http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=11&article=260
Is God Immoral for Killing Innocent Children?
Dan Barker and many of his atheistic colleagues claim that atheism
offers the world a superior system of morality when compared to the
moral system presented in the Bible. In fact, near the end of Dan’s
ten-minute rebuttal speech during our debate, he stated: “We can know
that the atheistic way is actually a superior intellectual and moral way
of thinking” (Butt and Barker, 2009). One primary reason Dan gave for
his belief that the Bible’s morality is flawed is that the Bible states
that God has directly killed people, and that God has authorized others
to kill as well. In Dan’s discussion about Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac,
Dan said that Abraham should not have been willing to obey God’s
command. Dan stated: “By the way, Abraham should have said, ‘No, way.
I’m better than you [God—KB], I’m not going to kill my son’” (Butt and Barker, 2009).
In his book
godless, Barker said: “There is not enough space
to mention all of the places in the bible where God committed, commanded
or condoned murder” (2008, p. 177). The idea that God is immoral
because He has killed humans is standard atheistic fare. In his
Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam
Harris cited several Bible verses in which God directly or indirectly
caused people to die. He then stated: “Anyone who believes that the
Bible offers the best guidance we have on questions of morality has some
very strange ideas about either guidance or morality” (2006, p. 14). In
his landmark atheistic bestseller,
The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins wrote the following as the opening paragraph of chapter two:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character
in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving
control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully (2006, p. 31, emp. added).
After listing several Old Testament verses pertaining to the conquest
of Canaan, Dawkins referred to God as an “evil monster” (p. 248).
Christopher Hitchens wrote that God’s actions and instructions in the
Old Testament had caused “the ground” to be “forever soaked with the
blood of the innocent” (2007, p. 107).
Is it true that atheism offers a superior morality to that found in the
Bible? And is the God of the Bible immoral for advocating or directly
causing the deaths of millions of people? The answer to both questions
is an emphatic “No.” A close look at the atheistic claims and
accusations will manifest the truth of this answer.
ATHEISM CANNOT MAKE “MORAL” JUDGMENTS
The extreme irony of the atheistic argument against God’s morality is
that atheism is completely impotent to define the term “moral,” much
less use the concept against any other system. On February 12, 1998,
William Provine delivered a speech on the campus of the University of
Tennessee. In an abstract of that speech, his introductory comments are
recorded in the following words: “Naturalistic evolution has clear
consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth
having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3)
no ultimate foundation for ethics exists;
4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is
nonexistent” (Provine, 1998, emp. added). Provine’s ensuing message
centered on his fifth statement regarding human free will. Prior to
delving into the “meat” of his message, however, he noted: “The first 4
implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I
will spend little time defending them” (1998).
It is clear then, from Provine’s comments, that he believes
naturalistic evolution has no way to produce an “ultimate foundation for
ethics.” And it is equally clear that this sentiment was so apparent to
“modern naturalistic evolutionists” that Dr. Provine did not feel it
even needed to be defended. Oxford professor Richard Dawkins concurred
with Provine by saying: “Absolutist moral discrimination is
devastatingly undermined by the fact of evolution” (Dawkins, 2006, p.
301).
If atheism is true and humans evolved from non-living, primordial
slime, then any sense of moral obligation must simply be a subjective
outworking of the physical neurons firing in the brain. Theoretically,
atheistic scientists and philosophers admit this truth. Charles Darwin
understood this truth perfectly. He wrote: “A man who has no assured and
ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future
existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as
far as I can see, only to follow those
impulses and instincts
which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones” (1958, p.
94, emp. added). Dan Barker admitted this truth in his debate with Peter
Payne, when he stated: “There are no actions in and of themselves that
are always absolutely right or wrong. It depends on the context. You
cannot name an action that is always absolutely right or wrong. I can
think of an exception in any case” (2005).
If there is no moral standard other than human “impulses and
instincts,” then any attempt to accuse another person of immoral
behavior boils down to nothing more than one person not liking the way
another person does things. While the atheist may claim not to like
God’s actions, if he admits that there is a legitimate standard of
morality that is not based on subjective human whims, then he has
forfeited his atheistic position. If actions can accurately be labeled
as objectively moral or immoral, then atheism cannot be true. As C.S.
Lewis eloquently stated:
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?
A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a
straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it
unjust...? Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying
it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my
argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying
that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to
please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that
God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was
senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely
my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out
to be too simple (Lewis, 1952, pp. 45-46, italics in orig.).
If there truly are cases of justice and injustice, then God must exist.
Furthermore, we will show that the God of the Bible never is unjust in
His dealings with humanity. On the contrary, the atheistic position
finds itself mired in injustice at every turn.
STRESS “INNOCENT”
Generally, the atheistic argument against God’s morality begins with
blanket statements about all of God’s actions or commands that caused
anyone to die. When the case is pressed, however, the atheistic argument
must be immediately qualified by the concepts of justice and deserved
punishment. Could it be that some of God’s actions were against people
who had committed crimes worthy of death? Sam Harris noted that he
believes that the mere adherence to certain beliefs could be a
legitimate cause for putting some people to death (2004, pp. 52-53).
Almost the entirety of the atheistic community admits that certain
actions, such as serial killing, theft, or child abuse, deserve to be
punished in
some way. They do not all agree with Harris
that the death penalty may be appropriate, but they would argue that
some type of punishment or preventive incarceration should be applied to
the offender.
Once the atheistic community admits that people who break certain laws
should be punished, then the only question left to decide is
how they should be punished and
to what extent.
Atheists may quibble with God’s idea of divine punishment, but it has
been sufficiently demonstrated that their arguments cannot be reasonably
defended (see Lyons and Butt, 2005, 25[2]:9-15; see also
Miller,
2002). Knowing that the idea of justice and the concept of legitimate
punishment can be used effectively to show that their blanket
accusations against God are ill founded, the atheists must include an
additional concept: innocence.
The argument is thus transformed from, “God is immoral because He has killed people,” to “God is immoral because He has killed
innocent
people.” Since human infants are rightly viewed by atheists as the
epitome of sinless innocence, the argument is then restated as “God is
immoral because He has killed innocent human infants.” Dan Barker
summarized this argument well in his debate with Peter Payne. In his
remarks concerning God’s commandment in Numbers 31 for Moses to destroy
the Midianites, he stated: “Maybe some of those men were guilty of
committing war crimes. And maybe some of them were justifiably guilty,
Peter, of committing some kind of crimes.
But the children? The fetuses?” (2005, emp. added).
It is important to note, then, that a large number of the instances in
which God caused or ordered someone’s death in the Bible were examples
of divine punishment of adults who were “justifiably guilty” of
punishable crimes. For instance, after Moses listed a host of perverse
practices that the Israelites were told to avoid, he stated: “Do not
defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations
are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is
defiled; therefore I visit the
punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:24-25, emp. added).
Having said that, it must also be recognized that not all the people
God has been responsible for killing have been guilty of such crimes. It
is true that the Bible documents several instances in which God caused
or personally ordered the death of innocent children: the Flood (Genesis
7), death of the first born in Egypt (Exodus 12:29-30), annihilation of
the Midianites (Numbers 31), death of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15),
etc. Using these instances, atheists claim that God cannot be moral
because He kills
innocent children. Atheists then
insist that modern-day atheism would never approve of such, and thus
atheism is morally superior to the morality of the biblical God.
ATHEISM HAS NO MORAL QUALMS ABOUT KILLING INNOCENT CHILDREN
A closer look at atheistic morality, however, quickly reveals that atheists do not believe that it is morally wrong to kill
all
innocent children. According to the atheistic community, abortion is
viewed as moral. In his debate with John Rankin, Dan Barker said that
abortion is a “blessing” (Barker and Rankin, 2006; see also Barker,
1992, pp. 135, 213). One line of reasoning used by atheists to justify
the practice is the idea that humans should not be treated differently
than animals, since humans are nothing more than animals themselves. The
fact that an embryo is “human” is no reason to give it special status.
Dawkins wrote: “An early embryo has the sentience, as well as the
semblance, of a tadpole” (Dawkins, 2006, p. 297)
Atheistic writer Sam Harris noted: “If you are concerned about
suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with
greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst
[three-day-old human embryo—KB]” (2006, p. 30).
He further stated: “If you are worried about human suffering, abortion
should rank very low on your list of concerns” (p. 37). Many in the
atheistic community argue that unborn humans are not real “persons,” and
killing them is not equivalent to killing a person. Sam Harris wrote:
“Many of us consider human fetuses in the first trimester to be
more or less like rabbits;
having imputed to them a range of happiness and suffering that does not
grant them full status in our moral community” (2004, p. 177, emp.
added). James Rachels stated:
Some unfortunate humans—perhaps because they have suffered brain
damage—are not rational agents. What are we to say about them? The
natural conclusion, according to the doctrine we are considering, would
be that their status is that of mere animals. And perhaps we should go
on to conclude that they may be used as non-human animals are
used—perhaps as laboratory subjects, or as food (1990, p. 186, emp. added).
Isn’t it ironic that Dan Barker protested to Peter Payne that God could
not cause the death of an unborn human “fetus” and still be considered
moral, and yet the bulk of the atheistic community adamantly maintains
that those fetuses are the moral equivalent of rabbits? How can the
atheist accuse God of immorality, while claiming to have a superior
morality, when the atheist has no moral problem killing babies?
In response, God’s accusers attempt to draw a distinction between a
“fetus” in its mother’s womb, and a child already born. That
distinction, however, has been effectively demolished by one of their
own. Peter Singer, the man Dan Barker lauds as one of the world’s
leading ethicists, admits that an unborn child and one already born are
morally equivalent. Does this admission force him to the conclusion that
abortion should be stopped? No. On the contrary, he believes we should
be able to kill children that are already born. In his chapter titled
“Justifying Infanticide,” Singer concluded that human infants are
“replaceable.” What does Singer mean by “replaceable”? He points out
that if a mother has decided that she will have two children, and the
second child is born with hemophilia, then that infant can be disposed
of and replaced by another child without violating any moral code of
ethics. He explained: “Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has
no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be
right to kill him. The total view treats
infants as replaceable” (2000, p. 190, emp. added; see also Singer, 1983).
He went on to argue that many in society would be aghast at killing an
infant with a disability like hemophilia—but without good reason
according to his view. He argued that such is done regularly before
birth, when a mother aborts a child in utero after prenatal diagnosis
reveals a disorder. He stated:
When death occurs before birth, replaceability does not conflict with
generally accepted moral convictions. That a fetus is known to be
disabled is widely accepted as a ground for abortion. Yet in discussing
abortion, we say that birth does not mark a morally significant dividing line.
I cannot see how one could defend the view that fetuses may be
“replaced” before birth, but newborn infants may not (2000, p. 191, emp.
added).
Singer further proposed that parents should be given a certain amount
of time after a child is born to decide whether or not they would like
to kill the child. He wrote: “If disabled newborn infants were not
regarded as having a right to life until, say, a week or a month after
birth it would allow parents, in consultation with their doctors, to
choose on the basis of far greater knowledge of the infant’s condition
than is possible before birth” (2000, p. 193). One has to wonder why
Singer would stop at one week or one month. Why not simply say that it
is morally right for parents to kill their infants at one year or five
years? Singer concluded his chapter on infanticide with these words:
“Nevertheless the main point is clear:
killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is
not wrong at all” (p. 193, emp. added).
It is clear, then, that atheism does not have moral constraints against
killing all innocent babies, but rather only those innocent babies that
the atheistic community considers “worthy” to live. How in the world
would a person make a moral judgment about which children were “worthy
to live?” Singer, Harris, and others contest that a child’s age in
utero, mental capability, physical disability, or other criteria should
be used to formulate the answer. Dan Barker has given his assessment
about how to make such moral decisions. He claimed that “morality is
simply acting with the intention to minimize harm.” He further insisted
that the way to avoid making mistakes in ethical judgments is to “be as
informed as possible about the likely consequences of the actions being
considered” (2008, p. 214).
Using Barker’s line of reasoning, if God knows everything, then only He
would be in the best possible situation to know all the consequences of
killing infants. Could it be that all the infants born to the
Amalekites had degenerative genetic diseases, or were infected with an STD
that was passed to them from their sexually promiscuous mothers? Could
it be that the firstborn children in Egypt, or Abraham’s son Isaac, had
some type of brain damage, terminal cancer, hemophilia, etc.? The
atheistic community cannot accuse God of immorally killing infants and
children, when the atheistic position itself offers criteria upon which
it purports to justify morally such killing.
Once again, the atheistic argument must be further qualified. The
argument has moved from: “God is immoral because He killed people,” to
“God is immoral because He killed innocent babies,” to “God is immoral
because He killed innocent babies that we feel would not have met our
atheistically based criteria for death.” Ultimately, then, the atheistic
position argues that atheists, not God, should be the ones who decide
when the death of an innocent child is acceptable.
ATHEISM TAKES “ALL THAT THERE IS” FROM INNOCENT CHILDREN
As with most logically flawed belief systems, atheism’s arguments often
double back on themselves and discredit the position. So it is with
atheism’s attack on God’s morality. Supposedly, God is immoral for
killing innocent children. Yet atheists believe the death of certain
innocent children is permissible. Have we then simply arrived at the
point where both atheistic and theistic morality are equally moral or
immoral? Certainly not.
One primary difference between the atheistic position and the biblical
position is what is at stake with the loss of physical life. According
to atheism, this physical life is all that any living organism has. Dan
Barker stated: “Since
this is the only life we atheists have,
each decision is crucial and we are accountable for our actions right
now” (2008, p. 215, emp. added). He further commented that life “is
dear. It is fleeting. It is vibrant and vulnerable. It is heart
breaking. It can be lost. It will be lost. But we exist now. We are
caring, intelligent animals and can treasure our brief lives” (p. 220).
Since Dan and his fellow atheists do not believe in the soul or any type
of afterlife, then this brief, physical existence is the sum total of
an organism’s existence. If that is the case, when Barker, Harris,
Singer, and company advocate killing innocent babies, in their minds,
they are taking from those babies all that they have—the entirety of
their existence. They have set themselves up as the Sovereign tribunal
that has the right to take life from their fellow humans, which they
believe to be
everything a human has. If any position
is immoral, the atheistic position is. The biblical view, however, can
be shown to possess no such immorality.
PHYSICAL LIFE IS NOT “ALL THERE IS”
Atheism has trapped itself in the position of stating that the death of
innocent children is morally permissible, even if that death results in
the loss of everything that child has. Yet the biblical position does
not fall into the same moral trap as atheism, because it recognizes the
truth that physical life is
not the sum total of human
existence. Although the Bible repeatedly recognizes life as a privilege
that can be revoked by God, the Giver of life, it also manifests the
fact that death is not complete loss, and can actually be beneficial to
the one who dies. The Bible explains that every person has a soul that
will live forever; long after physical life on this Earth is over
(Matthew 25:46). The Bible consistently stresses the fact that the
immortal soul of each individual is of much more value than that
individual’s physical life on this Earth. Jesus Christ said: “For what
profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own
soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew
16:26).
Although the skeptic might object, and claim that an answer from the
Bible is not acceptable, such an objection falls flat for one primary
reason: the skeptic used the Bible to formulate his own argument. Where
is it written that God is love? In the Bible, in such passages as 1 John
4:8. Where do we learn that the Lord did, indeed, kill or order the
death of babies? Once again, that information comes directly from the
Bible. Where, then, should we look for an answer to this alleged moral
dilemma? The answer should be: the Bible. If the alleged problem is
formulated from biblical testimony, then the Bible should be given the
opportunity to explain itself. As long as the skeptic uses the Bible to
formulate the problem, we certainly can use the Bible to solve the
problem. One primary facet of the biblical solution is that
every human has an immortal soul that is of inestimable value.
With the value of the soul in mind, let us examine several verses that
prove that physical death is not necessarily evil. In a letter to the
Philippians, the apostle Paul wrote from prison to encourage the
Christians in the city of Philippi. His letter was filled with hope and
encouragement, but it was also tinted with some very pertinent comments
about the way Paul and God view death. In Philippians 1:21-23, Paul
wrote: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to
die is gain.
But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet
what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard pressed between the
two, having a desire
to depart and be with Christ,
which is far better” (emp. added).
Paul, a faithful Christian, said that death was a welcome visitor. In
fact, Paul said that the end of his physical life on this Earth would be
“far better” than its continuation. For Paul, as well as for any
faithful Christian, the cessation of physical life is not loss, but
gain. Such would apply to innocent children as well, since they are in a
safe condition and go to paradise when they die (see
Butt, 2003).
Other verses in the Bible show that the loss of physical life is not
inherently evil. The prophet Isaiah concisely summarized the situation
when he was inspired to write: “The righteous perishes, and no man takes
it to heart; merciful men are taken away, while no one considers that
the righteous
is taken away from evil.
He shall enter into peace;
they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness”
(57:1-2, emp. added). Isaiah recognized that people would view the death
of the righteous incorrectly. He plainly stated that this incorrect
view of death was due to the fact that most people do not think about
the fact that when a righteous or innocent person dies, that person is
“taken away from evil,” and enters “into peace.”
The psalmist wrote, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of
His saints” (Psalm 116:15). Death is not inherently evil. In fact, the
Bible indicates that death can be great gain in which a righteous person
is taken away from evil and allowed to enter peace and rest. God looks
upon the death of His faithful followers as precious. Skeptics who
charge God with wickedness because He has ended the physical lives of
innocent babies are in error. They refuse to recognize the reality of
the immortal soul. Instead of the death of innocent children being an
evil thing, it is often a blessing for that child to be taken away from a
life of hardship and evil influence at the hands of a sinful society,
and ushered into a paradise of peace and rest. In order for a skeptic
legitimately to charge God with cruelty, the skeptic must prove that
there is no immortal soul, and that physical life is the only
reality—neither of which the skeptic can do. Failure to acknowledge the
reality of the soul and the spiritual realm will always result in a
distorted view of the nature of God. “The righteous perishes...while no
one considers that the righteous is taken away from evil.”
We then could ask who is moral: the atheist who has no problem
approving of the death of innocent children, while believing that he is
taking from them the only life they have? Or an all-knowing God Who
takes back the physical life He gave the child, exchanging it for an
eternal life of happiness?
WHY NOT KILL ALL THE CHRISTIANS AND BABIES?
Once the atheistic position is forced to concede that it advocates the killing of babies, and that
if
there is an afterlife, then the biblical description of God’s
activities could be moral, then the atheist often shifts his argument in
a last ditch effort to save face. If death can be, and sometimes is,
better for the innocent child or for the Christian, why not kill all
children and execute all Christians as soon as they come up out of the
waters of baptism (see
Lyons and Butt,
n.d.)? The atheist contends that if we say that death can be a better
situation for some, then this position implies the morally absurd idea
that we should kill every person that death would benefit.
Before dealing with this new argument, it should be noted that we have
laid the other to rest. We have shown that it is impossible for atheism
to accuse God of immorality in His dealings with innocent children.
Since atheism’s attack against God’s character has failed on that front,
the maneuver is changed to accuse the follower of God of not carrying
his belief about death to its alleged logical conclusion by killing all
those who would benefit. One reason that atheists argue thus is because
many of them believe that humans have the right to kill those who they
deem as “expendable.” Of course, atheism does not base this judgment on
the idea that certain
babies or other
innocent people would benefit, but that
society at large would benefit at the
expense
of those who are killed. Here again, notice that God is allegedly
immoral because He “sinned” against innocent children by taking their
lives; yet atheism cares nothing for innocent children, but for the
society of which they are a part. In truth, atheism implies that once a
certain category of people, whether unborn babies, hemophiliacs, or
brain-damaged adults, is honestly assessed to be “expendable,” then
humans have the moral right, and sometimes obligation, to exterminate
them. The atheist berates the Christian for not taking his beliefs far
enough, in the atheist’s opinion. If certain people would benefit from
death, or in atheism’s case, society would benefit from certain people’s
death, then the atheist contends we should be willing to kill everyone
who would fall into that category. If we are not so willing, then the
atheist demands that our belief involves a moral absurdity. Yet, the
fact that death is beneficial to some cannot be used to say we have the
right to kill all those that
we think it would benefit.
What Humans Do Not Know
One extremely significant reason humans cannot kill all those people
that we think might benefit from death is because we do not know all the
consequences of such actions. Remember that Dan Barker stated that the
way to make moral decisions was to “try to be as informed as possible
about the likely consequences of the actions being considered” (2008, p.
214). Could it be that human judgments about who has the right to live
or die would be flawed based on limited knowledge of the consequences?
Certainly. Suppose the hemophiliac child that Singer said could be
killed to make room for another more “fit” child possessed the mind that
would have discovered the cure for cancer. Or what if the brain-damaged
patient that the atheistic community determined could be terminated was
going to make a remarkable recovery if he had been allowed to live?
Once again, the biblical theist could simply argue that God is the only
one in the position to authorize death based on the fact that only God
knows all the consequences of such actions. The atheistic community
might attempt to protest that God does not know everything. But atheism
is completely helpless to argue against the idea that
if
God knows everything, then only He is in the position to make the truly
moral decision. Using Barker’s reasoning, when God’s actions do not
agree with those advocated by the atheistic community, God can simply
answer them by saying, “What you don’t know is....”
It is ironic that, in a discussion of morality, Barker offered several
rhetorical questions about who is in the best position to make moral
decisions. He stated: “Why should the mind of a deity—an outsider—be
better able to judge human actions than the minds of humans
themselves...? Which mind is in a better position to make judgments
about human actions and feelings? Which mind has more credibility? Which
has more experience in the real world? Which mind has more of a right?”
(1992, p. 211). Barker intended his rhetorical questions to elicit the
answer that humans are in a better position to make their own moral
decisions; but his rhetoric fails completely. If God is all-knowing, and
if God has been alive to see the entirety of human history play out,
and if only God can know all of the future consequences of an action,
then the obvious answer to all of Barker’s questions is: God’s mind.
Additionally, there is no possible way that humans can know all the
good things that might be done by the Christians and children that live,
even though death would be better for them personally. The apostle Paul
alluded to this fact when he said that it was better for him to die and
be with the Lord, but it was more needful to the other Christians for
him to remain alive and help them (Philippians 1:22-25). Books could not
contain the countless benevolent efforts, hospitals, orphanages, soup
kitchens, humanitarian efforts, and educational ventures that have been
undertaken by Christians. It is important to understand that a Christian
example is one of the most valuable tools that God uses to bring others
to Him. Jesus noted that when Christians are following His teachings,
others see their good works and glorify God (Matthew 5:13-16).
Furthermore, the lives of children offer the world examples of purity
and innocence worthy of emulation (Matthew 18:1-5). While it is true
that death can be an advantageous situation for Christians and children,
it is also true that their lives provide a leavening effect on all of
human society.
Ownership and Authorization
The mere fact that only God knows all consequences is sufficient to
establish that He is the sole authority in matters of human life and
death. Yet, His omniscience is not the only attribute that puts Him in
the final position of authority. The fact that all physical life
originates with God gives Him the prerogative to decide when and how
that physical life should be maintained. In speaking of human death, the
writer of Ecclesiastes stated: “Then the dust will return to the earth
as it was, and the spirit will return
to God who gave it”
(12:7, emp. added). The apostle Paul boldly declared to the pagan
Athenians that in God “we live and move and have our being” (Acts
17:28). If God gives life to all humans, then only He has the right to
say when that life has accomplished its purpose, or under what
circumstances life may be legitimately terminated.
In addition to the fact that God gives life and, thus, has the
authority to take it, He also has the power to give it back if He
chooses. Throughout the Bible we read of instances in which God chose to
give life back to those who were dead, the most thoroughly documented
example of that being the resurrection of Jesus Christ (
Butt,
2002, 22[2]:9-15). In fact, Abraham alluded to this fact during his
preparations to sacrifice Isaac. After traveling close to the place
appointed for the sacrifice, Abraham left his servants some distance
from the mountain, and said to them: “Stay here with the donkey; the lad
and I will go yonder and worship, and
we will come
back to you” (Genesis 22:5). Notice that Abraham used the plural pronoun
“we,” indicating that both he and Isaac would return. The New Testament
gives additional insight into Abraham’s thinking. Hebrews 11:17-19
states: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he
who had received the promises offered up his only begotten...accounting
that
God was able to raise him up, even from the dead...”
(emp. added). Since God gives physical life to all, and since He can
raise people from the dead, then any accusation of injustice that fails
to take these facts into account cannot be legitimate.
CONCLUSION
It is evident that atheism has no grounds upon which to attack God’s
character. Atheists contend that a loving God should not kill innocent
babies. But those same atheists say that killing innocent babies could
be a blessing under “the right” circumstances. Atheists contend that God
is immoral for taking the lives of innocent children. Yet the atheist
believes that it is permissible to take the lives of innocent children,
when doing so, according to their belief, means that those children are
being robbed of the sum total of their existence. Yet, according to the
biblical perspective, those children are being spared a life of pain and
misery, and ushered into a life of eternal happiness. Atheism contends
that its adherents are in a position to determine which children should
live and die, and yet the knowledge of the consequences of such
decisions goes far beyond their human capability. Only an omniscient God
could know all the consequences involved. The atheist contends that
human life can be taken by other humans based solely on reasoning about
benefits to society and other relativistic ideas. The biblical position
shows that God is the Giver of life, and only He has the authority to
decide when that life has accomplished its purpose. In reality, the
atheistic view proves to be the truly immoral position.
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