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Is Objective Morality a Religious Canard?
My response to Benjamin Cain
Religious beliefs can mess up a person’s thinking, including their take on truth and morality. That’s the gist of Dr. Benjamin Cain’s article: “The Religious Canard about ‘Objective Morality.’”
What follows is my attempted rebuttal to Dr. Cain’s article. I encourage you to read his article first and then my response.
Hopefully, you read Dr. Cain’s piece and are ready for my response. Assuming you have, here we go.
Dr. Cain argues that atheistic morality is just as valid — perhaps even superior — to any concept of “objective morality” that is based on religious faith. According to him, either morality is a social construct shaped by power (as atheism supposedly acknowledges), or it’s dictated by a supposed divine being, which (says the doctor of philosophy) makes it no different from subjective human opinion.
I hope to be fairer and more charitable in my response to Dr. Cain as he is in his critique of Christian beliefs. He contemptuously dismisses a Christian theologian for “sloppy thinking” due to that person expending “mental energy pondering preposterous creeds and dogmas about miracles, human sacrifices, and infallible scriptures.”
Presumably, he feels the same way about any Christian — theologian or everyday believer — who holds to such “preposterous” beliefs. Sadly, this kind of smug and condescending attitude toward anyone who believes in the supernatural is common in atheist and agnostic circles.
It’s another example of the degradation of discourse in society today as it relates to things like religion and politics.
Dr. Cain grossly mischaracterizes Christian theology in several places. For example, he writes:
“Of course, even theists must say there’s a subjective component of moral judgment since they, too, don’t like what they regard as “evil.” But they maintain that they have something other than just their feelings to ground their…
