📘 About This Series
This post is part of a daily response series to The Problem of God: Answering a Skeptic’s Challenges to Christianity by Mark Clark. The series critically engages with each chapter and section of the book, examining Clark’s arguments through the lens of reason, historical evidence, and The God Question’s core philosophy: what’s true doesn’t fear investigation.
Today’s post responds to content found in pages 45-47 of the book — the section titled “What If They Ate Your Sister?”
If you’re just joining us, you can view all prior entries in this series on The God Question blog at https://godordelusion.com/the-god-question/. The God Question is a blog that investigates Christian claims with clarity, courage, and calm. We believe truth can withstand scrutiny—and that real meaning doesn’t require pretending to know what we don’t.
Can we know that something is morally wrong—even if we don’t believe in God?
Mark Clark doesn’t think so.
In Chapter 2 of The Problem of God, Clark tells a story from his time at Michaels craft store. An atheist co-worker claimed that morality is culturally constructed. To test him, Clark asks: “What if a jungle tribe tortured and ate your sister? Could you really say that’s wrong?” The implication is clear: If you don’t believe in objective morality, you must accept that cannibalism is just a matter of taste.
But this argument falls apart under scrutiny.
It relies on shock—not reason. Clark knows we’ll recoil in horror at the idea of someone eating a loved one. That horror, he argues, proves the existence of a moral law, which in turn proves the existence of a lawgiver—God.
But this is emotional sleight of hand. Just because something feels deeply wrong doesn’t mean it requires a supernatural explanation. Our moral instincts are real—but they’re also explainable through biology, psychology, and culture. Evolution favors cooperation and empathy. We’ve learned, over centuries, that causing harm leads to chaos.
Clark’s argument also creates a false choice: Either you believe in God, or you believe nothing is really wrong. That’s simply not true. Secular ethics offers a rich tradition of moral reasoning based on harm reduction, shared values, and reason—not divine command.
And ironically, history shows that religious people—including Christians—have often used “God’s law” to justify moral atrocities: slavery, holy war, racism, subjugation of women. These weren’t moral advances—they were cultural norms disguised as divine mandates.
So the real question is this: Do we need God to explain why torturing people is wrong?
No.
We need empathy, intelligence, and a commitment to human dignity. And those are available to believers and non-believers alike.
A clear, clever breakdown of moral development from a secular point of view.
God or Delusion? 