If the Christian has no assurance that God will triumph from the way the world appears to be going, one would be better off hedging one’s bets by siding with the Devil or sitting the whole thing out all together. There are those that attempt to do just that.

Atheism is the worldview that believes that God does not exist. Those embracing this perspective tend to do so over both objective and existential reasons.

Those claiming to embrace Atheism for objective reasons often concentrate their attacks on the more scientific approaches to the existence of God such as the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument for the existence of God holds that all contingent things must have a cause and that this cause is at the minimum Aristotle’s Uncaused Cause and preferably the God of the Christian faith as expounded by Aquinas when he adapted these propositions for Christian usage. Atheists raise their hands and say hold on a moment to what they see as presumptuous conclusions.

From the Christian perspective, since God exists beyond what we perceive as time, He is sufficient or necessary to jumpstart the universe and get the temporal ball rolling. However, the Atheist has no metaphysical problem with an infinite chain of causality. Yet the laws of thermodynamics might dictate otherwise as these fundamental principles of physics hold that there is only a finite amount of energy available within a closed system.

So even though the Atheist may not have an intellectual objection to a material universe that is infinitely old, such an assumption smashes eventually against the hard wall of reality. However, seldom has that ever stopped anyone adamant about adhering to their favored delusions no matter what the evidence might say.

The next set of arguments for Atheism against belief in God center around a set of moral objections. All must confess these have crossed our minds at low points in each of our lives.

The most objective of these centers around the nature of goodness and God’s relationship to it. This argument was developed by Bertrand Russell (218).

The moral disproof for God states that good must result because either God decrees it or He does not. If good is good simply because God says it is and no one can argue against Him since He is the biggest guy on the cosmic block, good is not really good since God has willed it so arbitrarily. However, if God declares something good because of its own inherent nature or compliance with a standard beyond Himself, doesn’t that mean that the standard rather than God is ultimate? Thus, at best, God ends up being demoted to the status of Plato’s less than omnipotent demiurge.

Geisler counters, though, that this is really putting the ethical cart before the theistic horse. Geisler writes, “Rather than flowing from God’s arbitrary will, the moral law may be seen as rooted in God’s unchangeably good and loving nature, then the apparent dilemma is resolved (226).” Thus, good is something God is rather than something God decides or does. This brings to mind verses such as John 8:58 where God proclaims “Before Abraham was, I am.”

Other moral objections to the existence of God are a bit less ethereal and considerably more visceral and marked by the pain those leveling them have experienced or witnessed living here in an obviously fallen world. One such objection raised by Albert Camus in The Plague uses the backdrop of an epidemic to make the point that theism is inherently anti-humanitarian. The story posits the dichotomy that, if one assists the suffering, one is siding against God by interfering with the work of His judgment, and if one wants to be in His will and not stand in His way, one is therefore opposed to human well being (221).

Other related objections to God over the problem of evil dismiss His existence all together. A number of Atheists deny the existence of God on the grounds that, because people often suffer disproportionately to what they have done wrong, an all powerful and all good God does not exist. It is argued a God possessing these attributes would not allow evil. But because evil is rampant, that is proof that either God is not all powerful and cannot do anything about evil or that He is all powerful but does not do anything about the evil in the world because He is not good enough to care.

Though it is not always a comfort to someone that has befallen an overwhelming tragedy such as the murder of a loved one, the existence of evil does not by default disprove the existence of God. It does, however, toss the apologetic ball into the theist’s court to provide a plausible reason as to why an all-powerful and all-good God would allow suffering to exist.

Known as “theodicy”, these explanations attempt to reconcile the simultaneous existence of both God and evil. It is at this point that the theist must counter claim that the evil in the world is solvable or redeemable. The Christian especially can point out that God has indeed done something about the evil by sending His only begotten Son into the world to do something about this tragedy in the most personable of ways.

If the Atheist presses this objection too vigorously, the wily apologist ought to turn the argument back on his unbelieving compatriot. To even make the claim that God does not exist, because the world is not as good as we think it would be if He really did, is actually an indirect argument that He really does.

For to argue that things are not good enough is to assume some kind of standard exists beyond the earthly fray we find ourselves in. If this material universe was all there ever was, the highest good we could ever know is what we see around us and we’d be unable to criticize anything as the “is” automatically becomes the “ought” in such a context.

Yet there is a deep dissatisfaction that compels most human souls onward towards a better world. Romans 2:14-15 says, “…when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts…”

Secondly, Atheists claiming disbelief in God because, in their view, He has not done enough to stop or prevent suffering in the world often want to have things both ways. These theophobes not only deny God over the imperfections they see in the world but then hypothesize that, if God existed, man would not be free because human freedom would be, as Geisler puts it, “circumscribed by his divine determination (231).”

However, it is because God loves us so much and respects us as individuals that in the vast majority of instances He does not directly interfere with most actions but rather permits their outcome to propel the world onward to His ultimate plan for all of His creation. Geisler writes, “If love is persuasive but never coercive, then allowing men to freely determine their own destiny would seem to be the loving way to make them (231).”

Unfortunately, some are in such a state of rebellion against God that they take this animus out on others. Foremost among such deeds would no doubt rank murder.

Some would respond that, if God really loved the innocent, He would intervene to prevent this crime. However, as C.S. Lewis hypothesizes in The Problem Of Pain, for our own benefit God has created a world that operates in the vast majority of instances by a series of repeatable and verifiable principles.

For example, according to this moral “steady-state theory”, I am able to pick up a knife to either slice a steak or slit my neighbor’s throat for the purposes of providing man with a rational world where we will not go mad. Faced with such, the Christian must embrace Romans 8:28 as a comfort in a world that often does not seem fair to our finite minds.

Frederick Meekins

 

WesternFront America

Socrates (470-399 B.C.) – a renowned Greek philosopher from Athens who taught Plato, and Plato taught Aristotle and Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. Socrates used a method of teaching by asking questions. The Greeks called this form “dialectic” – starting from a thesis or question, then discussing ideas and moving back and forth between points of view to determine how well ideas stand up to critical review with the ultimate principle of the dialogue is Veritas – Truth.

Characters

• Socrates
• Aristotle
• Ayn Rand, 20th century Objectivism philosopher

The only philosophical debt I can acknowledge is to Aristotle. ~ Ayn Rand

{Setting: The Academy of Socrates}

Socrates: We are gathered here today at my Academy to discuss a very important question – Is Ayn Rand’s radical atheism a terminal defect of Objectivism philosophy? Rather than conducting this symposium myself I will call upon my student, Aristotle, the father of political conservatism, to make diligent inquiry into Rand’s ideas.

Aristotle: Ayn, what significant entry did you write in your journal at age 13?

Ayn Rand: I have made this declaration about my life which I shall never change – “Today I decided to be an atheist.”

Aristotle: But how can a mere child make such an irrevocable declaration about one’s life?

Ayn Rand: “The concept of God is degrading to men” because the affirmation that “God is perfect” meant that “man can never be perfect.” The thought that “man is low,” and imperfect and that there is something above him was simply “wrong.” Therefore, since there is “no proof of the existence of God exists, belief is rationally indefensible.”

Aristotle: Ayn, you discovered my writings on philosophy in 1918 after graduating from high school and your admittance to the University of Petrograd where you later made this sweeping declaration: “The only philosophical debt I can acknowledge is to Aristotle. In your magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged” (1957) you detailed the parameters of the philosophy you later created – Objectivism – that the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness or rational self-interest.

Ayn Rand: I tried to make radical individualism the foundation for capitalism.

Aristotle: Indeed, this brings us to the central premise of this dialogue: The four major problems of an Objectivism worldview which may lead one to form sophistic conclusions:

1. Where rationality leads

In Atlas Shrugged, Galt Gulch’s Dagny Taggart [a.k.a. Ayn Rand] extols the wondrous machine motor designed by Galt: “She thought of this structure … replacing the power plants of the country” of which Dr. Wicker commented:

These beautiful passages lead to one, very profound insight: the well-designed technological object is a demonstration of the existence of the spiritual power of the human mind over matter against those who like Marx would argue that our thoughts are entirely caused by material conditions.

Aristotle: Ayn, you zealously propagandized the cause of rational objectivity, yet your atheism ignores God. Without God our technological progress would not be possible if our minds were incapable of penetrating nature, if there were no order to nature, if there were not definable objective truth. “If you allow human technological wonders to be tangible proofs of the human mind as cause, then the things of nature should likewise demonstrate the existence of a mind that made them.”

2. Selfishness is not the cure for collectivism or moral relativism.

Aristotle: Ayn, throughout your work you “present false dichotomies, either-or choices between two extremes: collectivism or individualism, either living entirely for the state or entirely for oneself, either complete self sacrifice to the point of annihilation or complete selfishness to the point of narcissism.” You avoid Marx by accepting the radical individualism sown by Thomas Hobbes that comes to fulfillment in Nietzsche. What about the importance of family in society? Ayn, doesn’t family mean anything to your philosophy?

Ayn Rand: Aristotle, the family isn’t a relevant part of Objectivism. I proved that by the abortion I got in the early 1930s, joining the abortion movement and refusing to have children with my husband. To me family restricts me from enjoying my life, my way!

Aristotle: But your Objectivism philosophy ignores my extensive writings about the family which establishes “the conservative affirmation of the primacy of local economic life against the interference of the state is rooted in the moral duty of families to provide for themselves, not in individual selfishness (which is a vice, not a virtue).” Throughout my writings, including “Politics,” I avowed that the family is the fundamental economic entity as well as the disseminator of morality. Ironically, Ayn your obsession with narcissism and radical selfishness lived vicariously through your books perverted your reason, the very power that defined you and your Objectivism philosophy.

3. Objectivism becomes subjectivism; reason becomes Rand

Aristotle: Ayn, is it Reason that you celebrate or is it your reason that you have championed in the philosophy of Objectivism? …I have here a signed copy of “Atlas Shrugged” to your friend and leading woman disciple, Barbara Branden, the wife of your lover Nathaniel Branden, whom you named your institute of Objectivism after. May I read the inscription? I believe your words reveal the essence of your soul.

Ayn Rand: {nervously} Yes.

Aristotle: To Barbara – For the sense of life which is mine and yours – for starting with the same values and accepting nothing less – to carry on my battle, my universe and all my values. ~ Ayn

Ayn, you claim Objectivism is a philosophy dedicated to Reason, if so then why did you steal another woman’s husband, justify it with your reason and humiliate her further in the book’s dedication? … Are these not the acts of an irrational mind?

Ayn Rand: Perhaps my Objectivism philosophy devolved into a cult-like movement as my star ascended. I become increasingly intolerant of any contrary views or intellectual challenges to Objectivism philosophy and excommunicated all heretics.

Aristotle: Indeed, let us move to the fourth and final critique of the Objectivism philosophy.

4. Philosophy of selfishness or personality disorder?

Aristotle: Ayn, when I analyze Objectivism and observe your life which merely mirrors your writings, I have come to this evident conclusion: You are a narcissist. From your earliest work, “The Little Street” (1928) you extol as virtuous the main character’s vice: “He doesn’t understand, because thankfully he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning or importance of other people.”

This radical selfishness is a leitmotiv throughout your entire body of work including your late writings like, “The Virtue of Selfishness” (1964) – a paean to selfishness and narcissism.

{Turning to the Academy students}

Narcissists like Ayn Rand have no respect for the pain and problems she caused others. Narcissists like Ayn Rand are motivated by delusions of grandiose self-importance and demand to be deified above all others. Narcissists like Ayn Rand live in a dream world of exceptional success, power, beauty, genius, or perfect love (“romantic realism”) which confuse and conflate fantasy and reality.

Ayn Rand: Aristotle, I must protest now that you are being too hard on me.

Socrates: And now we end where each of us must begin – with God. Ayn, is your summary rejection of God merely a projection of yourself as a narcissist? If so, what do we do with your “bible,” Atlas Shrugged? If your rejection of God was merely narcissistic rejection of a power greater than your limited intellectual capacity could understand or value, then, absent God, is it the conservatism of Aristotle, Adam Smith, or Ronald Reagan that you truly celebrate, or is it self-deification and crass narcissism disguised in Objectivism rhetoric?

Ayn Rand: {profound silence}

Aristotle: As a conservative I accept the world as it is and distrust the politics of abstract reason, unlike the sophists, humanists and liberals whose empiricism views reason separate from experience.

Despite her exceeding love of my ideas, I answer “yes” to the question – Is Ayn Rand’s radical atheism a terminal defect of Objectivism philosophy? Conservatism and capitalism aside, the major tenants of Objectivism philosophy effectively is the worship of selfishness and narcissism which is antithetical to real conservatism and capitalism which are rooted in the Republic, the free market, morality, assiduousness, veritas, virtue, and God.

* See Dr. Benjamin Wicker, “10 Books Every Conservative Must Read” (Regnery, 2010), pp. 299, 318-28.

© Ellis Washington

Ellis Washington is former editor of the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute. He hosts a radio program Thursdays at 11 a.m. Eastern on 1620 AM in Atlanta. It can be heard online at the Radio Sandy Springs website. His weekly podcasts are available Mondays at The Conservative Beacon. Washington is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including “The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law” (2002). Washington’s latest book is “The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust.”

 

WesternFront America

Try as the atheist might to manipulate objective data to fit their hypothesis with some evolutionists going so far as to invoke the law in order to suppress perspectives conflicting with their origins account, the assumptions of atheism fail to square with the facts of nature and with the revelation of nature’s God. At one time earlier in the modern era, it was quite common for the atheist to portray himself as the true friend and ally of science. However, as impartial observational science has probed deeper onto the macroscopic realm of cosmic space as well as the microscopic world of the subatomic particle, this relationship once prided by the atheist turned out not to be as solid as originally thought.

The scientific establishment and the philosophical elites once derided the so-called “theistic proofs” for the existence of God as the outdated wisdom of a less-enlightened era. It turns out, however, that these time-honored arguments may be as relevant as the latest academic journals.

The cosmological argument, perhaps the best known, states that all finite realities and structures have a cause. Therefore, ultimately there must be an uncaused cause complete in itself in order to get the proverbial billiard ball rolling; this the theist declared to be God.

Naturalistic cosmologists steeped in atheism such as Carl Sagan once tried to dance around the issue by saying that the cosmos is all there was, is, or ever will be. But it seems that the laws of physics don’t exactly have a record of contributing to their local PBS station.

The Laws of Thermodynamics declare that, left to themselves, systems degrade to the maximum level of entropy; or in laymen’s terms, things wear out. Employing this principle, one is forced to conclude that, if the universe is an infinitely-old closed system those like Sagan claim it to be, then the universe would have already wound down in eons past. Therefore, the universe must have had a beginning. And since something finite cannot come from nothing, the hypothesis of a divine creator provides the most plausible alternative.

It has been noted that the theistic proofs do not necessarily reveal the God of Judeo-Christian adoration but at best point the seeker in His direction. Likewise, the findings of science point the individual in the direction of a yet more definitive source of knowledge standing in opposition to the claims of atheism.

Scripture strikes the decisive blow against those daring to spit cognitively in the face of God. Psalms 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”

Until the scientist can replicate life on his own from nothing whatsoever, that verse settles the issue of whether the universe sings the praises of an omnipotent Creator or testifies to the cruel fact of an arbitrary universe devoid of plan or purpose. Some will no doubt continue to insist upon their own path of stubbornness despite what the very molecules they are breathing might be telling them.

Of those failing to be persuaded by the evidence, Psalms 14:1 says, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Webster’s defines fool as “a person devoid of reason or intelligence.” Either the educated person assents to the reality of God or his so-called “education” is not worth the value of the parchment the big-shot degree is printed upon.

If the skeptic still refuses to abandon atheism in light of the objective evidence, one is left with no alternative but to drag out the rotten fruits produced by this faulty system in terms of ruined lived and fallen nations. For instead of establishing a set of moral values resting upon a foundation apart from divine revelation as originally postulated by the adherents of early atheistic modernism, one ends up with an ethical system based upon the absolutist relativism of postmodernism where almost anything goes except daring to set forth some kind of behavioral standard binding upon all.

According to Chuck Colson in Against The Night: Living In The New Dark Ages, in the arena where relativism reigns supreme in opposition to the law of God, there is no legitimate ground in which one can exclude the arguments and proposals of Nazis, serial killers, and pedophiles (47). From today’s headlines, the nation is coming to realize in the most brutal of ways that these ideas do not confine themselves to academic journals or newspaper opinion pages. And in the case of school shootings such as Columbine High, this radical antipathy towards God can in fact turn deadly.

If the lawlessness of atheism can wreak havoc upon individual lives, just imagine its affects magnified across entire societies. The major dictatorships of the twentieth century testify to this blood-soaked historical truth. Founded upon assorted atheistic ideologies, these totalitarian regimes promised secular heavens on earth but instead dragged their nations down to the very borders of hell.

Unfettered by eternal external standards, those holding the reins of power in such societies had nothing to hamper the implementation of their most extreme policy whims, not even the value of innocent human lives. For example, Mao Zedong of the People’s Republic of China slaughtered five million of his own countrymen in pursuit of his Cultural Revolution and related kinds of Communist nonsense.

While the United States has not yet eliminated that many (at least among those fortunate enough to escape the womb alive), the Orwellian day is here when good will be called evil and evil called good. Former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett aptly noted on an appearance on “Meet The Press” that, had the Columbine killers greeted one another with “Hail the King of Kings” rather than their trademark “Heil Hitler”, school officials would have intervened since an affirmation of theism — especially of a Christian variety — is the one thing an atheistic educational system cannot tolerate. School officials did not intervene and the rest is history, with organized unbelief claiming yet a few more in its unrelenting war upon God and humanity.

As public rhetoricians are fond of pointing out, mankind stands at a crossroads. The choice, however, goes to a level deeper than the choice between Democrats and Republicans that Americans must make on election day.

The decision to be made transcends the limited purposes of institutionalized politics to embrace fundamental issues of worldview and belief. The nature of this conflict can be discovered in a comparison and contrast between atheism and Christianity.

From the fundamental postulate regarding the nonexistence of God, atheism attempts to formulate a comprehensive framework upon which to hang its understanding of mankind and the universe. Without God to account for the cosmos in which they find themselves, atheists argue that the complexity of nature arose through a process of gradual evolution governed by the rules of chance.

This process of evolution, to the atheist, serves as the dynamic against which man strives to find and determine his role upon the earth. As such, everything is thus in a state of flux and nothing is fixed as man struggles to figure things out against the backdrop of a cold and purposeless void.

Not even fundamental issues such as individual rights, personal ethics, or social institutions can afford to remain fixed and stagnant. And if innocent human lives are ruined or destroyed, that may seem regrettable at this moment along the long evolutionary chain, but mankind will ultimately get things worked out and the piles of corpses littering history’s ditches will not seem so nauseous upon further enlightenment.

Of these ideas, Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Any history book objective enough to attest to the horrors of the twentieth century testifies to this startling truth.

Standing in contrast to the lonely pointlessness of atheism is Judeo-Christian theism recognizing God as the fundamental proposition of the universe. Like atheism, the Judeo-Christian tradition builds its system around its conceptual foundation as well. But since its basis is drastically different from that of atheism, the conclusions drawn by Christianity are considerably different.

Christianity holds that, since the universe was created from nothing through the Word of God, all creation is dependent upon Him at all times. Colossians 1:17 says, “…by him all things consist.”

Since man is God’s creation, it is therefore God’s right to determine the standards by which man shall conduct his own affairs. And since God loves His creation, it follows that His standards are for the benefit of His children. These standards are communicated to mankind in a number of ways.

One such way is through individual conscience. Romans 2:14 says, “For when Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves.” While God has written the Law across the heart of man, man has suppressed this truth through sin.

God has overcome this development by making Himself known in the person of His Son Jesus Christ and through the direct propositional revelation of His Word and the Holy Bible of which II Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” It is within this framework of Law and Grace that the balance between the individual and society is found as this system and the objective standards established by it protect the individual since it recognizes the worth and fallen character of each. That is why Psalms 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

Atheism remains one of the most serious intellectual challenges faced by the contemporary Christian. Despite its obvious scientific and sociological shortcomings, the powerful adherents of this system positioned in influential sectors of society such as government and academia have enshrined this worldview as the official dogma of civilization nearly as stifling as anything allegedly imposed by the medieval Catholic Church.

Yet despite considerable efforts to enforce this system as an orthodoxy that goes so far as to jail students daring to pray around a flagpole, like its sister system in the former Soviet Union, Western atheism is a decaying ideology. It is amid this decay often resulting in social and individual ruin that the Christian is able to proclaim the superiority of the theistic alternative and the God of its adoration.

© Dr. Frederick Meekins

 

WesternFront America

From at least 1994 when I remember writing my first column on the subject, despisers of the Almighty and liberals of the most spineless of stripes have conspired to undermine Christmas as a national celebration in the attempt to downplay and ultimately eliminate public recognition of God in general and His only begotten Son Jesus Christ in specific.  These efforts have been so widespread that I was able to compile columns written about them over the years into a book titled “Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Horrors”.

Though the American people have been manipulated and their resistance worn down on a number of fronts to the point that they now let slide any number of outrages that would have caused considerable uproar in the past, for the most part citizens have been quite vocal about attempts by secular leftists to ban acknowledgement of the Christmas season.  However, now that traditionalists have asserted the right to publicly affirm their god-given heritage, secularists are responding with alternative displays of their own promoting their own particular worldview.

Foremost among these is an ad campaign targeted at Washington, DC’s public transportation system.  The posters sponsored by the American Humanist Association read, “Why believe in a god?  Just be good for goodness’ sake..”  This simple question and accompanying reply are in need of a complex response.

For starters, whether we like it or not, if an atheist front group wants to pony up the cash, they have the same right to buy public advertising space like any other organization with too much money on its hands.  Responses such as the one presented in a 11/17/08 USA Today article titled “Atheism: A Positive Pillar” where an Illinois state legislator told an atheist activist, “It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!…You have no right to be here!  We believe in something.  You believe in destroying.”

Such an attitude may itself be of a greater danger than the outright atheism.  For it is wrong on a number of philosophical and apologetic grounds.

For starters, it is not really all that dangerous for children to know atheism exists. Granted, one might not want to, as in the example used by D. James Kennedy in a classic sermon, hand one’s child over to a thoroughgoing secularist who on the first day of kindergarten proceeds to indoctrinate the hapless pupil as to the alleged reasons why God does not exist and why Jesus Christ is not His Son.

However, part of protecting children is to warn them of the dangers out there bent on destroying them in body and soul.  Thus, just as parents eventually one day have to have that discussion with their young ones about the existence of pedophiles and where to aim the kick should some sicko every try to rob the young ones of their innocence, parents also have the obligation to warn to warn that there are those out there that hate God so much that they’d like nothing more than to persuade you to give up your belief in Him as well.

The cause of Christ is not served by hiding these things from young minds and then finally exposing them to such apostasies upon adulthood.  It’s challenging enough when you are taught about these things and then find your self surrounded by the products of an education system advocating such a viewpoint reeking of what you always heard pot smelled like and another hooligan wearing a t-shirt with decals of copulating skeletons as I remember the first day of college.

Secondly, lack of a belief in something is a belief about it.  For too long, Christians and allied theists have played into the hands of atheists and agnostics by going along with the notion that those professing unbelief are objective and unfettered by preconceived epistemological commitments and that the believers are the ones holding onto bedrock dogmatic foundations.  Many atheists are just as rabid in their assumptions as the most zealous of pulpit-pounding evangelists.

The anti-God Christmas placards intone the reader to “Just be good for goodness sake.”  But without God, can good truly exist?  For if He does not, mankind is left with the alternatives of either nihilistic anarchy or regimented totalitarianism.

For example, if God does not exist, who is to say whatever the individual thinks or does is right or wrong?  As has been said, in some cultures they are suppose to love their neighbors and in others they eat them.  To the cannibal the adage is not so much finger licking good but rather good to lick fingers.

Furthermore, if God does not exist, on what grounds do the institutions of society such as the government have the right to tell you to do anything whatsoever?  Without God and His revelation, the “IS” automatically becomes the “OUGHT” with rules and laws merely being those promulgations which keep the strongest in power.

But what about the individual, the timid may ask unsettled by the door that has been opened but too prideful to grasp Christ’s outstretched hand.  What about the individual?

If the individual is no better than all the other animals who are themselves just products of random chance, his welfare means nothing in comparison to the welfare and even the convenience of the larger group.  Though it is a somewhat different philosophy, according to a  Caryl Matrisciana column titled  “An Enlightened Race?” New Agers who believe similarly to atheists that there are no absolutes rooted in the character of an eternal personal God don’t really don’t even want to say Hitler did anything wrong but rather merely things that were misguided at worst.

The New Atheists claim that the suspicions their worldview elicits are unfounded because as humanists they only have the betterment of the species in mind and that traditional religions are the ones responsible for the atrocities of history.

Margaret Downey of the Atheist Alliance International is quoted in the USA Today article as saying, “We atheists simply add an ‘o’ to our belief system — we believe in good.”  However, that is in spite of rather than because of their unbelief.

If anything, what atheists exhibit when they manifest goodness is remaining Judeo-Christian moral capital.  These individuals professing godlessness remain largely good because they have been acculturated in a milieu largely Biblical in its underlying ethical orientation.

However, as time marches on and these foundations are eroded as succeeding generations will become less familiar with this heritage.  Future atheists will not be as eager to embrace the balanced approach to life we in the West have come to categorize as good.

Incidents where traditional forms of religion have been invoked to justify abridgements of individual liberty are horrifically tragic but because they betray the values espoused by the founders of these systems of belief.  However, by default, that does not make those claiming to lack a religious faith are not necessarily more laid back in their approach to life and less prone to violence.

If anything, lack of divine restraints seems to send man’s compulsion to prey (not pray) upon his fellow man into overdrive.  One only need to look at the histories

of regimes with an explicit antipathy towards the God of the Bible such as Soviet Russia, Red China, and Nazi Germany.  And even in the United States where human dignity is for the most parts respected, numbers are appallingly high in terms of the millions slaughtered in the names of abortion and so-called “reproductive rights”, a charge led primarily by the godless along with the wishy-washy easily whipped up into a frenzied enthusiasm over the joys of baby-killing.

As commuters putter about this Christmas season and viewers watch the battle of the broadsides, there is more on the line than an esoteric debate as to the nature and origins of goodness.  Both their very lives and their eternal destines could very well be on the line.

 

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