Whenever one thinks seriously he/she is ultimately concerned with meaning of human existence and without
a solid conviction about values in general, and
moral values in particular there is no
sense to seek any meaning at all . That is any durable meaning . Atheism is based on the vision of the universe which
is devoid of any transcendence
and the idea that one receives any truth
from God is radically rejected and
replaced with the idea that reality is unstable zone between
phenomena unknowable in themselves and fields
of mental activity by which they are apprehended. God does not exist after Nietzsche and other atheists and if God does not exist then there are no
transcendental values.
Human beings are accidental byproducts of the cosmic forces, not different in any deeper
sense from any other form of life
. Man is now reduced to the level of a
thing. He/she is no more
significant person deprived of
any direction of life. Why? Because
there are no directions since God is dead. It is important to remember that the
negation of any transcendence is a radical negation of any reality which would be
somehow immaterial in it’s nature and not reducible to matter-energy in
movement . This cancels out already
God because His nature
as an immaterial spirit is of course transcendent to matter in
movement. Human beings are
nothing else but also forms of matter in movement because there is no spirit in man , an immaterial center of the
self-conscious person any more. The
universe does not show any unified sense or traces of meaning . Man however is
ambiguous in his/her
inclinations and self-centered
purposes . Since God does not exist everyone is god to himself and since objective values do not exist either because the
were founded in the will of God not existent now , human beings
create their own values . Whether something is good in moral sense or
evil in moral sense is a distinction
which belongs to the past. There simply is no such thing as moral good or evil because the source of
objective moral values God himself does not exist.
Man
therefore does not anymore use moral language . Since man is only
material in his/her consciousness and sub-consciousness man is
no more one-self-directing-self but is a
thing. Man is well-functioning and efficient when healthy, and
malfunctioning bundle of
impressions and different parts which can be to some extend fixed like an old car or some other dysfunctional gadget. If fixing is
impossible, man is discarded like a piece of junk. Judged as unwanted
element for some imaginary reason he/she will end up
as a little pile of ashes like during the Hitler’s and Stalin’s time.
Since
there is no objective moral evil or good we use
a language which is adjusted
to the modern way of looking at man. There is no objective morality and there are no moral duties . A human being can be
sick , maladjusted , anti-social or depressed, but
there is no moral evaluation here. And since there is no
moral good or evil nobody is really
responsible because as already
mentioned he/she is only malfunctioning
thing. In his book “Beyond Good and
Evil” Nietzsche rejected any traces
of Christian morality and
glorified some sort of “higher
kind” of man of the future . No wonder
that the language of the
german storm troopers and creators of
concentration death camps was
full of words like: herenvolk and
master race.
Objective
morality is a morality coming from the transcendent God Creator of man. It expresses God’s
purposes for humans and it elevates every human being to the
status of God’s chosen partner.
For atheists all this is
gone. However since human s still
live in some form of society there is a
necessity to have some
behavior classified as proper,
legal orderly and deserving praise the
opposite form of behavior are labeled
as disorderly mall adjusted dangerous for society and criminal.
The ultimate criterion of
value of man is his/her functioning
in the society according to some
human laws and prohibitions
enforced by the judiciary and ultimately by
police force, incarceration and
even execution.
If God
does not exist then man is nothing more
but an animal only, and one does
not call animals moral or immoral. When a lion hunts down and kills a zebra in the wild steppes one does not say this lion is an immoral
criminal because the animal simply follows instinctual ways of acting, feeding, multiply and so forth. When those needs
are satisfied the animals rest and they will kill again only when they feel
hungry. Man however can be worse
than such animal because he/she will enjoy killing and even feel
satisfaction in brutal sadism. The psychologist Eric Fromm in
his book “ The Heart of Man” it’s genius
for good and evil shows the contradictory character inscribed in the
very nature of man. He divides people
into two classes : the ones who love life and whatever lives (biophilia) and those
who are loving death and destruction of all source
(necrophilia) . History of humanity shows
periods of the domination of those who belong to necrophilia
. People like Nero , Caligula, and in modern times Stalin, Hitler and similar
political leaders belong definitely
to necrophilia they do not hesitate to lead
millions upon millions of people into
death and perdition in the name of
some insane political ideology.
Eric Fromm shows also in his book
the sadistic watching of thousands upon thousands of
people how a group or even two individuals only fight each other quite often to death. This is the
ambiguity of values when it comes to behavior .
Atheism
must ultimately end up with radical materialism, which acknowledges only matter in movement . It follows therefore that
all reality is one- dimensional and
therefore there is no basis of any distinctions on which to build some ideas
of values of any kind not only moral
values but any values . Each process of matter is simply what it is and to call it good or bad , better or worse , healthy or unhealthy
is simply an unjustified way of speaking only. The question about meaning of
human existence and the values open to human decisions is simply a
delusion. Many atheists of our times openly constantly stress the
meaninglessness of human beings sand their existence. The noble
price winner Steven Weinberg, the physicist
at the University of Texas says
that:
….”What we are
learning about physical law seems coldly impersonal and gives no hint of meaning or purpose.” In his book “The First Three Minutes,” Weinberg wrote, “ the more universe seems comprehensible , the more it also seems
pointless. The zoologist Richard Dawkins
of Oxford University wrote in 1995 that
the world is “ neither good or evil, neither cruel or kind, but simply callous :
indifferent to all suffering and lacking
all purpose.” Dawkins also said
that “… 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 pointless indifference. Allan Dressler an astronomer in Pasadena CA says: “…many scientists seem to be on a
crusade to run down human worth because
they think that it will
destroy the arrogance that leads to religious intolerance but it make also science
meaningless and soulless.” Jacques Monod of France in the book “Chance and Necessity, says “ Man
knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity out of which he emerged only by
chance.” Jessica Mathews the head of Carnegie Endowment , Washington D.C. says
in 1996 that men and women should accept
“… that human life is a cosmic accident without any purpose…”
Since
there is no God and the universe is completely purposeless and devoid of any meaning and man is the product of
such universe it follows that man is
meaningless absurd and devoid of any value whatsoever because he and his existence is nothing but a purposeless accidental phenomenon. If we fall back on scientific
language describing what happens to the cancer patient that “ normal” cells
become “abnormal” and that the body
undergoes a process of what we
human call illness are we not asserting
the vision of life that involves norms ?. Are we not dividing the world
between healthy entities and sick ?. Are
we not still according grater value to
the consciousness of the human sufferer that to the molecular processes within the body which lead to it’s dead? What justifies this hierarchy
of values except our own imagination? (Suzan Sontag in the book “Illness as
Metaphor.” )
Indeed if God does not exist, and the universe is nothing but a blind material process and
human beings are insignificant
and purposeless byproducts of this process,
then any talk about any values of
normal of abnormal, good or bad , better
or worse have no basis at all . The abolition of man and all he represents is complete.
All this
above would be worth analyzing, if
atheism were not
built on a number of contradictions
and errors of experience and
knowledge but it so happens
that it is neither
coherent , nor logically and epistemologically justified.
RECOMMENDED READINGS:
Easterbrook, Gregg, Beside Still Waters, Searching For Meaning in an Age of Doubt, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York : 1998
Fromm, Erich, The Heart of Man, Harper & Row, New York: 1964
Delbanco, Andrew, The Death of Satan, How American Have Lost The Sense of Evil, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York: 1995
Fromm, Erich, The Heart of Man, Harper & Row, New York: 1964
Delbanco, Andrew, The Death of Satan, How American Have Lost The Sense of Evil, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York: 1995
Other books by Leszek Figurski and co-author Irene T. Ciszewska
Finality and Intelligence, Is The Universe Designed?
Odwaga krytycznego myślenia . W Poszukiwaniu sensu życia
Finality and Intelligence, Is The Universe Designed?
Odwaga krytycznego myślenia . W Poszukiwaniu sensu życia
www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com
