Do we not need God to know from Right or Wrong? (The answer is “no” only if you want to be wrong).

Those who hate me will now manifest themselves. Those who think that they know better without God. Sam Harris, a famous atheist and moralist, stands front and center here. His book the Moral Landscape suggests according to the title “how science can determine human values”. Determine, yes, but not cause them. When grammar school boys playing soccer let one of their own ‘have it’ because he breaks the rules, i.e. “cheats”, yes, the observer can suggest that there is a human value in keeping the rules but the basic rule "not to cheat" was not caused by the observer but by the value intrinsic to the human person. But who created that intrinsic value in the human person? We have left the realm of science entirely behind. There is no doubt that science can help us in decision-making but what makes us decide whether or not our decisions are worth following in the first place? For example utilizing statistcal process control towards best yields you can determine just that “best yields” but that does not mean that all that a human being does and is is to yield? The typical american philosopher Harris practically suggests that we are made for practicity. If we just do enough science we know how to answer Kant’s moral question: “What should you do?”. He does well in challenging the naysayers of Hobbs’ “you cannot get an ought from an is” but does not travel far enough to suggest that those human values, which are specific and subjective, participate in the human nature which is common and general to all men and women. At the end of the day yes, science can determine human values, but what gives value to our human values? Or perhaps who validates those values as truly valuable? If one scientist suggests that his science finds one value to be valuable while another scientist finds that same value to be worthless. Then what? 

Can you perfectly know what to do if you believe in God? The answer is “no”. On the other hand the same question rephrased, “can you know what to do if God reveals it to you?”, is “Yes, you can, because it has been revealed”. But wouldn’t that require Faith? Yes, of course it would, but so does Madagascar which I have never traveled to, the floorboards below me which hold me up, the smartphone which contains the weather app to tell me the veridical temperature of the air outside, and everything else in relation to me. How can I possibly know that my daughter truly loves me back? Faith and the fact that she reveals it to me. When God, or a, by definition, “Higher Power” reveals my moral landscape to me, and I find out that it works, then I as the feeblest of the jurors decide its veracity. But who values the value I give to that veracity? Me, myself, and I, I guess...I thought science was supposed to do that or at least statistical process control. So if everyone (or at least the majority) judges wrong then could it still be true that a tyrant were a hero? Nay. Nay. Here truth must needs be objective. A tyrant is no hero, no matter the wrong judgment of the majority or the whole. The truth, and the moral truth does not participate in false judgment. It requires a Truth and a correct judgment and that, if science can bolster, yes, can determine human values but would require more to actually create them as such. 

The fact is this. If God exists we’re all wrong, not the majority or the minority, but the whole. So if you do not believe in God because it would hinder you from living the life you think you should be or could be living, think again. Luther suggested (wrongly) to “sin boldly”. It is not worth being wrong in any sense of the word, but it is worth knowing that you will be wrong no matter what you do. Throughout the highways and byways you will find yourself in the wrong no matter your human exasperation. Redemption and wholeness are not the property of those who cannot create human value. Only God can give that. We, feeble creatures, cannot create human value, only determine it. We require redemption and it will not come from ourselves as suggested by Harris. Only from an Unmoved Mover who allows Himself to be moved. St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th Century suggested that God who cannot suffer is not unmoved and has compassion. This is something we need. Someone greater than us having compassion on us because we cannot figure out what to do and how to do it on our own. The Kantian question, “What should I do?”, cannot fully be answered by the universal moral law. We require Revelation. We require Redemption. Only by Grace can we encounter the means towards a fulfilled Moral Life. Nothing gives fully the Human Soul than that which is beyond the Human. Even in the most perfect marriage (find me a perfect one) the spouses cannot perfectly complement each other. There is no permutation, not even of all the atoms in the universe (and by the time you counted all of those you would have run out of people through and through) which would allow it. So if perfect happiness, perfect bliss is impossible by human standards then it is time to start looking at divine ones. Shall we?