Ingrained in our national history is a belief in God. By no means were all of the Founding Fathers Christians. In the 18th-century America the line between Christianity and deism was not as distinct as today. (Basically deism is the belief that God created the world and established the moral law and stepped away.)
Thomas Jefferson is a classic example of a deist of sorts. He did not believe in the divinity of Jesus or the miracles. Patriots such as Patrick Henry, John Jay, Samuel Adams, and John Witherspoon were conscientious Christians. Most were Protestants. Charles Carroll who signed the Declaration of Independence was a Catholic. George Washington was an Episcopalian. John Adams was a Unitarian who often referred to the virtues of the Christian moral system.
In the work entitled “Indivisible,” authors Robinson and Richards remind us that with rare exception all opposed the establishment of a federally endorsed church. A vital sidebar to this is historically indisputable. Though they did not favor a state church they did believe that God existed and the basic principles of morality were public truths, not sectarian religious doctrines. They were not secularist, who believed practical atheism was the only neutral ground. They revered God in public and often officially. We have gradually evolved away from doing so to the point God is basically excluded from the market place of ideas, omitted from education, banned civilly, and banished to houses of worship where He is almost incidental in many.
As a result a large segment of a generation is emerging with little or no knowledge of God. One major study revealed that seventy percent of today’s teens have no Christian memory. That is, they have experienced no relevant Christian experience. To them it is as though God doesn’t exist or at best is irrelevant.
Back to Dostoevsky’s conclusion. Does it give us a clue as to why immorality and crime has proliferated? Without God there are no moral absolutes and therefore no good or bad.
That is not to say there are no moral or good people who don’t believe in God. There are. They have been reared in a culture where biblical moral tenants espoused by our forefathers have for generations been the norm. Often without realizing it they have subscribed to the norm.
Without God there is no universal moral norm. Morality in such a culture becomes subjective. “I,” the subject, determines what is right or wrong. Objective faith is essential for there to be a cultural norm and the object is God.
This very concept is under attack. If successful the last best reason for being good will have been removed. If things are as they are with God being partially factored out of lives what will it be if the trend continues?
Do a personal inventory. What role does He play in your life?
The Rev. Dr. Nelson Price is pastor emeritus of Roswell Street Baptist Church.
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No saliva and mouth foam required; however your definition of the word "truth" may need some attention.
Just because some people disagree with you and Dr. Price's interpetation of scripture hardly makes them the "worst elements of our community".
Remember the ministry of Jesus was directed toward to poor, the sick and the despised. In my book that hardly makes him a "conservative".
2) I can prove that your thesis-- that you need God to be good-- is wrong by simple statistics. Crime and criminality are lowest in the most atheistic countries (Norway, Japan) and highest in the most religious countries. Happiness is also highest in the most atheistic countries. Kindness and happiness--what's wrong with that as an ethical foundation?
3) Ethics pre-dates Christianity, indeed, it pre-dates the Abrahamic religions.
If we stick with the Abrahamic God, then it's easy to show a very bad set of ethical principles.
Let's take the top 10 rules:
40% are all about God himself (who and how to worship).
10% are honor your father and your mother.
Now we've got 50% that might be in the realm of "ethics."
30% are criminal law: don't kill, don't steal, and don't lie under oath.
10% -- no adultery
10% left for the thought crime of "coveting."
What is missing from the top 10? Anything critical to ethics?
How about slavery, just for one?
Seriously-- not worshiping God is worse than slavery?
Being jealous of your neighbor is worse than slavery?
Adultery is worse than slavery?
If that is your deity, he could use some serious re-visiting of his ethics.
Violent crime has been in a long-term decline for 40 years in the United States. If Americans are indeed becoming less religious, perhaps the good pastor should develop another hypothesis.
And, it's "tenets", not "tenants".
Dostoyevsky was wrong, but statistical correlation is not causation by any stretch of the imagination, especially if you try to get a p value for the deviation between societies with respect to religiosity and happiness (the deviation will be small).
I agree with you though that Quoting Dostoyevsky and taking it as a given is Not Good Thinking.
Nor is listing a bunch of Early American Luminaries and suggesting that since they were superstitious, we should be too.
to Dr. Price: fear not. It is not true that to those of us without God, anything is permissible. We know that whatever we do, whatever we are during our brief lives, it's up to us to a large degree.
This is a better place from which to start than is a superstitious delusion that if we get right with the supernatural God, we'll live forever in heaven.
Frankly, some of it is left over from rather cynical style of Medieval Peasant Control.
Apollo, Zeus, Odin, Siva, Osiris, Maloch, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and even Yahweh...they have had many real followers, but they themselves, were always myth.
Seeing that does not signal the end of morality among men.
What biblical morality are you talking about Reverend? The parts that instruct us to kill gay people, to kill people who work on Sunday, to kill people who practice witchcraft (the slaughter of innocents perfected by the Catholic Church and codified for posterity in the Malleus Maleficarum)? The biblical lessons that say it's ok to destroy whole cities (or maybe even the whole of humanity) if people worship different gods? Or the modern church morality that says it's ok to hide pedophile priests from prosecution and to tell millions of AIDS stricken Africans that condoms are evil? Or the ongoing efforts across the globe and in our back yard to teach children that critical thinking is dangerous and they should just accept that certain fairy tales are right while evidence and sound reason are wrong.
Here's a message: you don't need a supernatural sky dictator in order to be kind to each other, to be helpful, to be a good husband or wife, a good father or mother, a good child, and saying that you do makes you the disingenuous one in the conversation.