Dear Friends,
It seems to me, if you think all there is to our universe is what you can see, smell, hear, taste and feel, you are irredeemably foolish. Sadly, many only believe in what they can sense despite all the evidence that most of creation is not sensible. Can you see, hear, taste, feel or smell an amoeba? They exist nonetheless, indeed even most of human science describes that which is insensible and only understood by association. Dark matter and dark energy are examples, yet many believe in Dark Energy but not God, because they claim there is no proof of God’s existence, while standing in the midst of the ultimate proof, the universe. While science can describes a lot of our universe it falls short in most ways. Science only describes the world, it doesn’t explain it. Science has become a religion unto itself, and like many old religions it is a religion of the temporal, not the spiritual. To worship that which is worldly, like trees, Earth, the Sun or the Moon, is to abandon the spiritual for the temporal, and is a path to a miserable, short, unfulfilled and violent life.
Atheists always claim they are moral people but refuse to recognize where the morality they claim to espouse came from. Atheism in and of itself has within it no morality. In fact, atheism is the direct opposite of morality, since it teaches that the here and now is all that counts, so why put off your personal gratification for anything, why not just take it from another? Atheists will argue they have compassion and that is why they limit their actions but where does that compassion emanate from? All human morality comes from religion and the teachings of true religious leaders. Jesus Christ taught to love thy neighbor as thyself, Confucius taught the golden rule, Buddha taught actions create Karma, etc… the morality that atheists claim to have within them is actually from the religions they claim to be above.
Morality must come from a place of epiconsciousness or spirituality. A monkey has no morality… it eats, sleeps, has sex, excretes and fights for more. A monkey has no spirituality, it cannot think on an epiconscious level, it is an animal that, while very intelligent, cannot understand a greater purpose then itself and it’s immediate needs. Morality comes from the human being’s ability to grasp there are those things which we cannot see, that we cannot taste nor really understand. We can understand that we have a purpose, veiled from us to be sure, but a purpose that transcends our individual lives and makes us more that we are otherwise. Morality is the recognition that we are not the center of the universe but a cog in it’s workings. To believe the universe is only what we can measure, is to ignore all there is that we cannot measure, morality is that measure and comes directly from religion.
Modern atheists actually follow the teachings of hedonism. Pleasure of the flesh is paramount. Some follow the philosopher Epicurus but without his spirituality. People who only seek pleasure of the flesh or of worldly things cannot be truly happy because those pleasures can be taken from them at any moment. Even a stumble down the steps to your front porch can result in paralysis and thus end all hedonistic pleasures. The atheist will fall apart and take his or her own life while the devout will grow spiritually from it. To be a hedonist is to be shallow and live a life unfulfilled. Some atheists will fight on this point and say they get their pleasure from music, reading poetry, philosophy or great works of literature, but the ability to enjoy books and music is just as fleeting as the ability to enjoy sex. It is the nature of the human condition that this is true.
An Atheist can be a very good, loving, honorable and moral person, but that isn’t because they are intrinsically good but because they have been taught morality, morality that comes from the very thing they eschew, a belief in God. They ignore the transcendent for the temporal and in doing so they have retreated back to the stone age where people worshiped the Earth, Moon and Sun. While many are happy they miss the fulfillment of knowing there is something more, they have value they cannot understand and have a purpose that transcends their humanity and existence. Knowledge of these things, and dare I say, belief, gives a person solid ground to trod rather than shifting sands of a hedonistic lifestyle, that could throw them to the ground at any moment. Belief is a rationally self interested attribute that, even if it is not true, makes the human condition better, for everyone, especially the believer, even the unbeliever.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
