Richard Dawkins, the renowned biologist, is among the leaders of the new atheist movement which has been aggressively attacking religions, especially what remains of Christianity in the West. Religion has been likened to poison, a cobweb of superstitions that the society would be better without. In his book, The God Delusion, which was published in 2015, Dawkins even suggests that children be protected from the faith of their parents, and puts into question parents’ rights to educate their children according to tenets of religion. A few years later, Dawkins changed his mind. He now thinks that banishing religion, after all, is not a good idea because it would only make people do terrible things. Religious people, he thinks, might be more likely to be good because he believes that God is watching his every move.
This is awkward, because it means to be good one has to believe in falsehood, namely existence of God. And it means religion is beneficial for the society purely because of its utility, like that of a security camera in deterring mischiefs. So, the atheist is merely suggesting that we need God because believing in Him could help bring down the crime rates. Then what will happen to the Enlightenment agenda which is premised upon secularisation?
Secularisation is, in fact, the reason why society has generally become godless and indifferent to truth and falsehood. Secular worldview is based on the denial of the Absolute and Unchangeable, while it affirms only what is relative and everchanging. In such a worldview there is no place for God, or the immortal soul. Hence, there is no authority above the man-made authority, and no responsibility and accountability beyond what is demanded by the state and the society. Such is the world that we live in now, where what matters most is not what is true but what is pragmatic. God plays no role in the government and the state now is the absolute authority, or rather the new God.
What is the consequence of that? There will be no legitimate ground to demand any change in the government because the absolute authority now is the state, and when the state legislates according to what it holds as “true” and “right”, it becomes law that must be obeyed by everybody, including the atheist who denies that there exists the Absolute Source from which we know what is true and what is right. In other words, he is obliged to submit, and he should not make any attempt to reform the state because that is a violation of that obligation. Yet, the same atheist would now seek to avoid fulfilling his obligation to the state arguing that the legislation is not based on what he thinks as “true” and “right”, and so he demands, instead, that a reform be initiated.
For the atheist, his godlessness is the real cause of his dilemma because without faith in the Absolute, no absolute moral principle would be possible. Moral relativism, on the other hand, holds the view that moral judgements are true or false relative to some particular standpoint such as a culture or a historical period, and no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others. Such is our world now, where objective moral truth is denied. What is considered a crime here and now might be a virtue somewhere else in some other time. Nietschze’s famous statement: “God is dead” implies his belief in moral relativism. Presently, it is widely held that nobody can be in the position to judge others.
With the demise of God, truth and meaning are effectively gone. Post-truth debates are characterised by appeal to emotions rather than facts. With truth no longer a priority, post-truth politics become a dangerous affair. The impact on ethics is equally destructive, because when objective truth is denied, how can there be moral truth? But some people think that multiculturalism and tolerance demand that absolute moral truth be denied as its prerequisites. This is, however, not quite true as tolerance is conceptually different from moral relativism. Tolerance means the forbearance of an act that is premised upon a moral argument that one does not agree with. Whereas moral relativism does not recognise absolute moral truth in the first place, hence, no argument is needed. That being the case, moral relativism could lead to moral paralysis or accepting “immoral acts” under the pretext of being non-judgemental. Hence, pluralism should never be made an excuse to deny objective moral knowledge because the implication is catastrophic.
