The Inadequacies of Atheism

The following is a letter I wrote to an atheist blog. I had been challenged with Euthyphro’s Dilemma: If God created morality, it would be arbitrary and despotic; if He discovered it, He wouldn’t truly be God since there would have existed a reality beyond Himself. I answered that God Himself is the source of morality, and instead, this dilemma hurts atheism:

I think that Euthyphro's Dilemma brings atheism to its knees. He offers only two possibilities—morality is either DISCOVERED or CREATED—and atheism is unable to receive either. (If the atheist creates morality, then morality is arbitrary and meaningless; if he discovers it, then this implies that it is transcendent and has moral Giver!) However, atheism’s problems don’t stop there.

Atheism demonstrates itself to be an inadequate paradigm in many other ways. It fails to be able to account for the facts. Although it may be able to deny the existence of transcendent moral absolutes, it certainly can’t deny the use and existence of reason, logic and math. However, the atheistic paradigm can’t account for them. It can only account for molecules-in-motion, not necessary and unchanging verities, which are able to not only “map” the world but also predict future discoveries. Take math, for instance, and the formulas and regularities that it has been able to DISCOVER.

I was particularly fascinated to learn that the musical harmonies that we recognize and enjoy are supported by precise mathematical relationships. Where do these come from? From an explosion or from Design?

Where do the laws of nature come from? An explosion (Big Bang) or Design? As far as we can tell, they work precisely and uniformly throughout the universe. Where does gravity reside? What maintains and stabilizes its attraction? How can it work uniformly and unchangingly throughout, especially in the midst of change and expansion? What accounts for the existence of both change and non-change?

How did everything spring into existence without cause? What accounts for our informational systems (DNA), life, consciousness, or freewill? How do you carve meaning out of a meaningless world? Evidently, you must CREATE it, but then it is arbitrary and essentially meaningless. How does the atheist cope psychologically with the flatness and emptiness of life? Rationality should teach that the atheistic paradigm is not adequate to embrace the verities of life.

ANSWER: DISCOVER a new paradigm!