Daniel Kelleher’s 8/11 letter to the editor warrants comment. It is fascinating that Mr. Kelleher considers himself and his atheistic belief system to be more honest and courageous than his religious counterparts, yet his writings include egregious misrepresentations of what others have written. Sometimes he portrays the veritable opposite of what was written. Often, he takes a word or sentence out of context, and/or makes assumptions about what Christians believe to use as a platform for God-bashing. Since he has a decent command of the English language, it is likely his misrepresentations are intentional rather than based on misunderstanding. The use of such methods of argumentation is diagnostic of intellectual dishonesty. The examples are many, but I will list just a portion of one. The complete letter is printed on my website hosannahealthcare.com.

      Mr. Kelleher claims I wrote that atheists “are morally inferior if not outright raving lawless maniacs.” In truth, what I wrote was, “Yes Sam, the atheist can be ethical, do good deeds, and feel compassion and happiness. But they are not coming by it more honestly than those religious, because they are ignoring historical and scientific evidence that validates belief in God in general and in the Bible in particular. They are hiding from the ultimate truths about humanity, from their innermost needs, and are disavowing the Creator of their capacity for those good qualities and deeds.”

      With this clarification, I turn again to Mr. Kelleher’s 8/11 letter, where he mentions the secular humanist’s “superior method of discovering moral behavior” that he says is “certainly superior to a system based on fear of eternal punishment and hope of a heavenly reward.” His description of his “superior” method included nothing about method of determining what is moral but only that “Moral behavior is innate to human beings. The sane know when we are not doing the right thing…Secular humanists see good behavior as its own reward…”

      There is a reason he didn’t describe his method. He can’t. It is impossible for Mr. Kelleher to develop a logical method of determining morals within his atheistic framework because unless there is a moral law giver, there is no such thing as morality. If we evolved from a primordial soup without intelligent design, and the only objective laws in the universe are the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, and mathematics, discussion of moral judgments is senseless. If all moral judgments are reduced to descriptions of what is, then there is no logical basis to offer prescriptions for what ought to be. It is not that atheists cannot make moral judgments but that their belief system offers no rational basis for making those moral judgments. They must step outside their belief system to posit morality, just as they must step outside it to find meaning for their lives.

      It piques my interest and touches my heart that Mr. Kelleher admits to there being a moral law, something within humans that gives us an innate objective sense of right and wrong. It provides a ray of hope that he may be more honest in this regard than well-known atheist philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche. Because of this circumscribed area of honesty, Mr. Kelleher’s views lack the internal consistency of a philosophical framework like Nietzsche’s in which there is no higher law or superior way of morality.

      As soon as Mr. Kelleher admits that there is good and bad behavior, that one set of morals is better than another (his “superior method”), he is, in fact measuring them by some standard of right and wrong, saying that one conforms better to that standard than the other. But logically the standard that measures two things must be something different from either, must be objective and independent of opinion, in other words absolute. Without an absolute ethical standard, moral judgments are not possible, and all disagreements are nothing more than differences of opinion. Mr. Kelleher vigorously argues his points, presumably believing that he is closer to that objective standard than his opponent. So while Mr. Kelleher ridicules people who believe in absolute morals and absolute truth, his writings reveal that he himself has a passionate belief in absolutes. His atheism posits an absolute negation, that there is no God. Yet once Mr. Kelleher exposes his belief in moral absolutes, that logically requires a moral lawgiver.

      Mr. Kelleher states that Christianity’s moral code is based on fear of eternal punishment and hope of a heavenly reward. He further states that Christians believe that “the human being is at its core an evil being prone to do terrible things without an external restraint”…leading to “a frenzy of pillage, rape and murder.” Regarding the fallen nature of humans, you need only read history and look around you for verification of that and the need for external restraint. But when you consider that Jesus raised the bar for morality by claiming such things as lust is adultery and hate is murder, external control of behavior cannot be the ultimate goal for the Christian. The Christian ethic described in the Bible includes an inner transformation of the mind and heart of which moral behavior is a reflection. Thereby, the true state of morality is measured by the internal condition of the heart set in a relational context. While, thankfully, fear and hope are often deterrents of bad behavior, the ideal is that Christians joyfully obey out of love of God and His creation. This is done with progressive ease, and external restraint is less relevant, as we are transformed into His likeness. Transformation begins with repentance, followed by God the Father’s forgiveness that was bought by the sacrificial death of Jesus His son. This transformation generally progresses throughout the person’s lifetime through the workings of the Holy Spirit. God wants that for Dan Kelleher whom He loves very much. Fine tuning his intellectual honesty would be a huge step in the right direction toward Mr. Kelleher achieving his “innate” morality. “This is what the Lord says…You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:10,13).

Annie Bukacek MD