The Lifesaver Religion

When you drill down to the core of Christianity you find a set of truths. That Jesus is God and that He loves us so much that He was willing to be tortured to death for us. That God calls us children and that our purpose in life is to know, love, and serve God. Those beliefs guide us to love others as we love ourselves and to do good to everyone.

Upon examination the modern faith of atheism has no center. Like the Lifesavers® candy atheism has nothing at its core. For the core of atheism is a negative, there is no God. If there is no God then life is an accident, free will is an illusion, and there are no rules. Nietzsche realized this over a century ago. If there are no rules then anything goes and evil reigns.

Some might object to calling atheism a religion. But when dealing with worldly issues what is a religion? It is a set of beliefs that guide the actions of individuals. Buddhism does not recognize a god yet it is categorized as a religion. Similarly atheism is a set of beliefs that guides the actions of its followers.

Interestingly enough atheism requires much more faith than Christianity. Because it’s impossible to prove a negative atheists can never prove, in a scientific sense, that there is no God. Hence atheists have to believe based on their faith that there is no God.

Christians are given the gift of faith by God but they have many worldly supports for their faith ranging from the Bible to the miracles worked by God throughout the ages. Further reason can lead man to God.

For example faith provides a simple self consistent answer to where the universe came from, God made it. Atheists stumbles around producing various theories about why the universe exists but limited by the fundamental nature of science they can not now and will never be able to produce a self consistent theory of why anything exists.

The latest theories proposed by Steven Hawkings for example seem compelling but they require that gravity exists. But on what scientific basis should gravity exist? Something or someone had to cause gravity to come into existence. Since there is no basis in science for creation of anything, including gravity, from nothing--in fact there is a great deal of scientific evidence that that things can’t be created from nothing-- there can never be a scientific theory that explains why everything exists.

But the key difference between Christianity and atheism is that Christians can see that their core beliefs provide a rational basis for doing good, for helping others, and for leading a truly fulfilling life. Love thy neighbor as thyself is pretty good guidance for building a truly just society. Atheism has no equivalent teaching. In fact if atheism is right and man is just an accident and that death is a true ending then the only rational way to live would be to do whatever it takes to have the most worldly pleasure irrespective of the impact on others. To an honest atheist the guiding light of his faith is love thyself above all others.

Atheists look at the world through their concept of science and see man as nothing more than an animal. Of course looking at the world only using science is silly because by its very nature science is only capable of addressing material things. Hence there could be a veritable spiritual mountain out there and science could never see it. Just as faith is not the right tool to discover the next theory of gravity science is not the right tool to use to answer the spiritual questions of why we are here and how we should live our lives. Using science to address those questions is like using a screw driver to weld steel, an exercise in futility.

It may seem unChristian to lambast atheists. However pointing out the true nature of atheism is necessary since atheists have begun a major campaign to vilify Christianity while extolling atheism. From the dishonest, claiming that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t motivated to oppose racism by his deep Christian beliefs, to the historically incorrect, it was atheists who led the charge against slavery in the US, atheists have tried to gain credit for all that has been done by people of faith.

Simultaneously atheists reject any association with the crimes of those who reject God. Atheists continually harp on the Inquisition, a mostly secular activity that killed a few thousand people over the course of centuries, while ignoring the mass murders committed by atheists such as Adolf Hitler(11 to 17 million), Joseph Stalin(20 to 30 million), Mao(49 to 78 million), and Pol Pot(1.7 to 2.5 million, 25% of the Cambodian population).

While Christians have acknowledged that the Inquisitions were wrong, Pope John Paul II even apologized for them, atheists have not felt motivated to examine their own assumptions much less apologize for the massive killing fields of atheistic regimes.

Because atheists are claiming to be the guiding light for humanities march to the future on all moral issues, ranging from abortion to marriage, it’s important to see what atheism is truly like. What is it in their faith that allows them to overlook mass murder? What other problems might lurk unannounced in an atheistic utopia?

At the most obvious level it’s clear that atheism is a horrible world view by looking at the regimes that practice it. Historically atheistic regimes are a relatively new phenomena the first sad glimmering having occurred during the French Revolution. The true advent of atheistic societies however came from the birth of Communism and Fascism. Yet even though atheistic regimes have a short history they have a consistent record of human rights abuses and mass murder.

There has been no atheistic regime that has not oppressed and murdered its own people on scales that make any Christian country, including Spain at the height of the Inquisition, look like perfection. Yet atheists claim that there is no correlation.
It’s not surprising that the same individuals who will claim that all of the historical documentation for Christianity is a sham will steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the crimes of atheistic societies.

But are they right? Are the murders unrelated to the core beliefs of atheism? The answer is no. In fact a core belief of atheism is that everything is meaningless. That we’re just an accident of nature without meaning or purpose. In fact all we are is a bunch of chemical reactions and the concept of free will and responsibility are meaningless. Atheism does not have a heart of darkness because it has no heart. The central tenant of atheism is a negative, there is no God.

Without a God to give value to everyone, the inalienable rights that form the basis of American Democracy, there is no reason to not kill those who stand in the way of “progress”. True atheism cannot object to the horrors done in its name because it has no basis for objecting to anything. By its nature atheism says that anything goes since nothing matters.

If atheism is so intrinsically horrible why are many atheists reasonable people? The answer is that atheists have grown up in the sea of Christian society. They know in their hearts, both through God’s actions and as a result of social conditioning, that other people have value, that charity is good, and that life is about more than selfishness.

But if those same people had been raised in an atheistic society they would have no social support for their good beliefs. Sure God would have written His natural law on their hearts so that they’d know what was right and wrong but history has shown that for many people that is not enough if society is corrupt.

Atheistic societies are inevitably horrible because atheism has no basis for requiring unselfish good. Man has been intrinsically damaged by Adam’s sin. Not all people are good as the crime rates show. Christianity provides a clear rationale for why people should live good lives. In Christian societies many don’t live up to that goal but at least society as a whole has a basis for saying why charity, kindness, and mercy are good. Atheistic societies can only invoke utilitarianism and rank people by their value to whomever is in power.

That’s why it’s essential to reveal the empty core of atheism. Atheism cannot provide intellectual or spiritual support to people trying to do unselfish good. Left to run society atheists will inevitably produce societies that reflect the worst in man because atheism has no basis to call man to his best.

In the end the fundamental difference between atheism and Christianity in the world is that Christianity calls us to goodness but many Christians have let God down and done evil while atheism calls us to selfishness but many atheists have overcome their faiths failures and done good.