Could morality have come from anywhere but God? Nope!

Greetings, mortals!  In my Twitter ministry, I have encountered a great number and variety of atheists, including a atheistic, Canadian expy of Captain America who writes an excellent blog.  With the exception of the ones who freely admit they eat babies, however, one theme is common to their tweets: Atheists claim to be moral without believing in or obeying God.

But are they correct?
I will admit it certainly appears that way.  There is overwhelming evidence that atheists are, at the level of populations, law-abiding, egalitarian, and tolerant.  Dr. Phil Zuckerman has found that atheists are less likely than the religious to "harbor ethnocentric, racist, or nationalistic attitudes."  In his paper Atheism, Secularlarity, and Well-Being, he concludes that

[a]theism and secularity have many positive correlates, such as higher levels of education and verbal ability, lower levels of prejudice, ethnocentrism, racism, and homophobia, greater support for women’s equality, child-rearing that promotes independent thinking and an absence of corporal punishment, etc. And at the societal level, with the important exception of suicide, states and nations with a higher proportion of secular people fare markedly better than those with a higher proportion of religious people. 

But what appears to be correct and what's actually correct are, of course, two different things.  For example, modern science appears to be correct -- despite contradicting the Bible -- on such fundamental issues as the origin, age, and composition of the Universe, whether the Earth is an oblate spheroid, the existence of unicorns, how to breed striped goats, and the origin and development of all known life.  But does that mean it's actually correct?  Of course not.  Modern science contradicts the Bible.  Therefore, it's actually incorrect.

How do we know one can't be moral without God?
First, and most importantly, the Bible says so.  Boom, QED, end of discussion.

Second, if you insist on further discussion, just look at morals.  They're so complex!  Atheists tend to claim that these incredibly intricate codes of behavior emerged from human empathy.  But no one could possibly accept something so complex coming from something so basic.  In fact, for atheists to claim in an intellectually honest way that rules and patterns as complex as morals could emerge from something as basic as the human impulse to empathy, they'd have to show that such emergence is evidenced elsewhere in the entirely naturalistic universe in which they claim to believe.

And that's just not possible.  It's not like you see, say, significant changes in butterfly phenotypes based on small changes in genotype.  Or even complex patterns emerging from simple rules in binary cell automation.  So, clearly, you wouldn't see varied, intricate moral codes emerging from something as straightforward as the capacity to see things from another's perspective.  They must, therefore, have come from the God of the Bible -- as the Bible says.  QED again.

Third, if you believe (like atheists laughably do) that human characteristics are the product of evolution from an ancestor common to all known life in response to selective pressure, you'd naturally expect to see some form of morality in other social animals -- which is ridiculous.  Do you see altruism in insects?  Chimpanzees risking or sacrificing their lives for one another, or gibbons voluntarily going hungry when they know that they have to hurt others to eat?  Or elephants showing sympathy for the plight of trapped antelope?  Despite the evidence of exactly those things, no, you don't.  So morality just couldn't have emerged from evolutionarily advantageous traits.

Since there is no secular, naturalistic explanation for human morals, they must be given to humanity by God.  Atheists, who reject God, are therefore immoral despite all evidence to the contrary.

So...if atheists are immoral, why do they, on average, behave in moral ways more consistently than the religious?
It has to be Satan making atheists look good to trick people into becoming irreligious, thus earning themselves condemnation to Hell by omnibenevolent God.  What other sensible explanation is there?

Thank you, mortals, as always, for reading!  I look forward to your thoughts in the comments section.

Evidence that the building blocks of life are abundant in the interstellar medium? Yes, but it's not a big deal.

Greetings, mortals!  Earlier today, scientists with the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy announced their finding that isopropyl cyanide, an organic molecule, is abundant in the interstellar medium.  They made this "discovery" by observing the Sagittarius B2 gas cloud with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) of radio telescopes to analyze the radiospectrometric signatures of the various molecules that make up the gas cloud. 

While researchers have previously detected organic molecules in space, isopropyl cyanide is the first such organic molecule seen that has a branched carbon backbone.  It, unlike any of those previously-observed molecules, is thus more like the amino acids that your sciences (incorrectly) believe form the building blocks of life here on Earth.  Because the amino acids, like isopropyl cyanide, have a branched, carbon-based structure.

What's the significance of this?  Well, if you believe life on Earth arose naturalistically, this finding strongly suggests that other branched carbon molecules -- including, possibly, amino acids themselves -- exist in abundance in space.  That would further support the theory that life arose on Earth without any supernatural intervention because it means those building blocks were likely already present here on Earth and didn't have to form from simpler molecules under the right conditions.

In other words, if branched carbon molecules are abundant in space, they were likely abundant on Earth from its earliest days.  And if that's true, the number of steps humans thought were needed to move from molecules present on Earth to the emergence of life decreases.  It also increases the likelihood that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Said another way, given the existence of branched carbon organic molecules in space, the number of assumptions in the chemical synthesis-based hypotheses of abiogenesis goes down.  And as scientists are always fond of telling us, the simpler a hypothesis is in relation to competing hypotheses, the more likely it's true.

Does this undermine Creation or Intelligent Design?  No, of course not.  First of all, if you want to blaspheme by calling Creation a hypothesis, it's the simplest hypothesis of all: God did it.  You don't even need to assume anything (apart from the agency of a supernatural being of limitless power and eternal duration whose very existence is at variance with all available evidence, which evidence is consistent only with a naturalistic universe).  QED.

Second, even if branched carbon organic molecules were abundant on Earth from its beginning, no one was around to see those molecules become self-replicating bases for all terrestrial life.  That means abiogenesis can't be proven, which means, of course, abiogenesis must not be true.  And if abiogenesis isn't true, then Creation must be, because it says so in the Bible.  QED again!

If God Created all, why, then, are complex organic molecules present in interstellar space?  Simple.  As I said in my last post, God has been expanding the veil of Heaven to make sure human space exploration doesn't pierce through it.  It's been a big project and something we had to do pretty quickly, so, well, there wasn't a lot of time to clean everything up.

Basically, the organic compounds you're seeing in space are the cast-off materials from Creation.  It's the sawdust on the floor of God's workshop.  That's all.  There's no significance to it at all apart from being further proof that God Created all life on Earth.

So quit getting all excited about this, okay?  Focus on something more important.  Like praying, or figuring out better ways to rationalize the Bible into being literal truth.  The salvation of your immortal soul is, after all, both incompatible with and more important than knowledge.

Thank you for reading, and as always, I welcome your comments below!