Atheism
QUOTE
“We are firm believers that you don’t need God in order to be a good person and do positive things for others.” (Atheist Quote on Social Media)
RESPONSE
This increasingly popular point of view makes grandiose assertions about what is "good" and "positive" with no basis whatsoever. Apart from an absolute standard for those concepts, which comes from God, there is no way to define what constitutes "good" and "positive" and as a result one's system of morality is reduced to individual opinions. Some say caring for the weak is "good" as they cannot care for themselves. It is "positive" in that it shows compassion for the less fortunate. Others say killing the weak is "good" because they consume more than their fair share of finite resources. It is "positive" in that the extraordinary resources required to sustain them could be better used to improve the lives of the capable. Without God as a standard, there is no definitive means of demonstrating who is right.
Without God the meaning of our existence is reduced to ephemeral whimsy. In my experience, few Atheists are brave enough to confront that unavoidable conclusion head-on and admit that their love for their children is no more meaningful than the fizz coming off a freshly opened RC Cola. It's just atoms doing what atoms do and what they shall do until the relentless march of entropy brings everything to a cold, dead, meaningless halt forevermore. It is within this construct that the Atheist must invent morality and meaning. When this fool's errand is complete, they are left with nothing more than an exaltation of some man's opinion, codified in media and books, which are subsequently used to proselytize others in their godless religion. At the end of his contentious labors, the Atheist’s disdain for Christianity based in part upon the silliness of having faith in what some man wrote down in a book, is reduced to zealously proselytizing others to study and believe Atheist dogma from a new book. That contradiction seems lost on almost every Atheist I’ve ever encountered. Here again the Atheist proves unwilling to fully embrace the abject nihilism that arises of necessity from his own claims - for if there is no God and meaning is nothing more than what you make of it, why insist that others embrace someone’s particular and novel contrivance of meaning? In the final mix, the Atheist does not deny the existence of God so much as he presumes to sit on His throne.
This also is vanity.
- Elder Daniel Samons
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS FROM ELDER MICHAEL IVEY
Excellent! If I might add: The atheist must exist with a constant uncertainty of moral flux. Without the moral decrees by which the Eternal, Immutable, Creator God, fixed the meanings of good and evil; and who forever retains ownership and moral authority over all he created, man is left to define, redefine, re-redefine and so on, a moral basis for his existence. History has shown this is true; that, humankind's notions of morality apart from God is ever changing. This is the one certainty of humanism. The Nazis had their definition of morality. Mao had his. Stalin his, Phol Pot his. Slave owners had theirs. Which was correct? Humanism cannot provide a definitive answer to this question. And so, one thing is certain: As long as people insist on defining morality by how one thinks about and values one's own experiences, moral values will be ever changing! There may be consensus about what some believe is moral, as was the case with the Nazis, but it will not last, as was also the case for the Nazis. Such uncertainty, predicated by persisting questions humanists can neither definitely nor finally answer, can but produce:
1. Despair
2. Nihilism
3. Anarchy
In turn, these lead civilizations into a downward spiraling abyss of human depravity in which:
1. Moral values have no significance.
2. There are no moral values.
3. Anything I choose to do is justified if I receive some benefit, even if the benefit is nothing more than a sense of self-gratification.
- Elder Michael Ivey