In a televised debate with Alan Keyes, Alan Dershowitz argued that he did not believe in God, while maintaining that people who do not believe in God can establish and do what is right, and there is no need to invoke God for us to be a moral society. He said repeatedly in one form or another, all we have to do, is do what is right. That became his mantra for refuting the idea that we need God to know right and wrong. All we need to do is what is right, he would say.
The question from the audience for Dershowitz was this, “What makes something right?” Following is his response.
It’s a question I’m actually writing a book about. It’s called “Doing Right.” In my book, I reject natural law. I also reject simple legal positivism. If something is right, you have to struggle over that. It’s very, very difficult. There are no simpleminded answers. It’s not because God says so. Certainly I don’t hear the voice of God. I don’t believe any human being has ever heard the voice of God. But what is right is very difficult. What’s right is what experience has taught us over generations is right. In my book, I say it’s much easier to know what’s wrong than to know what’s right. We know what absolute evil is. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it in the name of Secularism: Nazism. We’ve seen it in the name of atheism: Communism. We’ve seen it in the name of religion: the inquisitions and the crusades. We know what evil is. We know what wrong is. Right is a process. Right-ing is a process. A process of eternal search, beginning from the first human beings, moving through the Greek philosophers, through religious leaders, through civil leaders. I don’t know what’s right. I know what’s wrong. But I have something else to tell you folks. You don’t know what’s right. The minute you think you know what’s right, the minute you think you have the answer to what’s right, you have lost a very precious aspect of growing and developing. I don’t expect ever to know precisely what’s right, but I expect to devote the rest of my life to trying to find out. (italics added) ((http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=159474-1))
Now I am really perplexed, if no one knows what is right, then why did he write a book about it–whatever it is? If one does not know what right is, then how pray tell may one know what is evil since evil is the absence of right? Moreover, how does Dr. Dershowitz know that no one else knows what right is, for that seems to make him all knowing and able to determine that someone does not possess what he cannot even identify. A fortiori, why should anyone read his book, which by his own admission is not right since he does not know what is right and has no intention of ever knowing?
Lastly, while I do agree that Dr. Dershowitz has never heard the voice of God, which is undeniably true since he does not know what is right; I take exception to his averring that “[no other] human has ever heard the voice of God” since he gives no evidence for such a Brobdingnagian claim.
It seems quite clear to me when faced with the option of believing Dr. Dershowitz’s claim–having already conceded that he does not know what is right–or believing Jesus’ claim, to not only know truth, but to be truth (John 14:6), for which he gave ample supporting evidence, it makes little sense to side with Dershowitz.
