Recently on my radio show, someone asked me to comment about what some atheists said on the Atheist Experience YouTube show. I tried to find the particular video, but I didn’t really know where to look, since there are so many there. Anyway, he said that the atheists were saying that God should not judge us on whether or not we believe in Him, but on the goodness that we perform. Obviously, this argument is fallacious.

Universal standard anyone?

First of all, what universal standard does any atheist have by which he justifies saying what God ought to do or ought not to do, and then inform the rest of us about it? Is such an atheist in touch with a universal truth principle that he can apply to God? Or, is he stating his opinion? Not only that, but what standard of goodness is the atheists using? How does he define what is good or bad? What is his standard? Is it intuition, popular opinion, or common sense? Intuition is nothing but personal preference and subjective experience. Popular opinion doesn’t make something right, wrong, good or bad. And, common sense to one person may not be common sense to another.  So, what is the standard of good (or bad) that is obligatory to everyone else from which the atheist speaks? And, if that were difficult enough, how does such an atheist establish a universal abstract principle of right and wrong in his materialistic worldview?

I find it interesting that atheists so often try and take the place of God and proclaim moral truths for others. They complain that God had the Israelites kill the Canaanites (who were exceedingly wicked and sacrificed babies to Moloch). They complained that God permitted slavery in the Old Testament (God allowed it due to man’s sin). They complain that God should not permit people to rape and murder. But, they don’t tell you where God should intervene and not intervene in other things like theft, porn, physical abuse, or people’s evil thoughts and intentions. Should God stop someone from thinking of rape and murder since both of those are bad? Or should God just stop people from actually doing those things and let evil and vile intentions be permitted?  Where does the atheist draw the line and why? It seems to me that atheists can only offer opinions without justification. Oh, the arrogance of their futile thoughts.

To believe or not to believe, that is the question.

So, they tell us that God ought not judge us based on whether or not we believe in Him, but on our goodness. I find this reasoning to be nothing more than self-righteous ignorance.

In Christian theology, we can do nothing good before God (Isaiah 64:6; Rom. 3:10-12). We are by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). In other words, we are sinners. None of us are good enough to measure up to the holiness of God (1 Pet. 1:16). He is the standard of perfection, not ourselves, not our hearts, not our opinions. And since He is the ultimate standard of all that is good (which means we can’t know what good is less God reveals it), then we will not be able to measure up to that perfectly holy standard of goodness. This is why, in Christian theology, the second person of the Trinity became one of us (John 1:1, 14). His name is Jesus. He was born under the law (Gal. 4:4) and He never sinned (1 Pet. 2:22). Furthermore, Jesus went to the cross and bore our sins in His body (1 Pet. 2:24). He did everything that we could not and made forgiveness possible.

This is why faith is the means of being forgiven. It’s because our faith is in God, not ourselves as the atheists like to maintain in their unintended arrogance and ignorance. We are simply not good enough to please God so He did what we could not. He became one of us. He lived a perfect life, offered a perfect sacrificial death on the cross, and rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:1-5).

That is why we are justified by faith (Rom. 3:28; 4:5; 5:1). And that is why faith is important. After all, if we have faith in God, then we are trusting in His goodness not our own. We’re trusting in His humility and love and not our self-righteousness and arrogance.

Conclusion

So, atheists like to inform us of what God ought to do or not do, but they have no universal standard of moral truth. They have nothing more than platitudes, subjective opinions, and arrogant proclamations. And, unfortunately, they will suffer in hell, since they want their own righteousness, not the righteousness of God.