If This Is True: Do You Need God To Be Good?

June 11th, 2023 | Casey Middle School

Intro: Discuss the intention of the series.

1. Can we trust the bible? If the bible is true, then that radically changes the way we understand God, humanity, and our purpose on this earth.
2. Is there a God? If there is a God in heaven, then everything we experience was His creation, and in that creation, we were made special.
3. Does life have meaning and purpose? If the bible is true, and if God created the heavens and the earth, then you are not an accident. To know your purpose is to know God and the value He places on your life. You have a new identity in Christ and have been given a purpose much bigger than yourself.
4. This leads us to the questions we’re addressing this morning…

The God Delusion or God Solution

Questions: Do we need God to be moral? How do we know what is right and wrong? Is there such a thing as objective or absolute good and evil? Does objective moral law necessitate a supernatural moral lawgiver?

“There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.” - Proverbs 14:12

“All a person’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs hearts.” - Proverbs 21:2

“Do you see a person who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” - Proverbs 26:12

Philosophical and Scientific Reasoning

1. Rational Morality // Common Good

   1. It’s very important before getting started to clarify what we are NOT talking about today. We are not asking whether atheists or people who do not believe in God can be good or not. Can those without faith in God be moral? Of course they can. It would be incorrect and rude to say otherwise.
   2. From where I sit as a believer in Christ, every man and woman is a moral being created by God in His image whether they believe in God or not. In that sense, all people have infinite value no matter what they believe because they are created in the image of God. So the answer to that question is a huge, “Yes!” Atheists can do good. But that is not the question today is it?
   3. THE REAL QUESTION: The question we are asking today is whether there is a rational BASIS for moral good without the existence of God, which makes this an intellectual question because we are introducing rationality and logic.

2. Atheism: Getting to Good without God and to Evil without Good.

   1. Peter Singer, atheist and philosopher at Princeton University, says “We can no longer base our ethics on human beings being a special form of creation made in the image of God, singled out from all other animals as alone possessing an immortal soul. Why should we believe that the mere fact that a being is a member of the species homo sapiens, endows its life with some unique, almost infinite value?” This statement from Peter Singer is a direct challenge to my first claim today that humans are made in the image of God which is the foundation of our value system.
   2. Question: So is God needed for good to exist?
   3. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist and philosopher in the 1800s, made the challenge on atheism, “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.” Now that is not to say that atheists are incapable of moral behavior which we have already discussed. The argument is that atheism cannot lay an adequate foundation for morality.
   4. There is both an individual and universal standard for morality. The God question comes in at the level of “Why is it that we all have a similar moral compass?” Is it because our morals have evolved naturally over time through natural selection and human rationality? Or is it because we have a common designer and each of us bear His image?

3. Defining Good and Evil

   1. A lot of this discussion depends on what you mean by morality. If you mean, morality is social behaviors agreed-upon in a community, then I guess you could rationalize that without God, those behaviors could exist. But to say that something is absolutely wrong, or necessarily good universally, as objective reality, you cannot say that without God.
   2. By taking away a supernatural moral lawgiver from the equation, you are also taking away the very definition of good and evil. In other words, on atheism, you have no objective foundation for saying what is right or wrong.
   3. Question: Can we get our ethics from our science? Albert Einstein, an agnostic himself, said “You are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn around and speak of the scientific foundations of morality.” Ethical values lie outside of the scientific realm.
   4. Perhaps the strongest counter argument I’ve heard trying to find an objective basis for morality without God comes from a popular atheist named, Sam Harris. He’s written a book called “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”. Morality, he argues, is found in science, biology, chemistry, and social evolution. In his view, he imagines a continuum where on one end you have what he calls the worst possible misery for everyone. The worst possible misery for everyone, he says, is the definition of bad. On the other end of the continuum you have human thriving or happiness. Here is a summary of his argument: “The minimum standard of moral goodness is to avoid the worst possible misery for everyone. If we have a moral duty to do anything, it is to avoid the worst possible misery for everyone. The questions of right and wrong and good and evil depend upon minds...and minds are a natural phenomenon. They depend upon the laws of nature in some way. Morality and human values, therefore, can be understood through science.”
   5. The view is rational and at first sounds like he has found a way to ground morality in science and dismiss the need for the supernatural. But if you aren’t careful you will miss what Sam Harris has done here. He has smuggled into his view the very definition of good and evil by calling it happiness and misery. But is happiness a moral foundation for good? Why is it fundamentally good to behave in a way that produces the least misery for the most people? Sam Harris’ argument falls short for me. Because he isn’t getting his morality from science. He is assuming morality to start with, then using science to analyze it.
   6. And as a side note, this view of behaving in a way that produces the most happiness for the most people works until you find yourself in a staff meeting with the likes of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, who define their happiness and peace as murdering millions of people. Is that really okay? We all would agree that it isn’t okay. In the end, whatever this continuum from misery to happiness gives us as a scientific analysis, it cannot give us an objective foundation for morality.
   7. Atheist Richard Dawkins, in his book “The God Delusion” is at least consistent on the question of morality when he makes the statement, “it is pretty hard to defend absolutist morals on grounds other than religious ones.” In another book, “A Devil’s Chaplain,” he writes, “Science has no methods for deciding what is ethical.”
   8. If I am the product of chance and accident as atheism assumes, you cannot smuggle in a definition of how I ought to live from that. Everything just is. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s statement is confirmed then that, “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.” We can behave like animals with no accountability because in the end, we are no more than animals. Atheism abolishes any basis for morality, and does so in the name of science. We can be good without faith in God, but the evidence shows that any rational basis for morality depends on there being a God in the first place.
   9. CS Lewis said this was his biggest problem as an atheist. The problem with morality.

Theological and Supernatural Explanations

1. Bible Project Video on Sin

   1. If there is a mark, then there is a standard. If there’s a standard, then morality is not subjective.
   2. Pursuit of holiness > Missing the mark
   3. “What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? 2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” - Romans 6:1-2
   4. “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. 13 And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. 14 For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under the law but under grace.” - Romans 6:12-14
   5. Therefore our foundation for morality is not in naturalistic rationalism, but in knowing God and his plans for His glory and human flourishing.

2. Lawless or Legalistic

   1. Story of the prodigal son and prideful son
   2. “Now his older son was in the field; as he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he summoned one of the servants, questioning what these things meant. 27 ‘Your brother is here,’ he told him, ‘and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ 28 “Then he became angry and didn’t want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him. 29 But he replied to his father, ‘Look, I have been slaving many years for you, and I have never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me a goat so that I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes,you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’ 31 “‘Son,’ he said to him, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” - Luke 15:25-32
   3. Here you have a son that pursued a hedonistic lifestyle. No law. No morals. But had a moment coming back to the Father. On the other hand, you have the brother upset that God accepts and celebrates the lawless son coming home because he had done no wrong. That even in his faithfulness to the father, he was arrogant and did not understand forgiveness and grace. We are all somewhere in the middle, and therefore by definition all need the love, compassion, and grace of the Father!
   4. “8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— 9 not from works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.” - Ephesians 2:8-10

   5. We are not that good… to be good! We are all sinners in desperate need of a Savior! We all fall desperately and miserably short from perfection!

      1. Yes, the truth of God’s standard should drive us to want to pursue holiness, but even more than that, the GRACE of God should be our primary passion for pleasing our heavenly Father!

3. WE ALL NEED GRACE!

   1. 1. Saved, forgiven, set free. Not, saved, forgiven, still enslaved. Enslaved to my way, my good, my morals, my standard… but set free to joyfully, willfully, and with expectation embrace God’s will for humanity.

         2. There is confusion on morality, not because people have sought a deeper understanding of God’s heart on the issues, but because they have allowed a humanistic philosophy, a desire to be perceived as accepting and loving, or they have adopted whatever is culturally relevant to become priority, or in addition to their desire for faith.
         3. “This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. 21 But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.” - John 3:19-21
         4. The standard of God is not meant to be blended with society, but the standard of God is meant to be different from society and our culture.
         5. Question: How then ought we to live?

      2. The Word of the Lord

      3. The guidance of the Holy Spirit
      4. The wisdom from wise counsel
      5. The teachings from the elders
      6. The encouragement from the saints
      7. “And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, 25 not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” - Hebrews 10:24-25