I say again…there are NO true atheists, and add that the religion of atheism is Humanism. ‘Self’ is the god of atheismn.
If you are reading this as a ‘professing’ atheist, listen closely. Sir/Madam Atheist, you are your own God. I do compliment you for your sense of morality. Where did you obtain it, by the way? Where did any sense of morality come from? It came from the God of the Bible. Your sense of morality is based on ‘borrowed capital’. You borrow from God’s moral law to have a moral system, yet you desire to deny His existence. You either make it up as you go along, deciding what is ‘moral’ based on your own desires, or you claim the moral values of the system of humanism that denies God.
The only difference between the two sources of morality is the amount of self-pride resident in choosing of one over the other!
Here is a bit of Scripture for you:
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. – Psalm 2:1-4
Unlike God’s attitude toward those who “take counsel against God and His Anointed” I am not laughing.
I pray that God will pour out His mercy and grace upon you, draw you to Himself, and bring you into His glorious kingdom! If my flesh rises up in anger against you personally, I pray that God will accuse me of my own self-righteousness, and pray that He will replace that anger with tears – and He does. I pray that my zealousness in this matter is for His Kingdom and not for MY thoughts or opinions – they don’t amount to a hill of beans.
One last bit of Scripture for you, and for those who might believe in a god, but not the God of Scripture:
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” – John 3:18, from Jesus’ own lips. . .
The Battle Cry 
This has taken a couple days for me to really process….very good post Dan.
To say there is no God requires absolute knowledge, of all dimensions. Having this absolute knowledge would mean God in fact did exist, and they would be God. So there can only really be two classes, believers and agnostics…am I close????
Hope you had a great Monday! 🙂
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Deb,
You just might have a good point there. While an ‘atheist’ may have gotten to the point described in Romans 1 as having been ‘given over’ to their own passions, an agnostic still retains the knowledge that God/a god exists.
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I have NEVER EVER said that God does not exist.
When I say I am an atheistic-agnostic I’m stating that I disavow any belief in the Gods described by man thus far.
When I survey the descriptions and characteristics attributed to God, I can’t help but laugh because most are so anthropomorphic as to be ridiculous.
Most Christians reduce the idea of God to petulant tyrant living in the sky, taking silly offense at creatures as insignificant as we. I have little or no use for such a concept.
We are both atheists with respect to Zeus, Pele, Horus, Marduk, Ganesh, Bail, Thor, Isis, Apollo…etc etc ad infinitum. All of these speak more about their worshipers than to anything useful. You don’t believe in these caricatures anymore than I do.
I simply add one more candidate God description to the list.
Don’t call atheism a religion. It has no beliefs, no tenets, no dogmas it is simply the denial of a belief in a supreme being. I do not accept the existence of your God and all others thus far conjured by the mind of man. That is all that my atheism says.
The agnostic part comes from the inability to definitively state that no god exists. I don’t have infinite knowledge nor will I ever.
I don’t know if there is a God or not. But I will do my best to live my life as though He is watching and not from some meaningless fear of eternal punishment but simply because in the end all we truly have is each other and the world is a far better place when we serve one another.
R.
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Lotsa big leaps here,
These:
“When I survey the descriptions and characteristics attributed to God, I can’t help but laugh because most are so anthropomorphic as to be ridiculous. Most Christians reduce the idea of God to petulant tyrant living in the sky, taking silly offense at creatures as insignificant as we. I have little or no use for such a concept.”
suffer from a fantastic philosophic error on your part. If there is a creator, then to presuppose that anthropomorphisms are a human imposition is an imposition of your own, and based on nothing apart from your own presuppositions. The idea that a Creator would not use his creation to communicate is not a well thought out argument.
As well your small view of real justice, of real wrong and right is exhibited well here:
“taking silly offense at creatures as insignificant as we”
That you would think petulant the creator of the universe because he demands justice indicates how small your own view of justice is. What is particularily wrong with some bonehead with “Nausea” in his back pocket and a Che Guevera shirt telling you that your miniture view of justice is petulant? Is there anything wrong with his assessment?
“We are both atheists with respect to Zeus, Pele, Horus, Marduk, Ganesh, Bail, Thor, Isis, Apollo…etc etc ad infinitum”
Your usual saw. Robert, this diversionary tactic does nothing to address any of these idols. All it says is that people have different ideas, and does not address the cohesiveness of the ideas themselves. It would be like you saying that people feel differently than you on any given subject, only serving to relativise the substantial differences between the ideas. Robert, you and I agree that there is no egalitarianism of ideas, so stop suggesting there is in areas that your gray matter can’t process.
As well – here is where Dan is right on – your theos is between your ears.
“Don’t call atheism a religion”
This is deeply naive and shows a great lack of self reflection on your part. Religion is a view to things higher than you, that is its most basic definition. Not only that but you continue to impose standards of behavior from out the recesses of your noggin, and STILL don’t understand that those standards ARE your religion.
How can you not yet understand that?
“but simply because in the end all we truly have is each other and the world is a far better place when we serve one another.”
“all we truly have”
“far better”
You were saying about your lack of beliefs?
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Robert,
I don’t believe I directed the original post at anyone in particular, and I did not have anyone specifically in mind. My whole point was that in the absence of a recognized ‘god’poutside of one’s self, self is god. The highest goal of one’s life is to ‘self-actualize’ or whatever you want to call it, which is a humanistic concept. Therefore the ‘religion’ of the atheist would be humanism, if one considers humanism a religion. Atheism could be called non-theistic religion.
Do you always make such broad generalizations about ‘most Christians’?
Then there is scripture that points to every human being is born with an innate knowledge that God is, plus the general revelation of God in creation itself, that no man is without excuse.
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You know I was going to respond point for point and I actually quite a bit written here…
I just deleted it.
Seriously, what’s the point?
We aren’t going to convince each other.
I remember I once asked you Jason something in this vein; Is it possible to reconcile the views of those who espouse a naturalistic view of the universe with those who see a divine author and judge>
You response was essentially; NO.
So where does that leave us?
stalemate?
R.
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Oh, the sadness. I’m serious.
It is of course up to Dan, but if there are aspects to this that I have neither read nor considered – and I’m sure there are – I would nuch rather know them and address them than not.
I don’t really think it is necessarily a matter of convincing one or the other. You have decided what you are going to believe and so have I and that has never been at issue, which you correctly cite.
I think that bigger issue is allowing people to see the unavoidable philosphical underpinings of any worldview in its context. Though it turns the stomach of the less than thick skinned, these debates are incredibly helpful, I think, because they show whether or not there are bones holding up what may or may not be meat…to allow a metaphor to spiral out of control.
Jason
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I think this will all boil down to an epistemological debate.
The nature and genesis of knowledge.
R.
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The genesis of knowledge as in the beginning of knowledge? That would be God. My whole point is that there are no true atheists and that those who state they do not believe that God does not exist are their own gods.
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I think you missed my point.
What does it mean to say: “I know x”
What is knowledge and is there such a thing certainty when it comes to knowledge and what is that certainty based upon?
No true atheists?
Well I could say there are no true Christians either.
By definition you all fall short.
Am I my own God? In the sense that I bear responsibility for my decisions and the consequences for then sure. but I don’t worship myself. Despite what you and Jason might think! 😉
R.
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That’s why I asked a question at first to see if I read you correctly.
Knowledge is simply ‘knowing’ something. All knowledge is found in God and He was in the beginning.
Never said you were an atheist. You have said you are an agnostic, and beause you won’t actually say that no god exists, not because you believe that he does but are not sure ‘which’ god is the right one.
Scripture tells us that we are all born with the knowledge that God IS. You could say that we are born with a religious bent. I am not being dogmatic here, but it has been said that whatever anyone places as of first importance in his/her life is, for that person, god.
Assuming that to be true, would place that person his/her own god IF self-actualization is of primary importance. Maslow tells us that it is and I have not heard of a more favored explanation of why we behave the say we behave.
That’s also what the Bible tells us about all who are estranged from God by sin. I freely admit that when I lived apart from God’s saving grace wrought in Christ, I WAS my own God.
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“Scripture tells us that we are all born with the knowledge that God IS.”
How does that knowledge manifest itself?
Are we speaking of a deep moral sense?
How are you sure that those manifestations are really of God and not of some embedded wiring that our ancestors possessed which allowed them to survive where as those that didn’t have it perished?
R.
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The fact that God exists is seen external in creation. It is manifested internally in the fact that we have a conscience with a moral dimension to it. We are all created wiht the same embedded wiring and would have it whether we have lots of ancestors or if we were the first generation after Adam.
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Dan
Well this is where we differ.
You see Adam & Eve as a literal account I do not.
I take the naturalist view that we are the product of 4 billion years of evolution through natural selection.
We aren’t even speaking the same language in that regard. 😉
R.
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I’ll pray anyway, especially after you seemed to agree to this:
“I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.”
I have never judged you, at least I have tried to only tell you what scripture has to say about the human condition. If you have felt judged by me and I was really at fault, I sincerely apologize.
If looking back through any blog posts the truth is I quoted scripture that says you are lost, your argument is with God, not me.
The evolution discussion has become confusing. I am not going to get into endless arguments over it. It’s not the main issue anyway. That was about the existence or non-existance of a true atheist. I shouldn’t have let you take it there anyway. That’s what usually happens in these types of conversations.
If I have a narrow and closed mind because I won’t back down from holding to what scripture teaches about God and His Son, man and his sin, and the whatever it has to say about anything elst at all, then I’m guilty.
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Dan
I should apologize too…
This is a tough issue. I work from the natural world and you from the world of faith.
Perhaps we will never see eye to eye!
R
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I’m gonna back up to Robert’s comment 12.
I understand how epistemology seems to be the obvious line of discussion. But I think that this is an ontological issue. Let me explain.
In the preceeding 10 comments, the conversation naturally gravitated toward a Hume view of the universe. Your defenses and plaints were established in materialism. Which is fine as far as it goes.
The framework of your epistemology is survival of the fittest. Since all that you know is based on that which has succeeded, that is that which has managed to kill off any competitors either by making more babies and eating all the food or eating the competitors or some variation of these with those who are not in direct competition. The causative factor in your entire episteme is success. What is right in your episteme is what succeeds and what is wrong in your episteme is what fails. If this were really an epistemological issue for you, you would be the president of the Ayn Rand fan club.
But instead that which occupies your blog, as much as not, are shoulds and oughts.
For instance, in your latest here you write, “I have ALWAYS known what was right and what was wrong.” This statement is, from a materialist epistemology, meaningless apart from a societally relative paradigm.
Which is why this is primarily an ontological issue.
The most important things in your life are, for the most part, in complete opposition to natural selection – the clear exception being your reproductive rate (one of the reasons that I don’t think you are really a liberal!). You regularly – and often I believe, correctly – make assertions about wrong and right. But these assertions have absolutely no relation to your episteme. They flow from your being, and they are in opposition to natural selection.
Point is this: What you “know” has two categories, issues unrelated to you which are viewed scientifically, your epistemology, and issues which are related to you and which do affect you, which are felt and couched in emotive language, not scientific language. But what you “know” in the latter category is completely in opposition to the prime mover in the former category.
Your being begets an impetus unrelated to your episteme. That which is most important to you is that which can never be known or asserted with any certainty at all if your worldview really is materialism.
From where do your proliferative “oughts” arise? Your being. But your being was “created” in your world by a ‘series’ of events which not only has no “oughts”, but is in complete opposition to your ‘oughts’. As I said, if your episteme were consisted your blog would be “Atlas blogged.” You ‘should’ have no ‘shoulds’ apart from endorsing that which succeeds and rejecting that which fails.
From where does compassion arise in such an epistemology?
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The comments have been renumbered. I deleted several…….my fault. They all seemed to be the evolution argument and off topic…….I wonder if Robert will respond to you, Jason.
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Robert,
Aren’t you in Leominster, Mass?
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@ Jason
Your defenses and plaints were established in materialism. Which is fine as far as it goes.
I hate the word materialism…. Makes me feel like I am some greedy accumulator of goods! I prefer naturalism.
It’s silly and stupid but it’s what I prefer!
If this were really an epistemological issue for you, you would be the president of the Ayn Rand fan club.
Are you calling me an Ayn Rand disciple!?
Sweet mother of all that is good and pure!
Yes I have read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ & ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Anthem’….but I don’t think objectivism is a REAL workable philosophy.
Jason…while I do agree that in the animal world ‘survival of the fittest’ is the rule…
That doesn’t apply to humanity anymore! We have the ability to leap beyond the fight or flight, kill or be killed paradigm. It’s our capacity for reason and rationality that makes that possible.
Which is why this is primarily an ontological issue.
I believe a moral sense is something that has evolved and has been selected for by virtue of it being conducive to a functioning society. In this view it is implied that there were members of our species who did NOT possess. These members would have had propensities for what WE might consider to be antisocial or dare I say immoral behavior. It would further follow that those who had adaptations allowing for social and gregarious behavior would have easily made scarce those that DID NOT have them.
AS to compassion….
Are we the only species capable of compassion ?
I think not.
R
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I moved to Templeton last month!
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Farther west. We used to go to the Old Mill occasionally.
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Hey Robert,
New England really spanked the Broncos last night! I had to turn it off!
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Even though my last name, (hint: it’s on the trophy awarded to the winner of the Super Bowl) is essentially royalty in the NFL, I don’t really follow football all that much.
It’s not that i think the game is worthless or anything, i am just much more a fan of baseball.
Though i did hear the score of the game and I thought it DID seem a bit lopsided especially since Brady is out for the season.
Are the Patriots that good or are the Broncos that bad?
R.
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I grew up with baseball! Went to the Astrodome when it was the only one and watched Don Drysdale smoke the Astros. We had a friend who has season tickets to Fenway and shen she moved to Vermont we got them when she and her daughter couldn’t make the games. We would drive to the Alewife station and take the subway in. Haven’t followed either sport much lately.
Now that we are completely off the topic of this post, have a great day!
The Broncos were that bad last night…..
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