FSTDT

It may help to recognize that the spiritual inability of unbelievers to repent (without God’s help) is self-imposed. They reject God’s offers of mercy and salvation, but not because of any physical inability. Rather, they have absolutely no desire to repent because they hate God’s law and they love their sin. Jesus says as much in John 3:19-20.

And so the analogy of someone with Down’s Syndrome being imprisoned because he cannot act normal is not fitting because such a person does desire to behave normally, but is physically unable to do so – the opposite of the situation with unbelievers. They do have the physical ability to obey God’s law and even to repent, but they have absolutely no desire to do so because they hate God’s law and love their sin.

A better analogy is a violent murderer who has been repeatedly offered forgiveness if only he will repent and stop murdering. But he doesn’t repent because he hates people and just loves murdering them. Is the man able to stop murdering? In one sense, yes, because his choice to murder is free and not due to external compulsion. But in another sense, no, because he will do what he desires, what he freely chooses: to murder. His spiritual inability to repent is self-imposed because he loves doing what he does. The conviction and capital punishment of such a wicked person would certainly be fair. Likewise, unbelievers do have a choice, and it is genuine. The problem is that they will choose to reject Christ every time because it is what they want – unless God changes their heart. Unbelievers do not end up in hell because they have no choice, but rather because they do have a choice and, left to themselves, they will always choose hell (Psalm 14:2-3).

Tony, morality is about “what should be,” not “what is.” You are trying to explain why people do behave in a particular way (because it benefited their survival in the past). But that doesn’t explain why we should continue to behave that way today. First, you are arguing that “right” is what achieves a particular end – in this case, the survival of the most people. But that presupposes that such an end is itself morally commendable. In a Christian worldview, yes, people have innate value to God and are worth saving. But in an evolutionary worldview, how would maximizing the survival of a bunch of chemical accidents be morally commendable? Is it also morally commendable to maximize the chemical reactions taking place in a car engine? Should we try and create as many internal combustion engines as possible since this is morally right? So you are stealing from the Christian worldview when you presume that people have innate value.]

[Second, even if I grant that people have intrinsic worth (which makes no sense on your system), it would still lead to absurd results. If maximizing the survival of people is what determines morally right, then we should outlaw all extreme sports (sky-diving, car-racing, etc.) since these sometimes result in fatalities. In fact, if you really believed that maximizing human survival was what determines “right” then you would want to restrict as much human freedom as possible in order to accomplish this, e.g. along the lines of the robots in “I Robot.” It would be against the law to not have children. etc.]