In recent discussions with sincere nontheists, I have observed an underlying trend in nearly every conversation.
This trend involves the nontheist asserting for sundry reasons which they provide, that theism, specifically of the Christian stripe, is immoral.
Now, it must be stated that in general, this argument is not to prove in a direct manner that nontheism is true or that theism is false, but rather in a manner of sorts to convince the theist, specifically the Christian, that the Abrahmaic God is immoral. If God can be shown to be immoral, then it logically follows that the Christian God is not God at all, for the Christian maintains that God is omnibenevolent or all good.
The reasoning is simply that if God can be shown to be immoral from passages taken from the Holy Bible i.e. the appeal to the the doctrine of eternal punishment, and or by appealing to instances where people associated with the Church have committed immoral acts, then believing in Him and worshiping Him and propagating the gospel is also immoral and therefore the Christian is guilty of immoral acts based upon their adherence to the Christian Faith.
These arguments, according to the nontheist, justifies one in not believing that the Abrahmaic God is God at all, but merely an invention of men's minds. In other words, these arguments are used in an attempt to make a case that the position of one who maintains that this Abrahmaic God is God, and that He has revealed Himself through The Holy Bible is a position that is baseless, inconsistent, internally contradictory, and at best discrepant.
　
Now, before we go any further, we must, for those who are not familiar with the nontheistc position, briefly explain what it asserts.
The nontheistic position is one which is materialistic or naturalistic in nature. It asserts that, contrary to the theistic claim that the universe is created by a transcendant being, that the universe came to be by completely naturalistic explanations. That is, that it is completely materialistic in its composition, and self sustaining meaning that it is not contingent upon anything but itself. This entails the view known as (ex materia) or out of matter. Either the universe has always been and always will be as Carl Sagan put it, or it spontaneously popped into existence of it's own accord.
If we grant the eternal existence of matter and motion, then everything else can be explained by natural evolution. Matter, time, chance, and natural selection are used to explain the existence of life as we know it. It is maintained from this position that even the complex intricacies of human life i.e. the aesthetic, emotional, and mental components of humans can be explained in purely materialistic terms. As Karl Marx explains: mind did not create matter, matter created mind (see MER, 231). According to this view, humans have a material body but not an immaterial soul. Materialism maintains that only the body exists. Thomas Hobbes as an adherent to this view which maintained that: the body is to the mind what the brain is to a dream; mind is simply a manifestation of matter. (Thomas Hobbes [1558-1679]). Therefore, it follows that the mind (no more than chemical reactions in the brain) and matter are one. When the body dies and matter disintegrates, so does the mind and or soul.
Also entailed in this view is that humans are different from animals only in that they are on the "highest rung of the evolutionary ladder" so to speak. We are qualitatively no different than any other animal in the animal kingdom. We differ only in degree, not in kind. We have more highly developed abilities than primates, but are not uniquely different than them.This is akin to maintaining that given enough time, one could place a prokaryotic cell in front of a typewriter and eventually it would be able to produce a dissertation on quantum physics.
Now, all of the above of course sounds good if you maintain that you lack a belief in the transcendant. For the atheist, it provides a seemingly solid, scientifically sound explanation for the existence of reality as we know it.
To some it doesnt really matter either way.
Some claim to not know. Some maintain that as humans, they are unable to know how the universe began. Because of this they withold judgment on the matter and are open to various views. This is respectable.
The Achilles Heel for those nontheists who hold to the materialistic and naturalistic explanations of the universe is not so obviously understood and can be enumerated in two parts. Each part has it's on proverbial Achilles Heel or weakness which causes the whole matter to crumble under it's own weight.
First Part - Matter and Mind
The theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter or energy; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions.
However, the theory of materialism is not made up of matter! The theory about matter has no matter in it. The idea that that all is made of molecules does not itself consist of molecules. For a thought to be meaningful in this theory, it must transcend matter to view it and make an assertion about it. The Achilles Heel here is that if the thought about matter is a part of matter, then it follows logically that it cannot possibly be a thought about all matter. Since itself is a part of matter, it cannot transcend itself to make a statement about all matter. The only way for mind composed of thoughts to make a statement about all matter is for it to be more than matter. Therefore the materialist view is self-defeating.
Second Part - Meaning
In the atheistic view we were not created with any specific or ultimate purpose in mind and are simply the blind byproduct of natural evolutionary process. When we proverbially step back and examine the universe from the nontheistic materialistic naturalistic position, it can be confidently asserted that we are insignificant specks in our vast solar system, which in itself is a mere speck in our galaxy, which itself is one of innumerable galaxies. Our world was no doubt formed in obscurity amongst the vast cosmos and will end in equal obscurity when our sun swallows it up due to tidal interactions. Even if Earth should escape incineration in the Sun, still all its water will be boiled away and most of its atmosphere will escape into space.The increase in solar temperatures is such that in about another billion years the surface of the Earth will likely become too hot for liquid water to exist, ending all terrestrial life. So in other words, if humans somehow managed not to obliterate themselves by nuclear holocaust, we will be obliterated by heat and fire. Hmmm... sounds like a passage right out of Revelation!
In other words, there is no ultimate purpose or meaning to our existence. The universe is cold, dark and indifferent to our condition, and one day it too shall more than likely experience heat death.
When we come down from this high view of the cosmos to gaze at the infinitesimally small huamans walking about to and fro on the earth like so many ants, who live, if lucky to the ripe old age of 80 or 90, we are at best, insignificant. With wars, strife, hunger, and numerous other ills, the words of Dawkins here ring true for the atheist.
We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. (The Selfish Gene 1976, 1989).
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. (River out of Eden 1995).
The nontheist must admit that according to his view, life as we know it is ultimately meaningless, senseless, and indifferent. It would appear that the whole show was rather a bad practical joke which was played on an epic scale by the uncaring silent cosmos.
In this dark melancholy scene, there is something quite peculiar taking place.... There are people on this tiny speck of dust flying through space that have this queer concept of "meaning" and this somehow is wrapped up in an even more strange concept known as "morality". The cosmos looks on as men run to and fro establishing courts of law and penal systems, they go to great lengths to instill virtue and discourage vice, they reward the courageous and honorable and penalize the reprobate and criminal. Not to mention this weird illogical emotion known as love which is seen to compel men and women to do very stange things indeed, like sacrfice what few years of life they have by giving their time, effort, money, and sometimes even their lives, for the ones they love. This same queer emotion is said to be the impetus also for acts such as fornication, rape, and sexual pleasure. You have people flying planes into buildings as an act of devotion to their god, you have people giving their hard earned money to fund billioin dollar research products, and you have many learned men and women who spend their lives in laboratories and classrooms striving with all of their puny little brain matter to see if this meaningless, senseless universe by chance might have caused some other lost, hoplessly lonely lifeforms to exist in the nothingness of space.
You even have some people who spend a great portion of the few hours they have on this speck of dust on internet forums who maintain that their God is real and then you have those that say He isn't because He is immoral or that He has not revealed Himself to them via emprically verifiable evidence. These poor creatures sincerely believe that their arguments are meaningful! They appeal to a moral standard to support their position, not knowing that when they do this, they inadvertently contradict their own position. For while maintaining that at bottom, there is no meaning, no design, no purpose, no right, no wrong, no mind but in matter, nothing but the random collocation of atoms and molecules occuring by natural evolutionary processes, they maintain that their statements about this meaningless universe are meaningful! How ironic! They, on one hand, maintain that there is no ultimate purpose for life, no ultimate objective morality, and on the other, use the argument that their opponents are immoral as their discrediting evidence!
These do not see that when they violently react in indignation to the supposed immorality of this God, that they themselves are appealing to something that their position does not allow for. They say they are nothing more than part and parcel with the material universe but do not live as such. For if they did, then they would behave as the animals do. Animals do not sit and hold councils about how to prosecute their fellow animals who have committed crimes. They do not even committ crimes! Lions do not hand out awards or give commendations to the most courageous lions in the sahara, neither do elephants give each other slaps on the back or handshakes for never forgetting their fellow elephant who was stuck in the watering hole. Nor does a cat say that their owner is immoral when he shows favortism to the dog by giving him a Milk Bone!
But all of these things the nontheist would argue are not only "good" but virtuous!!! They would argue that it is good to encourage charity, and discourage selfishness, that it is good to be involved in the abolishment of slavery and numerous other reforms of social ills.
And this is Achilles and his heel being once more vulnerable. For in the very act of trying to support their nontheistic position that all is matter and matter is all, they are forced to assume that at least one part of reality is meaningul and more than matter, namely this idea of justice! For if the whole universe has ultimately no meaning, no rhyme, no reason, then we should never have found out that it has no meaning; kind of like the cave-dwelling fish that have no functional eyes to see or pigment in their skin. They live in total darkness. The word dark, for them, has no meaning.....
