UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
I'm
pretty sure it was last year [or perhaps the year before] that a large
gathering of atheists had their anti-Christmas celebration. There were
all kinds of entertainment and some preaching of the glory of atheism.
In a politically “free” society this is perfectly in order, of course,
and if Christians have the political freedom to celebrate the meaning of
Christmas [putting the best face on it] then why should anyone begrudge
atheists their faith and celebrations?
You
understand, certainly, that if their faith is “true” then there is no
“political freedom” (or any other kind for that matter). Everything that
exists is chemical reactions (as atheist activists like Weinberg,
Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins and others insist). Even the thought that they
are “freely” choosing to celebrate is a determined chemical reaction.
"Freedom" is only a word that chemistry determines will be used [or
not]. They sense something that feels like they are making choices but
that feeling and sense is a chemical reaction to which the name
"freedom" or "choice" is given.
I
didn't myself hear him say it but I understand that Dawkins recently
admitted that words like "praise" and "blame" have no rational basis but
that we "can't live without using them." It's what he should say
because it's true (if the word "truth" can have meaning in an atheistic
world). Others like Bertran Russell have said it before him.
I
always find that a little amusing; especially when I hear Dawkins or
Harris rant about “truth” and the moral high ground and the abuse that
Christians and other religious people have heaped on the world. They
simply don’t get it! For the consistent atheist there is no truth or moral high ground or choice. There only is what is. “Truth” can’t exist. You don’t say a stone is “true”; that makes no sense. You say a stone is. In atheism a stone like everything else in existence simply is.
An opinion, a conviction, a tree, a sermon, a piece of demagoguery, an
act of cruelty or compassion, a dog or a mountain, a book or a
physicist’s theorizing—in atheism these are all the end products of
purposeless carbon. Weinberg said it’s hard to convince people that
their highest thoughts are nothing but chemical reactions. He seems to
forget it’s just as hard for them to think his brilliant thoughts are
nothing but chemical reactions. He is like a firecracker exploding and
has no more control over what he thinks than he had over his beginning
to exist. That’s not my view of Weinberg—that’s Weinberg’s view of
Weinberg (and Dawkins and Harris and the rest of us).
So when you watch and listen to these people talk they really give you the impression that they
are really choosing to say something when on their own view they are
nothing but a bag of bio-chemicals reacting to a causal network of
chemical reactions.
But
though that always makes me shake my head (an unchosen chemical
reaction, no doubt!) it isn’t what affects me most these days.
What
affects me most is how people in a world as filled with pain and
injustice as this one can celebrate the non-existence of someone who
could right all wrongs.
Yes,
I know the God of Christians and others is rejected. There are some
gods and some claims about the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
that I’m vehemently opposed to myself. That’s not quite the point I want
to make.
I
find it distressing that several thousand healthy, well-off and “free”
people can gather to celebrate the fact that rolling centuries of
injustice, wickedness, selfishness and abuse that have engulfed tens of
billions and that this will never be dealt with. Celebrate that?
Here’s
what I mean. A Nazi commandant (name your poison, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Vlad
the Impaler, Stalin or whoever) delights in torturing little children
before butchering or burning them, after the war goes to South America,
lives in luxury and dies peacefully in old age. Atheists shrug—it is
what it is! Nothing can be done about it. We should do something about
it now because it’s “wrong” (?) but there’s nothing to be done for the
billions in the past, the hundreds of millions in the present and who
know how many in the future. That’s the faith of atheists (though some
may not like it).
To celebrate atheism is to celebrate that!
There will be no justice for the teeming millions, there will be no
“making it up to” the pillaged innocents. If you’re “lucky” you’re among
those who can go to big parties to celebrate that there is no one who
will take care of all that.
Putting
the best face on it, at Christmas, Christians say “happy birthday” to
Jesus believing that he has claimed that all wrongs will
be righted and that he signed his claims with his glorious life and
atoning death and that God vindicated him in resurrection and
glorification. Maybe that’s all nonsense but at least there’s something
to celebrate. That is, it’s the kind of faith that
warrants dancing and singing and proclamation. If it is true, all that
is false about Christianity will be judged and obliterated and all
wrongs will be righted and an innumerable host of ravaged innocents and
righteous will come walking out of the shadows and loneliness into the
warm light of welcome and fullness of life.
Atheism, as one of its chief proponents (Blackham) said years ago, “Is too bad to be true!”
The recent atheist party was a big crowd of people singing “unhappy birthday to you.”