What people call ‘atheism’ these days is specifically materialistic atheism. Certain Buddhists, for example, claim to be atheist — not believing in an all-powerful God — but they nonetheless understand that Man has a soul (which they believe to be immortal); that there is a spiritual dimension underpinning life; and so on. What sets modern, materialistic atheism utterly apart is that it states that the material world is the only dimension of reality; that all aspects of life, thought, emotion and the world are entirely material or physical.

This what the materialist atheists consider to be a scientific point of view.

I want to emphasise a point I touched on previously. The idea — as expressed by the communists and others — that the moral underpinnings of secular Humanism (at least the anti-religious version), are simply bourgeois sentimentality, and that in secular Humanism or in any philosophy constructed on a foundation of materialist atheism, the logical end result is the Holocaust and the Killing Fields.

Mr Dawkins and Mr Hitchens would deny this strenuously. In fact, they both claim that neither Hitler nor Stalin were atheists in the true sense — for example I have it argued by atheists that Hitler was some sort of Pagan mystic, and that Stalin drew his world view from some corrupted Chritian notions he picked up in Childhood.

(This is in fact classic Socialist doublespeak — wherein whatever wrongs the Party does are immediately imputed upon the other side, of which the offenders are then said to be agents. I believe Mr Dawkins and Mr Hitchens are revealing something of themselves they might prefer hidden.)

Mr Dawkins argues that atheism was ‘incidental’ to Hitler, but the truth is, it is Secular Humanism itself which is inconsistent with materialistic atheism. Marxism, Nazism and mass murder are the logical and inevitable consequence of the philosophy of atheist materialism.

Now, the typical atheist will immediately object. In the West, this person is usually a ‘me first’ sort of person, and in most cases the basis of their belief is nothing more than ‘I can’t see it so it doesn’t exist’ (’If a tree falls in a forest and I wasn’t there to see it, did it make a sound?’). So, this person will become annoyed if confronted with the statement that atheism leads to genocide and mass murder. He or she will argue that ‘I am not like that, nor my atheist friends, therefore the argument is preposterous.’

And it’s natural that he or she would be offended, so please let me assure him or her, that I am not suggesting he or she is a Nazi Brownshirt. What I am saying is that, in the communist vernacular, he or she is a sentimental or ‘decadent’ Bourgeois, who has an attachment to traditional morality logically inconsistent with their philosophical outlook — a characteristic the ‘heroes’ of Socialism understood very well, hence their scorn and hostility to middle class ‘’reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries’, even those who regarded themselves as Socialists.

This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.
–Che Guevara

(Let me hasten to add, I am no friend of the communists. If you find yourself in the sad position of having been persuaded an evil philosophy such as materialistic atheism is true, having a moral code that is inconsistent with it is not a bad thing.)

As I argued previously, atheism taken to its logical conclusion leads to a nihilistic disregard for human life and human exceptionality; and the subsequent license to murder and destroy. That most Western middle class atheists (to their credit) do not embrace this is a result of their upbringing, the social surroundings and habits, and sadly it will diminish over time (rapidly on a generational scale). There is no logical philosophical basis in materialistic atheism for the values our society holds dear, its ‘progressive’ and godless middle class included. They are just a product of affinity to those we most encounter (’people like us’).

I would say this to materialistic atheists: it’s a mistake to open this Pandora’s Box. You feel wise and knowledgeable when you broadcast to the world the foolishness of the old ways, and your great superiority in intellect and reasoning. You see this as the clear light of reason, a gift for young and old.

But cast far, this seed will land in hearts and lives very different from your own, and the results will not be what you predict. The evidence for this is that it has happened numerous times before. When you broadcast your message to the world, the young and impressionable, the disillusioned, the lost — that there is no God; and that Man has no soul and knows of no truths other than what he constructs for himself — not everyone is going to embrace this philosophy in the half hearted manner of the Western Bourgeois

Not everyone is going to put their mind into this brave new world of pure freedom, but keep their heart in the altruistic moral order of times past.

Sentimentality is a product of comfort. What will happen when this philosophy finds as its raw material those who have grown up ouside the cocoon — the timid Georgian boy whose childhood was a constant torment of fear; the poor Austrian small town boy, impoverished and humiliated in an imperial capital full of privileged elites? What when these men, grown to manhood, their souls shaped by the influence of their harsh life experience refracted through a philosophy of spiritual nihilism?

Bred outside the cocoon, outisde the middle class comfort zone, what attachment will these men have for middle class values?

When they arrive, with their armies of lost and twisted souls, will you be the first to recoil in shock and dismay as they work out the implacable logic of a soulless world?

Will you be the first to cry ‘why me?’, as they line you up for elimination.

‘You called us forth,’ they will say. ‘Why do you cry out?’

Will you then also cry out “Oh, God, no!”

‘Too late to call for God’, they will say. ‘God is dead.’

…and who killed Him?

Richard Dawkins — erstwhile captain of a veritable army of lost souls — has posted an extensive interview with Pastor Mark Roberts, the renowned New Testament scholar

…and a wonderful interview with Professor Alister McGrath.

(Concerning the Alistair McGrath interview, it needs to be noted that this was omitted from Mr Dawkins TV series “Root of All Evil”. I watched some of that disappointing series — a cynic might say this excellent interview with a great Christian intellectual was excluded because didn’t fit Mr Dawkins’ Mike-Moore-esque style of pseudo-documentary film-making.

This is what I had to say on Mr Dawkins’ comments page:

Mr Dawkins, you’re certainly right when you say that Christianity is more rational than atheism. Despite the archaic poetry it uses to express itself, there is a level of understanding in the Bible that no materialistic philosophy can approach.

As you pointed out, the proof of this is that the logical outcome of a purely materialistic atheistic ‘cult’ belief is profoundly at odds with what we we intuitively know to be true and right. Whereas Christian thought, despite its unfashionable tendency towards mysticism and an understanding that certain things cannot be understood on our plane of being (hence the need for Faith), is both logical; internally consistent; and, most importantly, consistent with our experience of the world (not to mention our experience of the presence of God, but sadly most of your readers have been denied that that).

I guess atheism is just too solipsistic to have anything useful to offer. The idea that just what ‘I’ can see and touch is enough to know the universe — apart from being philosophically risible — is so grossly unscientific that the rational mind rebels with the heart.

Thanks for your link to Dr Roberts web site. There is some very interesting material there. Isn’t it extraordinary to realise that by all objective standards the New Testament is actually the most reliable document to reach us from ancient times!

Thanks again Mr Dawkins, and I’m delighted that you have found Christ at last after all these years.

Moral complexity does exist in algorithmic form…within our brains. And that goes to the difference between laws and goals. My goals are what I’m trying to do, both morally and in other areas. There are some sophisticated software programs running in my brain made up of things that I’ve been taught, things I’ve figured out for myself, and things that are built in. All of these add up to provide me the tendency to act a certain way in a certain situation. The strategies that drive that software are my moral goals.

Laws, on the other hand, exist outside of myself. I am not specifically programmed to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. I have some tendencies in that direction, but there’s nothing stopping me from acting otherwise, and — let’s face it — I often do. I have tendencies to be nice, fair, just, etc., but I also have tendencies to try to get what I want, to get even with those who have wronged me, to try to be a bigshot, and so on. These tendencies compete with each other, and my behavior overall is some rough compromise.

Phil Bowermaster, The Three Goals, Game Theory, and Western Civilization

My Christian perspective informs me that thought is a product of life, so (sadly), no machine will never think.

But for the sake of argument, assuming one will (and the argument is worth the assumption), it’s fascinating how deeply our ethical laws are tied to our God-given spiritual nature: our unique gifts of love and compassion, our gut-level sense of wrong (knowing right is more difficult, but instincts for shame and outrage are deep, acutely sensitive and much more accurate than our feeble ability to logically define transgression).

In the area of reasoning and philosophy, Christians would argue an ethical code must have barriers of sanctity — such as the sanctity of life (particularly of innocent life).

For example, it is not acceptable to deliberately take an innocent life to save a greater number of innocent lives — no moral doctor would kill one child to save the lives of two others. Nor is it right to kill an old or ill person (who may have only a short time to live), even if this would greatly prolong another’s life — sanctity of life is not quantifiable.

There are many arguments about the death penalty, but all generally include a concept of the sanctity of life. Those who support the death penalty may argue that cold-blooded killers must face justice for their horrible violations this sanctity, or that the risk to the lives of others posed by such criminals is an immoral imposition on potential future victims. Those against might argue that even a sadistic murderer’s life is sacred, or even that there is innocence somewhere in the most twisted soul.

However, I’ve never heard anyone suggest it would be acceptable to execute criminals simply for convenience or to save money. Even though the utilitarian would argue that the money saved might be used preserve other lives, there is a ’sacred barrier’ that renders that calculation offensive to us.

On a lower level of sanctity, it is wrong to infringe the natural freedoms of some to enhance the convenience or comfort of any number of others. But it is wrong to place personal freedom above the life and health of others (the argument underlying traditional opposition to the legalisation of drugs). Even libertarians would probably agree, although they might have a much broader conception of what constitutes a ’sacred’ freedom, and to what degree one’s actions (or the other person’s own actions) affect the life and health of another.

America’s Founders had it right — life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, in that order…

Even though our whole being has been wrought with moral awareness at its core, we struggle to apply right and wrong to even the most trivial situations. It would fascinating to see how a hypothetical intelligent machine would manage, though if such a creation were possible I seriously doubt it could ever evolve beyond the need for an easily accessible off switch!

For the first time in four years! A new track from my music outfit, zero.enmity.

As usual, most people will find it sleep inducing — that can be a good thing for some, of course — but I have heard tales (probably apocryphal) of people who actually enjoy the music of zero.enmity!

Well, I enjoy it, and enjoyed making it.

Available here: The Ornaments of Love

They f– you up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.

…

Man hands on misery to man.
  It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
  And don’t have any kids yourself.

–Philip Larkin (This Be The Verse)

That poem (it’s short there’s only one other verse) is brutal and brilliant. It’s not true, of course, but it’s painfully honest. It cuts through whole libraries worth of modern verbiage and lays out one of the central theses of our times like a bloody human heart slapped down on a butcher’s shop counter.

Billions of people weep oceans over this simple misapprehension. That something happened to them to make them to make them sad. Because this psychic sadness is so universal, we conclude — logically but erroneously — that it must be a consequence of the experience all adult humans have shared; our childhood.

This lie — that our parents have ‘f–ed us up’ — ruins lives, it divides families, it murders the bond of love between parent and child. As the poem suggests, it drives people to agony, solitude and suicide.

Some bear this grudge inwardly, some proclaim it like a religion, but it’s all a lie. It’s just about the worst lie in the world.

I’m a born-again, fundamentalist Christian, but I’m also a terrible heretic, so I draw many of my conclusions about God and Man from other religions, none more so than the noble philosophy of Buddhism.

Before he became Buddha, ‘the one who has seen the light’, his name was Siddhattha Gotama and he was an Indian prince. He had everything, as you may know, palaces, pleasure gardens, a beautiful childhood. He had love, luxury and all the pleasures of family and court. Enough to guarantee happiness in any young man.

But he left it all behind and spent long years seeking he knew not what, because deep in his heart there was a great unfulfilled longing.

As it happens, a revelation regarding this aspect of human experience is one of the foundation stones of Christianity, the Story of the Garden of Eden. This is not a myth or folk tale, it is a mystical riddle of great philosophical and spiritual profundity.

And, as we fundamentalists will tell you, it’s pure literal truth.

We are all spiritual beings fallen from our heavenly Father’s side. We inherit pain and sadness in this world, but we don’t inherit from anyone. We don’t inherit it from our parents, our culture, from oppression by some other class or people, from capitalism, from religion, from advertising, from war, or from any other worldly thing.

We are beings who have tasted perfection and now we born flawed and ugly in a material universe defined by calamity and death.

We inherit our pain and sadness from a time before the world. From an event — if it was an event — that we are no longer perfect enough to comprehend.

Oh dear ones, cry for your lost innocence.

Just don’t blame Mummy and Daddy for it.

This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.
–Che Guevara

The revelation of the logical anti-gospel of no-god, as triumphantly proclaimed by the great secular preachers of our time — the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens — is abuzz the world over. I have been a bit harsh in my reaction to the devangelists of Atheism, because of course, if you study the evidence logically, they are exactly right.

All Christians are either luke-warm or mad; and all are scoundrels — pass the collection plate, God tells me He wants you to give us loads of money, Jesus loves you, please come back again. They pass their brother bleeding on the road, and puff their chests out in the house of worship. They just bend with the wind and intone their sombre utterances to whichever political master flatters them best.

As for the Catholic Church, for most of the last millennium, they were basically a totalitarian dictatorship. Yep, that’s right. I won’t deny it. Protestants, too. Luther, Calvin, Mother Theresa, all were crazed fanatics, as is anyone who assumes there is more of the world than the random movements of atoms and photons.

The Buddhists and Muslims are no better, the Jews are worse. In fact wherever you look you will see proud, wicked, self-serving hypocrites, both religious or otherwise.

Beyond the flickering cone of light provided by established science, the masses stumble in ignorance and superstition.

All humans are wretched. Even the seed of truth sown by science falls ever on barren ground. Whatever philosophy or belief, humans excel at only self interest and satisfying their urges. Any pretence of philanthropy or compassion is simply evidence of an unhealthy craving to be admired.

The Bourgeois — liberated from religion, but still smugly shackled in their imaginary moral code — still persist in the the delusion that morality can exist. In their conceit they repackage the corpse, calling it Humanism or Natural Morality. But humanism might as well be dog-ism or mud-sim. No bright wrapping can stifle the smell of an idea that is dead and decomposing. Nietzsche was right. There is no natural basis of morality. Morality is what Man creates, so let him create and destroy it freely to gain whatever advantage he may. Even the Bourgeois will embrace this bloody truth when their lives or livelihoods are threatened.

Who then can argue with the promoters of infanticide, euthanasia, abortion or eugenics? Their logic is irreproachable. No person’s life deserves special status. A life can and ought to be freely taken if the loss of it can bestow a net benefit to others. You have no soul, and nor do I. What is your life to me if by your death I might benefit?

Besides, if none will stop me, why should I care?

As for the great tyrants, let them be called Great Prophets of the the Misangelion! The prohibition of murder is just an archaic human construct. Human Elimination is the most efficient way to bring material benefit — the only benefit that exists — to the greatest number of people. So why not? The greatness of a man can only be measured by his impact on the living. Once the dead pass into non-existence, they are immediately irrelevant (even before the grass has grown over their mass graves).

What is it to stamp out human life anyway? If the Greens are to believed, and their argument is entirely logical, humanity is a destructive plague (and if it suits us, let us believe them one week and feed them into the ovens the next).

Here it is then, the logical conclusion of a purely scientific approach to life: Nothing is valid and nothing is true. There are just shifting theories; our drives and urges; and untamed nature. None of us deserve life, and everyone will die one day. Happiness and affection, love, hope, awe and sadness are worse than mere sentiment, they are chemical-induced hallucinations. There is no purpose to life, and nothing has any meaning. Do whatever gives you stimulation, and answer to no one and no thing.

The devil spreads wide his arms, saying ‘Welcome, my children. At last it is settled. I am the Way, the Warmth and the Darkness. Come, the road is wide and the way is all downhill.

The only true and correct philosophy is nihilism.

…just as I suspected when I was seventeen years old.

But there’s only one problem; I’ve tried nihilism, and there was nothing in it. Apart from anything else, I do indeed have to die one day, but between then and now I want to live. I raced towards that grim rendezvous at far greater speed as a nihilistic young man than at any time since. And even that dispirited youth came to realise a cold heart and a cold sneer — dressed in black and looking out for number one like a Wild West gun-fighter — were a poor investment for his fleeting hours.

If that’s the outcome of a logical approach to the truth of life, what use is logic to me?

I want to live an world, that contains the warm glow of Joy; the delicate precipitation of Hope; the burning ecstasy of Love; the sweet pain of shared Sadness; the cool breeze of Forgiveness; and the uplifting and vivifying stimulation of that distant light on the hill — Truth.

So the question must be, having arrived at nihilism, how does one get to that other location from here?

It’s all over the news of course — Dawkins, Hitchens, ‘religion is superstition’, ‘there is no god but Reason’, you know the sort of thing.

It’s grimly amusing to see these atheists, in trying to twist facts to suit their theories, categorise Nazism and Communism as forms of religion, in order to inflate their case that religion is the cause of the world’s woes. What all these godless beliefs — atheism, Nazism, Communism, Jacobinism, Greenism, you name it — have in common, is that they are philosophically materialistic.

One of the characteristic delusions of the materialist is that they think they can find a materialistic means to fix the faults of Man. You know how it goes:- Things can be made perfect… …if only we can change how people think, …if only we can eliminate this superstitious belief, …if only we can liquidate this class of people, …if only we can exterminate this race.

One of the things that first drew me towards Christ (a long journey), was realising that, behind its archaic expressive style, the Bible holds a more accurate, insightful and enlightened understanding of humans and human nature than any amount of Darwinism or Psychology.

The Bible explains that Man is imperfect, and no amount of self-improvement or social engineering can fix him. No amount of murdered class enemies, or race enemies, or evolutionary rejects can be enough to fix Man. If you could reach into his heart and mind and set every dial to the ideal, he would still be imperfect. And the Devil would still be out there waiting to tempt him.

The Bible explains all this. Despite its ancient poetry, it is still the authority on the soul of Man.

Incidentally, Dawkins, Hitchens and their kind never properly describe anything close to Christian belief. They paint a picture of a superstitious pagan-style deity — the ‘invisible friend’ or ‘the macaroni monster’, ‘the old man in the sky’ — and then say ‘how absurd’. Well, I agree. There are no false gods with flowing beards living on Mt Olympus or anywhere.

But that also goes for the false gods of our new ruling class — the gods of Reason, Science, The Self, The Environment, Freedom– or the king of all the new gods, Politics. These false gods truly are what their followers claim, human constructions with no existence outside our own imaginations.

But as King David said,’My soul thirsteth for the living God’. The Bible teaches that God is mysterious, His nature unknowable, that life and all things come are of Him and from Him. This is the enlightened truth. And the more I learn of the universe — with its multitude of miraculous coincidences, its intelligent and self-organising nature, its simplicity and complexity; and the more I see of living things, how exceptional and unbound Life is by the laws of the material world; the more logical and obvious seem the philosophies of true religion, and the more sadly benighted those of the materialist.

With this, I know every free thinking reader will agree.