And just as God creates in love so He asks us to create in love. The Abrahamic monotheisms are the only systems to place love at the heart of the moral life. There are other codes of ethics: every civilisation has them, secular or religious. All civilisations have something like the golden rule: treat others as you would wish to be treated. Many of them have forms of justice: treat equals equally. But only a vision that sees the world as God’s work of love makes love the highest value. Love God with all your heart, soul and might. Love your neighbour as yourself. Love the stranger for you know what it feels like to be a stranger.
And yes, there is another way of seeing the world and our place within it. The Universe came into being for no reason, and one day for no reason it will cease to be. There is nothing special about humanity: we are mere primates with a gift for language. There is nothing special about any of us. We are born, we live, we die, and it is as if we had never been. Our ideals are illusions; our hopes mere dreams. We have no souls, only brains; no freedom, only the hardwiring of our genes. And the biggest illusion of them all is love, the smokescreen created by humans to hide the fact that we are here to reproduce.
I know which I prefer. Better is a world built on love than on the Darwinian struggle to survive.
[blockquote]And yes, there is another way of seeing the world and our place within it. The Universe came into being for no reason, and one day for no reason it will cease to be. There is nothing special about humanity: we are mere primates with a gift for language. There is nothing special about any of us. We are born, we live, we die, and it is as if we had never been. Our ideals are illusions; our hopes mere dreams. We have no souls, only brains; no freedom, only the hardwiring of our genes. And the biggest illusion of them all is love, the smokescreen created by humans to hide the fact that we are here to reproduce.[/blockquote]
A good succinct summary of the secular materialist worldview.
Yet, they live irrationally…failing to grasp the nihilism of their worldview…and persisting with an insane optimism or a complete abandonment of self-examination. As Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living.
The rich irony is that so many of the folks that believe this way have no qualms about forcing their world view upon everyone else…Soviet Socialism being a prime example. I despair of communicating with the insane that live all around us. They are literally insane and do not know it. They believe that everything is ultimately pointless and material, yet live delusional lives thinking that anything at all matters.
If there is no God and all there is is space, time, and matter, then everything IS meaningless and nothing really matters at all. They say they believe this…they aver to this creed and proselytize their secular materialism and force feed it to children in schools…yet they cannot live consistently with their professed beliefs…AND they do not see it.
And amid the swirling insanity rises the ugly specter of the culture of death, with its vile abortions, obscene euthanasia, depraved sexuality, nature worship, and selfish endless greed…
Oh, Lord Jesus, come and save us!
2, you nailed the insanity exactly. Materialists either must bail out of their worldview at some point or, recognizing the meaninglessness of it, do away with themselves. That is the reason that they are not consistent.