World without God?
If chance be the father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear state of emergency–sniper kills ten, youths go looting, bombs blast school–it’s but the sound of man worshiping his maker. -Steve Turner, English Journalist
I am reading Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion. Dawkins, if you do not know, is an athiest. He does not believe there is a God, any god, or supernatural being of any kind. He is so certain about this that he devoted hours of his time to build a case for it and write a whole book on the subject. (I will write more on his writing in a later blog.)
What does a world without God look like? I don’t know whether Dawkins will answer that in his book or not, I haven’t read that far yet. Although I would guess for him, he would consider it redundant to even give such an answer, because as far as he is concerned we live in one.
Without a Creator I suppose we are here by accident? What a depressing world view. If we are here by chance, then what purpose do we have? Any? None more, perhaps, than to defeat the weaker species. Sounds awfully close to Hitler’s mission. In the words of Ravi Zacharias, “If life is by accident than I can remove you by incident.” Is this what Dawkins and atheists like him desire?
Is that not Hell? Eternal separation from the Sovereign Lord and Maker. The cursed will receive just that what they desire, even if it is met with severe disappointment. The irony.
MY desire too…save for the grace of God! This I find incredibly humbling. My faith is not my own. Soli deo Gloria.
Note: I know the use of male pronouns to represent both sexes is not “politically correct” in this day. For now, just understand that (in context) I am referring to the entire human race. I refuse to employ “gender inclusive” language, I will explain this in a later blog as well…
5 May 2008 at 5:07 am
I began assembling the following response shortly after stumbling upon this post a few days ago. I write in my spare time (which is indeed very spare), and the response turned out to be much longer than I had intended (apologies for that), but finally, I think I’ve finished it up. My response:
As an “atheist like him” I can attest that your perception of what “we” desire is incorrect. I use the quotation marks around we, first of all, because atheists generally cannot be defined by a certain set of beliefs. To be an atheist simply means that one lives their life without a belief in any god(s). However, there of course is a growing “atheist movement” in this country (and others) led largely by the likes of Dawkins, and while I certainly don’t agree with him on absolutely everything, I think he and I are sufficiently close enough in our opinions that I can speak as an “atheist like him.”
The world-view that Zacharias ascribes to atheists is false. Let me start with us as “an accident.”
…Ok, I guess he’s right about that, I do think that in a sense we’ve developed as “an accident,” but only in the sense that the probability of the universe turning out exactly as it has has to have been infinitely low. There are billions upon billions of events that could have happened differently, but the laws of time, space, and probability dictate that one event out of any number of possibilitiesmust always happen. If you have a million different possible outcomes to a situation, each has a .0001% chance of happening, but nonetheless, one of those possible outcomes, even with such a low chance, must occur. So yeah, we may have been just a cosmic accident, but only insofar as that we’re the lucky ones to have emerged from the last 13.7 billion years of cosmic chaos. It could just as easily have been a different civilization on a different planet (although there could, and likely are, in my opinion, but those out there as well), but instead it is us. As British rocker turned prominent particle physicist, Brian Cox, recently said (in reference to the marvels of human civilization) “These are the things hydrogen atoms do when given 13.7 billion years.” To me this is very inspiring. To realize that we can trace the roots of the matter that constitutes our bodies back to a fiery soup of super-heated hydrogen atoms that formed literally just minutes after the big bang, and yet, in our astonishing complexity and human capacity for thought and feeling, we are here nonetheless.
If Zacharias believe that “if life is by accident then I can remove you by incident” then that is a testament to his lack of morality, not to what a world without God would look like. I find the idea that we are only moral because we fear the punishment of hell contemptible, and I sure as hell (pardon the expression) don’t see the god of Bible, who does some pretty terrible things that fall far outside the bounds of what I believe is moral, a guide for my morality. No, I need really only one guiding principle to base my morality on: Treat others as you would like to be treated. Nearly every major religion around the world has come up with some form or another of this statement (Jesus wasn’t the first) because it is engrained within hardwiring of the human mind.
With regard to purpose. It is often assumed by many Christians that if we atheists do not derive some purpose for life from a supreme being then we must not have any, or that we must somehow dogmatically follow the principles of Darwinian evolution. First of all, I think your understanding of Darwinian evolution may be a bit limited, as the real marvel of the workings of evolution has nothing to do with “defeat of the weaker species” (this was how people like Hitler and the “Social Darwinists” perverted a beautiful scientific theory and twisted it for their own personal gain), and everything to do with selection for traits that help increase chance of survival simply by virtue of the fact that they do just that, increase the chance for survival. There’s no active intent to destroy weaker species, or races, or what have you (as a preemptive response: of course, Darwin’s book included as part of its title the phrase “preservation of favoured races,” but by “race” let’s be certain that he meant something much more akin to what I explained about than some sort of Hitlerism).
Anyways, I do not believe that we need there to be a god for our lives to have some purpose. Does life have some grand purpose with respect to the entire universe? No, the universe is a vast unfeeling emotionless wasteland, (but nonetheless an astonishingly beautiful one) unfathomably huge. But to us, to us mere specks of chemical scum, as Steven Hawking once so elegantly put it, this life means everything. I feel extremely fortunate to be alive and here and to be able to enjoy my brief existence here on the Earth. I hope also, that we as a species can live on for thousands of years to come and that countless billions more can experience this marvelous little thing called life. So I through my own life hope to contribute to the betterment of the human condition on Earth and to make the life that future generations enjoy a better one. If this is not sufficient purpose for life then I do not know what is.
I strongly encourage you to watch this talk given by physicist David Deutsch concerning the place of humanity in the universe. I find it incredibly moving, and I think it gives my position much more succinctly than the above ramblings.
5 May 2008 at 9:28 pm
I appreciate your comments. Obviously I cannot avoid understanding Dawkins through my own world view, and consequently perhaps misunderstanding what he intends to mean. So it is especially important to receive your input. Thank you for being my “sound board.”
I want to give your comments justice, and therefore want to take some time before answering them. If I do not respond to your comments directly here, I may touch on your insights in a later post.
I tried to watch the talk by David Deutsch, but the link wouldn’t open. Can you give a web address?
Thanks!
5 May 2008 at 9:46 pm
no wait…I found the video on your blog. (I should’ve thought of that). Have to go for now, but I’ll come back to watch it…
6 May 2008 at 3:30 am
hmm, yes, it seems i screwed up all the links in that post. not sure how that happened…
I meant to link here here here and here
and for any other readers interested, the David Deutsch talk is here
6 May 2008 at 3:31 am
there, got the tags right this time