Huckleberry Finn is probably one of the greatest works of literature in the English language. I highly recommend it. There are dozens of essays that could be written on the themes in that book, in fact I have a feeling a lot of them have already been written. I want to talk about one of the most important themes as far as I am concerned. In the following excerpt Huck Finn is struggling to make one of the most momentous decisions human beings are ever called upon to make:
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter - and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson, your runaway [slave] Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. Huck Finn.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing.
But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, "stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and suchlike times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he"s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell" - and tore it up.
There is a British creationist I've been in conversation with lately. His "handle" is Dimension11. We'd been having an off-topic conversation about people who pray over their children instead of taking them to the doctor. Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac also came up. At one point in the conversation Dim11 said this:
"I believe any parents responsible for the harm of their children should be dealt with severely by the law. I am a Christian, and I am supposed to forgive and love my enemy. However, if I came face to face with a paedophile, he would never walk or have sex again. To ensure SOME children never get abused by him would be worth the possibility of hell."
So what's going on in these two passages? God has some authoritative, immutable rules. One of them is "Thou shalt not steal" another is "don't judge people, don't cause harm to people. . . do unto others as you would have them do to you for this is the law and the prophets." What's going on here? Are these people setting themselves above God's absolute moral authority?
Yes, that's what they are doing. Huck Finn and Dim11 have their own morality above all others. Above God, above the Bible. And both are prepared to go to hell rather than compromise their personal moral code.
I don't think there's such a thing as "natural morality" that exists outside of time and culture. I think we grow our own, that it is a natural consequence of who we are as a species.
Charles Darwin wrote:
