“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, Or you will also be like him. Answer a fool as his folly deserves, That he not be wise in his own eyes. Atheists are at it again” (Proverbs 26:4-5).
The Backyard Skeptics have unveiled a billboard that claims “Atheists make better lovers.” The atheist billboard tells us why atheists are better lovers. It’s not due to love but because “nobody is watching.” By “nobody” the atheists mean God.
Since there is no God who judges our behavior, men and women, men and dogs, women and horses, adults and children can do anything they want together. If there is no ultimate judge or judgment, everything is up for grabs.
Keep in mind that if no one is watching atheists make better lovers, then they can also make better wife beaters, sadists, thieves, batterers, and rapists.
The Backyard Atheists have adopted and adapted lyrics from John Lennon’s atheist anthem “Imagine”:
Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people living for today
Since there’s only sky above us, meaning no God, you and I can live for today with no consequences attached to our behavior.
Now what’s true for sex is also true for everything else. Given the premise that nobody (i.e., God) is watching, what did Adolf Hitler do that was wrong? “Tyrants make better murderers. (After all, nobody is watching.)” Given the operating assumption of the Backyard Skeptics, after death did Adolf Hitler fare worse than the world’s greatest philanthropist? No. Nobody will be there to judge either one of them.
The worldview of the Backyard Skeptics is expressed well enough in a few lines from the sci-fi film Pandorum (2009).
“Just imagine just for a minute, imagine yourself without the chains of your morality. You’d even surprise yourself. It’s the ultimate freedom.”
Biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig Palmer set forth the thesis that rape is natural, that it’s part of the evolutionary process and is beneficial. Their book A Natural History of Rape (2000) was published by MIT Press, and in it they state that human rape “arises from men’s evolved machinery for obtaining a high number of mates in an environment where females choose mates.” Men rape because it helps spread their genes. No one can object on moral grounds, not even the women being raped, since nobody is watching (judging).
Atheists cannot account for morality. I do not accuse them of being immoral, but I do accuse them of borrowing their choice of moral living from concepts derived from the Christian worldview, the very worldview they denounce. If at death, we are no more than dust in the wind and in life a bag of meat and bones animated by electricity, then there is no basis for unchanging morality in life or death.
Atheism is a worldview driven by faith in a system of thought supposedly generated by a brain that evolved from a pre-biotic soup of chemicals that randomly emits electrical impulses through its gray matter. But how can a materialist know that an evolved brain can be trusted to know anything authoritatively or claim that certain behaviors are morally right or wrong given purely materialistic assumptions? C.S. Lewis puts it this way:
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents — the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the materialists’ and astronomers’ as well as for anyone else’s [thought processes]. But if their thoughts — i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy — are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident would be able to give correct account of all the other accidents. ((C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 52–53.))
Why is it a “part of nature” when a mother eagle cannibalizes one of her young and feeds it to the stronger chick, but it would be morally reprehensible for a human mother to do the same to one of her own children? How did our DNA figure out these moral distinctions, and why are they ultimately moral in a materialistic cosmos with no design or purpose?
There’s a more fundamental question that is rarely asked. How does the purely material generate the immaterial (wisdom, joy, love, hope, logic, reason, morality)?
Atheists in London promoted a similar campaign.
London buses were outfitted with the following banner ads: “There’s Probably No God. Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Life.” ((See Gwynne Dyer, “The Atheist Buses” (February 8, 2009).)) The sponsors hope the postings will get people to question the existence of God: “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think — and thinking is anathema to religion,” the promoters argue. “[Richard] Dawkins said that as an atheist he ‘wasn’t wild’ about the ad’s assertion that there was ‘probably’ no God.” ((“Atheists Plan Anti-God Ad Campaign on Buses” (October 23, 2008).)) He wanted the ads to say “There is no God.”
If there is no God, then who gets to say what constitutes enjoying life? Are there any restrictions on enjoying life? If there are, then who gets to set the restrictions and why? By what standard and by whose authority?
Two girls who took part in riots in Croydon, a town in South London, England, have boasted that they were showing police and “the rich people that we can do what we want.” They said it calmly and matter-of-factly. Has Richard Dawkins contributed to a change in moral philosophy among London’s youth with his atheist bus campaign?
People were robbed. Businesses burned. Reports on Twitter claimed some people were being stripped, while another shocking video shows a bleeding teenager being robbed in broad daylight by lawless thugs who pretend to help him to his feet. Here’s how one newspaper headline described what was going on: “‘Mob Rule’ as London Rioting Spreads.” It seems to me that it’s nothing more than evolution’s “survival of the fittest” in action, especially since “nobody is watching.”
There’s no God, Dawkins and his fellow atheists have been telling the world, so stop worrying and enjoy life. The rioters are enjoying life at the expense of others, and who are you or anyone else to say that they shouldn’t be enjoying life the way they want to enjoy life?