Taking atheism seriously

Even if this extraordinary position is adopted it does not help. It is not as if matter generates the same moral sense among all people as would be expected if it was actually doing so - our numerous moral conflicts give the lie to that. But even if matter did have this remarkable ability, why should anyone care about and abide by moral feelings that happen to be thrown up by the impersonal, uncaring stuff of the universe?

It almost goes without saying that atheism rejects the notion that there is any form of ongoing existence following death. Because conscious life is totally identified with the physical body and in particular with the brain, once the body ceases to function and begins to break down, life and consciousness are permanently and irretrievably lost. This means there can be no final accounting for one’s life, which may be a big relief, but it also means that many who grossly breach man-made justice systems “get away with it”.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, atheism would suggest that we live in a totally deterministic universe. In the absence of any non-material beings all there is is matter and since matter operates mechanically that leaves no place for the actions of genuinely free agents. It is not only our actions, however, that are totally constrained by the laws of physics, so too are our words and even our thoughts. (So don’t blame me for writing this! But then again no one would be able to stop themselves anyway!)

This then is life as seen through an atheistic framework: my/your individual conscious life is something that has been thrown up, unintentionally but inevitably (given the initial conditions and the nature of matter) by the stuff of the universe. There is no purpose to this relatively brief, one-off existence and before departing to oblivion it would not be (ultimately) wrong to kill the last whale or indeed to push the button to initiate global nuclear war. Moreover, in the absence of any absolute moral values it is not possible to make moral progress or to even have any genuinely rational moral debate (or indeed rational debate on any other subject since we are unable to control what we think or say).

Philosopher Louis Pojman drew the conclusion in his book, Life and Death, that life is no more than being “in the middle of the ocean in a boat with numerous leaks in which our primary task (is) to bail out water so that we (can) simply stay afloat and sail in circles”. Rather a bleak outlook perhaps but (ignoring for the moment that the state of the physical universe may happen to preclude this from occurring) one would hope that atheists would have the courage to take a ruthlessly honest look at the reality of their own world view.