Mankind is not sheep, therefore it does not need a shepherd. Atheism is the rejection of the notion that any deity exists. According to “statistics” Atheism is the fourth largest group of a particular belief. In other words, Atheism is now the fourth largest religion in the world. Atheists don’t consider Atheism to be a religion because there isn’t a common doctrinal belief. Isn’t believing there isn’t a God in fact a doctrinal belief?
“Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.” – Don Hirschberg
Atheists, don’t shoot me. Your belief is a religion, even if you believe in nothing; just like Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and so on is for believing in something or someone. Roughly 800 million people claim to be Atheists; there are roughly 1-2 billion people who claim to be of Christian faith. It seems like Christianity has a comfortable lead, but in reality, like a NASCAR driver coasting to the finish line on fumes, the rest of the pack is quickly catching up.
What makes Atheism so appealing? It leaves morality, right, wrong, good and evil up to the individual, and so many people are happy with this. The question that begs to be asked is: who gets to decide what is right and wrong? A poor Atheist might think it is more than appropriate for a rich Atheist to share some of his wealth if he knocks on his door and asks him for something to eat. The rich Atheist may think the opposite and tell the poor Atheist that he doesn’t believe that he should share his wealth with him. Who is right?
Atheists point to what they consider “natural laws”, a system of laws determined by nature, as the basis for their belief on lying, theft, and murder. No Atheist wants their home to be robbed, or a family member murdered; these are examples of what an Atheist would deem to fall under the wrong column. Who gets to decide what goes into the columns in the first place? If you leave the responsibility to choose what is considered right and wrong up to the individual, you are bound to get varied opinions. When immorality and morality become subjective, doctrinal beliefs decay to the porosity of limestone; they just can’t, don’t and won’t hold water. A fine example of right and wrong being left to the individual is William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. The story is as close to real life when it comes to humans left to their own instincts without objective morals to follow.
Atheism is a fine, intellectual doctrine. They believe you rely on your mind which has developed over millions of years to reason your way through life, outwitting the slower, intellectually inferior minds from the muddy end of the gene pool. The problem that inevitably arises from this stance is that I’ve met some pretty crafty, intellectually inferior people – and they can shoot well, too. An Atheist CEO is as much at the mercy of the “inbred”, moonshiner’s sense of right and wrong, as the latter is with his. Both can live in peace with each other, if they never have to cross paths.
Atheism in its simplest form can be considered nothing less than a dictatorship. Will any Atheist agree with that? Probably not, but to quote a famous Atheist, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche;
“Christians call it faith… I call it the herd.”
Hitler, 1938… the parallels are uncanny. The laws that Atheists call natural are anything but. Christianity follows those same laws. The difference: Christianity’s believes those laws to be of super-natural origin, hence a being higher than that of mankind. The very thought of there being a God who has the ultimate say in what happens to us when we die is the fuel that drives the Atheist’s argument. Where Christianity literally pushes its doctrine down mankind’s throat, the God of the Bible isn’t as persuasive. Atheists want a choice on how to live their lives; God gives mankind choices.
You can believe in God and write your own rules. You cannot believe in God and believe there is no accountability.
” A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God.” – Ravi Zacharias