Friends: Solomon vs. Dawkins.  A famous atheist wants freedom and meaning without God, but knows Christ is necessary to our culture. See the column below. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #922

July 16, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What Atheism Means

By Bob Walters

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” – Ecclesiastes 1:2

Most folks figure the speaker here is King Solomon, in the latter bracket of his life between birth and death, assessing the inadequate efforts of man to find life’s purpose.

If the speaker is indeed Solomon – being mindful of course that theologians, as with nearly everything else, land on differing views of intent and authorship – then the Old Testament’s wisest man seems fraught regarding whether purpose can be found.

Regardless of authorship, the message in Ecclesiastes is surprising simple: humanity’s efforts to establish meaning in this life are a distant and destructive second to life’s true mission.  And that mission is to discover God, love God, obey God, be awed by God … and to love others as God loves them. That’s Solomon’s meaning.

Life and existence and purpose have meaning because our focus and endgame is life with God.  It is not just a secondary “belief” that God exists and is Creator and moral master; it is life with God.  As in, I don’t “believe” I am married; I live my life with my wife Pam, and she with me. It is our life, not our belief, i.e., the truth. God is like that.

Anyway … Ecclesiastes is the Bible’s greatest screed against humanity’s self-centeredness.  We find the solution to Old Testament problems in the New Testament.

Jesus Christ was and is God’s mechanism of sharing life with humanity in divine, loving concert.  Others may hate Christians, and our Christian lives will be challenged by those who do not believe, believe something else other than Christ as God’s Son and our Lord and Savior, or prefer their own appetites over God’s righteousness.

The current century and the current year continue to give us a fair, constantly in-our-face glimmer of how life deteriorates when we dispatch God from morality and Christian ethic from our culture.  Hello woke ideology, radical Islam … and, surprisingly, of all people for the defense, famed atheist scientist and author Richard Dawkins.

Perhaps you missed earlier this year when Dawkins, in April, very publicly stated that he considered himself a “cultural Christian.” Why?  Because he saw, within atheism, the absence of charitable certitude and a baseline moral construct. 

Dawkins likes Britain and the United States – presumably anywhere – that has the morality and coherence Christianity offers: “the inviolable dignity of every human being, human rights, women’s equality, etc.,” and in his case likes the unspoken but palpable purpose that life should have some meaning.  Atheism doesn’t provide that. 

Yet, Dawkins still seems to want what many atheists actually desire, and it is not ultimate understanding or purpose. What Dawkins desires is order, but he wants “the fruit without the tree; he wants liberation from superstition and fundamentalist religion, while keeping the yield of religion.” That “yield” is morality for everyone else, and a freedom from that morality himself.  Let someone else keep order, and leave me be.

Remove Christianity, and the grounding of free culture erodes.  Dawkins realizes that.  And when there is no “grounding for existence, existence becomes meaningless.”

Ahhh.  Wokeness and radical Islam offer intolerance and fear, not freedom, love, and order. Dawkins sees them as less optimal substitutes; the fruit of post-Christianity.

All this to say, that even atheists recognize that when God goes away – when the morality of Christian culture goes away – the vacuum attracts an unpleasant maelstrom of evil.  Knowing that God is what holds life together is what gives life meaning.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) cites First Things – LINK: Dawkins, Cultural Christian