Atheist Superbowl Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0ZqQznblZo&sns=fb

A former student alerted me to this Superbowl commercial that was sponsored by an atheist group. She wanted me to write a post about it, so I am.

A disclaimer comes first. No self-respecting atheist thinks you should consult a commercial to find representation for the atheist position, but since obviously several atheists put this thing together, it might be amusing to respond to it, with approximately equal brevity.

The way I will do this is to address a few of the assertions in the ad because clearly there are no arguments in it. Syllogisms make for uninteresting commercials.

The ad begins with a series of statements addressing the elite that are in the family of the skeptics, atheists, agnostics, etc. The ad called them "non-conformists" and "free thinkers." Let us begin there.

Why on earth should anyone think that an atheist is anything other than a conformist? The broader culture seems to be nominally religious, usually possessing some vague belief in a mystical "other" out there. But what if one considers the decidedly anti-Christian liberal college environment, and the decidedly anti-Christian pop culture environment? If it is true that such places are aligning rather nicely with atheism, then please tell me how becoming an atheist is some bold departure from cultural norms. As a resident of California, it sure looks the other way round to me--that it is far more non-conformist to be a Christian than to be a proud college grad, armed with a degree in something terribly fashionable from someplace even more fashionable, whining about how Christians and Christianity are ruining everything, especially all the liberal goals.

I think the typical atheist/"non-conformist" should ask himself or herself this simple question: Have I ever had a relationship of any substance with an intelligent, informed Christian, or have I ever read a substantive book written by a Christian? If the answer is no, then probably they should abandon the notion of being a persecuted cultural loner striving fruitlessly against a massive tide of ignorant cultural opposition. These are the clone wars, and the modern university is the assembly line.

And another thing, the ad praised "free thinking," which I take to be utterly meaningless in the lips of an atheist. In the context of the ad it seems to advocate asserting one's own ideas. But what if my idea is to kill a bunch of people? Isn't that non-conformist, free thinking and the like? I guess I don't have much to say here except that ads are poor places to promote philosophy since there is no ground for understanding what on earth the atheist can mean by "free thinking." As soon as he starts defining it, we realize that there are a lot things he wants to do to restrict us. Think Stalin, Mao, Hitler and the gaggle of other advocates of atheistic "free thinking."

We are assured that the fuel of the passion of the atheist is "not belief in magic," but the quest for knowledge. What I want to know here is why the atheist believes the unitive act of knowledge is at all meaningful in a universe thrown together by chance and destined for material particularization? Crane, an atheist himself, is a stout enough critic of such an idea:

A man said to the universe: 
"Sir I exist!" 
"However," replied the universe, 
"The fact has not created in me 
A sense of obligation." 

A last thought and then I leave the subject: Note the two terms so celebrated by atheists, logic and truth. Atheists love logic and truth and hate magic and the Easter bunny. So if you want logic, you had better become an atheist and if you want to protect the habitat of the Easter bunny, then remain a simpleton Christian. See how simple these choices can be.

But surely any logical reductio analysis of atheism will demonstrate that logic makes absolutely no sense in a godless, mindless, purposeless universe in which we are merely adrift amid universal debris; in which we ourselves are nothing more than universal debris. Many atheists themselves want to know if logic is merely a human adaptation and was not itself intended and is not therefore necessarily universal or objective. If that is the case, then one cannot proclaim that logic is the "one truth." Many atheists have become postmoderns, and if one is to be consistent with their systems, then logic is nothing more than a "western notion." How are we to claim that our western notions are better than African tribal notions, where logic may play a far less significant role?

In the end, the commercial is ironically amusing but not particularly coherent.

Is John Maxwell Right?

"Happiness is a choice." Really? Is happiness an affair of the will? What about all those 1st world people who seem biologically predestined to be miserable?

Have you not encountered them? The people who hear Maxwell say this (or Peale or Ziglar or Osteen, etc.) then summon all their moral energy to choose happiness today. And then some event happens that is less than ideal, and in comes the acrid fog of unhappiness. So they summon more moral courage and try to stop it, but they never can. What if unhappiness just chooses some of us?

Of course after the futile strain that is their efforts to resist unhappiness, they are even more deeply affected by unhappiness, because now they are not only unhappy, but moral failures for their inability to resist it. They are not only unhappy, but they are bad people as well.

So they turn to drugs, exercise, a new job, food, something, anything, to rearrange the environment to make it happier. It never works. And when it doesn't work, they lash out at the things and people that fail them. Some of them are perceptive enough to know that they are the center of their misery and thus they lash out at themselves, perhaps even hurting themselves. But unless they have the strength of will (if we are to call it that) to end their own lives, this only compounds their unhappiness.

Some of these people have every blessing that can be expected in a sin-diseased and broken world. Some are rich and have loving families. Some are utterly surrounded by near pristine beauty, and yet they are miserable. (Contrast them with the untold millions of contented poor, or contented sufferers of all kinds...)

Perhaps the naturalist is right. Perhaps they are merely biologically predestined to be miserable. Perhaps they operate a broken machine; broken by no choice of their own, but only by the sheer cosmic genetic lottery. Perhaps they can manipulate this broken machine to alleviate some of the sadness, but perhaps then again they cannot. It may never work. Nature has made them a self-loathing and therefore self-serving and self-centered being. They were built by nature to be nothing more than a white hot center of nerves pulsing constantly with pain until death dissolves the pain.

In the meantime, after awhile anything that passes close to this tangle of nerves will itself be seared by it. If some human beings are like refreshing oases, where the pains and struggles of life may be soothed, these people become yet another source of the pains and struggles from which we all seek refuge. Thus no one really wants to be around them and they become isolated, which compounds their sadness, and compounded sadness becomes anger, which compounded becomes hatred, and after awhile this spiral downward becomes impossible to stop or even slow. Indeed after awhile these people are perpetually affected, intemperate, uneasy and angry, and they don't even know why anymore.

Of course as a Christian I believe there is a solution, but these people will never seek it; the solution must seek them. The solution is the cross of Jesus Christ. When Christ turns to a person in this condition and his transforming embrace is felt, then change can begin. Only the gospel can make men happy; not our feeble choices!