If Atheism IS TRUE
What if atheism were true? Many proponents of this worldview have possibly never considered their view to its logical conclusions. Many atheist, agnostics, and self-professed skeptics, view life as static, which is to say, in the here and now. What happened before is history, something to be studied and used NOW. While on the other hand, the future is something to imagine, conceive, and plan for as part of the knowledge of...NOW. Really, in the supposed billions of years old universe (as some estimate) is the life span of 75 years even of any significance at all? HARDLY! We are blips in the cosmic dust; blowing along the trail of this universe’s spiral to ultimate...nothingness?
Have you considered the possibility that atheist are right, that the idea of God is an evolutionary product, and imagination of our collective minds (if they even exist). I took a philosophy class once, in hopes of sharpening my critical, logical, and analytical thinking. The course got to the place where the professor stated, “We cannot know we are not brains in vats being fed the illusion that we live in a physical world.” Of course he is wrong; because there is no ‘proof’ we are brains in vats...NONE-WHAT-SO-EVER! Philosophy, science, and yes, even theology, loses sight of reality, at times, what people live with, die with, and rest their hopes upon. Michael Jackson and others may go the route of cryogenics hoping to be revived from their frozen naps to live in eternal bliss of future advances. Others can glory that their life was meaningful, because they thought it was-subjectively speaking.
I am content to think that my life has value, because a Creator choose to create me. In my hope is a hope of eternal bliss, promised by the one who had come down from there. Each and every person, in my worldview, has value and worth because they are created in the image of the one true and living God. In Christ, who took man’s sin to a cruel tree, we see life, hope, and eternal things. I am satisfied that the best evidence points to a God, and His Son, resurrected from death. But...what if that was all false, what if I’m a brain in a vat, or worse, a piece of cosmic dust floating on rocks, bound for thermal death and annihilation. What if atheism was true; there is no creator, no god, no savior...no... There would be certain unavoidable consequences to a universe that had no God, and we must face that reality, if atheism were true.
JUSTICE
First, the idea of justice vanishes. Vindications for the wrongs of the world we live in are non-existent. Values and morals are not objective and truly unaccounted for in the grand scheme of things. Hitler will not be punished for his war on the Jews (and many other groups). There will be no reconciling the past wrongs or punishment for the ills of the world. The tyrants of old, the butchers of yesteryear, and the criminals of the past are just dead, and just as dead as the good, the right, and the just (and of course those are illusions). Justice is not going to prevail, it won’t. There is no final court room. No final charge to answer to or punishment to meet out. Life is meaningless, in the GRAND SCHEME of things. For what purpose do we exist, and worse is there ever a reckoning of past wrongs, which seem to have gone unpunished. Justice is purely an illusion, if atheism is true.
HOPE
Hope vanishes in light of the ‘truth’ that atheism presents. What could we hope for, if the world is random, chance, and pure luck? No grieving mother who is despondent, depressed, and mourning the loss of a baby, young adult in battle, or the spouse of 50 years could hope to see their face, hear their voice, or be with the love that existed in a particular point of time. Hope is an expectation of a future event, which will be better than the present. Atheism offers no support for hope, offers no reason to ULTIMATELY hope in anything but extinguished existences of all life and matter itself, or at least the forms as they exist now. Hope is illusory, not to be trusted and grasped, if atheism is true. Life truly is random chance, atoms bounding off hopeless items and affecting other hopeless entities. What is hope but sheer fantasy of expectations that are grounded, ULTIMATELY, in nothing, worse than brains in vats, if atheism is true?
DEATH
What about death for atheism, if true? Christ’s death at Calvary was useless, His resurrection a creation of fantasy and fiction. Death is victorious, death does reign, and it conquers and destroys all. Our moon, sun, stars, and yes, planet (and the entire universe) will succumb to death. There was not a payment for sin at the cross in Israel, some 2000 years ago. Death took an itinerant Jewish rabbi to a cruel measure of demise, for no apparent reason, to suffer and die as His message meant...NOTHING! Atheism is grounded in the nothingness of hopelessness and death. Death is not positive or negative it is neutral. Death just happens, it comes, it takes, and it never frees a soul from a wretched body (souls surely don’t exist, either). Death is the reality, the ultimate reality, if atheists are right.
GOD
God does not exist, if atheism is true, so we know nothing from Him and nothing of His Son’s grace, it is a fictional account, embellished to appeal to the uneducated, uninformed, and clueless masses that see divine intervention in everyday instances. The Bible is a collection of fables and proverbs, as relevant as any other book or stories of yore. It isn’t God’s word, no, it is truly just men, brilliant indeed, but blinded by religious devotion or purely hallucinatory notions; visions of angels, spirits, and gods, as real as fairies, unicorns, and the Lucky Charms Leprechaun. Religion is a fantasy, made to make us feel better about the eventual extinguishing of our existence. Maybe we are that vat or the brain, imagining a world of hope, eternal life, and God. Yeah, if atheism is true...we have no greater good.
Beauty
Beauty is most assuredly on the death row of atheism’s world view, if true. Beauty can be appreciated by atheist, in the Christian worldview, I am actually sure. Beauty has no basis if there is no ultimate foundation for it. Beauty is a description and quality that exists in the Christian world view, originating from God. God created all things, originally, in a way that was beautiful and it is clearly affected by sin now, but much of the beautiful qualities are retained, if the Christian worldview is true. If the atheistic world view is true then beauty is truly “in the eye of the beholder,” isn’t it? What would be the place to ground beauty’s standards in? It suddenly becomes a subjective standard that can change with the whims of the viewer. Beauty can’t be appreciated in an objective way, if atheism is true.
BOUNDARY EFFECT
The last thing I will consider, if atheism were true is boundaries. Rules, regulations, laws, or whatever you want to call them. I’m not talking about morals, even though there is an element of boundaries in morals, but in a larger, universal sense. If atheism is true, there would be no boundaries, no standard, and no way to measure anything. God is a ruler, in the kingdom sense, but a measurement ruler, too. By Him we measure all things; truth, standards, and anything else you can think of. Let me illustrate with the most mundane anecdotal illustration that I can think of. It is true, so it carries much greater weight (!). I lived in Cincinnati for a year while I completed my degree (in Mortuary Science). In traveling between my apartment and the college, I encountered numerous stop-lights, along the route. One late fall day, while most of the leaves were still on the trees, a freak ice/snow storm struck. It was a very mild and brief storm, but the leaves and snow/sleet/ice combined for havoc on the power lines, city wide.
As a country boy in the big city, the prospect of driving thru a city with no power, to control or run the stop-lights, had me nearly panicked. My fears were quickly dissolved as the journey to school was uneventful, as at every stop light, everyone, to much the surprise of me, treated each stop-light-less intersection like a 4-way stop. Each driver proceeded at their ‘turn’ with everyone being courteous, considerate, and orderly. To the atheistic worldview, this situation proves that morals are a social construct; by NECESSITY we do the ‘moral’ thing. I saw it much different; I saw the boundaries of life, the things that we appeal to, ULTIMATELY, at work. We followed a law, a rule, a boundary, which no one forced us to use (no police officer was at any intersection that I passed thru). Each person, without exception, and there was none (but the law breaker is still ‘breaking’ a boundary), followed a prescribed boundary, code that no one saw, voted on, or had passed down to them, something else kicked in, the ‘Boundary Effect’ as I’ve coined it. Simply stated, the ‘Boundary Effect’ is the idea that intuitively we have certain boundaries that exist in our very being, which are universal in our collective awareness. We know ‘where’ these boundaries are and the boundaries dictate our movement. Yet, if atheism were true, the boundaries seem useless.
WHAT IF?
I’m sure there are atheists that find meaning in life. They see a value in doing something, contributing, and/or finding ways to pull ‘meaning’ out of their existence. I’m not sure I could. I’m not sure, if atheism is true, I could be loosed from the despondency, hopelessness, and doom that life is leading to. I look at life, now, as hopeful, beautiful, and wonderful. An atheistic worldview robs hope, beauty, and wonder from our hearts and minds. We spin in a universe, ultimately, eventually, and inevitably doomed for destruction and death...yes death...the only true eternal force of nature, if atheism is true. Yet, I’m reminded of that verse, (1Corinthians 15:55) “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” In the atheistic worldview, this is not a true statement, for death ultimately triumphs over ALL, if atheism were true.
Comments