Thursday 1 July 2010

Atheism provides zero guidance for life - suck it up!

Although I managed to evade admitting the fact and avoided contemplating its consequences for more than 40 years, the fact should be acknowledged that atheism provides zero guidance for life.

Atheists ought be man enough to suck-it-up (although I did *not* do so - and so I am here asking others to be more honest and rigorous that I myself managed to be).

Consider: What does atheism not do?

Atheism provides no basis for being 'good' or virtuous rather than evil (indeed atheism is squeamish about the reality of evil precisely because it cannot conceptualize good).

Atheism provides no basis for preferring altruism over selfishness, no basis for aesthetic judgement and preferring beauty over repulsiveness, no basis for seeking and telling the truth rather than propagating lies.

For atheists, such matters are – at root – arbitrary and unjustifiable personal preferences – since if they are justified in terms of their consequences (as leading to outcomes like peace, prosperity or ease), then any preference of consequences is merely an arbitrary and unjustifiable personal preference (i.e. the preference for happiness, peace, prosperity and ease over misery, war, poverty and hardship is for an atheist itself merely subjective – merely ‘my opinion’ or ‘my gang’s opinion’).

Expediency is merely an unsupported subjective preference.

Atheism provides no basis for respecting individuals, since individuals are regarded as a minority of one - insignificant and short-lived organisms compared with a planet full of powerful nations, societies, cultures, ideologies and gangs. Expediency will always sacrifice the individual to the ‘greater good’.

(By contrast, a Christian will – or should - regard nations, societies, cultures, ideologies and gangs as utterly insignificant and short-lived by comparison with a single potentially-immortal soul.)

Atheism provides no reason for rejecting a focus on short term, selfish pleasure – if that is what happens to appeal; nor for rejecting cowardice, parasitism and victimization. Atheism provides no reason, except expediency, to consider other humans as anything other than something to be exploited or evaded according to our spontaneous – or acquired – impulses and urges.

Yet atheism also provides no reason why we should follow, or reject, our evolved impulses and urges.

Atheism cannot combat demotivation and alienation – since it undercuts and destroys any attempt to discover or provide purpose and meaning to life. Even a simple hedonism of seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering is rendered utterly pointless for mortal creatures in the infinite context of time and space.

An atheist life is intrinsically incoherent – suck it up!