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Who Is The Fool?


The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. (Psalm 14:1)

          Biblegateway.com posted today’s passage as a rather obvious April Fool’s Day jab, but by the time you read this, it will be April second, but it brought to mind an issue worthy of discussion. It has been said that an atheist has no natural authority on which to base their morality. I suppose some people have expressed that to mean that Atheists are incapable of being moral or good. Another alternative is that some Atheists have deliberately misconstrued it as a claim that Atheists are incapable of being moral or good as a strawman argument. 
          Let me state, therefore, that I am in no way claiming that Atheists are any more incapable of being moral or good than any other person. Because some are pursuing an evangelistic agenda to convince others that Atheism is Truth, they may be conspicuous in their goodness, even ostentatious, but that is not what is being claimed here. 
          The Christian can point to the Bible as her moral source. The Jew can point to the Tanakh and the teachings of the rabbis. The Muslims can point to the Qur’an. The Buddhists have the teachings of the Buddha. At best, the Atheist can point to the claims of a philosopher. Some will point to the teachings of some cultural group (family, heritage.) If you trace back through the history of those families, heritages, and cultures, most of them will not have formed their beliefs about what is good/right or evil/wrong based on belief in some form of supernatural being. At its most honest, Atheism’s moral foundation is built on a hodgepodge of ideas collected because they appealed and painted with shellac to make them look both shiny and solid.
          Before anyone else looks down their nose at such an obviously poor means of establishing a moral foundation, we should consider the extent to which they/we find our moral foundations the same way. Do we, as Christians, find our moral foundation in Scripture, or do we find it in the mélange around us? What has a greater influence on our moral thinking, the Bible, our political party, or Facebook?

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