurd evangelical position to another, Mr. Austin Cline at Atheism.about.com has written an article comparing my use of the phrase “atheistic lifestyle”¹ to the phrase often used in the homosexuality debate, “gay lifestyle.” Cline then defends the idea that we can write about and discuss morality in a coherent and valuable manner without using a theistic worldview.

Cline suggests that the phrase “gay lifestyle” is somehow exclusive to the evangelical community. Now this strikes me as a bit odd, if not itself a narrow ploy to parent the pejorative notion that Christians only function under an “anti-gay” mentality. It impresses me to see how much these slogans are foisted upon said people group by another, for what happens at the end of the day is the “innocent” party winds up entertaining the slogan more than those allegedly guilty. Such is the case with Mr. Cline’s and position, I fear. But admittedly, I don’t have much at all to say about homosexuality in general or the so-called “gay lifestyle” in particular, at least pertaining to anything Cline has said. Rather, my interest is to first briefly show that the parallel between the phrase “gay lifestyle” is a bad one, at least as it is drawn from anything I’ve written. Secondly, I’ll clarify a bit on my use of the phrase “atheistic lifestyle.”

I cannot speak for those who have chosen to use the phrase “gay lifestyle” and offer insight into what meaning is meant to be expressed in that. But as I understand it, the phrase is one employed almost exclusively by those who wish to illuminate a negative generalization on practicing homosexuals. As such, Cline and I can humbly agree that the phase should be avoided when people are susceptible to offense. Contrarily, my use of the phrase “atheistic lifestyle” was not meant to denote anything derogatory about those who label themselves atheists.

Now to the meat of the issue. First, a quick word should be said about what constitutes a “lifestyle.” The term ‘lifestyle’ has always seemed a bit slippery in its various usages. Simply put, a lifestyle is “a style of living that reflects the attitudes and values of a person or group.” Working under that definition of lifestyle, the term ‘atheistic lifestyle,’ as I have used it, is simply a referent to the style of living that reflects the attitudes and values of an atheist. Thus far I think it’s safe to say that Cline and I would be in agreement. However, the contention comes in when we start taking a look at what is, logically and without prevarication, the values atheism permits and how consistent those values are in the attitude and lifestyle of an atheist.

I say there is ‘nothing virtuous’ about the atheistic lifestyle simply because atheism cannot account for the existence of virtue in the first place. This is so because in a naturalist universe there could be no explanation as to how the feature of value came about in the cosmos if its whole history is due to the unfolding and rearrangements of matter. There simply will be no explanation to why things like intrinsic worth and value show up. The best explanation of this universal feature of value would be one that traces its origin back to a being who himself has value.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s grant that the atheist can, in some way, account for the existence of values. Even then it seems to me that the values that would arise from such a naturalist etiology would be so exceptionally different as to hardly merit the term virtuous (at least how it’s currently defined). Indeed, given an evolutionary picture, the values painted then would be selfishness, oppression, and whatever else would contribute to the organism’s survivability. To again use philosopher William Lane Craig to illustrate the point:²

Acts of self-sacrifice become particularly inept on a naturalistic world view. Why should you sacrifice your self-interest and especially your life for the sake of someone else? There can be no good reason for adopting such a self-negating course of action on the naturalistic world view. Considered from the socio-biological point of view, such altruistic behavior is merely the result of evolutionary conditioning which helps to perpetuate the species. A mother rushing into a burning house to rescue her children or a soldier throwing his body over a hand grenade to save his comrades does nothing more significant or praiseworthy, morally speaking, than a fighter ant which sacrifices itself for the sake of the ant hill. Common sense dictates that we should resist, if we can, the socio-biological pressures to such self-destructive activity and choose instead to act in our best self-interest. The philosopher of religion John Hick invites us to imagine an ant suddenly endowed with the insights of socio-biology and the freedom to make personal decisions. He writes:

“Suppose him to be called upon to immolate himself for the sake of the ant-hill. He feels the powerful pressure of instinct pushing him towards this self-destruction. But he asks himself why he should voluntarily . . . carry out the suicidal programme to which instinct prompts him? Why should he regard the future existence of a million million other ants as more important to him than his own continued existence? . . . Since all that he is and has or ever can have is his own present existence, surely in so far as he is free from the domination of the blind force of instinct he will opt for life–his own life.”³

Now why should we choose any differently? Life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person is just stupid. Thus the absence of moral accountability from the philosophy of naturalism makes an ethic of compassion and self-sacrifice a hollow abstraction. R. Z. Friedman, a philosopher of the University of Toronto, concludes, “Without religion the coherence of an ethic of compassion cannot be established. The principle of respect for persons and the principle of the survival of the fittest are mutually exclusive.”⁴

It would be silly to deny there (should) exist(s) individual lifestyles relative to different philosophical systems; especially those which greatly differ. Take a Christian and a nihilist, for example. If each adherent takes his or her view seriously, then we should see radically different lifestyles lived out by each—each one reflecting the attitude and values their philosophical system permits. If we are to remain objective, the comparison isn’t far off between Christianity and general atheism. This sounds good in theory, but a problem arises: generally speaking, there isn’t that radical a difference between the lifestyle of an atheist and the lifestyle of a Christian. In fact, 99% of the time I bet you wouldn’t be able to distinguish a Christian from an atheist unless you had access to personal information. So the question to be asked is this: why, if atheism and Christianity differ so greatly regarding in their philosophy (of value in particular), we don’t see radically different lifestyles?

The answer is rather simple. The typical atheist doesn’t admonish the pragmatic outworking of his own worldview. Instead, he has to borrow from mine to remain coherent. Unless Mr. Cline considers hypocrisy a virtue to be had in one’s lifestyle, it seems then there is, in fact, “truly nothing virtuous about the atheistic lifestyle.”

Finally, Cline complains that God is not necessary for us to theorize about metaethics. He states: “we can write about and discuss morality in a coherent and valuable manner without using a theistic worldview.” Now I have to be honest; this is a huge cop out. This has never been, to my knowledge, a matter of respectable contention between theists and atheists, and certainly not something I’ve ever argued. Cline is right in saying that many have written on ethics without God as a referent. But again, that possibility was never the issue. What is the issue, as was made clear in the article by Craig I cited in my initial post, is that there doesn’t exist a philosophically coherent metaethical theory apart from one that involves the existence of God, regardless of freelance theorization. Cline hasn’t even begun to argue against that point by either showing the theistic picture of morality incoherent or by developing what he thinks is a coherent atheistic one. If, on he other hand, Cline would like to look into those points rather than building straw men, perhaps that’d be of considerable interest to me. But until then it seems he will remain content with enjoying the use of concepts that have meaning only in a worldview diametrically opposed to his own.
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1. I have since taken my article Mr. Cline referenced down due to technical difficulties.
2. “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations for Morality.” Foundations 5 (1997): 9-12.
3. John Hick, Arguments for the Existence of God (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), p. 63.
4. R. Z. Friedman, “Does the ‘Death of God’ Really Matter?” International Philosophical Quarterly 23 (1983): 322.