David Hart's fine essay on atheism and morality at
First Things moves me to relate a parable:
Once a race of men, men like us, dwelt on a beautiful planet which orbited a distant star. The star bathed the planet in heat and light sustaining lush forests, beautiful lakes and oceans, and crystal blue skies. Agriculture flourished and food was abundant.
One day, though, the planet's intellectuals gathered together to complain amongst themselves about their sun. It was too hot and oppressive, they bemoaned. There were sometimes droughts in which people died of thirst and the crops withered. People exposed to the sun suffered from cancers of the skin and other maladies that were cited as evidence of the sun's capricious cruelty.
Resentments grew. Then, at a time oddly enough called the age of enlightenment, the intellectuals sought ways to kill the sun. They didn't need it, they cried. It was a burden on their existence. They wanted to liberate themselves from the tyranny it imposed. There was enough energy stored in the wood, coal and oil to drive their civilization for thousands of years.
In their feeble attempts to slay the sun they threw stones at it. They shot arrows at it. Meanwhile, the common folk just shook their heads at this foolishness and conformed their lives to the sun's nature and courses, but the intellectuals were resolved to succeed in their quest to snuff the sun out.
Then, one day, the sun began to gutter. It's light suddenly dimmed to a reddish glow, and the planet was shrouded in darkness. "We have killed it," the intellectuals exulted. "It is a marvelous thing we have done. Now we are free to show what human ingenuity and reason can accomplish as we use our wits to build a glorious civilization without having to sweat under the scorching fires of a sun.
At first everyone put their shoulders to the work of collecting firewood and coal, but soon it became clear that something was terribly wrong. The planet was growing colder, the oceans were freezing, the vegetation was dying. The beauty of the planet was disappearing and the globe was turning into a rocky, barren, frozen wasteland.
Civilization was driven underground. Food became scarce. There was not enough light to grow crops in the subterranean greenhouses. Children shivered in the cold. The intellectuals insisted that everyone was better off that men could create their own light if only they tried harder. They demanded that the people redouble their efforts to mine the stored energy, but it was plain that it was running out. The sun had all but abandoned them and with every day it became clearer that the people could not long survive on what energy was left.
Then the people began to cry out, "Who told us we could kill the sun and be liberated from it's oppressive heat?" "Who told us we no longer needed the sun to live as men?" The intellectuals, so haughty and arrogant before, now hid in their underground caves in fear of the people's wrath. Their own fires were flickering and sputtering and would soon burn out. The once gorgeous planet and the glorious civilization it sustained would soon be a dead, lifeless, frozen husk.
The moral of the parable: Modern man is like the men living on a planet whose sun has gone out. He has "slain" the source of the energy which gave rise to his rich civilization. He has slain the source of his moral light and vitality, and he's trying to survive on the leftover capital bestowed by that once mighty star. Someday, though, all of that will be used up as well. Then his civilization will die of spiritual inanition.