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By David Wright On Sunday evening (October 18) the congregation watched the final segment of Kyle Butt and Dan Barker's debate about God's existence. In his closing remarks, Mr. Barker gave an analogy intended to show the superiority of the atheist's view of mankind. Imagine, he said, that a person is in prison for committing a crime. After some years have passed, the governor pardons him. This would be great! Mercy is a good thing. But if it were discovered that the prisoner was innocent of crime in the first place, his innocence would give him more dignity than a pardon. Barker's point is clear. The humanist perspective that man is basically good gives people more dignity than the biblical view of men and women as sinners needing grace. But the analogy only holds up if people are truly innocent of iniquity. Suppose that Tim murders his neighbor. Based on circumstantial evidence, the police arrest him, the jury convicts him, and the judge gives him a life sentence. After five years the court decides that a mistake has been made, that guilty Tim is actually innocent. If Tim walks free, his freedom does not ennoble his character or enhance his personal dignity. Tim is living a lie. “We atheists and agnostics,” Dan Barker said, “don't view ourselves as sick. We don't view ourselves as sinners. We don't feel a conviction of wrong. We don't buy into the supernatural, mythological lie that there is something actually spiritually wrong with humanity.” Does Mr. Barker's declaration of human innocence mesh with reality? Is there no spiritual wrong in a father who sexually molests his own infant daughter? Is there no sickness in the soul of a serial rapist who terrorizes a university campus? Was there no true evil in the hearts of the Nazi soldiers who brutally murdered small Jewish children? No lie (however appealing) can enhance human dignity. What truly ennobles a man is the knowledge that he is created “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27). The Lord even invites men and women to become children of God and thus “fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17). What humanist perception of man can equal the biblical view that a Christian is a son or daughter of the King of Kings? |