Another interesting conversation about atheism.

I had another interesting talk with a doctor at work about the idea for God's existence.

One thing that I was impressed with, was his willingness to concede that without a higher power, God, force that transcended humanity, there was no ultimate purpose or meaning. He saw how there was no objective right or wrong, good or evil... and he was willing to live with that.

The questions that I never got to finish asking him, was why then would he; grieve if his mother died, shout for joy when his child was born, sigh with relief when he saved a patient, beam with pride when his son scored a goal, feel depressed and lonely when no one was around?

If he agreed that life without God was probably ultimately meaningless, then why did he continue to live day to day as if life had meaning? Was he just willingly delusional?

I imagine it's more likely because no matter what we believe, we all seek happiness and pleasure in life. And that is a meaningful thought. We all live as if meaning were meaningful!

And that, with or without realizing it, becomes living life with the belief system that life is all about the pursuit of pleasure and happiness.

So lets talk about the belief system that life is all about the pursuit of pleasure and happiness. Sounds pleasant enough, but there are many hidden dangers with this philosophy.

• First of all, it requires an insurmountable number of qualifiers, to allow society to function with any order. The search for pleasure and happiness must be policed, because it is inevitable that someone will find rape a joy, murder fun, genocide beneficial. (Humans are ultimately self glorified animals in this belief system).
• All things are allowed for pleasure, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else...can you imagine what that would look like? this may seem extreme, but pornographic imagines of the youngest in society becoming mainstream? Some would argue we are already close to that with our worship of youthfulness and the ever decreasing age of models in media.
• If someone decides that the best thing in life is suicide, there is no reason to stop that person except to enforce a different value system onto them
• The sacred is lost. Sex, marriage, life itself becomes objects of pleasure. Their value to be determined by the individual or the powerful in society.
• Everything becomes subjective...what we see as abhorrent now later may become celebrated.
• We become our own gods, we determine right and wrong, good and evil.
• This list could go on and on...

Another comment he made, was that he felt all these ideas of God were made up by the human mind through some process in evolution. To me that is like saying the video game character realized that he was actually being controlled by a teenager.

We take for granted our incredible faculties, abilities and insights. We assume so much, and practice insurmountable arrogance when we think that we have overcome the limitations of our own DNA and genetics. We too easily convince ourselves that we can on our own see outside the reality that evolution/nature made for us and somehow seen outside of the very construct we are within. The reason that pride is even possible is because we have lowered ourselves from beloved children of God, to merely complex animals. By killing God in our minds... we elevate ourselves to something we are hopeless to handle (becoming our own god), and we simultaneously lower ourselves to something far inferior to what we are meant to be (beloved of God).

It is not nature/evolution that has created meaning and the idea of eternity, it is God who has written it on our hearts. It is God who created that need within us. Is it anything but absurd to think that nature would create a hunger in us for something that does not exist?

Ecclesiastes 3:11

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.