This is a response to the January 28th MyTurn article by Mike Ruskovich entitled, Just Asking Some Hard Questions.

The tenor for much of Mr. Ruskovich’s essay is summarized by his quote, “Does religion create barbaric behavior, or prevent it?” (Italics mine). He has offered a proposal that calls for a decision: the reader must decide if religion is bad or good. And he concludes with a reference to John Lennon’s song, Imagine...imploring his readers to ask hard questions, thereby following the great singer’s vision shared in the song.

At one point in his essay, Mr. Ruskovich asks a question, “Has religion really made the world a better place?” And I would point out that Christianity has contributed both: the vision and implementation of the university into world culture; as well as hospitals, orphanages and relief organizations…just to name a few. Conversely, I would ask him, “What ideas and institutions have atheistic governments contributed to humanity?” But let’s move on.

At this juncture it may be helpful to provide a definition of the term false dilemma, which is sometimes also called a false dichotomy: this is “the assumption that only two possible conclusions exist in an argument, when in fact, there are more” (A Dictionary of Common Philosophical Terms). Professor Thomas Sowell of Stanford University elaborates that one should take caution to avoid “the mistaken assumption that what applies to a part, applies automatically to the whole. What is at the heart of the fallacy is that it ignores interactions among individuals, which can prevent what is true for one of them, from being true of them all.” And so, Mr. Ruskovich, I think it is safe to state that the term “religion” can describe phenomena so diverse, that it becomes impossible to make universally accurate generalizations about its diverse practitioners in the global arena.

Is it true that horrible things have been done in the name of religion? Of course it is. And is it true that horrible things have been done in the name of Jesus Christ? Of course it is. But let’s not pretend that horrible things have never been done in the name of atheism. Let’s not pretend that Christians have the market cornered with respect to totalitarian regimes. Surely it would be an oversight to casually toss Hitler into the Christian camp, and yet refuse to toss Stalin and Pol Pot into the Secularist/Humanist/Materialist camp.

Lest our readers be unaware: it is estimated that Stalin, alone, murdered perhaps 70 million; and Pol Pot slaughtered anywhere from 1-3 million. In just the past century, the atheist tally is roughly 70 million dead! More than 10 times the number from Hitler’s death camps! So Mr. Ruskovich, “Why do we refuse to learn from these examples?” How is it that the general public fails to remember the tens of millions of executions carried out by atheistic totalitarian regimes…in just the past 70 years?

It was none other than Nietzsche (regarded as the father of modern atheism) who proposed that without God, there is no objective moral standard. And against Nietzsche, Dostoevsky warned, “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.” And Richard Dawkins, one of the “new atheists” has said, “There is no good, there is no evil, and there is no justice.” And he’s not saying that atheists can’t behave…but if there is no God, there is no rational basis for morality. Do we really want to “Imagine” a world functioning with no rational basis for morality, when we’ve already witnessed individual nation-states functioning within such a paradigm (Soviet Russia, Communist Cambodia)?

So it seems that logically, Mr. Ruskovich is faced with a dilemma: 1) In order to hold a logically coherent claim to know good from evil (or to claim to know that they even exist), he must accept theism as a first principle (and its inherent moral foundation); or 2) He must jettison any claim to an objective moral standard, and side with the atheists.

So here is his predicament: If he were to side with the atheists, he would then have no philosophically coherent defense for what he appears to infer in his My Turn article, which is that objective good and evil exist, which serves as his first-principle to provide a logical defense for his claim that religion is bad. So which will it be? And so Mr. Ruskovich, if you choose to reject theism, I must then ask: Who would you propose to be the standard-bearer of a new, incoherent, relativistic, subjective, moral standard?

As Dr. John Lennox (holder of 3 Doctoral degrees, and Professor of Mathematics & Philosophy of Science at Oxford University) said in an interview last week, “If all that exists is the material, then all morality is simply the product of brain states.” So Mr. Ruskovich, if you want to “imagine” the opposite of John Lennon’s song, “imagine” a world in which all morality is reduced to a product of brain states. A world in which it is declared by atheistic authorities that all actions are permissible--that there is no such thing as an objective moral standard (or for that matter, any metaphysical truth). Let’s go back to the future…to Stalinist Russia.

“Asking some hard questions”? Excellent. “Imagine”? I have. But I choose to quote another musician. I’d rather “see the doorway, to a thousand churches” (In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel).

For further exploration into these issues there is an excellent resource, available online for free: Visit www.fixed-point.org (scroll to the bottom of the page). To date there have been multiple debates and discussions between Dr. Lennox and others. This website also contains study guides to each of the debates, as well as books for further reading, covering both sides of the debates, including books by: Scientists, Historians, Philosophers and Biblical Scholars.

Craig Smith earned a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California. His mentor there was Dr. Coit Blacker, who in the Clinton White House served as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs, and is now the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He also earned a four-year Master's degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, with an emphasis in Historiography, Hermeneutics, and Philosophy of Religion.