Image via WikipediaWorld-class skeptic Michael Shermer is suffering from a not-so-rare condition: empty nest syndrome. His daughter is away at university, and he misses her. The authentic love of a father for a daughter, right?
Wrong.
Enter the darwinian explanation.
We parents can’t help feeling this way, and neuroscience explains why. Addictive chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin surge through the brain and body during positive social interactions (especially touch). This causes us to feel closer to one another. Between parents and offspring, it cements a bond so solid that it is broken only under the most unusual (and usually pathological) circumstances.Under this scenario, love is not authentic. It is just a chemical burp dished up by mindless evolution, the same process that dishes up the urge to rape. It's an evolutionary parlour trick, and nothing more.
Albert Mohler puts it this way:
He concludes with words that can hardly be described as sentimental. “Each of us parents makes one small contribution to the evolutionary imperative of life’s continuity from one generation to the next,” he suggests.
Rarely is the sterility and bleakness of the evolutionary worldview displayed with such candor. The love of a parent for a child is reduced to an evolutionary factor that works through a physiological process of chemical interactions in the brain.
If evolution is true, it must explain everything. Michael Shermer’s article demonstrates just how unsatisfying that explanation is.Does Shermer actually live as though love were nothing more than a programmed chemical response? Of course not. Atheism, and darwinism as part of the package, is unliveable in practice. We all live as if love is an authentic experience and an authentic part of being human. In other words, we live as though theism were true.
Philosophical darwinism is indeed a universal acid. It rots the soul and dissolves our humanity.
Rebel against the atheist machine.™
8 comments:
Oh how stupid. So just because something is part of a chemical soup means it's not authentic? Might want to check you assumptions.
Atheism and Darwinism are perfectly livable. Darwinism is how we came to be and I'm living by atheism now and have for all my life. The western world is rebelling against your machine. You lose.
Hey no probs Sherm!
If I were an adherant to that silly bronze age superstittion Christiannity I would probably go to all the effort and trouble of treating you with compassion and pity.
Whew! I'm glad we've left such silly, outdated notions behind!
Now, I realize that your pain puts you in a weakened state. If you are in a weakened state I can take advantage of that and get one tiny step closer to being the Alpha male. I can't afford to waste my energy on useless (Christian) concepts like pity, compassion, understanding or mercy.
Soooo sux 2 B U Sherm! Hope you don't mind if I step on your face on my way up.
"So just because something is part of a chemical soup means it's not authentic?".
No, under your scenario something is not a part of a chemical soup, the chemical soup is all that exists.
Atheism and darwinism are not liveable. Human beings exist as if life has meaning and purpose, and they have value. Under darwinism and atheist, it doesn't and you don't.
So, who's the loser?
You are. The chemical soup IS the love. My life has RATIONAL meaning and purpose. I do not treat it as some 'test' for a higher deity's sick games thank you very much.
"RATIONAL"?
And where do you think something as immaterial and intellectual as rationality comes from, in an arational, mindless, uncreated universe?
Does rationality precede darwinian evolution, or did rationality evolve along with love? Are the laws of logic therefore contingent and temporal, or are they universal?
As for purpose and meaning, these are nonsensical concepts in a purely material, undesigned, purposeless, ultimately meaningless universe. So, you can either embrace theism and the authenticity of life that it secures, or continue in your irrationality.
"If evolution is true, it must explain everything."
That can't be true.
The theory of evolution by natural selection explains evolution. The theory of gravity explains gravity. To ask a theory to explain everything is unfair to all theories (except a "theory of everything", for obvious reasons).
Anon, anon, anon (just kidding).
By evolution, Mohler means materialism. If materialism is all there is, then it must explain all there is. That's the point. Under materialism, abstractions -- such as numbers, values, concepts, etc. cannot exist, they cannot be real. So love is nothing more than a chemical burp of no more significance than gas after a burrito. And meaning, purpose, etc. are flat-out absurdities. That's why, when God is taken out of the equation, the biggest loser is... humanity.
I believe in God because I believe in myself as an authentic thing with real value, meaning, and purpose. The atheist must deny these things.
So, when the atheist denies God, he actually "proves" that he himself does not exist... loser!!! (not you).
The atheist is reduced to a collection of molecules arranged by mindless, purposeless processes. Like the cheshire cat.
"Under materialism, abstractions -- such as numbers, values, concepts, etc. cannot exist, they cannot be real."
--- Under materialism... abstractions can exist... and be recognized as such.
"I believe in God because I believe in myself as an authentic thing with real value, meaning, and purpose. The atheist must deny these things."
---You can believe in yourself without believing in God. Ask Shermer. I'm sure he believes in himself. And I'm sure he doesn't believe in God. And I'm sure he sees no contradiction there. And I"m sure he could explain why there's no contradiction better than me.
"The atheist is reduced to a collection of molecules arranged by mindless, purposeless processes."
---Oh no! Carl Sagan, Atheist, said that "the beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together". It might be reducible to molecules on some level, but it is not a mindless, purposeless process.
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