I ran across this ministry blog and attempted to answer these six questions they asked of us atheistic types but it seems the comments were disabled. So, I'll answer them here. From: Six Questions to Ask an Atheist (Questions are inset and italicized.)
1. If there is no God, “the big questions” remain unanswered, so how do we answer the following questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? This question was asked by Aristotle and Leibniz alike – albeit with differing answers. But it is an historic concern. Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet, and is there any meaning to this life? If there is meaning, what kind of meaning and how is it found? Does human history lead anywhere, or is it all in vain since death is merely the end? How do you come to understand good and evil, right and wrong without a transcendent signifier? If these concepts are merely social constructions, or human opinions, whose opinion does one trust in determining what is good or bad, right or wrong? If you are content within atheism, what circumstances would serve to make you open to other answers?
My response to 1. Why do you assume nothing ever existed? What makes you think nothing is the default state? The sum total of energies (mass+energy+(-energies)) in the universe still equals zero. The question presumes a theistic creation narrative which is false. But the answer comes with our understanding that from simpler forms comes complexity. Evolution is the development of current states from an accumulation of less complex forms in, for instance, the physical and biological realms. Human history progresses away from the dictatorial, the primitive, and we become more intelligent and humane as our collective understanding develops. It is this societal comprehension of well-being, of justice, of what it is to suffer that gives our morality a foundation. This consensus is what progresses and is the property that transcends the individual life which must end so new life can come into existence and continue the progression.
2. If we reject the existence of God, we are left with a crisis of meaning, so why don’t we see more atheists like Jean Paul Sartre, or Friedrich Nietzsche, or Michel Foucault? These three philosophers, who also embraced atheism, recognized that in the absence of God, there was no transcendent meaning beyond one’s own self-interests, pleasures, or tastes. The crisis of atheistic meaninglessness is depicted in Sartre’s book Nausea. Without God, there is a crisis of meaning, and these three thinkers, among others, show us a world of just stuff, thrown out into space and time, going nowhere, meaning nothing.
My response A2: Crisis of meaning? This mantra, repeated by the religiose ad nauseam, is actually a misdirection, a diversion. With a deity your life has no meaning. You are a drone manipulated for its plan. You are a pawn. With only this life, one's life has immeasurable value, meaning is one's family, friends, purpose is procreation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Morality is what propagates well-being. With a deity this is all arbitrary and meaningless.
3. When people have embraced atheism, the historical results can be horrific, as in the regimes of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot who saw religion as the problem and worked to eradicate it? In other words, what set of actions are consistent with particular belief commitments? It could be argued, that these behaviors – of the regimes in question - are more consistent with the implications of atheism. Though, I'm thankful that many of the atheists I know do not live the implications of these beliefs out for themselves like others did! It could be argued that the socio-political ideologies could very well be the outworking of a particular set of beliefs – beliefs that posited the ideal state as an atheistic one.
My response A3: Again, this oft repeated falsehood is religious propaganda. Stalin was educated in seminary school. They never mention that Mother Teresa was also an atheist according to her own correspondence. Stalin's problem with the Russian Orthodox Church was political as it backed the Czars in both the revolution and counter revolution. Beliefs were irrelevant. Stalin re-opened the churches during WW2 even though he saw religion as a means of manipulation of the masses for ill effect. Marx wrote that religion would fall under the weight of its own dogma. So, it wouldn't need to be abolished. Mao had his country's traditional belief system Christianity was seen as an outside intrusion. The same goes for Pol Pot. None of these tyrants killed in the name of atheism. In fact, in Stalin's case most of the death was caused by two Christian sources,a) Hitler was a Catholic fundamentalist who invaded in WW2, and b) the Lysinko Famine was caused by a creationist's view of biology, a Lamarckian evolution by acquired traits; that is, pseudo-science, not science.
4. If there is no God, the problems of evil and suffering are in no way solved, so where is the hope of redemption, or meaning for those who suffer? Suffering is just as tragic, if not more so, without God because there is no hope of ultimate justice, or of the suffering being rendered meaningful or transcendent, redemptive or redeemable. It might be true that there is no God to blame now, but neither is there a God to reach out to for strength, transcendent meaning, or comfort. Why would we seek the alleviation of suffering without objective morality grounded in a God of justice?
My response A4: Another diversion, another misdirected view as suffering of all life forms would make any omniscient deity complicit in the premeditated act of causing the suffering in the first place. After the fact, the religionist's view turns life into a long wait for revenge which makes no sense. Suffering, as horrible as it is, for all life forms, at least makes sense in the natural view. Also, in the naturalist's view it is up to us to relieve, even remove, suffering which is why we have medicine, ethics that evolve as we come to understand what causes suffering, civil and animal rights, and the whole concept of humanitarian aid. It was the ubiquitous suffering that caused Mother Teresa to be an atheist.
5. If there is no God, we lose the very standard by which we critique religions and religious people, so whose opinion matters most? Whose voice will be heard? Whose tastes or preferences will be honored? In the long run, human tastes and opinions have no more weight than we give them, and who are we to give them meaning anyway? Who is to say that lying, or cheating or adultery or child molestation are wrong –really wrong? Where do those standards come from? Sure, our societies might make these things “illegal” and impose penalties or consequences for things that are not socially acceptable, but human cultures have at various times legally or socially disapproved of everything from believing in God to believing the world revolves around the sun; from slavery, to interracial marriage, from polygamy to monogamy. Human taste, opinion law and culture are hardly dependable arbiters of Truth.
My response A5: We have no god. We merely have those who claim to represent, and be in contact with, a supernatural absolute authority. There is never any evidence provided to support this claim, but they continue to make it, laughably.
Our morality progresses with our intellect; that is, our ethics evolve in parallel with our understanding of suffering, well-being, justice, and what propagates these in the pursuit of life's betterment. Never again will slavery be promoted, as it was by Popes Alexander VI and Nicholas V, as good because the indigenous peoples are "ungodly," or not under the command of the Christian deity. In short, we have much better metrics for morality than those stagnated in the Bronze Age and dictated by misogynistic, desert dwelling goat herders who claimed their deity mandated everything from forced abortion (NU 5:11-31) to burning one's daughter for fornicating (LE 21:9), from human sacrifice (LE 27:29, NU 31:1-40, JG 12:31-39) to cannibalism (LE 26:29). Society has progressed beyond these atrocious dictates which show that this claimed absolute authority is no more than the command to submit to the imaginings of egotistical patriarchs and primitive tribesmen.
6. If there is no God, we don’t make sense, so how do we explain human longings and desire for the transcendent? How do we even explain human questions for meaning and purpose, or inner thoughts like, why do I feel unfulfilled or empty? Why do we hunger for the spiritual, and how do we explain these longings if nothing can exist beyond the material world?
My response A6: Another meaningless mantra that evinces an evidentiarily vacuous falsehood. Humans have a desire to know, and when they can't know they will speculate. It's called curiosity. When we don't know some humans replace their ignorance with words like supernatural, spiritual, or miracle; they replace confusion with a longing for a father figure who has all the answers; they replace the fear of dying with concepts like the transcendent which only works with the cognizant (i.e. ideas, logic, etc.), thereby making their God, their existence; and their dream of an afterlife an idealized concept originating as a function of some mind. This both defers responsibility to an intelligent agency and puts that agency deep into an Orphic Abyss out of the reach of science and naturalism; only, this isn't the deity of the Bible which is written to have needed time (GE 1) to build the world (not the universe, but reality) while moving across the face of the waters, had sons that mated with human daughters (GE 6:1-4), and ate lunch with Abram (GE 18). We give our life meaning. Our families give our life meaning. Defending our life, liberties, and well-being against tyrannical oppressors claiming irreproachable absolute authority from divined knowledge of some supernatural entity gives our lives meaning when submitting to their imagined authority would turn us all into subjugated automatons.
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Now, I have a question for you. Why hasn't, in the more than 2 millennia of the Abrahamic faiths dominating mankind, the subject of these beliefs brought heaven to Earth, eliminated suffering among life forms, or even performed anything, at all, unless one counts the most absolutely heinous atrocities ever committed against humankind at the hands of those claiming its divine authority?
Christianity, in particular, has an atrocious history, with Islam coming up hard and fast. It wasn't until the advent of this monotheistic belief system that beliefs could be considered wrong as pagan beliefs in many gods were inclusive, not exclusionary. It also wasn't until Theodosius I mandated Christ belief throughout the Roman Empire and killed off millions who didn't convert from pagan beliefs that the concept of a holy war was born. I don't think I want anything to do with your meaning of ...well, actually, your view only has meaning after death now that I think about it — I want nothing to do with that.
Beachbum's Mountain View
