What about morality? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
This whole chapter is pretty much a train wreck. If we take this chapter seriously and believe it, we can dispense with everything else in the book. Seriously. Moral judgments without an objective transcendental standard are highly flawed and doomed to failure.
He says no virus could survive if it did not adjust to morality over time. So is morality changing? It would seem to be in Ray’s case. However, if morality is changing, then what are we really adjusting to? It’s like saying we are adjusting measurements to the speed of light, but the speed of light is always changing.
Suppose we look at the Southern Baptist Church which was founded in defense of slavery. Was the church wrong then? The question is nonsensical on this view. After all, if morality changes, maybe it was moral back then and the SBC was in the right then.
If morality changes, with what does it change? With what the people do? If so, then no people group is ever truly wrong. If the South had won the Civil War, then slavery would be okay today if it lasted. If Hitler had won World War II, we could all say Jews deserve to be put to death and that would be okay.
Naturally, we have the prison inmates claim brought up. That is better dealt with here. Ray also makes a claim that a religious person will say “religiosity equals morality.” It doesn’t! The pagans engaging in orgies in the Roman Empire and the Canaanites offering up their children as sacrifices were quite religious. Stalin and others murdering millions and dynamiting churches were quite irreligious.
Now does religion help with morality? Depends. I think Christianity certainly does because Jesus Christ has been the best motivator for good behavior. The way I treat people around me is often based on what I see in the life of Jesus. Certainly by no means perfect, but that is the basis for it.
What about caring for the sick? Again, Christians are often on the front lines here. When a disaster takes place somewhere, when you go there, you will often find Christians already there tending to the sick.
What about divorce? I do not know if Ray’s book was written before Shaunti Feldhahn’s book on divorce and marriage, but she did find that those who take their Christianity seriously, such as doing regular activities like attending church and Bible reading, are less likely to have a divorce.
Ray also lists a number of beliefs he learned from his church, which really explains a lot.
Women are to be honored and respected, but they are inferior to men.
Don’t trust someone educated unless they went to Bible College.
Ministers are human so follow their words and not their deeds.
God loves everyone but you don’t have to. You don’t have to welcome blacks into the church. Don’t marry someone from another religion. Gays are going to hell. (For the second one, I have already said that’s not because of lack of love but because of how one treats Jesus. Gays aren’t going to hell but those who have a life that regularly participates in immoral behavior and is defined by it are not going to inherit the Kingdom, including heterosexual sin.)
If you believe you go to Heaven and if you go to Hell you didn’t believe enough.
The Bible is the perfect word of God and any inconsistencies are because you don’t read it right. It doesn’t need interpreting and is to be read in black and white. (My own position is inerrancy, but the second part is complete bunk)
Sex is sinful except in marriage and even then it’s suspect.
Too much education is bad for your faith.
Don’t trust scientists unless they agree with the Bible.
I have not listed all of them, but these are enough and the rest are like that. If this is what Ray grew up with, I don’t blame him for abandoning it. Good for him. The problem is the threw out the baby with the bathwater and based on his bad fact-checking in the book, he hasn’t done much research since then.
Ray also says we would think “You should not kill” is clear, but what about the wars to claim the Promised Land? Those weren’t killing in the sense of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments does not condemn killing, but murder. Some killing is justified, such as self-defense.
One major flaw in this is that Ray gives no basis for morality. He doesn’t define the term. He doesn’t define goodness. He gives no basis for the existing of any of these. If all that exists is matter in motion, then what is goodness and morality? Are these real or just illusions? If unchanging morality is a myth, then morality changes, so who is to say that people in the past or even in another culture are wrong?
Ray does try to give sources to go to for wisdom on moral judgments, but if there is no objective morality, what wisdom is there? It’s like saying go to experts in math when rules of mathematics are constantly changing. If morality is changing, then we can dispense with everything said about sex in the previous chapter. There are no moral or immoral sexual practices. There are just ones society approves of and doesn’t and if society approves of pedophilia someday, that will be moral too. Right?
Ray will often point in the book to scientists. It would be good if he read some philosophers.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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