Telling Lies for Atheism

[cathopologist]

[

In his famous work of fiction, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky observed, through his character Smerdyakov, “For if there’s no everlasting God, there’s no such thing as virtue, and there’s no need of it.”

That seems to be an accurate reading of things. Without God and immortality, the case for an objective, transcendent moral order is awfully hard to make. And therefore the case for moral obligation is difficult to sustain as well.

If life is simply about survival, and the replication of genes, then things like morality in general and truth-telling in particular seem quite out of place. As an example, atheist Richard Dawkins has been fairly candid about life without God. As he wrote in his 1995 volume, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life:

“Theologians worry away at the `problem of evil’ and a related ‘problem of suffering.’ … On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies… are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it: ‘For Nature, heartless, witless Nature. Will neither care nor know.’ DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”

Presumably in such a world truth means very little as well. After all, if humans are nothing but a bunch of selfish genes, then why should truth matter at all? If life is simply a purposeless struggle for survival, then why would it show any interest in truth or falsehood?

Such a reductionistic worldview may help to explain why some atheists seem so cavalier with the truth. Indeed, Richard Dawkins has had a bit of a history of stretching the truth and pushing misleading information. The many criticisms of his The God Delusion, even by fellow unbelievers, are a testimony to this.

But it seems poor Richard has been caught out yet again with a bad case of truth decay. The full story is told by English commentator Melanie Phillips: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniep...th-delusion-of-richard-dawkins.thtml#comments

Phillips does a great job of demolishing Dawkins here. She begins with these words: “The most famous atheist in the world, biologist Professor Richard Dawkins, poses as the arch-apostle of reason, a scientist who stands for empirical truth in opposition to obscurantism and lies. What follows suggests that in fact he is sloppy and cavalier with both facts and reasoning to a disturbing degree.”

](http://au.christiantoday.com/article/telling-lies-for-atheism/6139.htm)
Page 2 of the article here.
Page 3 of the article [here](So much for integrity and truth-telling Mr Dawkins. To paraphrase Dostoyevsky, “For if there’s no everlasting God, there’s no such thing as truth, and there’s no need of it.” Thanks for being such a good illustration of this Richard.).

 

[MarcoPolo]

Sounds like Dawkins is your amateur political moonbat quote splicer.

 

[cathopologist]

I wonder why, instead of making things right and contributing to society, he’s advocating Militant Atheism and looking for faults in religions. If i reverted to Atheism, i would do something more worthwhile and meaningful, rather than mud-sling religions.

 

[sympathy07]

Its very article about Atheism. Thanks for good article.