The problem is not: ‘If there is no God, anything goes.’ The problem is: If there is no objective standard of value, anything goes. If there is no rationally provable standard of value, there is no way to defend with moral certainty what is right or to condemn with moral certainty what is wrong. The alternative is not religion versus subjectivism, but reason versus subjectivism—and the secular subjectivists know it. Hitler did not fear religion or faith; he feared reason and logic. He saw the Church not as an enemy but as a mentor, because of its remarkable ability to get people to believe in a creed full of contradictions. Here, in his own words, is Hitler acknowledging his heartfelt debt to religion: The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it. Hitler’s plans required that people have faith; thus, he had nothing but contempt for logic. And he was neither the first nor the last to feel this way. David Hume was as explicit about his hatred of reason as he was about his love for feelings. Just as he insisted that feelings are our only moral guides, so he insisted that Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. What does that mean? Hume tells us: It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. Now, we know what Hitler’s hatred of reason led to, but what about Hume’s? After all, he was not a maniacal mass murderer, but a peaceful philosopher who merely taught legions of other philosophers that moral principles cannot be derived from the facts of reality. What harm could that do? Well, ideas have consequences. And Hume’s ideas have made their way from the minds of ivory-tower philosophers into the minds of regular people. They have even made their way into the minds of children. Recall who said this: My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law, and if you don’t like it, you die. If I don’t like you or I don’t like what you want me to do, you die. It was Eric Harris of the Columbine massacre. Is it any wonder what ideas got into his head? How far is his philosophy from this one: It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger?... Full essay: https://theobjectivestandard/issues/2009-summer/is-ought-gap/
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:07:35 +0000
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