A couple of nights ago it was our privilege to participate in an event at Blue Mountain College in Blue Mountain, Mississippi. I confess that prior to a few months ago, I had heard of neither the town nor the college. But I am delighted to have made the acquaintance of both. Organizer Wendy Smith did a terrific job of pulling this event together and bringing in students as well as people from the community.

Fixed Point "tech guy" Ben Halbrooks, who accompanied me on the trip, observed that events of this type are rare for us. What he meant was that we frequently find ourselves in environments that are at best neutral to our (Christian) worldview and frequently contained a hostile element. There was something very refreshing about being in a small Southern town (my roots) where the people were friendly and hospitable.

On another note, yesterday morning I was doing an interview with American Family Radio, which broadcasts to some 26 states. (Click here to listen to a recording of the interview.) During the call-in segment of the program, an atheist called in to challenge my assertion that good and evil cannot exist in a world without God. Now, to be clear, I was not suggesting that atheists cannot be, relatively speaking, moral people. I was, rather, arguing that they have no transcendent reason for being so and, therefore, have no logical basis for their morality.

Predictably, he disagreed.

But when I asked him to give me the basis for his conviction that horrors like, say, the Holocaust were "evil", he could not give a clear answer. Instead he simply said that life was "special" and "extraordinary." When I pressed further, asking him to give content to those words, he faltered. You see, words like "special" and "extraordinary" imply value, and in a Godless world, value does not exist. If by these words he meant that life is statistically improbable, then okay, but this does nothing to buttress his position.

Princeton bioethicist and atheist Peter Singer would not have agreed with him. Perhaps the most logically consistent atheist, Singer very much agrees with me on this point: If there is no God, there is no absolute right and wrong, no meaning in life, and no dignity for mankind; man is simply another animal.

I am surprised by the number of atheists I encounter who do not understand this. They want to throw out belief in God, but retain some degree of meaning and morality in their lives. But you cannot have it both ways. It is an all or nothing proposition as Singer understands very well. "You cannot," as a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs once observed, "go over Niagra Falls halfway." I could not have said it better.

Note: If you, dear caller, happen to read this blog, please know that I wanted to talk to you more. I take your comments seriously and believe that you are both well-intentioned and sincere. Sadly, time constraints do not always permit a leisurely discussion.