Challenging me has really helped me progress my ideas on Mopologetics and morality, professor. Well, Symmachus pointed out something important on another thread; that the apologists aren't very original. They aren't the first ones to say "without God all is permitted" and push lawlessness onto disbelief. It's a pretty longstanding point by religious authorities universally, and I've mentioned specifically to Mormonism, Neal A. Maxwell was famous for quips about disbelief and relativism. So why is it so much more annoying when the apologists make these points than when other church leaders make them?
I kid you not, I woke up this morning an hour earlier thanks to PDT with the answer. Maxwell's thoughts on relativism were pretty shallow, the point was basically: look, without God as the lighthouse to guide your ship, you're left navigating the sea of relativism and who knows where you'll end up.
I took a quick peek at a typical Maxwell talk that takes on secularism and I think my point is going to stand. His article is in fact, childish, to be honest, but he appears to hold the theme that out there on the seas of relativism, it's hit and miss. There are good people who have had good ideas, but not the full picture. They try to do good but ultimately end up getting something wrong. In contrast, God, the great lighthouse, has guided a Church that has never failed in any of its ideas.
There is a big difference between saying 'without God all is permitted', and 'without God, evil is logically required'. It's one thing to say (although horribly naïve in this context) that Hoffman, after abandoning God (at age 12) was on his own. He picked up very bad habits, unlike Gemli, and went down a bad path and see? It's another to say, Hoffman after abandoning God as a child, followed his disbelief in God to its logical conclusions of fraud and murder. It's one thing to say that Gemli, out there on his own as an atheist, has picked and chosen from the market of ideas, and while he's chosen some good ideas, surely he's messed up on others. It's too bad he doesn't have the big lighthouse so that he can be right all the time like Neal. A. Maxwell was. But it's another to say Gemli is probably a decent person, but not because he's picked up on some truth, but because he's systematically stupid and irrational, and does good despite the fact his beliefs require him to be a murderer. It's a whole new level of insult.
And there's one additional twist. This is a real cherry for the top. The same guy saying that materialism requires us to be selfish and that selfishness leads to murder and mayhem, is the same guy who says that spirituality requires us to be selfish, and that selfishness leads to optimizing consumption, and that the pinnacle of the truth of consumption maximization is embodied in "price gouging". Remember "three cheers for price gouging" at the beginning of the pandemic? If Mark Hoffman forged a document, that's bad. See what greed does? But if a boy scout buys all the toilet paper at the local convenience store during a pandemic, and then his father, who is a bishop, helps him set up a stand outside and sell it to his suffering neighbors at a 9000% price markup then "three cheers!" "Hurray!" If Mark Hoffman killed people to cover his tracks, look at what selfishness does! But if power companies in Texas charge 10,000$ per Kilowatt to a lucky few, while other suffer or freeze and die, then "three cheers for price gouging!" "Hurray for the market, that doesn't give a damn about equality, or your wittle feelings!"
We're not dealing with a well individual.