Recommended

Does Ethics Require God? InterVarsity Pits Evangelist Against Atheist

A campus event this past semester sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and six other groups, including Comparative Religions Club, Philosophical Society, and Students for Free Thought, put ethics and religion front and center.

A campus event this past semester sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and six other groups, including Comparative Religions Club, Philosophical Society, and Students for Free Thought, put ethics and religion front and center.

Peter Payne, an evangelism and apologetics specialist serving on staff with the graduate chapter of InterVarsity at the University of Michigan, and Dan Barker, former minister turned atheist and now co-President of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, held a lively debate on the question, "Does Ethics Require God?" in front of 450 students and community members -- the largest gathering ever held by the University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point InterVarsity chapter.

Payne maintained that ethics requires God, while Barker believes that it does not.

Get Our Latest News for FREE

Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.

"There is the notion of the good," said Payne, but "Ethics has to be more than that." At minimal, the definition for ethics needs to at least include "human welfare."

Another constraint is that good is unconditional - "not dependent upon an individual person or society."

Payne stated that naturalists - those who only believe in the physical world - "don't have very much" because they would not have any way of knowing good from wrong: is it based on reason, etc? They would need an "ideal observer," but from the Christian perspective, "God is the ideal observer."

Barker, however, stated that "ethical," to him, means the intention of minimizing harm. He listed evidence for his "naturalist" belief, including the fact that many live good lives without a belief in God.

Barker also said those who do believe in God are not standing on any moral high ground and quoted Barna statistics of how born-again Christians are in fact worse than non-Christians in certain measures such as the divorce rate. He stated the fact that Christians can't seem to agree on many ethical issues, such as euthanasia or abortion, and finally cited Scriptures to say that God is not a loving God.

Campus Staff Member, John Jordens, on staff for 10 years, said the importance of this type of event for him was that it allowed Christian students to learn more about their faith - enough to be able to defend it.

"It helped us to think about some things like how to defend our faith," he said. "I realized that our students are coming from a Christian background without having wrestled with these questions."

"Some people were surprised that there are people who could believe as strong as Dan [Parker]," said Jordens. But "We need to be ready with an answer and think about how to defend that."

In addition, the fact that Christians are no different, statistically, from non-Christians should sadden Christians because they should be distinct.

Overall, he believes that "The visibility of Christians on campus have risen from this type of event and would hold it again.

However, he saw the event as a way to facilitate the dialogue.

"I wished that we could've been better prepared to continue the dialogue. We tried to do some small groups afterwards, but I learned that when we bring our friends, we can continue to talk about these things."

Concerning how this event might be detrimental to the young Christian mind, he said that those types of Christians are already looking for an excuse not to follow the lifestyle, but if they truly took the opportunity to engage in dialogue, then potentially many of their questions could be answered.

Students on both sides, called it "lively" and "done well" and indicated on response cards that they were pleased with the event and wanted to see it again.

Was this article helpful?

Help keep The Christian Post free for everyone.

By making a recurring donation or a one-time donation of any amount, you're helping to keep CP's articles free and accessible for everyone.

We’re sorry to hear that.

Hope you’ll give us another try and check out some other articles. Return to homepage.

Most Popular

More Articles