Morality Falls From the Sky!? Mike Calls BS on Atheists

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio & Transcript – Kyle thinks that morals are innate within all of us, that they just fall from the sky and that religion is the great divide and we’ll all live in peace and harmony when the young Atheists grow up and shed all of the old ways. Mike calls bullsh*t on Kyle and all the atheists out there, the argument for and against their “innate” morality never ends, check out today’s clip for more…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  What is there to make men moral then, I might inquire?  This is where I get lost in the libertarian doublespeak.  What is there to make men moral?  As my friend David Simpson put it, you believe in natural law, what about supernatural law?  Since you can’t explain where nature came from, we say it came from God.  Supernatural law thus bequeathed natural law.  Why doesn’t the rest of it follow?

Caller:  If we take religion as a teaching, as a way of living and think about what religion teaches us, some of the core values, and the central law of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  That’s where morality begins.  It grows up in the family and it grows up in the community.  An example, just to answer a little bit of John’s question, “Can the government or entities do something about changing morality,” I’m a smoker and I feel like, these days, like a pariah.  Through the advertising and the surgeon general’s warnings and even laws being passed where you can and cannot smoke.

The popular consensus is that it’s not a good thing and you start feeling like a pariah in certain communities if you are smoking.  This is an example of where governments and communities can come together and change the way people perceive things and look at things, to a certain extent their morality.  If we all agree that raping is bad, yes, we have a law against it, but it’s also a whole community banding together and saying that’s wrong.  Morality comes from a community by just touting those things that are moral, by making those things more popular.

Mike:  Here’s the philosopher’s question: if a community is begun, let’s just say you take 1,000 babies all born in the month of April 2012 and we stick them out on an island somewhere and we leave totally agnostic, atheistic people to raise them and teach them nothing other than how to wipe their butts, how to not pee on one another and then how to forage for food and then they leave, when you return and there has been no contact with the outside world, will they have found the morality that you just described is to be found in the —

Caller:  No, not at all, not in one lifetime.

Mike:  This is the point.  It’s not to vilify the atheists or the agnostic.  Let’s see, Kyle is in Tampa, Florida next on The Mike Church Show.  Hello, Kyle.

Caller Kyle:  Hello, Mike.  Great show.  I just wanted to explain, along the similar line as your previous caller, but to explain why I’m hopeful for the future of the country.  It’s because of people who I converse with on a daily basis like me, who are about 30, professionals who are also great admirers of people like Christopher Hitchens.  When we get together to discuss what the most important things to do are, certainly low on the list, if anywhere on the list, is the need for everyone to share the same Judeo-Christian beliefs.  We just don’t — in my generation, I can tell you, we don’t care about things like that.

We do believe, a lot of people like me, that limited government is the way to go, but we find offensive and shameful your example of the island where you put atheists in charge and you assume that the result will be somehow less moral than a group of people who insist that their imaginary god is the one to follow.  That’s why I’m hopeful for the future of the country.  There will be a day when the older generations who cling to these beliefs that divide us will no longer be around and we can get on with it.

Mike:  Why does the belief in a supernatural force divide people?  Does a belief that you need to drink water divide people?

Caller Kyle:  The answer is so obvious, I can’t even believe you’d ask the question.

Mike:  You’re saying — you’re pursuing a line of questioning where you’re insulting your most kind and gracious host.  I didn’t say that you couldn’t live in our country under the blanket of freedom that we’ll provide you because it’s provided by moral people.  I’d like to ask you, where did you get the morals from that you claim just fell out of the sky?  Where?

Caller Kyle:  They’re innate.  These are innate.  They’re innate in all of us.

Mike:  They’re innate?  You’re born with these?  Let me ask you a question then.  Can I be born a pure-blooded racist?  Is that okay?

Caller Kyle:  Absolutely not.  That would never happen.  Racism is a learned behavior.

Mike:  Bullshit.  Bullshit.  I’m calling bull — that’s right, I said it on these airwaves.  It comes out of the ass end of a bull, bullshit.  Can I be born a rabid homophobe?

Caller Kyle:  Absolutely not.

Mike:  Why not?  Where’s your morality?  Under whose authority do I succumb to?  See, your argument has no end, sir.  Your argument has no end and will never end.  Your argument — this is your problem and this is the problem.  That argument, and you can trot it out to the ends of the Earth.  You know what I would challenge you to do?  Go form a little Charles Manson-like compound out in the hinterlands of the California desert and try it out.  Try it.  I would never tell you or anyone else that they must ascribe to or live under what I say is the law.  However, there is The Law.

End Mike Church Show Transcript