Atheists regularly claim that they support "Universal values". This claim is often made in the context of a Christian arguing that they support "Christian values" like love, goodwill and caring for each other. The atheist will reply with something like this: "How dare you claim those as Christian values! I support those values too, and they've been around since before your ridiculous religion even got started". Sound familiar? The implication here is that those values fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking. I would like to challenge that implication.
Here I think we have a problem that we could call the social conditioning problem. We are all conditioned, to some degree by the time and place in which we live, and the influences of our society do impact on the lens with which we view the world. Everyone who lives in a Western Country lives in a location whose heritage has been strongly influenced by Christianity. So atheists have been socially conditioned to accept values that we take for granted in our Western way of thinking, which has historically been influenced by Christianity. In other words, a large part of the reason why the atheist claims that Christian values fit in with their way of thinking is because their way of thinking has been indirectly influenced by...you guessed it, Christianity. Even Richard Dawkins has referred to himself as a "cultural christian". Professor Edwin Judge makes the following comments in an interview entitled Christianity and the 21st Century:
"In Australia, very many of the ideals of the general culture, Australian values so-called, clearly come from that tradition (Edit note- ie: Christian tradition), and what the churches need to do, and what indeed the public needs to do is to inform itself better of the true sources of these things. The matter should be studied historically"
"We stand in this dual heritage from Greece and Israel but people have lost awareness of the sources of it".
"We must make the study of the Biblical tradition available to everybody, not just under church auspices but part of the commitment of our culture as a whole to the historical study of it not as a matter of personal belief but as a matter of explanation for why our values are such as they are. We should not accept that they can be declared, as people do, to be secular values".
He concludes:
"The true source of the value system needs to be clear. Everybody needs to know that, particularly people who have no church connection".
The atheist must account for the origin or basis of their values- do they have a consistent basis within their own worldview for exclusively supporting those values? Christians certainly do. The entire Bible has a consistent theme of putting others first and loving others, right through from the ten commandments to Jesus and through to the writings of Paul in the New Testament (for example see Romans 12: 9-21). When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he replied with the following:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40).
But what about the atheist? Can the atheist naturalist honestly claim a similar consistent basis for their values within their own view of the world? I'm inclined to agree with John Dickson, who says the following:
if human beings are only accidents in an unknowing universe, how can this choice be anything more than a mere preference, a product of ‘feelings’ as atheist Bertrand Russell famously acknowledged? On what grounds can the atheist speak rationally of the high and equal value of the poor or the weak or the asylum seeker?
Dickson concludes:
only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.
So do the values of love, compassion and goodwill really fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking? History and common sense would suggest otherwise.
