Tuesday, March 27, 2012

In Search of a Coherent Atheism

Supposing I should be in the market for a coherent atheism? One grows tired of incessant atheistic attacks against other worldviews. It is fun to go about smashing houses down, but after the fun, one must have some house in which to eat and rest and live. Where is the house of atheism?

Perhaps I could be persuaded to be an atheist if the following series of questions/challenges could be answered in a compelling manner:

1. Can there be any basis for human dignity if we are simply unintended bio-chemical machines?

Perhaps someone here could offer that we are more evolved than bacteria, but so what. To say that a biologically complex organism is better than a simple one involves a value judgment. But why would the opposing value claim be necessarily wrong—namely, that the robust simple organism is better than the complex but less robust organism? How does evolution give us the epistemic right to claim that biological complexity expresses biological superiority?


2. Does nature have me in mind? Did it intend for me to exist?


Even if it should be admitted that natural selection is a kind of probabilistic “selection” process, does that really unseat the tyranny of randomness in evolution? If the laws of physics are randomly arranged, then the first life appears from the infrastructure of this random physics randomly, and then “develops” through random genetic drift, requiring the cooperation of an environment that also randomly corresponds to these genetic coincidences in order to preserve them, then how on earth can we draw any other conclusion than that the process is randomness stacked upon randomness stacked upon randomness? Why does it seem a hollow claim when the evolutionist says that nature intended for me to exist?


The evolutionist says, “Evolution is not random because nature selects.” But what can it mean that nature selects? Perhaps they mean it in the most basic sense—that nature has genetic options and some options are weeded out through genetic drift and environmental pressures. But surely the term “selection” is an unfortunate one for such a phenomenon. Selection implies that nature views the various options and intentionally, deliberately, premeditatedly chooses one over the others because that is in its (nature’s) interests. But is that what is meant by selection? If not, why call it selection? Why not call it “random reconfigurations of genetics meeting a fortuitous environment?” 


3. If the universe is trending towards an equilibrium of particularization (scattering of material phenomena without aim or purpose), then why believe my noetic activity (mind activity) works substantively to unify anything? Can my acts of thought unmake the unmaking of the universe? Is it not anthropocentric arrogance to think my thinking stands against the whole pulsating chaos of the universe as anything more than mere static? 


Why does evolution care to produce a being capable of understanding the futility of thought about the futile universe?


4. When I walk through Yosemite, did nature intend to provide for me an occasion for aesthetic rapture? Does evolution care about providing natural beauty and then providing a being that can enjoy it? Can we think of this as an appointment, or is this too an accident?


5. Does the animal man love what is good because it is good; or is it good because he loves it? Perhaps the atheist can provide an atheistic solution to Euthyphro's dilemma? But caution, if good is good independently, then there is some form of god in the universe. If good is good because we say so, then unmitigated relativism emerges, and thus the atheistic position is no different than the postmodern position. If good is somehow in man, we must ask, in which man, or men? Marx? Jesus? Kennedy? Obama? Whose evolutionary stature should we trust as truly emergent? 


6. If nature only cares that I survive, then why should I care about anything more? 


Can love be anything more than wholly ancillary to my evolutionary status? If nature only cares that I survive, then perhaps I should confine my activities to the business of my survival and nothing else.


7. If the universe has no purpose for me, then why should I make plans within it? If we tell children that they are accidents of evolution destined for annihilation, why should we be surprised when they can't see the importance of math and science? 


8. Should I feel compassion towards people born with genetic disadvantages? Can I call for their destruction so they don't compromise the happiness of the rest of us?


9. Is there such a thing as evil? What is it? And who determines this?


10. Is there such a thing as free will? Or is the whole of nature merely locked into a closed system of cause and effect, leaving human freedom itself impinged by various chemical, physical and genetic factors?