The Bankruptcy of Humanism
Turn now to the problem of value. Here is where the most
blatant inconsistencies occur. First of all, atheistic humanists are totally
inconsistent in affirming the traditional values of love and brotherhood.
Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding both to the
absurdity of life and the ethics of human love and brotherhood. The two are
logically incompatible. Bertrand Russell, too, was inconsistent. For though
he was an atheist, he was an outspoken social critic, denouncing war and
restrictions on sexual freedom. Russell admitted that he could not live as
though ethical values were simply a matter of personal taste, and that he
therefore found his own views "incredible." "I do not know the solution,"
he confessed. (Bertrand Russell, Letter to the Observer, 6 October 1957.)
The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong cannot
exist. As Dostoyevsky said, ‘All things are permitted."
But Dostoyevsky also showed that man cannot live this
way. He cannot live as though it is perfectly all right for soldiers to slaughter
innocent children. He cannot live as though it is all right for dictatorial
regimes to follow a systematic program of physical torture of political prisoners.
He cannot live as though it is all right for dictators like Pol Pot to exterminate
millions of their own countrymen. Everything in him cries out to say these
acts are wrong—really wrong. But if there is no God, he cannot. So he makes
a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so, he reveals
the inadequacy of a world without God.
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith. "The Absurdity of Life
Without God" (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984) p.66
‘Whither is God?’ he cried, ‘I shall tell you. We have killed him ‘—you and
I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able
to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving
now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward,
forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying
as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while?
Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the
noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?... God is dead.. . . And we
have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?"
Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Gay Science," in The Portable Nietzsche,
ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954), p. 95
We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view,
or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology need
not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide
here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection
on it depresses me... Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of
the facts, will not take you to morality.
Kai Nielsen, "Why Should I Be Moral?" American Philosophical Quarterly
21 (l984):90