Another problem with atheism

To an atheist life in the universe came about by chance.  In the vast cosmos, among billions of galaxies containing billions of stars each, life began on earth.  We only have to travel to the moon for the earth to be small enough to hide behind our thumb, so imagine the insignificant speck of nothing our piece of the milky way is on the galactic scale.

According to evolutionists life began on earth in the primordial sea, a random mixture of amino acids energized by the atmosphere.  This life was mindless and accidentally evolved into something more complex and the process then repeated endlessly.

Let’s imagine that life did begin this way.  This means we’re alone in the universe.  If the evolutionists are correct and our existence is an accident then life has no purpose.

None.

If life came about by chance it has no meaning.  Something that exists by accident can’t have a purpose.  We can attempt to give life meaning by being good people (according to our own moral code), but that is only self-proclaimed meaning and it doesn’t protect us from the people who decide their meaning in life is to hurt others.  If life has no meaning then why bother trying to give it meaning?

This accidental life is mighty unfair.  Some people live into their nineties with nary a health concern while others are born with so many problems they die before their fifth birthday.  A serial murderer lives out a long life in prison while an innocent child is born with cancer and spends their childhood undergoing chemotherapy and constant trips to the hospital, only to die before a quarter of their life is over.

Some people have everything while others have nothing and the only difference may be the invisible line that separates their country from mine.  People in this accidental life rape children with impunity, sell drugs that destroy minds, amass gobs of money through fraud and sheer greed, and they kill fellow humans for being the “wrong” ethnicity.  A scary percentage of the population engages in behavior even the most primitive animals do not.

Despite supposedly being the highest form of life on this planet we act like delinquent children, eager to hurt each other and destroy the only home we have.

What kind of future do you wish to have?  What are you doing with your life?

If life is an accident why are you even asking those questions?

A problem with atheism

Everybody needs guidance.  We start life in this world a blank slate and our parents, with their loving efforts, attempt to shape us into decent adults.  No human has a monopoly on knowledge or wisdom, and so we look to other sources for help.

Some look to religious books.  Christians look to the Bible; Jews to the Talmud and the Old Testament; Muslims to the Koran; Hindus to the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita.  Buddhists, Shintos and others have less defined holy works but still have central teachings to be followed.

The point is they’re all looking for guidance.  Whether they chose their system of belief or were born into it, those teachings are their moral compass.  These works set out standards for right and wrong in a similar way that parents teach their children right and wrong.

Here’s the problem.  Atheists do not have this moral guide.  I do not mean atheists have no moral compass.  I mean they have no central guide to their life though this in itself does not make atheists bad people.

I listened to an interview with Christopher Hitchens in which the abuse of children within the Catholic Church came up.  Hitchens rightly decried the crime perpetuated by the priests but then said those acts are something no moral atheist would do.

Well of course not.  No moral person of any kind would do those things.  His statement was ill-considered and misleading because it implied all atheists were moral and all religious people weren’t, which is plainly not true.  Those priests believed in God but the pervert sitting at home downloading child porn doesn’t.  Both are just as bad.

The difference is religious people are given a moral guide to follow, though not all do.  Atheists have to make up their own standards, and that scares me.  Yes there are very good people out there who don’t believe in God.  They don’t hurt anyone, they do good works and they care for their families.  But what about the ones that don’t?

They have to decide completely on their own what is right and what is wrong.  Even governments don’t allow their citizens to do this.  When entirely left to our own devices the danger is our moral compass can be skewed.  What we determine to be right and wrong may change depending on whether someone with authority is watching, where we are and who we’re with.  Shouldn’t wrong things be wrong all the time?

Therefore theists look for wisdom from a source higher than themselves, just like a parent’s wisdom is higher than their children.

Atheists have decided they can live without these holy works.  But that brings up another problem.

Is religion inherently evil?

Suppose a person drank too much alcohol at a bar.  This person then gets in their car and attempts to drive home, plowing into another driver and killing them.  Does the victim’s family sue the car manufacturer or the driver?  It was the car that actually killed the other person but the driver was the one that misused something made for legitimate use.

The same can be said about religion, or at least the tenants the religion is based upon.  Does the misuse of religion or the misuse of the Bible prove God is at fault?  Or is it the person who is misusing it? 

Members of the Ku Klux Klan have, at times, used the Bible to justify their racist agenda.  Does the Bible promote one race above another?  No it does not.  The KKK seems to forget that the prominent ethnic groups featured in the Bible are not Caucasian at all. 

The Westboro Baptist Church blames all evil events on the existence of homosexuals.  Does the Bible agree.  No it does not.  While it does speak out against homosexuality it rates it alongside sex outside of marriage as wrong in God’s view.  Neither does the Bible promote or condone acts of violence, bullying or the use of derogatory terms towards homosexuals.  There is no scriptural basis for their hatred.

Muslim fundamentalists combine their twisted interpretation of the Koran with what they believe is Allah’s will to rationalize their acts of terrorism.  Yet that is a polluting of their holy book and the teachings of Muhammad.

Does the Bible condone the abuse of children?  Does it promote hurting those who disagree with your beliefs?  Does it claim one race is higher or lower than another?  Does it say God punishes the many for the acts of the few?

No.

It is a mistake to believe these groups accurately reflect the God they claim to represent without examining the facts for ourselves, and that includes understanding what the Bible actually says.  I believe what the Bible says because I’ve read it and made that decision for myself, not because it’s what my parents taught me and not because I’m ignorant of what others believe. 

If the Bible really did promote everything that is wrong with religion today it wouldn’t be the bestselling book in history.  It would have been forgotten or destroyed a long time ago. 

Atheist's ammunition: religion itself

In my first post I said most atheists are made and sadly the reason for their change of mind, all too often, is religion itself.  It doesn’t take a serious historian to understand that ancient religions weren’t very civilized.

The ancient Aztec’s engaged in human sacrifice, cutting the hearts out of living human offerings to appease their gods.  Another lost culture, the ancient Assyrians, were noted for their cruelty.  They also engaged in human sacrifice but they used children, using them in sacrificial offerings through fire.  Archaeologists have unearthed urns containing the tiny bones of children and babies involved in these religious rites.

But let’s be honest, “modern” religion doesn’t have a much better track record.  Christians of today claim the message their leader Jesus Christ proclaimed was that of love and tolerance.  Yet during the middle and dark ages people were burned at the stake, tortured, hanged, imprisoned or excommunicated by order of the Catholic Church (and Protestant) because a few brave souls dared to challenge what the church taught or attempted to translate the Bible into the languages of the day.

It is claimed the Pope is the infallible descendant of St. Peter but an afternoon spent reading the history of the popes shows a group of power hungry men who attempted to lead entire countries and engaged in a life of debauchery unequalled by their uneducated parishioners.  Interestingly the apostle Peter himself never claimed to be infallible, (reading the gospels shows he was not) so these men are claiming to be something higher than the man they supposedly descended from.

Of course, most of these events are decades and centuries ago yet the religions of today have given fresh reasons for atheists to hate them.

The Westboro Baptist Church pickets the funerals of homosexuals, carrying signs I won’t repeat here claiming God killed these ones because of their lifestyle.  They also picket after natural disasters such as the tsunami in 2004 and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, claiming it’s the fault of homosexuals half way around the world that God decided innocent people in impoverished countries deserved to die.

The Catholic Church or one of its subsidiaries seems to be in the news every other day as revelations of child abuse continue to surface.  It is bad enough these events occurred at all but the church’s insistence on secretly relocating these priests because they didn’t have the manpower to replace them just adds to the wrong.  The church’s unscriptural stance on abstinence for priests contributes to the problem.

While some religious leaders preyed on young boys others preyed on young girls.  Certain pastors of the First Baptist Church were arrested for sex or attempted sex with underage girls and Jack Shaap, then pastor of the church, was arrested for taking a female minor across state lines with the purpose of having sex.

Warren Jeffs, who is apparently still the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, is currently serving a prison sentence for rape as an accomplice with two girls, aged 12 and 15.  Mr. Jeffs has received “revelations” while in prison that Jesus Christ wants him released.  Don’t you think if Warren Jeffs was really a messenger of Christ that He could release him from prison without the help of his followers?

During times of war, notably the first and second world war, priests stood on opposing sides of the battle blessing the troops.  Catholics fight Catholics and Protestants fight Protestants on opposing sides of WWI and WWII with priests blessing the troops to go and kill each other.  Why would a Catholic from one land kill a Catholic from another?  Aren’t they all brothers in the faith?

By this point I’ve thoroughly sickened myself and the sad part is I haven’t even covered the tip of the iceberg.  From this post it would seem atheists have a long list of reasons to avoid religion and the gods they supposedly represent.  Sadly too many atheists use examples like these to lump all theists into the same mold, but isn’t generalizing entire groups of people on the actions of some the foundation of prejudice and discrimination?  It would be the same as saying since one atheist was a murderer then all of them are. 

But who or what is really at fault?

What is faith?

Faith is something that nearly all atheists seem to take exception to.  How would an atheist define faith and how do they view someone who says they have faith?

To an atheist faith is like a blindfold, something theists put over their mental eyes which blocks their reason and thinking ability and turns them into mindless drones.  This, in actuality, is a kind of faith.  It’s called credulity, or blind faith.  Credulity can be synonymous with gullibility, simpleness or naiveté.

I have met people with this kind of faith.  Usually they know very little about their own beliefs or holy book and thus cannot successfully defend what they believe.  They rely on the catchall answer “you just need to have faith” like a crutch, getting them off the hook and relieving them of the need to think. 

When atheists deride the word faith they imply that only religious people use it.  That is not so.  Faith as defined in the dictionary includes “complete trust…something that is believed with strong conviction.”  There was no mention of religion in that description at all.  By this definition atheists use faith all the time.

Think about the last time you boarded an airplane.  Did you meet the pilot?  Did you ask to see his certificate of training?  Did you meet the co-pilot?  Did you prove to yourself that the people in control of your life several miles above the ground are indeed qualified to fly the plane?  Did you prove they were qualified and not hung-over/depressed/suicidal?  Did you ask the mechanics if your plane was flight worthy?

Likely you answered no to each of those questions.  If so, why in the name of good sense did you get on that plane?  Because you had faith that since the last time you rode an airplane everything went okay and therefore this time won’t be any different.  In reality you don’t know that for certain but you’re willing to exercise a little faith.

Everyone does this.  Every day.  Several times a day.

But this is not real faith.  The Bible’s definition of faith goes deeper and it excludes credulity.  According to the Bible faith is a belief in something we cannot see but which we have solid evidence for our belief.

There are numerous things we cannot see but we know exist because of their influence on us and the world around us.  Air, gravity, magnetism and black holes are some examples.  We have solid evidence of their existence and therefore believe they exist.

This is how it works with God.  God is supernatural, something greater than ourselves and as such invisible to our eyes.  But those with real faith believe they have solid evidence of his existence, and He is real to us because of what we can see, not because of what we cannot see.

Atheists are religious too

What does an atheist see when they look at a theist?  In part they see someone worshipping God with fervor, eyes wide in religious ecstasy as they blindly follow a man wearing an absurd number of robes.  At times I see this too.  I have seen people so overcome with emotion in “God’s love” I wonder if the rational side of their mind is working at all.

I have seen this same blind emotion and devotion in atheists.  Read the comments under any YouTube video in which Richard Dawkins appears and you’ll find a number of atheists proclaiming “if God existed he’d be Richard Dawkins”.  Vocal atheists like Mr. Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens have a following all their own, a swarming crowd of disciples hooting at each insult to the religious.

In a sense atheists have swapped one god for another.  Theists follow a god or gods, a man or men, and a system of belief.  Atheists follow prominent men at the forefront of their belief such as Dawkins, Hitchens, Charles Darwin and even comedians such as Bill Maher and George Carlin.

Both theists and atheists make a common mistake.  A human tendency is to believe something and then seek out others who share your way of thinking.  Religious people do this all the time as they seek out a church that teaches what they want to hear.  If real truth is out there however, then shouldn’t we conform to it rather than force a version of it to conform to us?

Atheists make another mistake.  Many don’t seem to understand what men like Richard Dawkins actually believe.  Dawkins says we cannot prove God exists, but neither can we prove he doesn’t exist.  This is not the same as unequivocally saying God doesn’t exist as many of his followers do.

In the end what atheists hate the most is often what they become.  Don't believe me?  Do an internet search for "church of atheism."