Evolution and How to Build a Bomb

A critic of the article “How to build a bomb in the public school stem” argued that a biblical foundation was unnecessary for ethics. Jonathan Sarfati’s response explains how Christian foundations underpin the prosperity and science of the West, and contrasts these with the atrocities of atheistic regimes. This needs to be revisited especially with the increasingly shrill atheistic attacks on Christianity in general and on Christian freedoms, pushing moral boundaries, and even a leading atheistic evolutionist saying that Hitler’s ideas should be reconsidered. Then the response explains the real problem for atheists trying to build an ethical system.

 “How to Build a Bomb.” You wrote that in order to create an explosive child all that was required was to educate that child to believe that we evolved from animals, life is an accident and that there are no absolutes.

“That belief system which is indoctrinated into kids provides the perfect basis for this.

“Well, I and many, many other people like me believe exactly those things, reaching our conclusions through trial and error and by asking questions of ourselves and the world we live in and not shying away from the answers whatever they appeared to be or mean. In doing so we feel we have a wider more stable foundation with which to tackle the problems of today’s MODERN society and MODERN man’s need for a combination of tangible truth and spiritual peace, two quarters in which the ancient indoctrination of organized religion has consistently failed to provide.”

Actually, biblical Christianity has provided the only basis for prosperous modern democracies, including:

• The rule of law, which binds all people, recognizing a higher source of the law. The alternative is rule by despots.
• Equality of all people under the law, neither favoring the rich nor the poor (Job 34:19).
• Property rights, presupposed in the command against theft (Exodus 20:15). Without them, the capital cannot be used as capital for investment loans, and there is no protection for what people have earned by productive work. Indeed, Hernando de Soto’s book The Mystery of Capital shows that if private property in poor countries were freed up from statist ownership, this would provide 90 times more wealth than all the foreign aid to all Third World countries over the past three decades.
• All these are biblical principles, and it is no accident that the most prosperous countries have adopted them, and that the poorest countries fail. Even now, prosperous countries in the west are still benefiting from these Christian-based foundations laid down in their past.
• Conversely, atheism has been tried as a basis for life in many countries in the 20th century. The results have been some of the biggest bloodbaths of all time under communist despots above the law, e.g., Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. For example, the Inquisition killed 2000 people in three centuries; Stalin killed that many before breakfast. Neither could atheistic economies remotely compete with the West—e.g., it didn’t take long for the USA to outstrip the USSR in the space race when they put their minds to it.

[An atheist noted] “In short I am, to you, a walking time bomb. I am, in actual fact, a diligent, hardworking, caring, stable, compassionate, intelligent, kind, thoughtful and considerate individual…”

[And nice to your mother too, I’ve heard.]

“(as are many, many of my likeminded friends all around the world) we manage to live the lives your religion postulates without the need for the pomp and scripture, the fear and hatred and the presence of any kind of omnipresent deity to keep us in check. I wondered how you would explain this?”

Nothing to explain. The article explained that evolution provides the basis for the bomb-building, not that everyone would act consistently on this basis. We know that many atheists borrow a moral code from outside their belief system, since that can’t provide any. The rabid misotheist Richard Dawkins even claimed that he was a passionate Darwinist as to how we got here, but a passionate anti-Darwinist when it came to morality.

Rather, our argument is not that atheists cannot live ‘good’ lives, but that there is no objective basis for their goodness if we are just rearranged pond scum.

[For the full text of this article, please see:]

https://creation.com/why-christianity-not-atheism-is-the-only-rational-foundation-for-ethics