Atheism

Introduction

The best evidences for the existence of God proceed from human nature. The way man naturally thinks and acts consistently points to something akin to the Christian God. On the contrary there are no evidences for atheism. The atheist can try and give alternative explanations for the arguments given for God, but he cannot put forth any positive evidences of this own. In what follows we will consider whether human nature, as it has always been, is more consistent with a world in which there is no God, or one in which there is a God consistent with Christianity.

Man has Always Believed

As far back as we have written records man has always believed in God, Gods, and/or the supernatural. There is no evidence that man has evolved these beliefs. By all accounts it seems to be inherent in him. Most atheists will acknowledge that as far as written records are concerned man has always believed. They may say that man evolved such beliefs before he learned to write, and so we have no record of such an evolution, but it is impossible to discuss non-evidence. Some atheists will claim that we can glean evidences from the remnants of pre-historic man, but such evidence would be speculative and fragmentary at best, and so for our purposes would come under the category of non-evidence.

The atheist will also say that before man could understand certain natural objects or events such as the sun, moon, eclipses, lightning etc. he explained them by resorting to the supernatural. This may be true, but it doesn't explain why man, being a product of atheistic evolution, found it so natural and easy to believe in the supernatural. The question that the atheist must try and honestly answer is whether it would it be more natural for man to believe in God in an atheistic world or in an theistic one.

Objective Morals

Man has always had what I would call objective morals. In other words, he has always pointed away from himself to someone else and declared him to be morally right or wrong. Subjective morality would be to declare that something would be right or wrong for oneself but not necessarily for someone else. Morals become objective when one declares morality for others in addition to oneself. As soon as we do this we are assuming an inviolable law to which we are all subjected. Only God could provide such a law.

A knowledgeable atheist will agree that in a godless world there are no objective morals, but he will claim that man evolved such an idea in order to best survive. Why man would need to act as if there is a God in order to best survive in an atheistic world is a question for which I have never heard a good answer. In any case there is no evidence that man evolved such an idea. As far as we have written records man has always thought this way. For an atheist to counter this he has to once again go back to the non-evidence of pre-history.

When confronted with the idea that God is the only possible authority for objective morality some atheists will claim that society is an alternative authority. The problem is, if one takes society as his moral authority, then he must be willing to submit to whatever morals his society declares. If he does not, then morals go back to being subjective. When an atheist is asked whether, if he had lived in Nazi Germany he would have accepted the slaughter of the Jews as being morally acceptable, or if he would have accepted the enslavement of black Africans in 19th century America, he invariably answers no. Obviously then society is not a violable option from which to obtain objective morals.

If the atheist is not willing to accept the moral authority of society the only authority left is the individual, but if the individual is his own authority then there is no objective morality. Once again all morality becomes subjective.

Some atheists contend that there is no such thing as objective morality because different societies have different morals, and there is no particular moral which is accepted by all peoples. Whether or not this is true is debatable, but irrelevant to the present argument. When we are talking about objective morality we are only speaking of man's seemingly natural propensity to declare something to be right or wrong, not only for himself, but also for others. For the sake of this argument the particular moral is irrelevant, as we are dealing with man's general tendency not with his specific choice.

All of this, by the way, is consistent with Christianity which says that man was created by God who declares rights and wrongs for all of mankind. As a result we all have an intuitive sense that there are objective morals, but since we are fallen, estranged from God, and on our own, we often times disagree as to what those morals should be. This is exactly what is seen in the world in which we live, and exactly what Christianity would predict that we should see.

Life Has Meaning

As far back as we have written records man has always believed that life has meaning over and above merely meeting his biological needs. It can be anything from loving God, to helping others, to enjoying himself, conquering the world etc. As with objective morals the specific meaning does not matter. We are simply concerned here with man's propensity to believe that life does have meaning.

Animals seem to be content to follow their instincts while fulfilling their biological needs. Man on the other hand acts as if life has meaning over and above these instinctual drives. But life can only have meaning if an intelligent being gives it such. If there is no intelligent being at our origin, which I guess in this case would be the Big Bang, or maybe the formation of the first cell, then there can be no inherent meaning to life.

Man as an intelligent being can and does give meaning to his life, in fact, it seems to be natural for him to do so. The question the atheist must answer is why, if man's life is inherently meaningless, does he naturally find the need to give it meaning? He will most likely say that it evolved in man to help him to better survive. But once again he must ask himself why man must act as if there is a God to best survive in a godless world.

If on the one hand there is a God, then life has meaning and man would naturally act as such, and this is exactly what he does. On the other hand if there is no God, man should be perfectly content to live a meaningless life in a meaningless world, and he has never been able to do this.

Free Will

In an atheistic world all thoughts would be produced by the interaction of the mind with the environment. There would be no mechanism, such as, an independent soul to supersede this interaction and come up with independent thoughts. All of our actions would be mapped out for us by which thought produced by this interaction presents itself to the mind in the most favorable light.

So despite virtually all human beings for all of history believing that we make independently free choices on a daily basis, the atheist must believe that this is all an illusion. He must believe that we only think that we have free will. In reality we are merely the unwitting slaves of the mind/environment interaction. Such a belief is depressing, and does not explain man's natural sense that his thoughts are independent and free.

The Idea of God

As stated above all thoughts in an atheistic world are produced by the mind interacting with its environment. An interesting question therefore arises. How does the interaction of an atheistic mind with an atheistic environment produce theistic thoughts?

An atheist will generally respond to this question by stringing a few thoughts together to show how by simply reasoning on the basis of what he sees around him he can come up with the concept of God. The problem with such a counter argument is that he cannot show that this is an atheistic world. Therefore he cannot show that his reasoning is the result of an atheistic mind interacting with an atheistic environment. It very well could be that this is a theistic world and his ease in stringing together thoughts that lead to God is because God has created us to easily do so.

What the atheist has to do is to come up with a mechanism in an imaginary atheistic world to free him from the natural course of an atheistic mind interacting with an atheistic environment naturally producing atheistic thoughts. If the atheist says that it is impossible to imagine such a world, then isn't he saying that the only world possible to imagine is one in which the idea of God is easily attained? If this is the case, then once again the atheist must honestly ask himself whether the easily attainable idea of God would be more likely in a theistic world or in an atheistic one.

The Desire to Live Forever

If this were an atheistic world there would be no eternal life. All life would be mortal. If mortality were our natural state, one would think that we would be comfortable with it, but we are not.

Why is it that in all other aspects of life man lives according to his nature and seems to be content to do so? When we are hungry we eat, when we are tired we rest or sleep, but we struggle with the idea of death. We see it as an unwelcome intrusion just as Christianity says that it is.

Christian theology says that we were created to live forever, but because of sin we are subjected to corruption and death. This not only explains why we have a strong desire to live forever, but it also explains why we see death as such a tragedy. It seems to me that once again Christianity does a better job in explaining human nature as it has always been then does atheism.

Conclusion

In the preceding paragraphs we have considered two models - an atheistic world and a Christian world. We have looked at human nature in the way it has always been for as long as we have written records. It seems to be clear that we as humans act in our day-to-day lives, even when we are not thinking about it, as if there is a God, and we thrive best in the world in which we live when we do so. The atheist finds himself in the unenviable position of trying to explain why man must act as if there is a God to best survive in a world in which there is no God. Our job as Christians is much easier. The reason why we as human beings have always acted consistently with the idea that God exists is because he does.