Acknowledge

A couple years ago I tried to read a book by Sam Harris called The End of Faith. Never finished that book. Yesterday I finished the book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller. I had that book for less than a week and couldn't put it down.

Here is some of what it revealed to me:

Emptiness of Natural Selection:
Evolutionary biology tells us that everything we think and feel occurs because it is those thoughts that allowed us to prevail. Thus those who felt love and beauty only feel that and see it because their ancestors did. And those thoughts and feelings are part of our biological makeup that allowed us to survive natural selection. So what they are saying is we only feel love because it assists our survival and it is a trait that was passed down to us for survival.

This is a very sickening view to me. To think that love and beauty is only for our ability to procreate. To think that everything we think and feel can't really be trusted because we are only realizing it in order to continue to fill this earth. So if this is true, how can we trust anything? How can we trust anything that even scientists reveal? Aren't they being contradictory? How can they even trust what they believe to be true? If there is no God then one would believe that all things are inexplicable, like your disbelief in God... so therefore how can you go on using your rational judgments if they cannot be trusted. The very basis for proving that God doesn't exist contradicts the ability to believe in anything at all.

And if this were true it creates a pretty empty existence. Explain then why anything in this world matters. "There's no actual purpose for which we were made- we are accidents. If we are the product of accidental natural forces, then what we call 'beauty' is nothing but a neurological hardwired response to particular data. You only find certain scenery to be beautiful because you had ancestors who knew you would find food there and they survived because of that neurological feature and now we have it too.... Love too must be seen in this light. If we are the result of blind natural force, then what we call 'love' is simply a biochemical response, inherited from ancestors who survived because this trait helped them survive."

But: "Regardless of the beliefs in our mind about the random meaninglessness of life, before the face of beauty we know better." We have an appetite for something greater than the explanation of life as merely the outcome of random atoms in the universe. This appetite or 'blessed longing' is something we will always fee the absence of until we let it fill us with the "joy, love, and beauty that no amount or quality of food, sex, friendship, or success can satisfy. We want something that nothing in this world can fulfill." That something that we are longing for is a major clue that God is real.

Right vs. Wrong:
So referring back to the above argument, how can we really know what is right vs. wrong if God does not exist. If all that matters is our survival than why are we as humans any different from any other animal in nature. Wildlife depends on hunting and killing for survival, some of which occurs within the same species of animal. But we as humans don't agree with this. Killing another human being is wrong. If all that matters is our survival and what it takes for us to achieve the most success for ourselves, then where did our conscience come from. Why would the average person even think twice about hurting another person in order to make it to the top if our entire survival is based on the theory of natural selection? This is because it is not the case. There is something else out there controlling the universe, the world, our lives. "If there is no God as one may believe and everyone has just evolved from animals, why would it be wrong to trample on someone's rights? Why are humans considered different from the rest of the natural world so that they are not allowed to act as the rest of the animal world?"

Because we have innate feelings of wrong and right, of moral obligation. "We also have an eradicable belief that moral standards exist, outside of us, by which our internal moral feelings are evaluated."
- example: If a woman spends her life fighting for the rights of women and believes she feels these rights are deserving based on social views of her time and place, than how can she have the right to place those views over the non-western world and their present societies. "If all cultures are relative, then so is the idea of universal human rights, so how can I decide to impose my values on this culture?"

"If there is no God than all moral statements are arbitrary, all moral valuations are subjective and internal, and there can be no external moral standard by which a person's feelings and values are judged." But "We are all equal- Man is but man, before God we are all equal. Before God!"
Human rights have no basis outside of God. How would we be able to trust our views of wrong and right if there is no God and instead in accordance with natural selection? We wouldn't. We wouldn't be able to really trust that "napalming babies is bad" and that "starving the poor is wicked." The fact that many nonbelievers continue to justify human rights in their minds explains that He is still shaping our views even if we don't want to accept it. He is giving us the knowledge of right and wrong, giving us a moral conscience. If one lives in a secular world but continues to make distinctions between wrong and right, then it is the heart that knows God exists even if your real world intellect is stuck in the secular mindset.

If nothing is larger than ourselves and our entire being is based on our personal success, what happens when we have achieved all that we can achieve? "This pointless litigation of existence before an empty bench... which, of course, is another way of saying- despair." But many live with the belief that it does matter the way in which we lead our lives yet it is in no accordance with a higher power or our life after death. What does it matter then to know and do right over wrong? "If the Bench is truly empty," what does it matter because the world will be over before we know it and no one will be around to remember what you did in your life, nor will it matter to you how your life affected others.

Life has beauty and meaning when we accept that there is a God who has given us inherent dignity because we know He exists. Acknowledging his presence is the first and most important step.