Explain 'moral', Christopher.

Christopher Hitchens was famous for his debating ploy with Christians, asking them to name one moral act that Christians can to that atheists cannot do.

Most are flumoxed.

Here's a reply a pal of mine would make:

Sorry Christopher, but your question is misconceived because Christians are capable of doing every moral act whereas atheists are incapable of doing anything morally right.

When Christopher's apoplexy ended you would have placed the burden of proof back onto him by asking him to explain how any act within a materialist worldview can be moral. In other words, on what true and justified meta-ethical basis can an atheist say he is acting morally without question-begging, invoking brute facts (a disingenuous blood relative of question-begging) or forever cascading along that infinite regress.

 

An alternative is:

 

A person who is not a Christian is incapable of any morally upright act.

 

Again, after the apoplexy dies down.

 

Christopher, you are using your incomplete world view to batter my complete world view. Step inside mine for a moment. 

 

Paul in Romans 3 starts this passage with perhaps Psalm 14:3, and then runs through a number of Old Testament ideas:

 

“There is no righteous person, not even one;
¹¹ There is no one who understands,
There is no one who seeks out God;
¹² They have all turned aside, together they have become ^[i]corrupt;
There is no one who does good,
There is not even one.”
¹³ “Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,”
“The venom of ^[j]asps is under their lips”;
¹⁴ “Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”;
¹⁵ “Their feet are swift to shed blood,
¹⁶ Destruction and misery are in their paths,
¹⁷ And they have not known the way of peace.”
¹⁸ “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

He also deals with the universal dilemma of the reflective person: "I do what I don't want to do, and don't do what I do want to do" Romans 7:21-25.

What's your solution, dead Christopher? Avoidance? Denial? Rejection of your own failings?