Why Atheism is Incoherent & You Aren't as Smart as You Think You Are

[Seax]

So you've figured out that the world is, so far as anyone can tell, around four and a half billion years old, life began as self-reproducing proteins that, driven to transmute through natural selection, produced all modern species. You've figured out that Genesis is nothing but a Jewish fairy tale. You, since you're on an 'atheist forum,' think you're very clever no doubt for having figured this out. You imagine you are a part of a small, but growing, rational community of enlightened individuals.

Well.....first, welcome aboard.

The truth is anyone with a room temperature IQ, unless hindered by religious brainwashing, can figure this out in 2021. You aren't nearly as clever as you imagine. Because everything I mentioned in the above paragraph speaks to the universe having fundamental purpose and meaning. I am not talking about the Judeo-Christian spook of a bearded man in the sky, I'm talking about the the laws of nature themselves.

The majority of people are still hindered in this way, if we choose to think of it as a hindrance - and many of our board members are de-converts, themselves.  I would certainly agree that it's not MENSA level difficult to work out that there is no bearded man in the sky.  We don't get many bearded man in the sky cultists here, not even from our faithful interlopers.  Still...the things our first and most trusted advisors tell us can be hard to let go of.  I'd ay it's not hard to have thoughts or doubts - that much just happens in a human brain.  It's more difficult to overcome conditioning.   Like any other lever, it works regardless of how smart or dumb a person may be.

If nature is deterministic, and one of the fundamental assumptions of science is that it is, then we must assume that the rise of life from proteins, and the ever upward development, through struggle, of life from these early proteins to complex, highly advanced lifeforms like men has been predetermined by the very laws of nature themselves. Nature then is not meaningless, without purpose, but has goals and ends. The laws of nature themselves are an expression of God.

Alot to unpack. 

I'd have to ask why we would assume the rise of life or ever upward development of life on the basis of determinism.  Deterministically, the universe could be in such a state or the local area could be in such a state as to deterministically prevent either, right?  As it seems to be in so much of the universe, for example.  

There may be such a thing as a natural teleology, but why would this..then(if true)... be some description or expression of a god?   

Think about it! You know that the Hebrew account of a God apart from nature creating everything is nothing but a fairy tail, yet you persist in the Judeo-Christian error of denying the obvious purpose and meaning in nature. To the Christian nature is nothing but a sideshow God created as a backdrop to his moral obstacle course for souls. You know that's not true, you know that man is himself a part of nature, that the universe is in motion, constantly evolving towards higher and higher states & that everything that is is a product of nature. Yet you refuse to overcome Christian nihilism towards nature, to accept that these natural processes are not meaningless or without purpose or direction. Nature; the universe, is directed by Divine Will. That is what the laws of nature, whether they be the laws of gravity, chemistry or biology, are; the Will of God!

I do love to burn soul forges to the ground!  It's not hard work, they're set to run hot and if you just add a little extra kindling........

I think that here, maybe, you're assuming things about atheists that atheism doesn't really describe and isn't concerned with.  Atheists can and do believe that there is purpose and meaning in life (and in nature) - they just don't believe that there are gods such that utterances like...

"expression of God"
or
"Divine Will/Will of God" 

....refer to meaningful/factual content, let alone content about whatever purpose or meaning there may be.  You're taking poetic license with these terms, I suspect?  When we say the will of the divine or the will of god in that context, we're not talking about a conscious personal observer with a vested interest in specific outcomes.....right?

I am not talking about a personal observer, or consciousness in the sense in which animals are conscious. I am saying that the laws of nature, and the direction in which they cause the universe to evolve, exist for a purpose, not the purpose of an external God, but for the purpose of the universe itself. For the universe is God.

The gods of all the various world religions are human attempts at understanding this. Because they had not the understanding we have of naturalistic processes, primitive man saw nature as the work of personal deities. He created in his mind anthropomorphic persons of great power directing nature. Eventually these religions became increasingly complex and developed beautiful, though fanciful, stories about these gods. But there is some truth in these old polytheistic religions—they were right to see the divine in nature and to revere it, though they may have been wrong in the details.

Eventually many of them realised this themselves, or at least came very close to it; the Neoplatonists & Stoics in Europe, some schools of Hindu philosophy in India and some Chinese thinkers had it pretty much figured even before the birth of Christ. It was Judaism and its offshoots, with the revelations of their prophets (though I suspect Christ's original message might have been pantheistic before it was corrupted by Paul), that have obscured this truth. But even in these religions, there are pantheistickish elements, because pantheism is an unavoidable truth for anyone that genuinely searches for God through the natural world without being led astray by the dogma of the prophets.

By God I mean mere the universe; nature, and by God's Will I mean the purpose inherent in nature. Why call that God? Because that is what all the other religions are grasping at when they talk about God.