“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not
eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you
eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis
2:16b, 17).
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they
were naked; … (Genesis 3:7).
One of the major issues involved in discussions about the existence
of God is the issue of morality. In recent years there have been
several books by atheists trying to suggest that “You don’t need God
to be good,” and that theme has been posted on bus panels and
billboards in various cities around the world as we have reported in
this journal (see “News and
Notes” March/April 2011). Atheists argue that morality is a
survival issue because, “If I don’t want you to murder me, then I
must not try to murder you.” That oversimplification simply points
out there can be a motive for morality that does not involve God in
any direct way. The Christian response to that atheist view may be
to point out that “survival of the fittest” in humans may in fact
demand murdering someone to avoid the possibility of that person
being a competitor in the future.
On the other side of the ledger we find atheists ridiculing the
biblical account of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit as a fairy
tale that has no essence of truth, and makes the whole issue of
morality a trust in a controlling God who simply pulls strings.
Atheists will also argue that Christians throughout history have
shown they are no more moral than anyone else, with an endless
string of infidelities and killings done or sanctioned by Christian
leaders.
There can be no question that the hypocrisy of human beings weakens
all arguments that can be made in the minds of people. However,
fair-minded people will realize that human weakness does not
validate or invalidate any position. The question has to be what the
system actually teaches and how it works. How humans became humans
in a moral sense is an important question, and one we can think
about and investigate. We have had articles in this journal in the
past about whether a confirmed atheist can really have a moral
system (see “The Moral
Impossibility of Naturalism,” May/June 2011; “Making Choices: An
Apologetic for Christianity,” January/February 2010; “How Do We Make
Decisions?” May/June 2007; “Atheistic
Explanations of Morality and Common Sense,” November/December
2006). What we would like to do in this article is to look at the
biblical account and see what it actually says and whether it makes
sense.
PRE-FALL MAN
Before eating the forbidden fruit, the first humans were what
anthropologists call “gatherers.” The description that the Bible
gives is that man could “eat from any tree in the garden” (Genesis 2:16). After the fall man
was told “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food …” (Genesis 3:19). After the flood the
expanse of man’s foods seems to be much larger as God says to Noa
h, “Everything that lives and moves
will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now
give you everything” (Genesis 9:3).
Also at this point a clear moral statement is made, “… from each
man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow
man. ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be
shed; for in the image of God has God made man’ ” (Genesis 9:5, 6).
Before the fall mankind did not have a moral code as such. If you do
not have knowledge, you cannot have morality. The tree in the garden
was “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” When God speaks
about man after the fall His words are, “The man has now become like
one of us, knowing good and evil” (Genesis
3:22). Someone could argue that since they had been commanded
not to eat of the tree before the fall that there was in fact a
moral code. But we must not confuse the ability to obey rules with
morality. There is no understanding or morality necessary to obey a
rule. A small child or an animal can obey a rule without being
morally responsible, and in fact would obey the rule even if the
rule was immoral. When Adam and Eve were given a rule it was not the
establishment of morality.
POST-FALL MAN
After the fall, Cain murdered Abel, and a number of changes in man’s
situation took place. First, man apparently began eating meat. Genesis 4:2 – 4 tells us that Abel
kept flocks and “brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of
his flock.” This would suggest butchering and thus the eating of
meat. When Cain killed Abel, God’s testimony about the murder was,
“Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). There was no moral
code involved, but a clear suggestion that murder of one’s brother
is condemned by the Creator in a natural way. Atheists will argue
that things like murder are naturally wrong, yet male lions and
bears kill their own offspring, and cannibalism is seen in many life
forms. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, they suddenly
gained an awareness of good and evil. They were sentient beings.
They then had the capacity and knowledge to make moral judgments.
Interestingly enough, the first judgment was nudity. God’s response
(Genesis 3:11): “Who told you that
you were naked?” He immediately asked them the rhetorical question,
“Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
As we 
have already pointed out, verse 22 finds God saying that man
has become like God, knowing good and evil.
Instead of looking at the significance of this process, people have
tended to focus on the tree and the fruit. The drug culture has
tried to suggest that it was LSD or marijuana or some exotic,
drug-laden elixir. Some children’s books have said it was an apple.
The list of speculations about the forbidden fruit is endless. Genesis 2:9 simply tells us that there
were two unusual trees in the middle of the garden, one being the
tree of life and the other the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Neither of those trees exist in the physical world today, just as
there are no places where there are cherubim east of the Garden of
Eden with “a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way
to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24).
Mankind misses the point by looking for physical forms of these
sources of life and knowledge in today’s world just as he does in
looking for the Ark of the Covenant as in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
21ST CENTURY MAN
As militant atheism has taken over the twenty-first century, one of
its major efforts has been to maintain that religion has nothing to
do with morality. They even go so far as to deny that good and evil
exist! Richard Dawkins in his book River Out of Eden ([New York: BasisBooks, 1995],
page 133) wrote, “The universe we observe has precisely the
properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless
indifference.” Connected to such a view is the idea that man can
intellectually form his own moral code and live by it, and that
people will adhere to it because they see the advantages to them
personally in doing so. Along with this view is the attempt to
invent such a code. Situation ethics, existentialism, and the like
are such attempts. Carried to a totally naturalistic conclusion such
views run into inherent problems. If there is no uniqueness to man
of the nature the Bible describes, then all living things have equal
rights and animals have the same moral protection and restraints as
humans. This has resulted in animal rights groups striving to
protect, in a human way, the rights of not only primates, but dogs,
cattle, and in the famous case with PETA’s complaint against
President Obama — flies (June 16, 2009). On the other side of the
ledger this view has led to people like Princeton bioethics
professor Peter Singer advocating the destruction of humans who have
mental or physical disabilities.
The point is that without an absolute, proven standard that is not
the product of scholarly opinion, all you have is human guesses as
to what will work. When you look at what has happened when these
human constructions are tried, what you see is failure and
atrocities. The list of examples includes Hitler, Cambodia, Sadam
Hussein, Mao Tse Tung, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and Charles
Manson — all reminding us of human systems that simply failed.
The Bible portrays the human capacity to know good from evil as a
unique attribute bestowed by God. We are not told how the forbidden
fruit produced this attribute, but we are shown the results. The
entire Old Testament is a witness to man’s repeated failures to
follow God’s rules for moral conduct. When we come to Jesus Christ
and the New Testament we see the perfect moral law of God enacted
and supported. It is difficult to read Matthew 5 – 7 and deny
that such a system would work if it were followed. As people have
followed the Christian system, incredible benefits have come to
mankind. Women’s rights, the abolition of violence, the beauty of
marriage and commitment on a personal level, and the value and
precious nature of children are just a few of the things that have
grown out of God’s perfect moral system as taught by Christ. (For
more on this read How
Christianity Changed the World by Alvin Schmidt.) People
claiming to be Christians have lived in rejection of what Jesus
taught as exemplified by the Crusades, the Inquisition, and Ku Klux
Klan; but the system itself is beyond criticism.
Chaos in the world will continue as long as we refuse to live as God
called us to live. Christ shows the importance of living God’s moral
code when He says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take
your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of
the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was
thirsty and you gave me something to drink, …” (Matthew 25:34 – 35). Our moral
choices live on into eternity, but our theories about why we have
morality and moral choices will die with us.
Back to Contents Does God Exist?,
NovDec11.
