Thanks, Chuck. The article you scanned to my email was a little hard to read, but I got most of it. Likewise, sorry your note that I posted ended up the way it did on the blog. I'm not sure why it does that. It wasn't like that when I composed it. But it will have to do.

Anyway, as far as the atheists' new approach, been there done that. But it could be worse. In the past I've talked about Nietzsche and how I disagree with him, but in some ways he was honest in his appraisal of where morality was at without God. In terms of ethics, the Enlightenment was about providing a basis for 'good without God,' through human reason alone. From Hume, to Kant, to Hegel, that is what it was about. Then there was Mill and Bentham. But it didn't work. Nietzsche understood that at the end of the day no appeal to reason could hide the fact that what passed as morality was just sentimentality and arbitrary, personal opinion. So he looked out into the abyss with despair. God was dead, so all that was left was nihilism. But he called out for the 'uberman', the 'higher man' who would establish his own order and decide right and wrong. This would in effect be the next step in the evolution of man.

I guess the best way to explain it is that people just don't know the history of ideas, so they are doomed to repeat them. This kind of debate is refreshing in a way, at least. Having atheists post signs like that is better than outlawing nativity scenes, etc. But I wonder if they have any new approaches to deciding how to decide between different views of 'the good.' What would they say to Mulsims, especially the ones to whom jihad is 'good'? One of the things Nietzsche realized was that the 'good' that the Enlightenment thinkers were trying to justify were things parasitized from Christianity. Kant felt there was a categorical imperative not to lie. But how did he know in the first place that lying was an ethical concern except by inheriting it from Christianity.

Does that answer the question? Anyone else have any thoughts? I put a link on the right hand side of the web page with a link to a First Things article from a while back about the very subject of 'Good without God.' I haven't read it for a while, but it is good, written by a guy from Wheaton.