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Can Atheists Defend Human Rights?
God is dead ‒ it’s just taking a while to get rid of the body. ‒ Yuval Noah Harari
If God does not exist, everything is permitted. ‒ Fyodor Dostoevsky
This statement, often associated with the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, though never actually written by him, encapsulates some of the ways some theists view atheism and what they think is its necessary correlation with nihilism. It has been extensively quoted by theologians and apologists alike.
It has also often been invoked by believers when reminded that the world is becoming more secular. If the world is more secular, what stops people from infringing on other people’s rights? If our values are arbitrary, evolved by chance, how can our rights be universal and guaranteed equally? For the Christian, the answer is they cannot.
From Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Ravi Zacharias, to Eric Metaxas, and many other popular contemporary thinkers, the Western world, which in theory (and reality, to some extent) harnesses the values of liberty and free speech for all, is directly descended from Judeo-Christian principles. Without Judaism and Christianity, they claim, we would have never achieved the intellectual, moral, and human rights progress most now enjoy in…
