[The Real Face of Atheism]

~ Chapter One ~

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by societies than belief or disbelief in God. Personal and national destinies are inextricably bound to this issue. It is not accidental that the key issues of the day that are felt with deep emotion and conviction, whether it be the issue of sexual orientation and practice, or life in the fetal stage, sooner or later filter down to whether there is a God, and if so, has he spoken?”

“Bertrand Russell’s assertion, in his conceptual critique of Christianity, that all religion is born out of fear, is a weak and unthinking criticism of the subject. It is no more true than if one were to say that all irreligion is born out of fearlessness.”

“Nietzsche [said that] because God had died in the nineteenth century, there would be two direct results in the twentieth century. First, he prognosticated that the twentieth century would become the bloodiest century in history and, second, that a universal madness would break out. He has been right on both accounts. More people have been killed because of ideological differences, and destroyed on the battlefields of geopolitical maneuvering, in the twentieth century than in any other century in history, and by some calculations, more than in the previous nineteen centuries put together.”

“[The] late English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge [said], ‘If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner.’ Muggeridge’s conclusion that either a power-monger or a sex peddler would take the reigns in the place of God is very much in keeping with the disarray of society today. Hitler unleashed on the world one of the most mindless, blood-letting orgies of hatred and sadism—the superman solving the problem by getting rid of what he saw as inferior. The Heffnerian credo has explicitly degraded the dignity of women, while implicitly asserting pleasure and sensuality to be the supreme pursuit of life.”

~ Chapter Two ~

“Theoretical physicist John Polkinghorne, a colleague of Stephen Hawking and the former president of Queen’s College, Cambridge, is eminently known for his scholarship and brilliance in his field. He has been at the forefront of high energy physics for over thirty years. Physics Bulletin described his book The Quantum World as one of the best books of the genre. Dr. Polkinghorne does a masterful job of refuting those who think science has done away with a theistic world… [He] argues against the mindlessness of the position that amino acids just randomly strung themselves together to form the protein chain, and strongly asserts that a tightly-knit and intelligible universe such as ours is not sufficiently explained by a random chance process. The exactness of our universe argues for the anthropic principle, which basically states that the existence and sustenance of man is not brought about by a random universe but is dependent on a universe with a very particular character in its basic laws and circumstances. It is like an acute Copernican revolution, not restoring the earth to the center of the cosmos, but linking the nature of the universe with its potential for the existence of man. So delicate is the balance, and so tightly knit, wrote Polkinghorne, that, ‘scientists have felt particularly uneasy about the delicate balance required by the anthropic principle. To alleviate their anxiety some of them have suggested that there might be a portfolio of many different universes… arising from an infinite series of oscillations of one universe, ever expanding and contracting, and each time having its basic structure dissolved in the melting pot of the big crunch, thence, re-emerging in a different form in the subsequent expansion of the big band.’ Then Polkinghorne added, ‘Let us recognize these speculations for what they are. They are not physics, but, in the strictest sense, metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to believe in an ensemble of universes… A possible explanation of equal intellectual respectability—and to my mind, greater elegance—would be that this one world is the way it is because it is the creation of the will of a Creator who purposes that it should be so.’”

~ Chapter Three ~

“[In] every society, no matter what its cultural underpinnings, there is a code of ‘oughtness.’ While the specifics may very from culture to culture, in each case, those specifics are rooted in a prior set of beliefs as to what ought to be. These, in turn, are related to what they consider to be a person’s essential nature and purpose. It is, therefore, inappropriate to say that we cannot challenge one’s morality, for the beliefs on which that challenge stands are open to defense or refutation. One common agreement emerges: That wherever one finds an ‘oughtness,’ it is always linked together with a believed purpose in life. Purpose and oughtness are inextricably bound, and any effort to sever them meets with individual discord and societal disruption. The result is anarchy.”

“The present abandonment of a moral law is really quite a unique experiment in civilization. This is not to deny the moral struggles of the past. But those past societies, at least theoretically, espoused a norm for determining what was right and what was wrong, some foundation on which to erect the structures of moral rectitude. In our day, there are no foundations, and we are well on our way to becoming moral eunuchs. Of the twenty-one civilizations that English historian Arnold Toynbee mentioned in his history, ours is the first that does not enjoin a moral law or educate our young in moral instruction.”

“The logic of chance origins has driven our society into rewriting the rules, so that utility has replaced duty, self-expression has unseated authority, and being good has become feeling good. These new rules plunge the moral philosopher into a veritable vortex of relativizing. All absolutes die the death of a thousand qualifications. Life becomes a pinball game, whose rules, though they be few, are all instrumental and not meaningful in themselves, except as a means to the player’s enjoyment.”

“As these opinion-makers [intellectuals and trend-setters in society] jumped on the bandwagon of a world now in high gear without God, they held out their philosophical swords to slice up anything in their way. Their proclaimed creed became ‘knowledge at any price,’ and this knowledge-for-the-sake-of-knowledge mentality has been categorized as ‘a lust for knowledge.’ (‘Always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth’ [2 Tim. 3:7] is an apt biblical description of such individuals.) These intellectuals have wanted every curtain and veil removed—right down to tinkering with unborn fetuses. All proverbial and parabolic instruction from the past that enjoined reverence and humility has been cast to the winds. The conclusions of the past have been dismissed as primitive belief, and described as a system of thought concocted by a few to control the masses through guilt.”

“Not all atheists are immoral, but morality as goodness cannot be justified with atheistic presuppositions. An atheist may be morally minded, but he just happens to be living better than his belief about what the nature of man warrants. He may have personal moral values, but he cannot have any sense of compelling and universal moral obligation. Moral duty cannot logically operate without a moral law; and there is no moral law in an amoral world.”

“Those who, in the name of Christ, have sought to kill in order to propagate their belief, were acting in serious contradiction to both the message and the method of the gospel. By contrast, the demagogues of the Nietzschean and Sartrean stripe were operating in total harmony with, and in some cases the direct injunction of, the ideology behind their actions.”

~ Chapters Four through Six ~

“With all of our access to everything that is supposed to make life easier and more satisfying, humans, intoxicated with the abundance of options, find some chains unbreakable. It is not surprising that boredom is a very modern word, with no counterpart in the ancient or medieval languages.”

“G.K. Chesterton summarized this malady in one epigram—‘Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy.’ I would change just one word in that statement, so that it would reflect our present word usage more accurately—‘Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of pleasure.’… When the pleasure button is repeatedly pressed and can no longer deliver or sustain, the emptiness that results is terrifying. Surely, the loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced what you thought would deliver the ultimate, and it has let you down.”

“Even life’s pleasures bring the feeling of pointlessness; they are here for a moment and then gone. At best they have ‘liftoff’ power, but no ‘staying’ power, or, to use a different analogy, they are like the periodic flashes of lightning on a dark road, with no guiding power.”

“The Christian contention is that God has spoken, and until he has his rightful place in our lives, neither the squandered, immoral life of a harlot, nor the rigorous, self-motivated, ritualistic life of a recluse will have purpose and meaning. The words of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) are most appropriate: ‘You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.’ Or, as French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal was known to have put it, ‘There is a god-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man, and only God can fill it.’ Atheism walks with its head down, earthbound, which is why it grasps nothing of eternal value. It must admit its predicament: without God, there is no meaning to life.”

“There is a complete sense of alienation in the world one hundred years after Nietzsche. It is this utterly morbid and hopeless philosophy that has sent many of our youth into a search for other realities. Those who do not have hope, in an effort to drown their despair, turn to drugs or alcohol or other experiments that they think will break this stranglehold of futility. The farcical and the absurd are hallmarks of a trapped society, devoid of all hope. Why have our young people turned to drugs in such large numbers, and why are they opting for other states of consciousness? It is because of the unbearable emptiness they face with a philosophy of life that offers no hope and no answers.”

~ Chapter Seven ~

“Nobody in his right mind would ever believe that a dictionary developed because of an explosion in a printing press. Every designed product in the human experience points to a designer. The argument is literally and figuratively as old as the hills. That is why it does not matter how loudly the intellectual community shouts ‘Chance!’ They have not been able to conquer the dreadful void of determinism and end up giving designed arguments to argue against design. Science is unconvincing when trying to establish how personality can come from non-personality. It does not know how to cope with the diversity of effect if there is a unity of the first cause. Human sexuality is not satisfactorily or sensibly explained by mindless evolution. The intricacies and fulfillment of human affections makes randomness a senseless argument.”

“Robert Jastrow… a scientist with extraordinary credentials and a one-time director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said: ‘The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same… This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always believed the word of the Bible. But we scientists did not expect to find evidence for an abrupt beginning because we have had, until recently, such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time… At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientists who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.’”

“The Bible makes it specific that God, in his love, created us. Thus, it is not life that precedes love, but love that precedes life. It is the love of God that gave us life in creation, just as it is the love of a mother that enables a child to live in procreation. Any attempt to thwart the love of God thwarts his design and brings discord in life because it rejects the very motivation in the creation of life. One can readily see how the failure to implement the role of love has resulted in modern society becoming the most abortive of life in all of history. The opposite of love is selfishness, and the rights of the one bearing the baby have now eradicated the love needed to give life. From ‘live and let live,’ we have moved to ‘live and let die.’”

“If love is creation’s first law, it is consistent within that framework to delineate love’s boundaries—this is the moral law. A failure to understand the nature of love has resulted in our inability to appreciate a moral framework. We find ourselves bewildered by love’s entailments and we wallow in the muddy waters of sensual indulgence. A foundational fallacy about love doubly jeopardizes one’s experience, for in squandering the purity of love, one also forfeits true liberty. In its stead, one grasps a poor substitute that leave one enslaved by insatiable cravings. In resisting the legitimate terms of endearment, one is left encrusted by a hardening layer that morality cannot penetrate.”

“Without [virtue, trust, and commitment], no human intercourse of any value is possible. But somehow, in our day, we have come to the conclusion that unaided reason can fashion a moral law. This has clearly proven to be wrong, and we are the hapless citizens of cities that are self-destructing and homes that are breaking apart in epidemic proportions. In the name of freedom, we have been handcuffed by fear and immoral enslavements.”

“None of us likes authority. It all began in the first days of creation, when the first man and woman refused to allow God to be God, and wanted to be as God themselves. Thus, sin entered the world through the rejection of God and the choice for autonomy and self-will. Men and women became the authors of their own moral law, and murder showed itself in the first family, followed by the question, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ The fall was a fact, and is a fact.”

“[Every] act of wrong, public or private, does victimize. It victimizes the one performing it and reshapes the person.”

“The most deceptive aspect of our sinfulness is the pervasive tendency to self-justification by comparison to some other person. An arbitrary hierarchy of vices is set up, and we exonerate ourselves by how far up the scale we are from the bottom. Those who recognize the nature of sin understand that what renders someone a sinner is not the scale of human wickedness but the very nature and character of God. It is God’s purity that we stand before, not a fluctuating moral code that varies from one society to another. When sin is understood, a moral discussion can begin—for each of us stands accountable before God. An accountability that high makes the moral law of any land secondary to the moral law of God. Honesty and virtue are embraced because our motivation is to honor God and not merely to appear right before others.”

“Reinhold Niebuhr in Moral Man and Immoral Society [writes]: ‘Pure religious idealism does not concern itself with the social problem. It does not give itself the illusion that material and mundane advantages can be gained by the refusal to assert your claims to them… Jesus did not counsel his disciples to forgive seventy times seven in order that they might convert their enemies, or make them more favorably disposed. He counseled it is an effort to approximate complete moral perfection, the perfection of God. He did not ask his followers to go the second mile in the hope that those who had impressed them into service would relent and give them freedom. He did not say that the enemy ought to be loved so that he would cease to be an enemy. He did not dwell upon the consequences of these moral actions, because he viewed them from an inner and transcendent perspective… The paradox of the moral life consists in this: that the highest mutuality is achieved where mutual advantages are not consciously sought as the fruit of love. For love is purest where it desires no returns for itself; and it is most potent where it is purest. Complete mutuality, with its advantages to each party to the relationship, is therefore most perfectly realized where it is not intended, but love is poured out without seeking returns. That is how the madness of religious morality, with its trans-social ideal, becomes the wisdom which achieves wholesome social consequences. For the same reason, a purely prudential morality must be satisfied with something less than the best.’”

“The Christian does not capitulate to one faculty exclusively. He or she does not see a human life as all brain or all emotion. Rather, one sees oneself endowed with the image of God and an integration of different capacities. This means that one’s individuality, when lived out within the moral boundaries of a loving relationship with God, brings a total fulfillment through a diversity of expressions, converging in the purpose of one’s creation. The rational, the aesthetic, the emotional, the pragmatic—all work together for good. The examined life truly becomes worth living. One’s conscience responds to the holiness of God; one’s mind is nurtured and nourished by the truth of God; one’s imagination is enlarged and purified by the beauty of God; one’s heart, or impulses, responds to the love of God; one’s will surrenders to the purpose of God… A Christian is not a slave to momentary values that are selectively applied, but obedient to a law, the validity of which he recognizes as the law of one’s own being. He is rescued from both pragmatism and alienation—the former being shortsighted and the latter leading to despair. Life is viewed not just in its constituent and isolated parts, but in its cohesive and purposive whole. The internal cohesion that God brings makes for psychological well-being. Contrary to Sigmund Freud, true spirituality, properly understood, is not an obsession or escape; rather, it rescues us from obsessions that do not satisfy and which, in turn, force us to escape via drugs or otherwise.”

“[Either] a person yields his heart and will to the rulership of God or he chooses to retain complete autonomy, irrespective of the consequences. God has revealed himself in this world and in his Word. We see within ourselves a battlefield: there is that within us that tugs toward autonomy and manifests our depravity and that within us that points us to God, in whose image we were made. Each must choose, for to live with the contradiction tears one apart. The words of Pascal are graphic: ‘What a chimera then is man! what a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! A judge of all things, feeble worm of the earth, depository of the truth; cloaca of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe.’”