One of the ways atheists interpret religion, popularised by Richard Dawkins, is to see it as a sort of intellectual virus.
This is so deep-seated and widespread it is ravaging and ruining the world.
What do we make of this 'virus' interpretation? · INFECTED The basic belief is that religion is thinking that, as it evolved, became infected and has seriously distorted the clearer picture enjoyed by atheism.
'Religion' here is any belief that strays outside of a naturalistic world-view and which falls for there being a supernatural realm.
In this realm there may be talk of the existence of spirits, gods and beliefs that are claimed by devotees to come from this spiritual realm.
And so atheists have become anti-religionists in the face of the terrible violence and bigotry and the massive destructiveness of religions present in the world today.
As atheists look on the world and review the history of religions, they see such an enormous amount of trouble, bloodshed and grief flowing from an almost endless series of religious conflicts, that their conclusion is not too difficult to see; religious beliefs and the intense hostility between rival claims, have directly caused such vast problems.
Obviously, without the spread of this awful virus, an atheistic world would have enjoyed wonderful peace and brotherly harmony.
What do I make of this way of understanding our world? · ASSUMPTIONS On this atheistic view, everything is posited on the truthfulness of a naturalistic philosophy of reality and evolutionary theory.
And if sound reasoning and clear arguments can be marshalled to support these positions, the case might be difficult to refute.
I also note that atheism has advanced to occupy the high moral ground from which it then stigmatises its opponents.
From this vantage point, atheism assumes it is the new truth for an enlightened age of science and peace, but that anything that enters the absurd folly of metaphysics is a malign mental virus.
On strictly atheistic assumptions, I wonder if it has not jumped a step too far, and assumed that it is the new orthodoxy where anything that remains undeveloped is a flawed throwback, in an otherwise mature happy family.
Whence this new orthodoxy? It would appear that as atheistic belief considers it upholds the values and virtues of modern progressive science most faithfully, it alone represents the towering pinnacle of intellectual progress.
· MEANINGLESS Two brief observations on this - as atheism is posited on an ultimately meaningless accident from where everything is as meaningless as everything else, it appears the most one might conclude, given a sufficient validity of reason, is that everything shares the same sort of 'normality'.
And that if there is no scientific evidence for naturalistic philosophy, then neither can there be any scientific evidence to support atheism, in which case religious ideas with their mental viruses are just as weirdly 'normal' as atheistic beliefs.
But of course, the atheist will fervently claim that as science is on his side, and as the religious side of the thought 'war' is so anti-scientific, it has conspicuously lost, and religious mental viruses are pathetically abnormal! · AWESOME One of the interesting things that atheism does is credit awesome powers of intellectual capacity, depth of reasoning and an intuitive sense of the value and significance of the pursuit of truth and reality.
But at the same time, on strictly atheistic assumptions, these capacities appear far beyond what might be consistent with atheistic belief about the blind meaninglessness of everything and its deep internal conflict with the final reasonableness of atheism.
I mean, can a truly atheistic cosmos spawn true information about its own nature and offer an objective frame of reference capable of being translated by our own cerebral molecules in the context of its own meaninglessness? I do not think so, do you? In an effort to underpin its own legitimacy, it is well-founded that atheism borrows the capital of early modern science with its rational basis for a meaningful humanity and cosmos.
In light of this, one of the questions faced by atheists is how far their reasoning is hardwired to the main operating system of the cosmos.
For if the cosmos has no rational origin, rationality itself is such a bizarre accident with no known process to account for how meaningless accidents are able independently to confer an objective frame of reference upon an entity void of meaning, a science or evidence-based answer to this most fundamental question remains outstanding.
· FINAL Here, I suggest is the big flaw in the religious virus explanation of atheism, that its world-view is based on suppositions for which it has no answer.
For if there are no final answers, atheism is included and must be discounted.
For the pursuit of final answers assumes a final Personal Mind able to divulge final meaningful information in a code translatable into human rationality.
Is religion bugging you? That's very understandable, but not on the answer coming from atheism.
This is why the historic biblical Christian answer, and its credible evidences, offers to be this final answer.
No other answer offers the internal consistency and profound intellectual credibility of a unified world view that is able to account for the origin of a created reality by the word of the true and living personal God, which is in some measure comprehensible to us.
He is the One who has made himself known to us in our own reason, a finite mirror of his own infinite source of wisdom, and who has also made himself known to us personally in Jesus Christ.
· CHRIST He is the one who came to deal with the terrible, abnormal brokenness in our humanity that began at the historic Genesis 'Fall'.
Here in the 'fall' is the root behind the ugly morass of spurious religious beliefs, some of which openly advocate violence.
Into this world, in his unfallen and sinless humanity, Jesus came and willingly went to death on the cross to suffer the just penalty of our moral rebellious acts.
Jesus even used the angry and proud violence of those who sought his death to deal with the root of their very enmity; their sinful hostility towards God their Creator that was so openly seen in their hatred of Christ.
Then by his finished sacrifice and triumph over death he is now, through the good news of God's grace, reconciling people to God and ushering in his new creation - 'For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Corinthians 1:21-24).
Still bugging you? Time to look at the old, but ever new and final answer!