The Many Faces, and Causes, of Unbelief - Apologetics Press

When man exalts “reason alone” as the final standard, and
limits his knowledge of God to whatever he can discern from
the natural world around him, he is destined to fail. As Sire
has explained:
In some ways, we can say that limiting knowledge
about God to general revelation is like finding that
eating eggs for breakfast makes the morning go well—
and then eating only eggs for breakfast (and maybe
lunch and dinner too) for the rest of one’s life (which
now unwittingly becomes rather shortened!). To be
sure theism assumes that we can know something
about God from nature. But it also holds that there is
much more to know than can be known that way
and that there are other ways to know (1988, pp.
49-50, parenthetical comments and emp. in orig.).
Consider such an admonition as it relates to the deist’s belief
that human ethics and morals may be fashioned by mere
“reason alone” based on the “natural world.” Hoover has commented:
Especially puerile was the deistic belief that you could
establish an ethical code by mere reason based only
on nature. Which part of nature do we consult for this
moral standard? What animal gives us the norm?
Some spiders eat their mate after sexual intercourse—
should we humans imitate this example? If not, which
animal shall we follow? (p. 14).
If, according to deism, the Universe is both normal and perfect,
and nature is God’s complete revelation of Himself, then
obviously both would reveal what is right. This leads inevitably
to the position that
...God, being the omnipotent Creator, becomes responsible
for everything as it is. This world must
then reflect either what God wants or what he is like.
Ethically, this leads to the position expressed by Alexander
Pope [in volume one, line 294 of his work,
Essay on Man—BT]: “One truth is clear, whatever is,
is right.” This position really ends in destroying ethics.
If whatever is, is right, then there is no evil. Good
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