Saturday, February 2, 2013
Is Christian ethics based upon fear?
Does Christianity teach that our primary motivation for doing good is the fear of hell?
The reasoning behind this seems to be that because there is the threat of going to hell for doing evil, that threat must be the motivation for Christians doing good. Well there's just one tiny problem, Christians, at least Protestants, don't believe its possible to get out of that punishment by doing good. The only way to get out of hell is to do commit one's life to Christ for the forgiveness of sins and receive the Holy Spirit for sanctification. Aha, the atheist will say, that only pushes the question back one step, isn't your only motivation for salvation then to escape hell. No but it is a motivation certainly, the main motivation should be, at least, to desire to worship and enjoy God forever.
Honestly, I don't see why atheists view this as a serious objection. For one thing it assumes motivation is a central part of what makes ethical decision ethical. But why should we believe that, especially on a naturalist view? The objection may be more effective if posed as an objection against the consistency of Christian ethics. But that even has shortfalls as it can easily be shown that there are noble and ethical motivations for doing good. Additionally, even the Christian worldview allows for the idea that an action can be moral even if one or more of one's motives is not moral. Which is another problem with this argument, it seems to assume that there can only be one motivation for an action. This seems obviously false.
In conclusion then, it would seem that if the atheist wants to make any sort of argument out of this objection, they have some work to do.
http://www.rationalchristianity.net/fear_morality.html
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