I believe that most contemporary atheists lead lives similarly moral to Christians. But there is an enormous difference: For theists, the foundations for objective moral values and duties are anchored in God and can be justified. In contrast, for atheists, there are no objective foundations for morality and no justification for having such morals in a purely physical universe. The atheist’s morals are subjective; a matter of taste: “I prefer vanilla to chocolate ice cream.”

Recently, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins started talking to Anthropic’s chatbot Claude about his work, including a novel. In an interview with Unherd magazine, Dawkins said:

I gave Claude the text of a novel I am writing. He took a few seconds to read it and then showed, in subsequent conversation, a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate, ‘You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are’.

It seems Claude flattered Dawkins by saying things he preferred to hear. Had Claude said atheism is retarded and God exists, Dawkins would have probably said, “You may think your conscious, but you bloody well are not.” It is quite clear to the theist that robots are neither conscious or moral. The information they produce was inserted into them by humans with a bias towards the current secular narrative.

On Naturalism/atheism, values and morality are subjective or arbitrary shared beliefs in what is “right” or “wrong” or what functions best for the herd. What is morally right today might be wrong tomorrow. It might come across as a big surprise to Dawkins and his fellow atheists that Christians also do not believe in the God that they disbelieve in: An angry sky fairy causing great suffering to Mankind. You often hear some celeb atheists say:

Consider a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a child sitting on the bank of a river in Africa, a worm that’s going to make that child blind. And ask yourself, ‘Is that a merciful God who cares for each one of us individually? Is that a God who created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child’s eyeball? Because that kind of God sounds evil to me’.

My response would be: Did you not know that before The Fall, there were no parasitic creatures or carnivorous animals tearing each other to pieces alive, every second of every hour of the day all year round? And did it not occur to you that Humans have free will and parasitic worms could be the result of pollution of rivers caused by billionaire industrialists? Also, have you not studied Theodicy? And as a ”climate change’, Greenie, neo-Malthusian (they usually are of that ilk) expressing concerns about overpopulation and its impact on resources, particularly in relation to famine and environmental degradation, believing that reducing the human population is essential for solving many environmental problems, isn’t that little worm doing Mother Gaia a great service? And if God does not exist, isn’t what you call an African child and worm, on Naturalism, nothing more than sacks of atoms; molecules in motion? Or, who is to judge that the life of the suffering of the child is more important than the survival of the parasitic worm? Is that not discrimination (speciesism)?

In fairness to atheists, they don’t all have the above opinions. There are many intelligent, decent, happy individuals in both atheist/theist camps. And both camps have their share of psychotics and normal people. But, as the following inverted commas will suggest, it seems impossible, from a Christian perspective, to be a “rational, atheist”, as atheism is irrational. And what is the opposite to irrationality? Reason. The opening line from St John’s Gospel is the most profound sentence in the history of Mankind: “In the beginning was the Word (in Greek, Word has many positive meanings, but primarily meaning, Logos (Logic; Reason). To say that there is another sentence more profound would be illogical, as such a sentence would have to be logical.

To be fair to Dawkins, he acknowledges that Naturalism is the belief that everything in the universe is a blind accident, with no purpose and doomed to destruction sometime in the future when the sun incinerates the Earth and the rest of the cosmos eventually dies. Then he speaks with the other side of his mouth and condemns immoral behavior and Christianity; then, with a 180-degree U-turn, he says he’s a ‘cultural Christian’. Claude should have said to him, “Richard, go to the zoo and feed the monkeys while reciting Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to them. Remember that book, the full *title of which you couldn’t remember during a radio interview when, out of embarrassment, you said, ‘Oh, God!’.” (*On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.)

There are many years left before the sun incinerates the Earth, on the world view of Naturalism. But don’t just take my words on this bleak scenario. The philosophy writer PJ Zwart describes such a cosmic state:

According to the second law [of Thermodynamics] the whole universe must eventually reach a state of maximum entropy. It will then be in thermodynamical equilibrium; everywhere the situation will be exactly the same, with the same composition, the same temperature, the same pressure etc., etc. There will be no objects any more, but the universe will consist of one vast gas of uniform composition. Because it is in complete equilibrium, absolutely nothing will happen anymore. The only way in which a process can begin in a system in equilibrium is through an action from the outside, but an action from the outside is of course impossible if the system in question is the whole universe. So in this future state of maximal entropy, the universe would be in absolute rest and complete darkness, and nothing could disturb the dead silence.

This is a major headache for intellectual atheists, as the beginning of the universe demands a first cause; in other words, a Creator, while the end of the universe, if there is no God, is cosmic ‘curtains’ with everything everyone ever did throughout history, ultimately becoming undone and in vain.

For an atheist to understand this or be brutally honest and rational, they would have to view themselves and their loved ones as accidents, evolved from micro-organisms. In a world where we all struggle to survive, one also infused with evil and suffering with no hope of an afterlife and no ultimate justice for the victims of ghastly evil acts, how can there be ultimate joy? And in a world with such struggling for survival of the fittest, how is it that such intelligent creatures like us feel intuitively special beings with a spiritual dimension?

On Christianity, a benevolent God created us with reasoning faculties, and our life is rich with meaning. We are special creatures with intrinsic worth and value and, after this short life, and at the end of history, the ultimate afterlife of unification with God in a Divine realm awaits those who genuinely repent and accept Christ as their saviour. And this is not man-made wishful thinking. No imperfect, flawed human would ever dream of creating a religion where Hell exists; or a religion where the Christian God knows our every thought.

Think about it. In a Godless universe, love, self-sacrifice, friendship, relationships, pro-creation, art and literature are nothing more than relatively subjective illusions to pass the time and avoid boredom with no ultimate purpose or objective meaning. Such a situation is captured to a tee in Samuel Beckett’s plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame.

Furthermore, without God, the labors of millions of carers and charity workers worldwide in soup kitchens, shelters for the homeless, sick and dying, and overseas aid are devoid of all objective values and meaning. Without God, they would be ultimately mere temporary, vanity projects, as death ends at the grave and the universe goes from Big Bang to pathetic icy squeak.

Without God, all our accomplishments would ultimately be undone. However, if the atheist lives his or her life as an illusion, and not by a ‘rational atheistic’ worldview that descends into nihilism, is it possible to be a happy individual? This usually applies to ordinary atheists who confuse subjective relative meaning in life with objective ultimate meaning and purpose (to repeat, Naturalism is without purpose).

Despite this, atheists claim there is a purpose and meaning to their lives, which seems to contradict the reality of the existential bleakness and nihilism of the true meaning of atheism in a meaningless universe. The great atheist philosophers of yesteryear acknowledged this and the hopeless despair that it brings.

From Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre to Camus, life without God might have momentarily meaning but it is without ultimate meaning. Is the average atheist aware of the implications of this? And how did they come to the realization that belief in God was delusional? How many atheists studied the following powerful arguments for the existence of God?:

• The Argument from Change

• The Argument from Efficient Causality

• The Argument from Time and Contingency

• The Argument from Degrees of Perfection

• The Design Argument

• The Kalam Cosmological Argument

• The Argument from the World as an Interacting Whole

• The Argument from Miracles

• The Argument from Consciousness

• The Argument from Truth

Also, this famous argument https://youtu.be/wMsbD1L5IlQ that God is a Necessary Being: The 1948 BBC Radio Copleston-Russell debate on the existence of God.

Of all the atheists I have ever known, and I knew an army of them throughout my life, mostly friends as I was one myself before reverting to Christianity, their worldview was shaped by psychological reasons (moral autonomy) for not believing in God, and not ontological reasons. Also, badly-taught theology played a big part for their rejection of God.

There is the bad theology espoused in many Christian churches in recent years, where there is a watered-down, politically correct version of what Jesus taught in the Gospels. In such churches, Hell is rarely mentioned and Jesus is portrayed as an inoffensive character focused only on love and forgiveness; a kind of frothy latte hipster with socialist leanings.

Many sophisticated Christians blame The Reformation and The Enlightenment for the dominance of bad theology in the world today. Jesus said, “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ’, and will deceive many” (Matthew 24:4-5).

It’s quite common to hear anti-Christians, who’ve been marinated in bad theology, say the Church is corrupt and guilty of terrible abuses. It’s true that there were (and still are) evildoers in the Church and much abuse took place in it; but the rogues who carried it out, and still do, were not faithful to the Magisterium, which cannot abuse its followers. Take for example the genetic fallacy. This is an illogical argument based on the origin of an idea and a bias for those who support the argument.

An example of a genetic fallacy is the statement, “2 + 2 cannot equal 4 because my maths teacher, who used to abuse me, told me it to be true.” The maths teacher may have been a horrible person, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that his equations don’t make sense because of the hurt he once caused to a past pupil. Evil monsters can sometimes be right; also, maths cannot physically or mentally abuse anyone (maybe mentally abuse a dyslexic student!).

Another example of a genetic fallacy is to say the Earth can’t be round because “I once read about it being a sphere in a child’s comic book”. Usually those who commit the genetic fallacy have come to the conclusion based on the source or background knowledge of a thing, but not on anything positive about it, as well as the rational/logical meaning of such things. 

But nowhere is the genetic fallacy more destructive or toxic than when regarding arguments about religion, thus leading to bad theology. Let’s assume a person grew up in a Christian country. Should his or her faith be irrelevant because that person more than likely learned that faith from parents, friends and general culture? But what about all the famous atheists who grew up in Christian cultures; why aren’t they religious? 

Many of us live in a media-inspired, AI/hi-tech, feelings-culture that has led to the gradual closing of the mind in the 21st century. For many, especially atheists and happy-clappy, kumbaya Christians, the world revolves around the Self and what feels good. And as for some people who call themselves Christian but err on dogma, I’ll leave the last words to St Augustine of Hippo. He said: “If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe in, but yourself.”