" But the modern neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, orthodox among today's scientists, insists that evolution is an unplanned, undirected process. It combines elements of chance and necessity or natural law, a combination of random genetic changes or mutations, which accumulate through natural selection. These are impersonal material forces reflecting no preexisting intelligence and no guidance. As the outcome of this process, human beings are essentially unplanned acts of nature.
When you die, you're not going to be surprised, because you're going to be completely dead. Now if find myself aware after I'm dead, I'm going to be really surprised! But at least I'm going to go to hell, where I won't have all of those grinning preachers from Sunday morning listening.
Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear -- and these are basically Darwin's views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That's the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either. What an unintelligible idea.
Christian humanism has a great deal going for it. It's warm and kindly in many ways. That's the good part. The bad part is that you have to suspend your rational mind. That part is really nasty. Atheistic humanism has the advantage of fitting natural minds trying to understand the world, but the disadvantage of very little cultural heritage -- and that's a real problem.
So the question is, can atheistic humanism offer us very much? Sure. It can give you intellectual satisfaction. I'm a heck of a lot more intellectually satisfied now that I don't have to cling to the fairy tale that I believed when I was a kid. Life may have no ultimate meaning, but I sure think it can have lots of proximate meaning. Free will is not hard to give up, because it's a horribly destructive idea to our society. Free will is what we use as an excuse to treat people like pieces of crap when they do something wrong in our society. We say to the person, "you did something wrong out of your free will, and therefore we have the justification for revenge all over your behind." We put people in prison, turning them into lousier individuals than they ever were. This horrible system is based upon this idea of free will.
Since we know that we are not going to live after we die, there is no reward for suffering in this world. You live and you die. I've seen bumper stickers (very sexist ones, actually) that say "Life's a bitch, and then you die." Well, whatever life is, you're going to die. So if you're going to make things better for yourself or for those you care about, you had better become an activist while you're still alive."
Will Provine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Provine
I keep hearing people who try to ground some level of objective or universal morality from an Atheist/Materialist/Naturalist/Darwinist worldview with little or no success. The above are excerpts from a debate between Provine and Johnson. It's interesting that Provine is so certain in his beliefs. This notion that the most evil humans in all of history will simply cease to exist, somehow doesn't seem like it would encourage people not to commit genocide. Why not abort babies at any time, for any reason? Human life has no meaning, it's just some impersonal materialistic forces. Under this worldview what could possibly be wrong with slavery? Why is it a bad thing to harm people?
Without intrinsic value and purpose, why would anyone care about human life?
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