As Dennis Prager releases yet another screed claiming that if there is no God, anything goes (see his latest video below, titled “If There Is No God, Murder Isn’t Wrong”)—yet another jihadist commits mass murder in the name of “God” (this time in London).
Of course, the irony of this pairing will be lost on Prager and company. But there you have it.
The fact is: If faith is a means of knowledge, anything goes. But acknowledging this relatively obvious fact entails disobeying one’s parents, preachers, and Sunday school teachers. And conservatives such as Prager refuse to do that. So they persist in claiming that if there is no invisible dictator in the sky who commands you not to murder, then murder is just fine.
What about when “God” commands people to murder—as he does in the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? “Never mind that,” we’re told; “God is love.”
Tell that to the families and friends of the Brits and tourists murdered in the name of God today.
One day, people will look back on this era—and on religious conservatives in particular—and marvel at the insanity. Here we are, with satellites orbiting overhead, smartphones in practically every pocket, countless diseases eradicated, the human genome sequenced, cancer on the run, frackers extracting petroleum from three miles beneath the Earth’s surface, thrill seekers skydiving from the stratosphere for fun, entrepreneurs planning commercial space travel, and countless other validations of the fact that reason is man’s means of knowledge—and, yet, Prager and company insist that there is no way that reason can identify secular, this-worldly facts of reality by reference to which murder, rape, and robbery are wrong.
Tomorrow, I will publish a brief article explaining how absolute moral principles can be and are derived from the natural world by means of observation and logic. Of course, Prager and company won’t pay any attention to it. If only “God” would command them to. Alas.
UPDATE: Here’s the promised article, “Secular, Objective Morality: Look and See.” Enjoy!
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