An atheist explains the real consequences of adopting an atheistic worldview

A conflict of worldviews
A conflict of worldviews

If you love to listen to the Cold Case Christianity podcast, as I do, then you know that in a recent episode, J. Warner Wallace mentioned a blog post on an atheistic blog that clearly delineated the implications of an atheistic worldview. He promised he was going to write about it and link to the post, and he has now done so.

Here is the whole the whole thing that the atheist posted:

“[To] all my Atheist friends.

Let us stop sugar coating it. I know, it’s hard to come out and be blunt with the friendly Theists who frequent sites like this. However in your efforts to “play nice” and “be civil” you actually do them a great disservice.

We are Atheists. We believe that the Universe is a great uncaused, random accident. All life in the Universe past and future are the results of random chance acting on itself. While we acknowledge concepts like morality, politeness, civility seem to exist, we know they do not. Our highly evolved brains imagine that these things have a cause or a use, and they have in the past, they’ve allowed life to continue on this planet for a short blip of time. But make no mistake: all our dreams, loves, opinions, and desires are figments of our primordial imagination. They are fleeting electrical signals that fire across our synapses for a moment in time. They served some purpose in the past. They got us here. That’s it. All human achievement and plans for the future are the result of some ancient, evolved brain and accompanying chemical reactions that once served a survival purpose. Ex: I’ll marry and nurture children because my genes demand reproduction, I’ll create because creativity served a survival advantage to my ancient ape ancestors, I’ll build cities and laws because this allowed my ape grandfather time and peace to reproduce and protect his genes. My only directive is to obey my genes. Eat, sleep, reproduce, die. That is our bible.

We deride the Theists for having created myths and holy books. We imagine ourselves superior. But we too imagine there are reasons to obey laws, be polite, protect the weak etc. Rubbish. We are nurturing a new religion, one where we imagine that such conventions have any basis in reality. Have they allowed life to exist? Absolutely. But who cares? Outside of my greedy little gene’s need to reproduce, there is nothing in my world that stops me from killing you and reproducing with your wife. Only the fear that I might be incarcerated and thus be deprived of the opportunity to do the same with the next guy’s wife stops me. Some of my Atheist friends have fooled themselves into acting like the general population. They live in suburban homes, drive Toyota Camrys, attend school plays. But underneath they know the truth. They are a bag of DNA whose only purpose is to make more of themselves. So be nice if you want. Be involved, have polite conversations, be a model citizen. Just be aware that while technically an Atheist, you are an inferior one. You’re just a little bit less evolved, that’s all. When you are ready to join me, let me know, I’ll be reproducing with your wife.

I know it’s not PC to speak so bluntly about the ramifications of our beliefs, but in our discussions with Theists we sometimes tip toe around what we really know to be factual. Maybe it’s time we Atheists were a little more truthful and let the chips fall where they may. At least that’s what my genes are telling me to say.”

In his post, Wallace comments on the statement above, but for more, you should listen to the podcast.

This fellow is essentially expanding on what Richard Dawkins has said about atheism:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference… DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. (Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995))

And Cornell University atheist William Provine agrees: (this is taken from his debate with Phillip E. Johnson)

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.

And what about Florida State University atheist Michael Ruse:

“The position of the modern evolutionist is that humans have an awareness of morality because such an awareness of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate when someone says, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory.” (Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262-269).

I see a lot of atheists these days thinking that they can help themselves to a robust notion of consciousness, to real libertarian free will, to objective moral values and duties, to objective human rights, and to objective meaning in life, without giving credit to theism. It’s not rational to do this. As Frank Turek said on the latest episode of “Cross Examined”, atheists have to sit in God’s lap to slap his face. We should be calling them out on it. I think it’s particularly important not to let atheists utter a word of moral judgment on any topic, since they cannot ground an objective standard that allows them to make statements of morality. Further, I think that they should have every immorality ever committed presented to them, and then they should be told “your worldview does not allow you to condemn this as wrong”. They can’t praise anything as right, either. This is not to say that we should go all presuppositional on them, but if the opportunity arises to point out how they are borrowing from theism in order to attack it, we should do that in addition to presenting good scientific and historical evidence.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

Remember when the progressive gunman attacked the Family Research Council?

Goodness Without God: is it possible?
Goodness Without God: is it possible?

Let’s walk down memory lane and remember what happens when “non-religious” people who don’t like “organized religion” get hold of guns and decide to act on their non-religious convictions. In this case, the shooter was a gay activist who was a great admirer of Friedrich Nietzche, the atheist philosopher who proclaimed the death of God.

The Daily Caller reports.

Excerpt:

The man accused of opening fire and shooting a security guard at the conservative Family Research Council headquarters last August plead guilty to three charges in a D.C. federal court Wednesday.

Floyd Lee Corkins, II of Herndon, Virginia entered guilty pleas to a federal weapons charge as well as a local terrorism charge and a charge of assault with intent to kill, according to news reports.

The Washington Post reports that, according to the plea agreement Corkins signed, he told FBI agents on the day of the shooting that he “intended to kill as many people as possible” and planned to “smother Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces.”

Investigators found additional magazines and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his backpack on the day of the shooting.

Following the guilty plea the FRC issued a statement placing a large portion of the blame for the shooting at the feet of the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, which had listed FRC as a hate group. FRC noted that prosecutors discovered Corkins identified his targets on the SPLC’s website.

“The day after Floyd Corkins came into the FRC headquarter and opened fire wounding one of our team members, I stated that while Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group,’” FRC president Tony Perkins said in a statement, which went on to demand that SPLC stop attacking organizations that have a different opinion on gay rights.

The shooting happened shortly after Chick-fil-A made headlines over the company president’s disagreement with gay marriage.

Why does anyone think that people on the secular left are tolerant?

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Mixed-race non-religious Oregon shooter singled out Christians for execution

Chris Harper Mercer
Non-religious Chris Harper Mercer doesn’t like organized religion

Gateway Pundit is reporting that the Oregon shooter was an atheist, based on his MySpace page. And his unconfirmed dating profile says:

Ethnicity: Mixed Race

Religious Views: Not Religious, Not Religious, but Spiritual

And groups:

Groups: Doesn’t Like Organized Religion ; Left-hand Path ;Magick and Occult ; Meditation ; Not Religious, But Spiritual

In this case, “Doesn’t like Organized Religion” means “Singles out Christians for execution-style murders”. He didn’t ask about anyone’s politics, or race, or anything else, he just asked about their religion – that was his motivation.

This is from the New York Post.

Full text:

The gunman who opened fire at an Oregon community college was forcing people to stand up and state their religion before he began blasting away at them, survivors said Thursday.

A woman who claimed to have a grandmother inside a writing class in Snyder Hall, where a portion the massacre unfolded, described the scene in a tweet.

“The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christian,” she wrote. “If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs. My grandma just got to my house, and she was in the room. She wasn’t shot, but she is very upset.

The Twitter user, @BodhiLooney, then recalled how her grandmother attempted to save the life of one of her close classmates.

“She tried to perform CPR on her friend, but it was too late,” the woman said. “I hope nothing like this ever happens again.”

Kortney Moore, an 18-year-old student at Umpqua Community College who was also in the room, told Oregon’s News Review that the shooter was indeed on the hunt for Christians.

Moments after hearing a bullet come flying through a window, she said the 20-year-old shooter made his way inside and targeted their teacher, pumping a single round into their head.

As the young man ordered people to the ground, Moore laid patiently with her classmates and waited, according to the News Review.

Once they all got down, she said the gunman began asking people to rise and say what their religion was. After they stood and gave their answer, he started shooting.

As the chaos continued, students began scrambling “like ants,” according to Brady Winder, a 23-year-old student from Portland who was in the room next door.

“People (were) screaming, ‘get out!,” he told NRToday, adding that he witnessed a girl frantically swimming across a nearby creek to escape.

Hannah Miles, another Umpqua student, was also sitting in a class room next door and said she initially heard a pop that sounded like a yardstick slapping on a chalkboard when the shooting broke out.

She said that when her class heard the noise again, her teacher went to see if everything was all right. Minutes later, shots rang out repeatedly and they all fled, leaving their belongings behind.

Jared Norman, a nursing student, was locked down in the cafeteria with 50 other students when he heard gunfire — which prompted a mass panic, he said, with his voice trembling.

UCC Foundation Executive Director Dennis O’Neill was also on campus during the shooting and said him and other school officials were running around and securing classrooms as the gunman made his way through Snyder Hall.

“We locked our door and I went out to lock up the rest rooms and could hear four shots from the front of campus,” he recalled.

Christian Bringhurst, a teacher at nearby Camas Valley Elementary School, said his daughter Justine was also on campus at time of shooting and was safely evacuated.

“It’s awful. The uncertainty of what is going on is tough to deal with,’ he explained. “We have a dozen (Camas Valley) kids going to school out there. Trying to find out who is there and make sure everybody is OK. Our hearts going out to the victims.”

At around noon, officials sent out an automated phone call to parents at Roseburg School District, which referenced the shooting and assured the school was safe.

Sometime later, students’ cell phones were confiscated and they were escorted out of their buildings with their hands up as authorities patted them down and lined them up to be evacuated on buses, according to NRToday.

Around 200 people were estimated to be waiting at the Douglas County Fairgrounds to pick up the students. Red Cross grief counselors were also on hand to provide care to anyone who needed it.

He didn’t like organized religion – particularly Christian organized religion. Christians who vote and evangelize get in the way of non-religious people who want to pursue immorality and pleasure. We already see lots of coercion of Christians, even in America, from the secular left. Many of the people who command the culture – news media, celebrities, politicians, academics, etc. seem to be comfortable with expressing outright hatred of Christianity. This raging intolerance can easily spill over into violence, as it has in other times and places. If you look at less Christian atheist regimes in North Korea today, and in the past in the Soviet Union, the anger at Christians and our “organized religion” spills over into mass murder very naturally. Maybe the non-religious people at the top who oppose organized religion so strongly should choose to be a little bit less hateful, and a little more tolerant of differences?

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