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When Morality Has No Higher Authority: Questions for an Atheist

by Light Channel TV

We could agree upon that we live in a generation where politicians, influencers, MSM and many others speaks a lot about freedom, justice, equality, human rights, love, dignity, and safety. These are mere words appear in political speeches, media campaigns, educational institutions, legal proposals, and secular social movements. But beneath these words we should ask a fundamental question:

What or Who makes these values objectively true and morally binding?

If there is no moral authority above human beings, societies, governments, and personal preferences, then on what basis can anyone say that justice is better than injustice, freedom is better than oppression, love is better than cruelty, or human rights must be respected? Because it "feels" so? This is not an attack on individuals. Many people who reject belief in God might show  kindness and be generous, courageous, and deeply concerned about suffering. The issue is not whether atheists can behave morally. The issue is whether atheism, by itself, can provide a coherent foundation for objective moral obligations.

What is the foundation of morality?

A distinction must first be made between three different questions:

1. Why or do human beings have moral feelings?

2. What or Whos moral rules does a person or society accept?

3. Why are certain actions objectively right or wrong, regardless of what anyone thinks or might feel?

Evolution, social conditioning, culture, education, and personal experience tries to explain why human beings develop moral instincts. They may try to explain why we tend to value cooperation, fairness, compassion, and loyalty. But explaining the origin of a belief is not the same as proving that the belief is true. Evolution may try to explain why people dislike suffering from a survival perspective, but survival is not identical to goodness. A social majority consensus may explain why a society supports a particular view, a particular law, but popularity does not make a law just. Personal feelings may reveal a person’s preference, but feelings differ from person to person and can sometimes be corrupted, manipulated, or mistaken. So someone's or majority feelings cannot become objective standards for everyone else.  Therefore, the central question remains:

Why should anyone be morally obligated to do what is "right", especially when doing so is inconvenient, unpopular, or contrary to personal interest?

If the only answer is “because I prefer it,” “because society agrees,” or “because the law requires it,” then morality becomes vulnerable and a result of personal preference, consensus, and power. Is this a society you want to live in?

The danger of morality reduced to preference

If morality has no objective foundation, then “good” and “evil” risk becoming merely expressions of personal or majority approval and disapproval. One person says, “This is right.” Another says, “No, it is wrong.” A third person has enough political or institutional power to impose their view on everyone else. What, then, makes one position objectively correct?  If there is no standard above human beings, morality can become:

• personal preference backed by subjective , prone to manipulation and biased emotion;

• cultural habit backed by traditions, manipulation and bias;

• majority opinion backed by numbers;

• political ideology backed by law;

• institutional policy backed by authority;

• or the will of the powerful backed by coercion.

 History is full of examples of governments and movements that used words such as security, progress, equality, unity, public health, and social protection to justify censorship, discrimination, persecution, and violence. The fact that an authority uses the language of "safety" does not prove that its actions are safe. The fact that a law is passed does not prove that it is just. The fact that a majority supports an idea does not prove that it is morally right.

If you want to live in a peaceful society, you should ask yourself this question:

Who decides what counts as harm, safety, dignity, and justice and even more important, on what standard judges the people making that decision?

If the answer is simply “the current government,” “the current culture and trend” or “the current majority,” then there is no stable basis for criticizing government injustice or cultural corruption. The law becomes the definition of morality rather than something that must itself be judged by morality.

The contradiction of claiming rights while rejecting absolute morality

Modern societies often speak about universal human rights. But the word “universal” requires careful examination. What does this mean and who defines what it means?

If human rights are created and given by the state when it suits the state,  then they are not truly universal. They are permissions granted by political authorities. What a government gives, a government can withdraw.

If rights are created by the majority, then minorities possess rights only as long as the majority permits them.

If rights are based merely on human preference, then one person’s preference for freedom can conflict with another person’s preference for domination. Why should one preference be morally superior?

A declaration can recognize a right, but a declaration does not create automatically human dignity. A court can protect a right, but a court does not create human worth. A parliament can pass a law, but legislation does not explain why human beings deserve protection in the first place. This leads to a fundamental logical difficulty:

How can someone claim that human rights are objectively binding while rejecting any objective moral authority above humanity? How can someone claim that we should enforce human rights while rejecting other human rights? 

The claim may be sincere, but sincerity is not the same as philosophical consistency. The Biblical Christian answer is that human dignity is not invented by the state, culture, feelings or society. Human beings possess dignity because they are created in the image of a self--existing God.

“So God created man in his own image”  Genesis 1:27.

This means that human worth exists before political or societal recognition. It also means that rulers, governments, majorities, churches, and institutions are all subject to an absolute objective moral law higher than themselves.

The difference between atheists having morals and atheism grounding morality

It would be unfair and imprecise to claim that every atheist is immoral or that no atheist believes in objective moral values. Some atheists argue for secular moral realism and believe that moral truths exist independently of human opinion. But this position raises difficult questions:

• What is the nature of these objective moral truths?

• Where do they exist? In the minds of some people? In subjective feelings?

• Why should they be binding on human beings?

• Why should a person obey them when disobedience is profitable?

• How can moral duties exist in an ultimately impersonal, subjective universe?

• What makes one moral intuition more reliable than another?

Atheism does not logically force every atheist to become a moral relativist. However, atheism by itself does not automatically provide the transcendent foundation that concepts such as universal justice, human dignity, and objective moral obligation seem to require. The issue is therefore not whether an atheist can recognize moral truth. The issue is whether their worldview can explain the authority of that truth. A person may recognize a moral law without accepting the God who gave it. But recognizing a law and explaining its morally binding authority are not the same thing.

The fallacy of calling and enforcing personal preference as  “universal morality”

A common avoided contradiction appears when people reject absolute morality but continue to speak as if their preferred values are universally binding. For example:

• “Everyone must be free.”

• “Everyone must be treated equally.”

• “Everyone has a right to self-determination.”

• "Women has the right over their own body."

• “You must respect my gender identity.”

• “No one may impose morality on another person.”

But these are themselves moral demands. They are not merely neutral observations. The statement “No one should impose values on others” is itself an imposed value. The statement “Everyone must affirm personal autonomy” is itself a moral requirement. The statement “You have no right to judge another person’s choices” is itself a judgment about what people have a right to do.

This is an oxymoron, a moral self-contradiction. Is like saying:

“There are no absolute moral truths except that everyone must accept my definition of freedom, justice, equality, and harm.”

Of course, freedom or justice are not bad ideas. But we cannot just simply pretend that those concepts can be assumed as natural by everyone ( almost). They require definition and foundation.

• Freedom to do what? Whatever feels right for me? What if that hurts you? Is that objective freedom, or subjective to my preferences? What if I have the means to enforce my "freedom".  Would you live in such a society?
• Freedom from what?
• Justice according to which standard?
• Equality of worth, opportunity, outcome, or identity? Who should define the equality standards?
• Love that affirms everything, or love that also warns against self-destruction?
• Rights grounded in nature, God, law, social agreement, or personal assertion?

Until these questions are answered, moral slogans can hide rather than resolve moral confusion and are often used as coercive tools to impose someones agenda.

When “safety” becomes a tool of power

The language of safety is important because genuine abuse exists. Violence, threats, humiliation, forced confinement, sexual abuse, psychological manipulation, and coercive practices should be condemned, whether they occur in a religious community, a family, a political movement, a medical institution, or a secular organization. But a distinction must be made:

• coercion is not the same as counsel;

• violence is not the same as preaching in genuine;

• forced treatment is not the same as voluntary prayer;

• humiliation is not the same as moral disagreement;

• abuse is not the same as religious conviction;

• psychological control is not the same as a person freely seeking guidance.

If the objective goal is to prohibit violence, threats, fraud, and coercive abuse, that objective goal can be stated clearly and applied consistently. But if the definition of harm expands to include any defined religious belief that describes certain conduct as wrong, or any voluntary spiritual conversation that challenges a person’s desires, then the issue has changed. It is no longer only about protecting people from abuse. It becomes an attempt to restrict others moral teachings and freedom of conscience.

You should ask yourself this question:

Can a society protect people from coercion without criminalizing moral beliefs that challenge the prevailing culture? 

If the state decides that disagreement itself is harmful, then “protection”  "equality" and "safety" becomes just another tool for ideological control.  A government may claim that it is protecting people from psychological harm while simultaneously imposing a different moral system through education, law, employment, media, and public institutions. The question is not whether the word “safety” sounds good. The question is whether the policy is actually protecting people from identifiable abuse or compelling and manipulating them to affirm a particular (preferred by a group of people) worldview.

Biological sex and the limits of personal identity

Another area of confusion concerns biological sex. Human beings may, for various evidence based reasons, experience distress, conflict, or profound discomfort regarding their bodies and  gender identities. Such individuals deserve compassion, protection from violence, and respectful treatment. No person should be mocked, abused, threatened, or dehumanized. But compassion does not require denying nor does it delete biological reality. One does not have to believe in a personal Creator to understand that biological sex is connected to the reproductive organization of the human body. Human beings are ordinarily male or female, with biological development organized around male or female reproductive functions. Rare disorders of sexual development do not erase the general biological structure of humanity, just as medical abnormalities do not redefine the normal function of an organ. Even more, a person’s feelings can be recognized  as real personal experiences, but feelings alone do not determine evidence based facts about the body. This distinction is important:

A person’s subjective experience should be treated with compassion, but subjective experience does not have unlimited authority to redefine objective reality for everyone else.

We accept this principle in many other areas. A person may sincerely feel that they are physically healthy while suffering from a serious illness. A person may feel that they are incapable of wrongdoing while objective evidence proves otherwise. A person may feel that a particular belief is true, but personal certainty does not make it true. Therefore, the relevant questions are:

• Is sex an objective biological reality?

• Can feelings alter the DNA based reproductive organization of the body?

• Should language be weaponized to deny biological distinctions?

• Can a society protect people from discrimination without requiring everyone to affirm contested claims and enforce discrimination on other groups of people?

• Is disagreement automatically hatred?

• Is every attempt to help or voluntary counsel a person necessarily abuse?

These questions deserve honest discussion rather than automatic condemnation.

The false dichotomy equation of disagreement with harm

A dangerous argument can develop in which disagreement is automatically defined as violence. If someone says, “I believe this conduct is morally wrong,” the response may be:

“Your belief harms me.”

Sometimes words could be genuinely abusive, threatening, or demeaning to someones perspective even if they were not meant to be so. Sometimes they might be rightfully damaging. Those should be condemned. But not every challenging belief is abuse. If disagreement itself is classified as harm, then almost any belief can be silenced by the powerful to promote a certain agenda:

• Yes, some religious teachings can be called harmful;

• But so can political criticism  be called harmful;

• scientific disagreement can be called harmful;

• parental guidance can be called harmful;

• moral warnings can be called harmful.

The result is a society in which the strongest protection is granted not to the most vulnerable, but to whichever ideology has the greatest institutional influence. Do you want to live in that kind of society?  A free society must distinguish between real abuse and offense, between coercion and disagreement, and between threats and moral conviction. Otherwise, “no one may harm me” can gradually become:

“No one may challenge my beliefs, desires, or identity or else...” Is int' a threat to someones freedom that one claims to fight for and support?  That is not freedom of conscience. It is an enforced demand for ideological immunity. A double standard.

The Christian standard is not coercion

A biblical moral framework does not authorize Christians to hate, abuse, manipulate, or coerce people. On the contrary. A Biblical Christ did not establish His kingdom through force.

“My kingdom is not of this world”  John 18:36. So Christians are commanded to speak the truth in love:

“Speaking the truth in love”  Ephesians 4:15. They are also commanded to protect the vulnerable, practice justice, and show mercy:

Isaiah 1:17; Micah 6:8; Matthew 23:23; James 1:27. The Biblical Christian position should therefore reject both extremes: 1. The abuse of people in the name of false religion. 2. The criminalization of sincere moral conviction merely because it challenges prevailing subjective beliefs.  Biblical Christianity teaches that every human being has dignity, but it does not teach that every desire is morally authoritative for everyone else. It teaches compassion, but not moral indifference to immorality. It teaches truth, but not cruelty to enforce that truth. It teaches repentance through voluntary acknowledgement of wrong doing, but not humiliation. It teaches freedom, but not freedom from accountability. Jesus said to the woman caught in sin: “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” John 8:11. That statement contains both mercy and moral truth. Christ did not treat the person as worthless, but neither did He redefine sin as virtue simply to avoid causing discomfort.

The biblical answer to self-existence

The modern idea that human beings are autonomous selves who create their own identity and moral rules resembles the ancient temptation: “Ye shall be as gods”  Genesis 3:5.

 So, the real  issue is not simply personal identity. It is the question of authority. Who has the right to define:

• what a human being is;

• what the body means;

• what is good and evil;

• what marriage and sexuality are;

• what freedom requires;

• what justice permits;

• and what society may compel?

If human beings are self-created and self-defining, then every person becomes their own final authority. But if every person is their own final authority, conflict and societal implosion is inevitable. One person’s self-definition can contradict another’s. One group’s freedom can collide with another group’s freedom. One person’s claimed right can require another person’s speech, labor, money, or submission. Eventually, “I make my own rules” becomes:

“You must affirm my rules.”

Is this just speculation? Do I need to turn on the news? How many wars, conflicts, genocides and evils are being unfolding right now in the world?  A society may reject divine authority while still demanding obedience to a new authority created by them, by institutions, by the powerful, by cultural movements, and law. The old morality is rejected, but a new orthodoxy emerges. It has its own doctrines, language, moral transgressions, approved authorities, punishments, and definitions of heresy. This is not the disappearance of objective moral authority. It is the transfer of objective moral authority from God to subjective human institutions.

Can society function without universal moral rules? Show me an example in the know history of humanity.

History has shown that no society can exist without moral rules. Every society must answer questions such as:

• Is murder wrong?

• Is theft wrong?

• Is rape wrong?

• Is deception wrong?

• Is exploitation wrong?

• Is betrayal wrong?

• Should the weak be protected?

• Should promises be kept?

• Should rulers be restrained?

• Should people be free to speak and worship?

• Should we protect and respect the nature?

If no universal standard exists, these questions are eventually settled by whoever is in power. Is this your reality of today?

• The stronger group defines justice.
• The ruling class defines safety.
• The majority defines rights.
• The institution defines truth.
• The state defines acceptable speech.

A society may use "compassionate" language while moving toward coercion. It may claim to defend freedom while restricting other peoples objective morally defined conscience. It may claim to protect minorities while suppressing other peoples minorities. It may claim to oppose oppression while creating new forms of ideological pressure for other group of people. This is the fallacy of subjective morality.  This is why a standard above human authority is necessary. Without it, there is no final basis for condemning the abuse of power, the abuse of whatever is destroying our societies, our families, our nature and finally our planet.

A moral standard must judge everyone: including Christians

The Christian claim is not that Christians should be immune from objective moral judgment. Quite the opposite. The Bible repeatedly condemns objective hypocrisy, corrupt leaders, exploitation, injustice, and the abuse of authority:

• Isaiah 10:1–2 condemns unjust laws;

• Amos 5:21–24 condemns empty religious formalism;

• Matthew 23 condemns hypocritical religious leadership;

• James 2:9 condemns partiality;

• Ezekiel 34 condemns shepherds who exploit the flock;

• Acts 5:29 limits obedience to human authority.

A truly objective moral standard must judge everyone: atheists, politicians, activists, churches, pastors, families, institutions, and governments. That is one reason biblical morality is not simply a tool for controlling others. It also places the believer under judgment. Biblically grounded Christians cannot appeal to God’s law to condemn the world while excusing their own pride, cruelty, dishonesty, or abuse.

Questions for those who reject absolute morality

1. If there are no objective moral standards, in what sense is anything truly evil? Because you feel it? Do you always trust your feelings? Are your feelings objective? What if I disagree with you based on my feelings? Who or what should decide?

2. Is cruelty wrong because it is objectively wrong, or because we personally dislike it?

3. If a majority approves injustice, does injustice suddenly  becomes redefined as just?

4. If a government legalizes oppression, does oppression become moral?

5. What makes human rights universal rather than temporary political permissions?

6. Why should a powerful person obey moral rules when breaking them benefits him?

7. What standard judges the people who define “safety”?

8. If personal autonomy is absolute, why may one person’s autonomy be limited for another’s benefit?

9. Is the claim “you must not impose your morality on others” itself a moral rule?

10. Can disagreement be called abuse without proving coercion or injury?

11. Is objective moral teaching automatically harmful because it challenges personal desire?

12. Can feelings alter biological facts? If you believe it can, can you prove it?

13. Is compassion possible without affirming every "belief" even personal constructs?

14. Is freedom compatible with compelled speech and ideological conformity?

15. If society has no authority above itself, what prevents power from redefining justice?

These questions require intellectual honesty.

Conclusion: truth, compassion, and moral accountability

No. We might agree upon that the world does not need more cruelty. It needs more truth, humility, courage, and compassion. Biblically grounded Christians must condemn genuine morally defensible abuse wherever it occurs. They must refuse violence, manipulation, threats, humiliation, and coercion. They must treat every person as bearing the image of God. But Christians must also resist the assumption that the rejection of biblical morality is automatically neutral, enlightened, or liberating. Secular subjective ideology has moral claims of its own. It speaks of justice, equality, safety, dignity, and rights, but it must still explain the foundation of those claims. Especially when the outcome says otherwise or the definitions of those claims are changing.  No one can consistently appeal to objective justice, objective universal human rights, objective absolute equality, or objective binding moral duties while declaring that there are no absolute moral truths unless they can explain where those objective obligations come from.

The Biblically based Christian worldview provides an answer:

• The self--existing God is the source of moral reality.

• Human beings are created in God’s image.

• The body, mind and soul has meaning and a purpose because it is created, not self-invented.

• Every person has a predefined and designed dignity.

• Every person is morally accountable to objective moral standards.

• Every ruler and institution is subject to judgment.

• Truth must be spoken with love.

• Love must not and can not be separated from truth. That will not be genuine love.

• Freedom must not be separated from responsibility to objective moral standards.

• Justice must not be separated from righteousness predefined by objective moral standards.

The central issue is therefore not whether Christians want to harm people. The real issue is whether a society can remain free and just after rejecting the moral authority that gives meaning to freedom and justice. If humanity becomes its own god, then morality will eventually be defined by whoever has the greatest power to impose it. But if human beings remain accountable to God, then no individual, movement, government, church, or majority possesses unlimited authority.

That is the foundation of genuine human dignity, genuine freedom, and genuine justice.