HOLLY ORDWAY, ATHEISM, AND PLAYING MAKE-BELIEVE

How do we evaluate a worldview or a theory to determine its viability? One way is to assess how well it agrees with the facts, findings, and even our experiences and perceptions. Related to this is the question, “How completely can it account for the facts within its domain.” 

Holly Ordway, professor of English and Director of the MA in Cultural Apologetics at Houston Baptist University, and the author of “Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms” writes that her atheism was unable to do either:

·       “My atheism was eating into my heart like acid…My worldview was entirely negative. I could not have explained the source of my own rationality, nor of my conviction that there were such things as truth, beauty, and goodness. My worldview remained satisfying to me only insofar as I refrained from asking the really tough questions.”

When we ask the tough questions of atheism, we find that it is unable to explain many things. Consequently, it is forced to play make-believe.

FREE WILL - Atheist Daniel Dennett acknowledgeD that the atheistic worldview cannot account for free will, since everything is predetermined by the laws of science:

• free will…is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they cheerfully insist that of course they don't have free will, couldn’t have free will, but so what?  

Consequently, the atheist must play make-believe by treating their children as if they are responsible and that criminals deserve punishment.

HUMAN PRIMACY – Our legal systems give priority to humanity. Therefore, swatting a mosquito or cutting down a tree is still not a criminal offense.

•  “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” (Genesis 9:6)

However, atheism is unable to affirm that the human has more value than the mosquito. This is because there is no way for the materialistic atheist to rationally affirm human value. Judging by its behavior, cows value their lives more than they do our own lives.

Consequently, many claim, “All life has equal value.” However, the atheist usually tries to claim the humans have more value based on their intelligence, creativity,… However, these measures cannot stand against scrutiny.

Why not? The atheistic worldview lacks all objective values, including the value of having a superior intelligence. Therefore, even though intelligence gives us mastery and greater ability to survive, the atheist can provide no objective reason that even survival has value.

Besides, to base human value on our superior intelligence creates inequality among the human race. How? Some are more intelligent than others. Therefore, to apply this criterion of intelligence consistently, it would mean that the intelligent have more value than other humans. This means that the atheist must again play make-believe that all humans are of equal value.

HUMAN EQUALITY – From an atheistic POV, we are unequal according to any possible measure – age, sex, strength, intelligence, societal contributions, likeability… Therefore, abortion and euthanasia and many other social evils have now become rampant. Consequently, the atheist must make-believe that there is such a reality as “human equality.”

“Sanctity of all human Life” (SL) has morphed into a “Quality of Life” (QL) worldview. Consequently, seen through the QL lens, society has determined that some are less valuable and therefore more expendable. As this slide continues, it is inevitable that QL will regard some as having less protection under the law. However, the atheist still plays make-believe that we are all equal under the law.

HUMAN RIGHTS (HR)– Atheism has no adequate objective basis to place human rights above the pig’s rights. Therefore, the State must arbitrarily grant HRs, not God. However, if the State grants these, it can justifiably retract these rights when it no longer sees them as expedient. Instead, the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence reads:

·       "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The founders understood that if our rights depended upon government to grant them, they could never be regarded as “unalienable.” In contrast, the atheist must make-believe that HR have an unalienable objective reality.

JUSTICE – This used to be administered according to the guilt of the individual, but now it is becoming a matter of group-guilt relative to sex, sexual practice, color, race, religion, and to a social appraisal of who has been oppressed. This can only lead to distrust and division.

Atheism has no basis to believe in an objective good and bad, just and unjust, and a right and wrong. These are now regarded as socially evolving ideas, relative to each society. Therefore, we now lack any objective standards to judge anyone or any culture or even a Hitler. In contrast, the Biblical worldview applies justice and punishment only to the wrongdoer:

·       “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.” (Ezekiel 18:20)

OBJECTIVE MORAL LAW (and morality) – Once the atheist rejects the Law-Giver, there remains no basis for objective laws or principles. Laws, therefore, must be humanly created, not discovered. This represents a major shift from principled Biblical thinking to a pragmatic cost/benefit analysis. However, human history has shown us that such thinking will inevitably favor those in power, who derive a different cost/benefit analysis. Consequently, here in the States, we find that Congress has been voting for themselves benefits far above those benefits granted to its citizens. In contrast, the Bible place everyone under the laws of God, even the king:

•  “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment..” (Deuteronomy 17:18-20)

However, atheists find that they are forced to say to their children that, “This is wrong.” They do not say, “This is wrong because it violates our evolving and humanly created laws.” Likewise, the teacher cannot say, “Cheating is wrong because it violates our rules.” Again, they are forced to play make-believe.

MEANING AND PURPOSE OF LIFE – Atheism has no rational basis to believe in the objective existence of theses. Since the cosmos was not created with any purpose in mind, we are left to fend for ourselves to create our own personal meaning and purpose.

Why then are many atheists doing morally good things? Because it produces temporary benefits for them! Once it does not produce those benefits, temptations to do what will produce more benefits will prevail. A pragmatic cost/benefit analysis will then be unable to ward off self-serving temptations. However, the atheistic worldview causes them to hope that their own subjectively-created purposes will produce a meaningful life.

SCIENCE – Instead, of the devotion of science to a search for the truth, science has adopted a narrowly secularized version – the search for a natural understanding to serve their worldview. However, the re-emergence of science had been the product of the Christian West. British scientist Robert Clark summed it up this way: 

·       However we may interpret the fact, scientific development has only occurred in Christian culture. The ancients had brains as good as ours. In all civilizations—Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, India, Rome, Persia, China and so on—science developed to a certain point and then stopped. It is easy to argue speculatively that, perhaps, science might have been able to develop in the absence of Christianity, but in fact, it never did. And no wonder. For the non-Christian world believed that there was something ethically wrong about science. In Greece, this conviction was enshrined in the legend of Prometheus, the fire-bearer and prototype scientist who stole fire from heaven, thus incurring the wrath of the gods. (Christian Belief and Science, quoted by Henry F. Schaefer, 14) 

For the Christian, science and everything else is to conform to truth, God’s truth. When the concept of truth is denigrated, it is inevitable that an inferior product, pragmatic cost/benefit concerns, will fill the vacuum. The search for immediate benefits will dislodge concerns for the truth. This will inevitably mis-guide research along with its “findings.”

All of the above principles find their objective support in the Biblical revelation. However, in the absence of any rational basis for these principles, atheism counsels us to make-believe that they do have an objective existence, because these principles are pragmatically necessary. Consequently, we are supposed to believe in free will, not because it really exists, but because we rationally need it to exist. We also need to make-believe in a right and wrong, a just and unjust, human right, human primacy, and that some behaviors are simply wrong. Outcome – cynicism, nihilism, and alienation!

However, playing make-believe is out-of-sync with reality and how we must live our lives in accordance with reality. Ordway had discovered that atheism did not give her an accurate roadmap by which to navigate her life. If we care about where we are going, we need an accurate roadmap. When our roadmap proves inaccurate, it should be discarded for a better one.