Just a Cosmic Rorshach

Ravi Zacharias and his colleagues publish a journal, Just Thinking, which is one of the best intellectual journals around. This month has an article on the "Glamour of Atheism" which is a contradiction in terms if you think about it. 

Cameron McAllister, the author, says that all atheism has to offer is death, which is correct. We started as a cosmic accident, we live meaningless lives, and we die meaningless deaths under the pitiless gaze of a cold and uncaring universe. It's enough to drive you to drink. 

Which is why it is amusing to hear an atheist argue for anything "good" or "principled" or anything else. These concepts are fictions and nothing more that exist only in that person's mind but are not founded in any reality beyond, if their worldview is right. A person can choose this if they wish, but so what? Well, they typically argue, it's for the survival of the species. So what? Why does that make any difference if the species survives? It's all a meaningless accident anyway. These are their subjective preferences, but if mine is say serial killing, so what? The people I am killing have no intrinsic worth, their existence is random, it's just my subjective preference to wipe them out on a whim. Since neither of our preferences have any transcendent meaning, as I said, so what? Remember, we are accidents - cosmic nothings.

The "so what" is, of course, we're not cosmic accidents and people - even atheists - live their lives as if there is transcendent meaning to such concepts as "good" and "justice" and "fair." That is because at the deepest level of their being they know it to be true. This in turn logically leads to disruptive questions like where did this innate sense of conscience come from? Is there a Grand Design and if there is, who designed it? No, the "glamour"  of atheism is that it allows a person to be intellectually dishonest and justify their actions behind the fig leaf of no accountability to anyone, even if they have to hold their hands over their ears and close their eyes while shouting "la, la, la, la, la" as loudly as they can to avoid hearing otherwise. Is that glamorous? I think not, or even intellectually honest. Now can we have a real conversation about meaning?

www.rzim.org/just-thinking/the-glamour-of-atheism/

(Tip o' the hat to Clover Stein)