Having had a few run-ins with self-proclaimed atheists over the years, I've learned how some of them think. They resemble the neighbor who “borrows” someone else's tools only to keep and then claim the valued pieces as their own. That is exactly what happens when atheists lay claim to those human qualities like morality, particularly, and the language associated it, the very qualities that set human beings apart from the animal kingdom.
Of course, I know that even atheists are incurably moral creatures and value, for the most part, human rationality. That is, after all, the way God created man in the first place. Hence, atheists, like the rest of us, are bound to a sense of right and wrong unique to the human race afforded via its creation in the image of God.
The problem emerges, however, when they exclude the existence of God and lose the only logical basis for the very moral judgments and reasoning processes that consistent atheists tell us aren't supposed to be there in the first place. They "borrow" our Christian morality, reason, and language with the intent of making our world a better place, as if “better” should be the direction of our race in the first place – another “borrowed” idea.
The infamous atheist, Richard Dawkins, despising the theistic mindset so naturally and universally prevalent in people, has gone on record by calling the perpetuation of the Christian worldview child-abuse and doing so as if child-abuse is, well, immoral, and for someone who doesn’t believe in right or wrong, it sure comes up a lot.
Morality, then, shouldn’t exist in a world like the one that he and other atheists purport. A purely natural world is devoid of those qualities we usually consider uniquely human, like mind, thought, and choice - all necessary precursors to any legitimate moral idea. As Dawkins noted in one of his rare moments of consistency, there is no such thing as right or wrong, we simply dance to our DNA.
Atheism is a package deal. As atheist, John Searle tells his readers, “The upshot of this discussion...is to remind us of something that we have known all along: namely, mental states are biological phenomena. Consciousness, intentionality, subjectivity and mental causation are all a part of our biological life, history, along with growth, reproduction, the secretion of bile, and digestions” (Minds, Brains and Science, 41). Essentially, if atheists are right, then we are determined, at best, and even if we think we aren’t determined, we are simply determined to think we’re not (Stephen Hawking). When an atheist lays claim to moral objectivity or criticism, then, they reach for the very thing that their worldview logically excludes.
These are the same atheists who berate Christians for their support of the biblical paradigm for marriage, the same one's in fact, who call us “bigoted” as if “bigotry” is also, well, wrong - another moral conclusion based on the theistic assumption that they, again, “borrowed” from folk who believe in God generally and the God of the Bible particularly.
Atheists have no tools of their own, but seem rather content using the moral language and ideas they hijacked from a biblical view of man and his world. We have a word for people who regularly steal and the fact that atheists get angry when I suggest that they are “thieves,” only makes my point for me.
Tony
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