A well-informed friend who claims to be an atheist (and is generally moved to pronounce this during the Christmas season) recently sent me the following link with the recommendation that all his 'Christian' friends should read it and come to terms with its inherent truth.
Here is my response.
I read the article from beginning to end, carefully and objectively. I can say without equivocation that I appreciate and will consider any person's position on relevant issues when they can articulate it well and support it with passion and conviction. This gent does a fine job of restating a fairly common system of beliefs espoused by many who purport to be atheists. However, this system of beliefs is rampant with flaws and self-contradiction. I do not propose that the 'Christian God' system of beliefs is not itself riddled with problems. It is. But it is important to note that any such system is ultimately founded on one kind of faith or another. The author of this article holds that such noble, human concepts as 'love' and 'free will' have intrinsic meaning and value. Yet, if there is no author of 'good' or 'evil'; if indeed, all of this 'existence nonsense' just accidentally 'happened', then it is logically and scientifically undeniable that no possibility for such intrinsic meaning or value could exist; and since we are accidental organisms, we have no capacity to assign meaning or value to anything. So it is, in the final analysis, the blind 'faith' of the atheist upon which his system of beliefs is founded.
Or, petitioned with efficient elegance,
If not God, then why . . . anything?
- J. M. Browne
