God is the prerequisite to "ought"

I just got back from NoVA to find Vox ripping apart Aaron Kinney over this:

Good luck supporting that statement, Vox! I would pay money to see a "might = right" moral code that is truly derived from the negative claim of atheism. Again, atheism has nothing to say about morality; atheism makes no positive claims. Vox is in the land of straw men. The sad part is that I think he isn't even aware of his straw men. His understanding of atheism is woefully inadequate, and here he is shooting his mouth off. I wonder if Vox even understands the difference between a positive and a negative claim?

There is a fundamental problem with atheism and its negative claim. Without a law-giver, there is no rational basis for "ought to." The very concept of what we "ought to do" is the fundamental foundation of morality, it is the guiding force behind all morality, atheism cannot provide a coherent foundation for it because it leaves the question of "what ought we do" to each individual. Ironically, it is the process of leaving basic morality up to individual interpretation which has caused most of libertarianism's hurdles because it leaves people wiggle room to violate the rights of others for causes that are perceived to be good and worthy.

In the Judao-Christian tradition, God is the lawgiver and ultimate source of "what we ought to do." God directs us to respect the life, liberty and property of all of humanity, something that atheism cannot compel the degenerate to do. No offense, but you have to have little more than a pop culture education in biblical theology to think that God is a fascist; His true nature is quite liberal and far more so than most people. God generally doesn't tell us what to do, think, wear, eat, etc. The vast majority of the theological laws attributed to revelation by the prophets and not Jewish cultural traditions can be summed up as, "and do no harm to anyone shall be the whole of the law." God commands us to live in peace, and there are chunks of the New Testament that direct Christians to seek compromise, not to force others to conform to their personal standards. That's for personal tastes, etc., but the bottom line is that the message is one of accepting others differences when they are not immoral or go against the flow of nature. I suppose we could get into an entire discussion about the doctrine of grace, but that would be lost on the average atheist.

Regardless, it all comes down to the question of what we ought to do, and atheism provides no basis for finding that. It should be rather telling to many of the radical atheist libertarians that classical liberalism derives much of its roots from the doctrine of predestination that came out of the reformation. I've met more calvinists that hold libertarian sentiments than I have met atheists, and it always astounded me when I was an agnostic how many atheists were often even more eager to push their "rational" decisions on others. I have never met anyone as convinced that they have God-given special dispensation to force others to conform to their standards than an atheist socialist. Whereas the Bible commands the believer to be respectful and mindful of the individuality of others as it is a reflection of God's greatness, His creation and His depth of wisdom, character and personality.

Let's not forget one thing, Aaron, humans are religious animals as Umberto Eco rightfully pointed out. Political ideologies in the 20^th century were made the de facto replacements for organized religion by millions around the world, and the result was a bloodbath so horrifying that it made the previous, nominally religion-inspired problems seem like nothing by comparison. This is the crux of the matter, the heart of the problem. When God is "killed," people will invent a new god that is more to their liking and I would like to see an atheist seriously dispute my claim that atheism-inspired idols and false gods like the Soviet and Nazi states aren't far worse than anything in Judaism or Christianity.

Atheism's negative claim creates a vacuum that nature or humans will fill. Despite the claims of a few liberty-minded atheists, the net result of atheism has not historically been faith in the efficacy of the individual, but the efficacy of the state. This happens precisely because of the simple fact that without God imposing His plan on humanity, what we ought to do becomes a question settled between the weak and the strong and the strong always win in an atheist world because they have no advocate in a divine power. So no, atheism is not explicitly might-makes-right, but it does have the problem that in nature, without God, the strong win and the weak lose. In that framework, the only morality that would survive the test of time is a relativistic morality based on the whims of the strong, not the weak since there would be no natural check on the strong.

Atheists, you can deny it all you want, but if you put a strong person in a setting with a weak person, the former will usually in some way dominate the other unless there are moral checks in place. The problem is that when you take God out of the picture, the strong person has no inherent reason, and when I say inherent I mean a priori to the existance of states and their laws, to respect the rights of the weak person. Atheism forces morality to work by standing on the good graces of the strong, and leaves the weak with no universal rule that they know will be upheld on their behalf. Even if the foundation of Christian morality is false, at least we have a framework in which we can confidently tell the strong that they are bound by the same laws as the weak and thus must respect the rights of the weak as though they were their own.