Atheism and the “Grounding Problem”

From the New York Times online:

Starting next Monday, a coalition of local groups will run a monthlong advertising campaign in a dozen Manhattan subway stations with the slogan “A Million New Yorkers Are Good Without God. Are You?” The posters also advertise the Web site BigAppleCoR.org, which provides a listing of local groups affiliated with the Coalition of Reason, the umbrella organization that coordinated the campaign.

This campaign is intended to 1) heighten awareness of the atheist movement in New York City, and 2) to coincide with the release of Greg Epstein’s upcoming book, Good without God.  Though the table of contents for Epstein’s book isn’t posted just yet, I sure hope that he addresses what’s known as the “grounding problem” for atheists when it comes to morality. Before I explain this a little bit more, there are a couple of things that I think need saying.

1) I believe that the Coalition of Reason has every legal right to post these signs, and no one (especially Christians!) should rob them of our freedom of speech.

2) I do not believe that one must believe in God in order to be a morally praiseworthy person. Too often non-Christians seem to think that Christians claim that atheism automatically leads to a life of depravity and evil. Sadly, many Christians do believe this, but the best Christian thinkers have never stated the case this way. The issue of dispute is the grounding problem (more in just a second).

3) The reason I believe that atheists often lead better ethical lives that their position would seem to imply is because I believe in the doctrine of common grace.

Okay, now to the grounding problem. Naturalism and atheism deny the existence of the Triune God of the Bible.  On a Christian worldview, what is right and wrong, what is beneficial for the glory of God and the flourishing of human beings is 1) that which is consistent with the being, character, and nature of God, and 2) that which is in accordance with His verbal revelation (made known to us in the Bible). That is all to say Christians have an objective standard for what is good and bad, one not rooted in personal preference or a numbers game.

So the question isn’t if one can still perform good deed if they don’t believe in God. The question is what are the grounds for making a distinction between good and bad in an atheistic world? The Why be good? question simply will not go away no matter how long it is ignored or mocked? As a Christian, the fact that atheists are often stand-up citizens isn’t a challenge to my worldview. Despite their denial of the Triune God, He is still the Creator and the One who inscribed His moral law on their hearts (cf. Rom. 2).

It is because the world is precisely what the atheist denies (i.e. under the rulership and direction of the sovereign Lord) that they can act in ways that they deceive themeselves into thinking are independent of God.

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