L 2.8

Loftus feels like Christian morality has a flaw in that "a Christian...always has an excuse for doing...wrong...he'll [God] forgive me". (p. 43)

Apparently, Loftus hasn’t read the book of Romans. Any reading of that book should be sufficient to show that the Christian ethic does not work on that basis. Again, there certainly are people who are guilty of the kind of thinking Loftus cites but, it is contrary to the outworking of Christian thinking.

L 2.7

According to Loftus, Christianity is "The carrot-and-stick method of morality". (p. 43) One aspect of what Loftus is saying is that Christians are merely trying to avoid hell. There certainly are Christians who are guilty of this but, this is not a logical outworking of Christian beliefs. The person who needs spiritual fire insurance is overlooking other dynamics that are important most notably, joy that comes from the ultimate hope.

It could be said that Loftus is saying that Christians don’t really experience morality but, are blindly led by a process that doesn’t really evoke genuine moral sensibility. The non-theist has to discover an ethic for themselves and what they arrive at has been a process of true moral discovery derived from intellectual introspection and dialogue with nature. Unfortunately, people’s experiences are so different, wildly so in some cases, and people’s opinions change over time such that defining an ethic becomes an exercise in futility. There are many different secular and humanist ethics so, instead of being able to see land and swim to it, groups of people are forced to tread water closely together in a sea of confusion pretending that their group is on solid ground. What’s worse is that the currents will sometimes take a person from one group to another so it’s difficult to even define the boundaries of the groups.

Christianity really isn’t like a carrot and stick mentality. Using his analogy, it’s really more like the person in question ate the carrot and has carrot truth inside of them. That sustenance then propels the true disciple of Christ to perform acts of carrot-based moral goodness. Of course, people will not always be able to perfectly adhere to a Christian ethic but, that’s not the point. The point is that the Christian ethic is grounded in a transcendent moral anchor whereas the non-theist ethic is not.

L 2.6

In response to the question of why we should act in a moral manner towards other people, Loftus asks on p. 42 "What difference does it make anyway whether people are of infinite precious worth?" He trying to show that Christians don’t have a monopoly on morality.

He can answer his own question in the very words he uses. The word infinite assumes a transcendent moral anchor; God. That means we are products of a divine ethic that is greater than anything any group of people can devise. The word precious indicates something that is necessarily worth preserving.

The word infinite isn’t applicable to people in a non-theistic framework but, does have meaning to theists. The word precious is possibly also not applicable to people from a non-theistic perspective. Many non-theists would maintain that humans are no more precious than any other life form on earth, or the earth itself for that matter. This worldview sees an equality among all things. This would certainly be true of pantheists who believe that everything is ultimately one (Advaita or modern Vedanta Hinduism). Consequently, people really aren’t precious to the non-theist in the sense that they are to the Christian. That’s not to say that Christians only think people are precious and everything else is garbage. It’s just that people have a special purpose and relationship with the creator in addition to the preciousness of the rest of creation (Gen 1:31). In light of this, non-theists can’t lay claim to an ethic that is equal to, much less superior to, Christianity. Non-theists aren’t able to escape the moral relativism that is a logical outworking of such a secular worldview. If relativism is the rule, no non-theists are able to justify their version of morality over another view, including Christianity. The strongest option available to non-theism is that any secular ethic may be applicable in a local sense but, certainly is not universal.

L 2.5

Loftus continues his commentary on ethics by saying that "Michael Martin argues that relativism 'is compatible with complete agreement on all ethical matters’". (pp. 40-41)

This statement seems absurd because moral relativism assumes that different groups of people are going to adhere to their own ethic which means there won’t be complete agreement between them on how to act morally. In fact, the study of moral relativism is the study of the descriptive, normative or meta-ethical variations between cultures. Even if there is a sense in which Martin is right, it would further illustrate how there can be no comprehensive ethic outside of an absolute morality.

Loftus quotes Michael Shermer in that "moral principles, derived from the moral sense, are not absolute, where they apply to all people in all cultures under all circumstances all of the time. Neither are moral principles relative, entirely determined by circumstance, culture and history. Moral principles are provisionally true-that is, they apply to most people in most cultures in most circumstances most of the time." (p. 41)

First, moral principles cannot be derived from the moral sense. In order to make a moral judgment on an action, there must be an appeal to an extreme, otherwise known as an absolute sine qua non exists outside of a transcendent moral anchor. The “moral sense” that Shermer refers to is clearly not a transcendent moral anchor. Second, in his appeal to moral principles, he must necessarily agree that they in fact are ubiquitously applicable. Otherwise, there is no moral prescription. Third, he logically negates his own relativist statement about morals being provisionally true by making an absolute statement. He is saying that the moral provisionism is absolutely true for all. The idea that morals are provisionally true is itself an absolute, ubiquitous ethic which means he really doesn’t see things as provisional anyway. This is the common mantra of the bourgeois postmodernist; “be tolerant of everything except Christianity”. Furthermore, making an absolute statement that is supposedly true for all (relativism is right) requires smuggled-in autocracy. Where did the person making the statement get the authority to apply a ubiquitous ethic? They never say.

In the end, it’s difficult to ascertain what Loftus is advocating. He seems to be pointing to utilitarianism but does he espouse the "act" or "rule" variety? Also, he seems to be advocating a subjective preference utilitarian theory of value but he doesn't specify prescriptive or descriptive rationality.

L 2.4

Loftus lists "social contract theories, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, Kantianism, and John Rawls's theory of justice" as examples of how lofty secular ethics can be. He is attempting to show that Christians don’t have exclusive access to moral insight and the secular case isn’t built on an invisible sky-daddy but, hard facts. In reality, he is merely outlining how muddled secular views of morality can be because there is no standard by which to make value judgments. Of course the non-Christian will object by pointing to the commonalities shared by people whether evidential or biological but, we know that this explanation is deficient because not all people value the commonalities in the same way. Furthermore, people use these commonalties to justify conflicting actions.

L 2.3

"The foundations of Christian morality are not superior ones to atheistic morality, based upon Christian presumptions". (p. 40) Loftus appeals to the "common sense of morality" which has also been expressed as common standards of social decency as a superior alternative to morals based on Christian beliefs.

Loftus begins to outline his case by comparing the two ethics. Basically, he is comparing Christian ethics to nothing. There are no such things as “atheistic morality”, “common sense of morality” or common standards of social decency. No atheists are going to be able to consistently define mores into a ubiquitous ethic. It’s more accurate to say there are “atheistic moralities” which necessitates that he single out which one he is using as a comparison. That would end up being a pointless exercise anyway because no atheist ethic has any sway over any others. Since humanism is grounded in human needs and all people have different needs, this is a wellspring for conflict as opposed to conflict resolution. Confirmation of this phenomenon is in the history of political socialism. There are quite a few different varieties and each has been described as an outworking of secular ethics. Socialists have disagreed with each other on how to implement socialism based on their ethical preference.

In Christianity, Enlightenment liberalism, and the Quest for Freedom, Kenneth Grasso makes the accurate observation that what Enlightenment liberalism took from Christianity was the centuries-old foundational ideology of freedom based on the worth of the individual. What the secular philosophers did not retain from Christianity was the source of that value; man’s relationship with the sovereign creator. Affirming Spinoza’s quote “nature abhors a vacuum”, after man excommunicated and banished God from authority, man filled the void with himself. It is from this zeitgeist that we see the outworking of each man inventing his own path. Consequently, it should be neither surprising nor controversial that there would be little to no consensus on what path to take. Thus, any appeal to a secular standard of human conduct amounts to little more than aether.

L 2.2

In a commentary on ethics, Loftus critiques divine command theory and modified divine command theory. He objects to the idea that we should consider God's commands as good. He says on p. 38 that "this makes God commands arbitrary because there is no reason why God commanded something other than the fact that he did". He cites the Euthyphro dilemma as an example of this conundrum.

What is completely ironic about the initial salvo from Loftus is that he doesn’t even acknowledge that humans would not even know what good was without a transcendent moral anchor. When he criticizes Christian morality as based on God’s commands, he might as well be Don Quixote tilting at windmills all in the name of an invented, artificial righteousness.

There have been many attempts to show that the God of the Bible has committed immoral actions and therefore, Christianity is built on a spurious ethic. Usually, these charges are trumped up from a misunderstanding of the passage or taking the passage out of context.