Unfortunately, our deductive arguments are often sabotaged by inductive examinations of history. America's past itself provides a plethora of the counterexamples to the niches we claim for ourselves. For example, though there were Christians who supported abolition, there were also many Christians who not only supported slavery and its assumption of white supremacy, they supported and defended forms of extreme racism such as existed in Jim Crow--Jim Crow followed the brief period of Reconstruction. At the same time, we have had prominent atheists who opposed slavery as well as Jim Crow. And the same has followed suit for other issues such as poverty, wars, and the environment where, though there were Christians who have been on the correct side of those issues, there have been a plethora of Christians who have been on the wrong side of those issues while there have been many atheists who have been on the correct side of those issues.
Roger Olson (click here for a bio), who writes one of the best Christian blogs I have come across, is a religiously conservative Christian who fits the mold described above in terms of believing that only theists can provide solid reasons for supporting human rights. And though I have much respect for Olson and his blog, I have to disagree with the point he makes in one of his latest blogposts that discusses the issue (click here for the article).
For Olson, his claim appears to be based on a collection of personal conversations about the subject. And those conversations tell him that the best reason that atheists can come up with for supporting human rights is that of empathy. That our feelings of regard for others tell us to respect human rights. Now though Olson easily spots the error in that claim, and though he says empathy is important, he says that we should vie for justice over empathy. And in so doing, he seems to have glossed over the fact that justice without empathy is a cruel, unforgiving master. And considering the fact that all of us have moral failures, we need to understand that we can never underestimate the role empathy should play in determining our support for justice let alone human rights.
But in addition to Olson's understatement on the need for empathy, he overlooks a school of thought called Moral Universalism that claims that moral truths can be determined to be true or false without opinions or feelings (click here). Moral Universalism can be seen in the Principle of Universality described by Noam Chomsky which says (click here):
if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us.The basic assumption behind the statement is the equality of all people. And though many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians might want to claim that such an assumption by atheists is arbitrary, it is not. For if conquering another people is based on the rule of force, then one cannot complain when others apply that same rule of force against one's own group.
There is another quite rational argument that supports a non-theist approach to ethics and morals and this argument partially rests on the Principle of Universality. That rational argument simply asks if mankind can survive by relying on the rule of force. This is a most pertinent question considering that we are facing possible extinction or near extinction events via a potential nuclear war or destruction of the environment.
For too long, we religiously conservative Christians have sought niches of superiority over nonChristians in hope that such niches could be used to argue a person into the faith. All of these niches, however, only show a spiritual character flaw we tend to embrace. That flaw is that we follow the false spirituality of authoritarianism.
We might also add that the Christian argument Olson is relying on rests on the notion that the threat of punishment from an almighty being provides the only adequate motivation for enough people to make society livable. But others would point out that doing what is right merely because one is afraid of being punished does not move us to have the necessary care for others to do what is right. Instead, it moves us to be more self-concerned than other-directed. Thus, if the fear of punishment is our only motivation for doing what is right, in the end we remain just as self-centered as we would be if our actions toward others were not moral. And that self-centeredness would eventually sabotage our attempts to practice justice toward others.
It isn't that fear of punishment or that belief in an almighty God doesn't provide adequate reasons in the guise of absolute values to support human rights. The problem is that the fear of punishment from an almighty God and other implications from our faith in God does not have a monopoly on providing the necessary absolute values that support human rights.
However, we should mention that the Gospel provides more than enough reasons for us Christians to not only support the rights of people in general, but also to support the rights of our enemies and those who commit crimes. That is because the Gospel tells us that God, at the expense of His Son, loved us while we were His enemies. The problem here is the Christian boast of having some degree of superiority over atheists. In this case the claim of superiority revolves around who can provide solid reasons for supporting human rights.
History tells us that even with our "superior" and God-centered view of the world, we religiously conservative Christians have failed time and time again in promoting human rights just as we have so often failed in treating our immediate neighbors they way we should. The same history tells us that atheists have often been leading the fight for human rights. And research shows us how some atheists have rational and logically defensible reasons to human rights.
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