True Freethinker will now consider that claiming to base their comments on the very latest astronomical data, some atheists argue that humanity is, on a cosmic scale, insignificant. Following are some examples of this sentiment:
Dr. Steve Weinberg,
The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
The Skeptic’s Dictionary:
Naturalism posits that the universe is a vast machine or organism, devoid of general purpose and indifferent to human needs and desires.1
TIME magazine states the following with regards to the universe’s final entropy:
humanity, and perhaps even biology, will long since have vanished. Yet it’s conceivable that consciousness will survive, perhaps in the form of a disembodied digital intelligence. If so, then someone may still be around to note that the universe, once ablaze with the light of uncountable stars, has become an unimaginably vast, cold, dark and profoundly lonely place.2
Dr. Francis Crick:
The astonishing hypothesis is that you, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it, “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.”3
Sam Harris:
We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss…Only the atheist realizes…how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all…many human beings suffer needlessly while alive.4
Daniel Dennett:
along comes Darwin, who simply shows how all of that design work, all of that creation, can be done by a process that has no purpose, no intelligence and no foresight. It is a very strange inversion of reasoning and it’s very upsetting to people to see that something that seems so obvious is being denied. Darwin does away with the reason for believing in a divine creator. This doesn’t prove there is no divine creator, but if there is one, it – he – need not have gone to all that trouble because natural selection on its own would have created all the biological diversity we see.5
Richard Dawkins, Is Science a Religion?:
we know from the second law of thermodynamics that all complexity, all life, all laughter, all sorrow, is hell-bent on leveling itself out into cold nothingness in the end. They – and we – can never be more than temporary, local buckings of the great universal slide into the abyss of uniformity.
Yet, circa 3,000 to 3,500 years before the most brilliant modern scientifically enlightened atheist minds conceived of humanity’s cosmic insignificance the Bible made the very same point-albeit, with a very different conclusion. Psalm 8:3 states:
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man…
Atheism has presented us with various answers to the question “What is man?” Man, meaning humanity, is a bio-organism who exists due to mutations and natural selection. Prof. Richard Dawkins wrote, “We are not, then, merely like apes or descended from apes; we are apes” (Late City Final Edition, April 9, 1989). Atheist sentiments such as these could be duplicated ad infinitum. We are animals, we are here, then we are gone, and that is all that there is to it-oh, by the way, please be nice while your bio-mass maneuvers about.
The Psalm continues thusly:
What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
If this strikes you are overly grandiose, consider the next verse for context:
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet…
How is man viewed today even by the most militant atheist? As the bio-organism who has dominion over the Earth, as the animal who has the ability to affect, for benefit or ill, the entire planet. Moreover, atheism views humanity as the very height of evolution’s achievements-higher than the angels.
Some atheists would contend that inferring divine concern from our cosmic insignificance is humanity’s propensity towards religious consoling delusion. However, this would only be true if there is no God. Moreover, atheism itself can be likewise accused of consoling delusion status in, at least, the following ways:
Atheism is the consoling delusion which offers subjective meaning in an objectively meaningless cosmos. Atheism is the consoling delusion of lack of ultimate accountability. Atheism is the consoling delusion of absolute autonomy. Atheism is the consoling delusion of erudite elitism (after all, no one in the history of humanity has been as well informed as the contemporary atheist who believe that they are right and anyone, in the history of humanity, who disagrees with them is wrong). Atheism is the consoling delusion that in the unobserved past life came from non-life. Atheism is the consoling delusion that in the unobserved future absolute materialism will be fully evidenced. Etc.
Thus, the Bible urges us to take awe in God while atheism urges awe in the cosmos’ grandeur and virtually wallow in our insignificance (a sort of atheist-neo-paganism). This awe of the creation is a fulfillment of Romans 1:18-25 which states:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man-and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”
In counter-distinction to this, the Psalm end thusly,
O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.
Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.