The subject of origins inevitably brings up questions about where we came from, why we are here, and what the purpose of life is (if such a thing exists). When it comes down to it, these are the only questions that are ultimately worth asking or seeking answers for.
When people ask why the unsolved mysteries of chemistry and physics are not the subject of debate when it comes to public education, I ask myself, What planet are these guys living on? These questions have no bearing on anything of ultimate significance.
If the atheistic/materialistic worldview is correct, there is no reason why one should not commit suicide when things get tough. Once you are dead and the biochemical processes in your brain shut down, there are no consequences, there is no accountability, there is no memory.
One day our sun will become a red giant and its outer atmosphere will expand beyond the orbit of the earth. When that happens, the earth’s atmosphere will be stripped away, the oceans will boil away, the sands will fuse into glass, and our planet will be sterilized of all life for all eternity. There will be no record of anything that anyone has ever done.
If the atheistic/materialistic worldview is correct, life is ultimately absurd. And the worst part is, this tragic, nihilistic, dark, cold, depressing philosophy doesn’t even make sense, and requires an unreasonable amount of blind faith. My favorite definition of reasonable faith is, “putting your trust in that which you have reason to believe is true.”
I have come to the conclusion that atheism/materialism requires blind faith, and that theism only requires reasonable faith. In order to be an atheist one must believe that nothing produced everything for no reason, that inert matter spontaneously generated life, that the personal came from the impersonal, that consciousness came from unconsciousness, that the equivalent of typographical errors turned rocks, atmospheric gasses and unspecified liquid concoctions into Chopin in 1017 seconds (and this list could be expanded). It seems to me that this is “unscientific,” magical thinking if ever such a thing existed.
I don’t have enough blind faith to be an atheist.
I do not propose that atheism makes people bad, but that it is destructive because it logically destroys any ultimate sense of purpose in life. Without a sense of self-sacrificial purpose, life loses meaning, and at that point untold miseries are destined to abound.