In an age defined by skepticism this may appear to be an odd question. It seems to me that what is commonly called ‘skepticism’ today is really nothing of the sort. A true skeptic is suspicious; suspicious of all claims to truth, not just the overtly religious. A skeptic is one who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions. Under this definition I wonder if any ‘real’ skeptics still exist. To doubt Christianity is easy, in fact, required before one can properly dismiss the faith or even come into the faith. Doubting the claims of Christ prior to conversion makes for the most potent and steadfast Christians I have ever met; and actually, I am skeptical of any so-called Christian who has never doubted his or her faith.
Leaving Christianity aside for a moment, where are those who have truly carried the skeptic’s suspicion from its conception to its end? It seems that most so-called skeptics abort their suspicions before suspicion’s ‘end-game’ can be realized. Novice skeptics tend to start down the skeptic trail and then, curiously, stop somewhere midway and build a sort of halfway house of thought where their ideas can relax without being subjected to the kind of rigorous doubt that they employ against the religious.
Soren Kierkegaard (19th century Christian philosopher) claimed that to be a true skeptic one must first learn to doubt his doubt. What did he mean by this? At first glance he appears to have posited a paradox: one must first doubt doubt, prior to doubting. If one must first doubt doubt, how could he/she ever get along with the deal of doubting anything (including doubt itself)? But Kierkegaard was only repeating a very ancient adage which says that nothing should be more susceptible to criticism, nothing more in doubt, than man’s ability to give thorough commentary on matters of ultimate seriousness. This is not a haphazard conclusion. It is a connective theme found in most of the respected philosophers from ancient times to the present, and, incidentally, is also a basic starting point in orthodox Christian theology.
One’s doubt must first of all take the stand and give testimony as to why it is a reliable witness in matters of true and false, particularly when dealing with existential questions of meaning, life after death, God, the soul, good and evil, etc. When most would consider doubt to be the only true and supreme judge in the court of human reasoning, they predictably balk at the idea of this ‘judge’ being asked to become, instead, a defendant in his own court. But he must become this; he must become a defendant first if we are to ever trust him as a judge in matters so important.
But you may still be asking: “why is this important, can’t we just subject abstract notions of God and immortality, and such, to the same sort of doubt that we employ against Tooth Fairies and Unicorns? After all, everything beyond empirical observation is rightly doubted, whether or not we have a solid ground for our faculty of doubt, for the simple reason that they cannot be scientifically verified.”
This sort of reasoning does indeed seem reasonable on the surface but fails at a very fundamental level – the human level.
For humans, or as Kierkegaard would phrase it – for existing individuals – such dismissals are wholly insufficient. The issues that vex us most as living beings are precisely those of an existential nature: how are we to live, what is justice, what is good, do I have a purpose or am I a blip on evolution’s radar, does life have ultimate meaning, if so what is it? In essence, the questions that we simply cannot ignore, those that are most pressing, are the very questions that have nothing at all to do with empirical observation; they are religious questions through and through. It is here that our ability to rightly doubt comes into sharp focus, for if our ‘doubter’ is broken all is lost.
What I am suggesting is this: that in these matters all of us are subject to the same conditions. We simply cannot know by way of our reason whether or not our chosen life philosophy or creed is true or false. Scientific study cannot help, religious texts cannot bail us out, and deep meditations under a waterfall cannot ease the difficulty. It is here that faith is a requirement of all people who would venture to tackle life’s most important questions. The atheist, the Buddhist, the agnostic, and the Christian alike must relent to a leap into the unknown, ‘if’ one is to follow skepticism to the very end and not settle for thought’s little halfway houses.
Let me end with one note of clarification dealing with Christian faith. In this discussion the issue of doubt and faith should be kept in their proper context – that of mental functions. When the discussion turns to Christian faith, the context is completely altered. For the Christian, faith, salvation-type-faith (if you will), is not understood as the end product of mental deliberation. Faith that relates to salvation is a gift from God. It cannot be attained in a library or in a blog forum. It is as Christ said: “No man can come to the Father unless the Father draws him” (Jn 6:44), and a like passage where Jesus tells Peter that the revelation given to him, that Jesus is “the Son of the Living God,” was not revealed to him by man, but by the Father (Matt 16:17). Christians are not compelled to worship Christ due to empirical proof of his deity, but precisely because such “proof” is evasive. If our God was merely a creature of nature he would not be God.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Faith and Reason
One of the best ways to discredit an opposing view is to simply dismiss it as “illogical.” It’s a tried and true method for a quick conversation killer. If you haven’t tried it lately, give it a shot. You’ll be amazed at how little effort you will exert; not only will you not have to think through the oppositions argument, you won’t have to think through yours either. It’s akin to the ‘my dad is bigger than your dad’ taunt heard on every playground in the world. As kids we all used this taunt knowing full well we would never have to actually present our fathers to each other for a physical inspection. In the same way, we accuse others of being illogical without an honest inspection of their view or a demonstration of why ours is any more profound. It is an intellectual cat and mouse game we play to avoid confronting the deep and terrible possibility that we might be wrong; that the other may have something to teach us about reality.
When brought over to the discussion of faith and reason the “illogical” card is thrown at every turn. I have participated in hundreds of online discussions, public debates, and private conversations over the issue of religious faith in a reason focused world and I am rarely disappointed. Someone always finds it necessary to accuse the other of being illogical or irrational. Why? Because most people hold their views of existence as close to their heart as possible. After all, if we get existence wrong, we get nearly everything else wrong. Faith and reason provide us with our ideas of existence and/or our existential dealings (life, death, relationships, the afterlife, goodness, evil, God, human nature, etc) and for many today reason, and reason alone, is the only sure way to the truth.
While faith usually finds itself under the scrutiny of popular media and academia, reason too reveals its own weakness upon close inspection. The curious thing about our reasoning powers is that we can reason about the very thing we are using to reason – our reason. Whenever we attempt to climb outside of reason in order to analyze it from a safe distance we find that we have never actually left, quite the opposite, we have only dug down further into our seat of rationality. It’s the one great variable that can never be properly defended nor properly dismissed. If we try to defend reason we only do so by our own reason, which only begs the question. Reason cannot be called in as a material witness when it is also, and at the same time, the defendant in the dock. On the flip side, reason cannot be dismissed except with the use of reason, this of course is another logical absurdity. Therefore, we are subject to reason and must trust that it serves us as a reliable tool of interpreting reality (the book to read is Miracles, by C.S. Lewis, and, if time is no object and you know a good psychiatrist, the Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant is a must).
Faith and reason are often presented as an either/or: either one chooses faith or one chooses reason, but one cannot have both faith and reason. If the reader has been paying attention, and if my logic has been sound thus far, it is easy to discern why this dichotomy of faith versus reason is a false dichotomy. At a base level the very tool we use for interpreting existence – our human reasoning – is assumed to present us with the truth, an assumption based on little more than what skeptics often accuse religious faith of: a blind leap, or, if one is honest with the language – a blind leap of faith (the epitome of intellectual treason in modern academia).
Of course, this is not an attack on reason, as I just said, reason can neither be attacked nor defended. Instead it is an attempt to show how it is that reason necessitates faith to perform its most basic movements (as troubling as such a thought might be for those who wish to purge their worldview of the necessity of faith). They are not antithetical, they are not in strict opposition, rather, they complement one another in very profound ways.
In closing let me throw out a simple analogy to help make the point (keeping in mind that all analogies are flawed in one way or another). Take a tire and a road. What could be more opposite than a circle and a straight line? Yet, the two make for a wonderful relationship. Rather than being in combat with each other, they are perfect companions with a shared purpose of moving someone from one place to another. If we think of reason as the tire and faith as the road the idea is clear. Faith and reason both work to move us from one state of mind and/or being to another. One need not prefer roads to tires or tires to roads for they are entirely separate categories serving a common goal.
Questions, comments, and threats welcomed.
When brought over to the discussion of faith and reason the “illogical” card is thrown at every turn. I have participated in hundreds of online discussions, public debates, and private conversations over the issue of religious faith in a reason focused world and I am rarely disappointed. Someone always finds it necessary to accuse the other of being illogical or irrational. Why? Because most people hold their views of existence as close to their heart as possible. After all, if we get existence wrong, we get nearly everything else wrong. Faith and reason provide us with our ideas of existence and/or our existential dealings (life, death, relationships, the afterlife, goodness, evil, God, human nature, etc) and for many today reason, and reason alone, is the only sure way to the truth.
While faith usually finds itself under the scrutiny of popular media and academia, reason too reveals its own weakness upon close inspection. The curious thing about our reasoning powers is that we can reason about the very thing we are using to reason – our reason. Whenever we attempt to climb outside of reason in order to analyze it from a safe distance we find that we have never actually left, quite the opposite, we have only dug down further into our seat of rationality. It’s the one great variable that can never be properly defended nor properly dismissed. If we try to defend reason we only do so by our own reason, which only begs the question. Reason cannot be called in as a material witness when it is also, and at the same time, the defendant in the dock. On the flip side, reason cannot be dismissed except with the use of reason, this of course is another logical absurdity. Therefore, we are subject to reason and must trust that it serves us as a reliable tool of interpreting reality (the book to read is Miracles, by C.S. Lewis, and, if time is no object and you know a good psychiatrist, the Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant is a must).
Faith and reason are often presented as an either/or: either one chooses faith or one chooses reason, but one cannot have both faith and reason. If the reader has been paying attention, and if my logic has been sound thus far, it is easy to discern why this dichotomy of faith versus reason is a false dichotomy. At a base level the very tool we use for interpreting existence – our human reasoning – is assumed to present us with the truth, an assumption based on little more than what skeptics often accuse religious faith of: a blind leap, or, if one is honest with the language – a blind leap of faith (the epitome of intellectual treason in modern academia).
Of course, this is not an attack on reason, as I just said, reason can neither be attacked nor defended. Instead it is an attempt to show how it is that reason necessitates faith to perform its most basic movements (as troubling as such a thought might be for those who wish to purge their worldview of the necessity of faith). They are not antithetical, they are not in strict opposition, rather, they complement one another in very profound ways.
In closing let me throw out a simple analogy to help make the point (keeping in mind that all analogies are flawed in one way or another). Take a tire and a road. What could be more opposite than a circle and a straight line? Yet, the two make for a wonderful relationship. Rather than being in combat with each other, they are perfect companions with a shared purpose of moving someone from one place to another. If we think of reason as the tire and faith as the road the idea is clear. Faith and reason both work to move us from one state of mind and/or being to another. One need not prefer roads to tires or tires to roads for they are entirely separate categories serving a common goal.
Questions, comments, and threats welcomed.
Friday, February 6, 2009
'God in the Dock': What is Salvation Type Faith?
I have never met a Christian that claimed to believe in salvation by works. I'm not sure they exist anywhere. Isn't it peculiar that one group is always accusing the other of preaching salvation by works, yet no one seems to actually believe in salvation by works?Perhaps the real issue is our adopted presupposition of what "faith" is.
For the first 1500+ years of Christian history the church understood faith to mean a literal 'becoming' of an individual into a new creation/new creature. Salvation was seen as an ongoing process of 'becoming' a Christian (pardon the brevity, much more could be said). From Augustine onward till the Reformation this was the understanding of "justification by faith." It wasn't until Luther that a decisive change was made in Christian theology. Luther agreed with the basics of what constituted salvation type faith: 1.) Faith has a personal, rather than a purely historical, reference; 2.) Faith concerns trust in the promises of God; 3.) Faith unites the believer to Christ.
Notice how none of these conceptions of faith can be accomplished by demons. As James said, "you believe God is one, you do well, even the demons believe and tremble." Faith is more than just mental assent to a list of correct doctrines 'about' God. Faith was a personal encounter with, submission to, and expectation of good from the living God. This is what should be understood as Biblical salvation type faith. Any time you find yourself on par with demons in your "faith," be suspicious of whether or not you have faith as defined Biblically.
The difference brought by Luther was the reinterpretation of Justification and Sanctification as two separate events in the salvation process. While the Catholics kept the two as one event (lasting a lifetime) the Protestants divided the two, making a difference between the initial conversion event (justification) and the working out of one's faith (sanctification). Both have their strengths and weaknesses. However, I'm of the belief that if one kept straight what is truly salvation type faith, they could travel either path without danger. When one relegates faith to a simple mental agreement with doctrine or any act purely rationalistic in nature, they are speaking of a faith alien from Scripture and Christian orthodoxy on both sides of the fence (Catholic and Protestant). Instead, they preach a faith in one's ability to correctly 'reason' through their espoused doctrine. If faith is only having the right opinion of doctrine then one could easily lose their faith through misunderstanding. "Childlike faith" would then be little more than the comical; children are full of misunderstandings.
If what has been said so far is still unclear, consider this: Two men are sitting in a deli. A third man runs in shouting, "this deli is on fire, get out while you can." The two men look at each other and begin a discussion. "You know, I really believe in what that guy said. I believe this deli is on fire. I believe that if we don't get out of here we'll burn to death. The other man says in return, "I like your reasoning. This deli is definitely on fire. I confess with my mouth and believe in my heart that this building is on fire." The two men burn to death.
Did these two men actually believe that the deli was on fire? No. If they did they would have done something - run, scream, pass-out, grab a fire extinguisher, something. Such is the case with many in the church today with their concept of faith. They believe in a doctrine but their life is uneffected. No one meets Almighty God and goes back to life as usual. I've left out more than I've covered in this discussion on faith. We have not even touched on the Incarnation - the center of our faith. Such is the case with blogs. If it was thorough it would be called a book.
God Bless.
For the first 1500+ years of Christian history the church understood faith to mean a literal 'becoming' of an individual into a new creation/new creature. Salvation was seen as an ongoing process of 'becoming' a Christian (pardon the brevity, much more could be said). From Augustine onward till the Reformation this was the understanding of "justification by faith." It wasn't until Luther that a decisive change was made in Christian theology. Luther agreed with the basics of what constituted salvation type faith: 1.) Faith has a personal, rather than a purely historical, reference; 2.) Faith concerns trust in the promises of God; 3.) Faith unites the believer to Christ.
Notice how none of these conceptions of faith can be accomplished by demons. As James said, "you believe God is one, you do well, even the demons believe and tremble." Faith is more than just mental assent to a list of correct doctrines 'about' God. Faith was a personal encounter with, submission to, and expectation of good from the living God. This is what should be understood as Biblical salvation type faith. Any time you find yourself on par with demons in your "faith," be suspicious of whether or not you have faith as defined Biblically.
The difference brought by Luther was the reinterpretation of Justification and Sanctification as two separate events in the salvation process. While the Catholics kept the two as one event (lasting a lifetime) the Protestants divided the two, making a difference between the initial conversion event (justification) and the working out of one's faith (sanctification). Both have their strengths and weaknesses. However, I'm of the belief that if one kept straight what is truly salvation type faith, they could travel either path without danger. When one relegates faith to a simple mental agreement with doctrine or any act purely rationalistic in nature, they are speaking of a faith alien from Scripture and Christian orthodoxy on both sides of the fence (Catholic and Protestant). Instead, they preach a faith in one's ability to correctly 'reason' through their espoused doctrine. If faith is only having the right opinion of doctrine then one could easily lose their faith through misunderstanding. "Childlike faith" would then be little more than the comical; children are full of misunderstandings.
If what has been said so far is still unclear, consider this: Two men are sitting in a deli. A third man runs in shouting, "this deli is on fire, get out while you can." The two men look at each other and begin a discussion. "You know, I really believe in what that guy said. I believe this deli is on fire. I believe that if we don't get out of here we'll burn to death. The other man says in return, "I like your reasoning. This deli is definitely on fire. I confess with my mouth and believe in my heart that this building is on fire." The two men burn to death.
Did these two men actually believe that the deli was on fire? No. If they did they would have done something - run, scream, pass-out, grab a fire extinguisher, something. Such is the case with many in the church today with their concept of faith. They believe in a doctrine but their life is uneffected. No one meets Almighty God and goes back to life as usual. I've left out more than I've covered in this discussion on faith. We have not even touched on the Incarnation - the center of our faith. Such is the case with blogs. If it was thorough it would be called a book.
God Bless.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Jesus Christ: The Great Paradox
I came across a blog recently that begrudged Christians for not coming up with reasonable explanations for the many paradoxes of the Christian faith. These sorts of attacks give me great joy. I'm not insensitive to the rationalistic knee-jerk that wants everything to be fully explainable in logical and systematic language, regardless of the subject matter. It is natural to want knowledge of all things - it makes us feel powerful, like gods.
The paradox of the incarnation of Christ is the greatest example of God taking the wisdom of the world and making it foolishness; of giving of sight to the blind and blindness to those who claim to see. If you're unaware of the paradox, let me explain it in simple terms: If God is eternal, meaning He never came into existence but has existed eternally without the confines of the time-space continuum, then how could God have 'come into existence' at a point of time in world history in the Person of Jesus Christ? Either Jesus Christ was not God in the flesh, or we're stuck with a logical absurdity.
The fact that Christianity is founded on this logical absurdity - the incarnation - is not a recent discovery. The Church has gotten by just fine for 2000 years despite this fact. It has always been a stumbling block for the Jews (symbolic of religion) and for the Greeks (symbolic of philosophy/rational inquiry and explanation). The Church has always understood that the incarnation is the only way that God could have redeemed humankind; this logical absurdity is the only way humankind could ever be reconciled to God. For those who work better with a flow chart or steps, as I do, I offer the following reasons why the great paradox of Christianity is paramount to authentic Christianity:
1. If God is Spirit then He is forever a subject and not an object within the framework of the material world. He must be approached as a subject - subjectively/relationally. He is not an object that can be studied as if one can come to 'know' Him by simply studying his attributes. In short, faith (the relationship God calls humankind into) is not attained through mental assent to a set of divine propositions about God. This is not to say mental assent is not important, but it is important to separate it from one's understanding of how faith is attained. One must recognize that God is not discovered through science for the simple fact that He is not an object in the material universe, yet God became material in the Person of Jesus Christ but was still undetectable as God through natural means of investigation. He will always be elusive to scientific inquiry.
2. If God came to mankind in all His glory He would have robbed humankind of any ability for them to come to Him through love and subjectivity. Why? Because seeing God in His glory would overwhelm a person's physical senses and forever relegate them to a sense attraction to God rather than a inward, love attraction.
2/b. Imagine a king who secretly fell in love with a common girl. How could the king ever capture the common girl's heart? If he approached her wearing the royal crown, the royal robe, and surrounded with the royal court he would rob the girl of her coming to love the king from her heart. His 'glory' would overwhelm the girl's natural senses, all she would see before her was the majestic king who demanded worship due to his position. The king decides to enter the city in a form that would not give away his 'kingness,' he would leave behind all his royal trappings and attempt to lure the girl with his love rather than his power. Likewise, God came to humankind in the form of a man, no, less than a man - a servant; in complete cognito, longing to enter through the HEART of His would-be Bride, rather than through her eyes.
Christian, take joy in the great paradox! Christ is not available to an exclusive group of intellectuals, he is available to babes and sages alike. The Paradox IS your faith - Emmanuel: God with us.
Atheists, take joy in the great paradox! You can forever justify your lack of belief using your keen intellect to rise above the foolishness of the cross. Feel no urgency to come to the Lord as your life slowly draws to a close with each passing hour. Know that nothing awaits you on the other side; mindless nature birthed you for no particular reason. Come to your last breath with the assurance that your rational deconstruction of Christ has served you well, feel confident that the torment of eternal separation from your Creator does not await you. Know that your existence was the result of the mindless natural order which somehow gave you the ability to think, and somehow made you believe that paradoxes even exist, causing you to be far too smart to fall for the Great Paradox. You are much too intelligent to love the Lord who died for you.
Cheers.
The paradox of the incarnation of Christ is the greatest example of God taking the wisdom of the world and making it foolishness; of giving of sight to the blind and blindness to those who claim to see. If you're unaware of the paradox, let me explain it in simple terms: If God is eternal, meaning He never came into existence but has existed eternally without the confines of the time-space continuum, then how could God have 'come into existence' at a point of time in world history in the Person of Jesus Christ? Either Jesus Christ was not God in the flesh, or we're stuck with a logical absurdity.
The fact that Christianity is founded on this logical absurdity - the incarnation - is not a recent discovery. The Church has gotten by just fine for 2000 years despite this fact. It has always been a stumbling block for the Jews (symbolic of religion) and for the Greeks (symbolic of philosophy/rational inquiry and explanation). The Church has always understood that the incarnation is the only way that God could have redeemed humankind; this logical absurdity is the only way humankind could ever be reconciled to God. For those who work better with a flow chart or steps, as I do, I offer the following reasons why the great paradox of Christianity is paramount to authentic Christianity:
1. If God is Spirit then He is forever a subject and not an object within the framework of the material world. He must be approached as a subject - subjectively/relationally. He is not an object that can be studied as if one can come to 'know' Him by simply studying his attributes. In short, faith (the relationship God calls humankind into) is not attained through mental assent to a set of divine propositions about God. This is not to say mental assent is not important, but it is important to separate it from one's understanding of how faith is attained. One must recognize that God is not discovered through science for the simple fact that He is not an object in the material universe, yet God became material in the Person of Jesus Christ but was still undetectable as God through natural means of investigation. He will always be elusive to scientific inquiry.
2. If God came to mankind in all His glory He would have robbed humankind of any ability for them to come to Him through love and subjectivity. Why? Because seeing God in His glory would overwhelm a person's physical senses and forever relegate them to a sense attraction to God rather than a inward, love attraction.
2/b. Imagine a king who secretly fell in love with a common girl. How could the king ever capture the common girl's heart? If he approached her wearing the royal crown, the royal robe, and surrounded with the royal court he would rob the girl of her coming to love the king from her heart. His 'glory' would overwhelm the girl's natural senses, all she would see before her was the majestic king who demanded worship due to his position. The king decides to enter the city in a form that would not give away his 'kingness,' he would leave behind all his royal trappings and attempt to lure the girl with his love rather than his power. Likewise, God came to humankind in the form of a man, no, less than a man - a servant; in complete cognito, longing to enter through the HEART of His would-be Bride, rather than through her eyes.
Christian, take joy in the great paradox! Christ is not available to an exclusive group of intellectuals, he is available to babes and sages alike. The Paradox IS your faith - Emmanuel: God with us.
Atheists, take joy in the great paradox! You can forever justify your lack of belief using your keen intellect to rise above the foolishness of the cross. Feel no urgency to come to the Lord as your life slowly draws to a close with each passing hour. Know that nothing awaits you on the other side; mindless nature birthed you for no particular reason. Come to your last breath with the assurance that your rational deconstruction of Christ has served you well, feel confident that the torment of eternal separation from your Creator does not await you. Know that your existence was the result of the mindless natural order which somehow gave you the ability to think, and somehow made you believe that paradoxes even exist, causing you to be far too smart to fall for the Great Paradox. You are much too intelligent to love the Lord who died for you.
Cheers.
Monday, January 5, 2009
The Problem with Modern Philosophy
"Among the things that have occasioned so much confusion in modern philosophizing is that the philosophers make so many brief statements about infinite tasks and mutually respect this paper money, although it almost never occurs to anyone, existing, to want to try his hand at fulfilling the task's requirement." (Soren Kierkegaard, "Concluding Postscripts")
If Kierkegaard had the luxury of looking forward 150 years he would see that nothing has changed whatsoever. Kierkegaard was, at the time, railing against the ridiculous notion of doubting everything made popular by Rene Descarte. Kierk said, "The presupposition, for example, of doubting everything would take a whole lifetime; now, however, it is done as swiftly as it is said." The point is: people rarely enact what they claim to believe.
Let me pick on atheists for a moment and then I will swiftly move and attack myself and my own branch - Christians. The majority of atheists I meet, especially on blogs, are straight up frauds. If Nietzsche said "There has ever only been one Christian, he died on a cross and the rest are hypocrites," then I declare there has ever only been one atheist, he died in an insane asylum (Nietzsche) and the rest are hypocrites.
Nietzsche was unique among atheists in that he actually took to task the work of appropriating the logical ends of an atheistic ideology. He sought to go 'Beyond Good and Evil,' for the simple fact that if no God exists and we, humans, are the result of millions of years of biological evolution then we cannot speak of 'good' and 'evil' as if they carry any merit in actuality. Good and evil are as foreign to nature as 'natural' and 'supernatural'; these two terms (good and evil) live not only exclusively in the minds of humans, but live there as phantoms - imaginations thrusted upon us by bio-chemistry.
Most atheists today will give 'good' and 'evil' some play in their philosophy because they realize the dead-end they are in for if they completely deny these two terms real validity. They will give "paper money" explanations of how evolution granted us our ideas of good and evil without any need of an eternal standard given by a Standard Maker. But even if one is to allow these explanations to take root in their logic, can they live it? Can they live as if good and evil are simply a matter of non-rational/material evolution with no eternal foundation? Rather than answer the question with more abstract reasoning (which is incapable of causing one to act) try answering it in your everyday life. Every time a situation comes along that tests your moral code (whatever code you've adopted) tell yourself: "millions of years of bio-chemical evolution has made my mind believe that this is wrong therefore I will not do it" and see how that works. Will you not immediately laugh at such a standard and go right on doing what you wanted to do because... you don't really believe bio-evolution can give you a morality of 'good' and 'evil' with any seriousness? Before you call my bluff, try it.
Nietzsche had it right: to go beyond belief in God is to go beyond good and evil. If one has not gone beyond good and evil, then one has not gone beyond belief in God. As Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D. puts it, "Nietzsche was a savage enemy of all lukewarmness, all halfway housebuilding, whether done in the name of religion or irreligion." Atheists often live as if there is a God, and the religious, often, as if there is not.
Now on to those Nietzsche most lamented - liberal Christians. By liberal I don't mean simply those who deny the virgin birth or who deny Christ's divinity, I mean those who nod their heads in agreement at the preaching of the word and return to their "halfway housebuilding" project of life. I can't speak for others but I can tell you why I am not faithful to appropriate all the words of Christ to my life: I'm scared to death! What if I become the kind of believer Jesus describes, what if I take His every word and live it out? Will I not become a freak, a fugitive in my own home, an outcast in the world, one who the world mocks and religion hunts down and kills? Will I not suffer the most intense trials and hardships one can imagine? YES, but oh the joy! (Oh how I long to welcome the suffering that comes from righteous living!)
Break out from your abstract theological philosophy! Quit pretending to know the Lord who radically changes your life if it has not been changed. Do not deal yourself the 'paper money' of pious talk, but seek the true riches of His kingdom. Let the skeptic doubt and the religious remain blind, but you - come to the Lord! Let Him take hold of your life Christian, not just your agreement. Pray for me, and I for you, that we may come to truly know the Way, the Truth, and the Life - Christ Jesus.
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