God is back, says Sholto Byrnes; in fact, He never went away. He's twice right (Sholto is, I mean): religion is ever with us, and it's therefore with us still. I'm glad to be able to record these two points of agreement, because the rest of the argument ain't so hot:
"Without God," wrote Dostoevsky, "everything is permitted." Proponents of secular liberal democracy would vehemently disagree, pointing to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights or the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. We're very fond of talking about rights, and we are highly attached to them. But even when we are not using the term sloppily - unless it's enshrined in law, for instance, you no more have the "right" not to breathe in my second-hand smoke on the street than I have the "right" to your last Rolo - we are all too hazy about where they come from.Byrnes's argument, not uncommon among those of faith, is that if you don't have God as a source of morality you're left with a hole you can't fill. Right and wrong become subject to human interpretation - as if, even with God, the devout managed to avoid this - and are relativized, depending on what goes down well and badly in different societies. Of course, we atheists and humanists have our responses to this old argument: we, too, know about social and cultural difference; we, too, have a source - a source of moral unity, if you like - from which to argue for some general, universalist norms. We do not simply follow Dostoevsky's well-known dictum and lay about us, disemebowelling, deceiving, betraying, slaying. We advert to the needs and interests of human beings, and the necessity of their living together. We work outwards from there. It's only a starting point; it doesn't resolve everything, not by far. A bit like belief in God doesn't.
What does Sholto Byrnes have to say to this? This is what he has to say:
Talk about human nature or "inherent" rights may seem to make passable sense, but on examination fails to rise above assertion...I'd reckon there was a mite more evidence for the existence of a human nature than there is for Byrnes's preferred source. Of course, if you believe in Him, He might seem totally real. But 'fails to rise above assertion' is not a locution I think I'd favour were I ever, as now seems unlikely, to come into that sort of belief.