Before we accept any worldview to be true, we ought to see how it answers the Big Questions.

Any worldview that we adopt must be logically consistent (it cannot be self-contradictory), empirically adequate (it must match what we see in reality), and it must be existentially relevant (it must speak to how we actually live our lives).

Atheism Can’t Answer How We Got Here

If atheism is true, then naturalism is the only mechanism in town. The only things that exist are the physical things we can touch, taste, see, hear, and smell. There is nothing outside of nature. So, every event has to be able to be explained by a combination of natural forces (physics and chemistry). Including the beginning of life.

If atheism is true, then the best explanation for humanity is microevolution – small changes over a long period of time eventually led to us. There is a lot of scientific data that goes against a theory of Darwinian evolution as the explanation for humanity. But even if we did start as single-celled organisms millions of years ago, there’s a major flaw in this theory. Evolution cannot explain the beginning of life. It can’t tell us how we got from non-life to life, how we got from rocks and minerals and dirt to things that grow and reproduce. It can only explain the processes that happen after life began.

The theory of Darwinian evolution has a “chicken or the egg” problem.

One explanation that many naturalists will offer is that life on Earth started someplace else in space and it came to Earth on board an asteroid that crashed into the planet’s surface billions of years ago. This theory is known as Panspermia. And, while this theory may be plausible, all it does is kick the can down the hall a bit. You still have to explain where that life came from.

Atheism Says We Are Here By Random Luck

If atheism is true, then life is the result of some coincidental collision between physics and chemistry. We are a big cosmic accident. We could have just as easily not existed. Life exists only due to random luck.

If life came about randomly, then that means it wasn’t created intentionally. And if life wasn’t created intentionally, that means life has no purpose. You aren’t here for a specific reason. And, even if you tell yourself that you have a mission in life, it’s all just a lie. Curing cancer or solving world hunger won’t mean a thing ultimately.

People don’t live life like they have no purpose, though. Everyone feels like they were put here for a reason. Some feel like they were born to be a parent; some feel like their mission in life is to be a doctor and heal people; some want to teach the next generation.

Even though atheism means we are here randomly and with no purpose, atheists live life like they have a purpose, too. Take famous microbiologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, for example. In his book River Out Of Eden, Dawkins says this about life:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

Dawkins realizes where his worldview leads. But he certainly doesn’t live that way. In fact, his major purpose in the past few decades has been to convince the world that religion is wrong, and anyone who thinks there is a God has a mental disability. But why should he care what other people think or how they live their lives? Ultimately, it all means nothing in his worldview.

Dawkins also champions a number of social causes. In other words, Dawkins lives his life like it has a purpose.

Atheism Can’t Claim The World Is Messed Up

If atheism is true, another thing it can’t say is that the world is messed up. But if all we are is the result of our genetic programming, how could we do anything else than what we do? If our personality traits are written into our code, how can we do anything else? And if we can’t do anything else, how can we be held accountable for what we do? We didn’t have a choice. Serial killers were born that way. So how can we punish them for doing what their programming made them do?

If atheism is true, there is also no transcendent source of morality and obligation. Right and wrong are subjective and left up to human opinion. We all get to pick what we think is right or wrong. If no transcendent objective morals and duties exist, then it’s up to me to determine what’s right and wrong, and no one can tell me any differently.

Remember, if atheism is true, then we get our morality through some sort of evolutionary process. And evolution is random. So it just so happened that we evolved to think that rape is wrong. It could have just as easily gone the other way.

There was a famous bus campaign in the UK in 2008 where some of the buses drove around proclaiming, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The atheist humanists who paid for this campaign think that the point of religion is to give people a bunch of rules to follow and to make them live in fear. Hell is a scare tactic. Someone is always watching you, so you better behave.

The problem is, even the atheist humanist group that paid for this campaign only believes this statement to be true to a certain degree. They don’t believe I can do anything that brings my life joy. You want to see a relativist become an objectivist? Cut in line in front of them at Starbucks. Even better, walk up to their table, pick up the drink they just paid a lot of money for, and take a big gulp of it.

“Hey! That’s wrong!”

Even atheists live like certain things are objectively wrong or right. Remember that Dawkins champions several social causes. He thinks certain groups don’t have the rights they ought to have. Whenever you see a protest take to the streets, those people think that something is objectively wrong and it needs to be changed. They are marching and picketing because they are claiming that there is an objective right that certain people are not being granted.

Atheism Says There Is Nothing To Fix

If atheism is true, then there is no basis for morality. Since there is no basis for morality, there can’t be anything to fix. Nothing is wrong. It is what it is. That’s just the way it goes.

Think about the implications of that for a second. Under atheism, things like genocide and slavery are just natural processes. There’s nothing wrong with rape. In some other species, the males force themselves onto the females. In some species, the female kills the male after he impregnates her or fertilizes the eggs.

If atheism is true, when human males force themselves onto human females, or when human females kill human men after they have sex, there’s nothing wrong with that. We don’t need laws to keep it from happening because that’s just nature taking its course.

Under this view, you should do like the bus ads encourage and “Just live your life”. And let everybody else live theirs.

But we don’t live this way. We instinctively know this view is false. Everyone tries to make their lives better. Most try to make the lives of other people better as well. Because we know there is a lot around here that needs fixing!

Atheism Says This Life Is It

If atheism is true, then once you die, it’s The End. There is nothing that comes after this for you.

If this life is it, then there is no risk of eternal torment when you die. You don’t have to be worried about being punished for eternity by having to push rocks up hills that keep rolling back down, or being whipped and failed, then healed, only to have it done over and over again. You’re not going to get punished in eternity just because you may have cheated on your taxes or took a candy bar from a store when no one was looking.

So, if there are ultimately no consequences to our actions, then what’s stopping us from really living lives however we want? If I’m the biggest and the strongest or the smartest, what’s to stop me from using my advantages over others around me to get what I want? Why should I stay faithful to my wife? Why should I get married at all? Why should I care if I get a girl pregnant? Why should I care if I have kids? All of these things slow me down and take my resources that I have worked hard for.

Speaking of resources, if I want something, why shouldn’t I just take it? If I’m stronger than you, oh well. If I’m smarter than you and can trick you into giving me your money, oh well. Who’s going to stop me? This life is it. Why shouldn’t I “live life to the fullest”?

OK, I know. Most people don’t take selfishness to that extreme. And we actually feel bad for people who have been victimized by people like that. But if there are no consequences, what about the injustices of this lifetime? What about murderers and rapists who got away with their crimes? What happens to them? If it’s just “the end” when we die, then the monsters of history end up the same as the saints. Does that seem fair? Does that feal like justice?

The sword cuts both ways, too. Because if this is it, there is no reward afterwards either. This life is as good as it gets. The homeless, the victims of crimes, those with debilitating medical conditions- there is no better place than this life. Innocent people who were murdered end up with the same ultimate end as their murderers. The difference is their murderers got to live longer than they did.

All the good we do is ultimately meaningless because everyone just dies. All the work we do to cure cancer or stop the spread of disease will make no difference in the end. All the effort we put into saving the planet or fighting for human rights only delays the inevitable. The universe will ultimately end in heat death, so none of it matters.

These Are The Answers?

Now, I’m not proposing that all atheists live this way. In fact, I’m also not proposing many of them think this way either. That’s my point. If you look at the big questions in life, and follow atheism to its ultimate conclusion, nobody lives like that. Nobody thinks there is no evil and no good in the world. Nobody thinks we should accept the world as it is and that there is nothing to fix. No one thinks we should really be able to live life however we want, that there are no rules, that none of this matters. If they do, we have a term for them: sociopaths.

When adopting a worldview, we need to make sure it describes reality the way it is and offers the best answers to life’s Big Questions. Atheism isn’t the answer.