The case for Good and Evil

A couple weeks back, I had a rather animated discussion with a friend, Ccx, who was a committed atheist. We talked about a lot of things, but the thing I wish to bring up here is this claim which he garnered from Dawkins' The God Delusion, the challenge he placed towards the theist system of ethics, which is this “Name one good act that a theist can do which an atheist cannot”. Eventually, Ccx from this abject atheism took up Einstein’s Theism as a final defence against theology, after this part of the discussion about ethics is over.

My reply is this:

Truly, I tell you that in an atheist world, Man is incapable of sin. Man is utterly sinless. (Isn’t that lovely, eh?) And similarly Man is incapable of committing a moral act, of committing good. I’ve tried dabbling in secular systems of ethics for about three years, and although they are very good (particularly Kant’s. You should really read the Metaphysics of Morals, a splendid logical thesis) Their limitations in basis and warrant limit them. Their limitations are discussed elsewhere very much already, and I have not the time to delineate them here. Rather, I shall point out to Ccx’s system of Morality, which is that “I can commit any act as long as it doesn’t compromise the rights of another.” He told me this was the system America was founded on. Very good, I admit it was, but I said that in the Declaration of Independence the rights were endowed by a Creator, which is inapplicable to an atheist worldview. He was a little smug in saying that I’m using “the same old argument” as many others have and said that using the Creator’s name was merely a simplistic way for the founding fathers to garner support. I admitted its simplicity, but asked him, “Since this is merely a simplistic coverup for the warrant and basis of rights, where then do rights really come from?” He asked me what I mean. Usually, rights are referred to as “God-given rights” but that was obviously inapplicable to him, so what was his solution.

Well, dear reader, I point out to you as well that in the modern age, Law is based on the idea of Rights. Ever since the birth of America, and the Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen of 1789, all the way to our modern Constitutions and the UN, the idea of Human Rights is what predominates secular ethics, at least in a sociopolitical sphere. But although the earliest secular declaration of rights, that of 1789, delineates very beautifully the rights of Man, and although our current day Constitutions do the same, none of them explain why these rights exist, why Man has these rights, why these rights are as they are &c.. My reply to Ccx hence was this: In an atheist worldview, there are no rights, for there is no metaphysical warrant for these rights. The difference between right and wrong is arbitrary and without warrant.

Hence the reply to the challenge posted earlier. An atheist can commit no act he himself admits is good, for upon his admitting that such an act is good, inquiry would uncover that his warrant for the existence of good or bad is either a Deity or...nothing.