In October of 2000, the USS Cole made headlines due to a bomb blast that killed US sailors. It brought to mind what an atheist might have thought, not about the ship itself but about the person the ship was named after. Darrell S. Cole was a Marine that gave his life on Iwo Jima, not only in defense of his country but in defense of his fellow Marines. Mr. Cole was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor because of his actions on that fateful day, and the USS Cole bears his name. ( To read a short statement from President Harry S Truman about the bravery of Mr. Cole, go here: http://www.directcon.net/bcarr/dcole.htm )

What would an atheist think of Mr. Cole giving his life for his fellow man? I’m sure that many atheist’s would think of Mr. Cole as a hero, a man that put his fellow man before himself. But my question would be: Why would any atheist believe such a thing? Because an atheist doesn’t believe in any life after death, this life is all there is. For man without a Creator God, life is just a blind random chance of evolution. Therefore, life would be too short to not be selfish. If God doesn’t exist, why would any man ever give up his short life for someone else? Without God, there is no immortality. This life is all there is.

If God doesn't exist, an atheist would have to have to admit that what Mr. Cole did wasn't brave, it was stupid.  To sacrifice yourself for anyone would be ignorant because life is just too short.  Without God, we are all just one heartbeat away from total non-being. Why sacrifice your life for another when everyone will just end up in a cold grave anyway?

Many God-fearing people will see an atheist as one that has absolutely no morals and no ethical values.  In other words, many believe that every atheist lives his life with no idea of right and wrong, and no idea of what is good or evil.  This is a false view of the atheist.  Although there are atheists that could indeed be labeled as not knowing right from wrong, most atheists live their lives within the law and with the knowledge that good and evil exists.  In fact, I know of people that fully believe that God doesn't exist, and these people live their lives with more strict moral values than many people that call themselves God-fearing individuals.

This leads me to the reason I am writing this paper. Although many atheists live their lives with the most upright and true moral and ethical values, if God doesn't exist they have absolutely no foundation or basis for living their lives as if universal moral and ethical values exist.  When an atheist holds to universal moral values, he must jump into a faith in an ultimate Lawgiver and a Creator God.  I have never met any atheist that could truly live his life as if God doesn't exist, and no atheist wants to think about what he must hold to if God really doesn't exist.

For man without God, his life is but a speck of dust in the universe.  He fills his life with anything and everything to keep from thinking about what the consequences are if God doesn't exist.  It's a sad moment when he realizes that the one he calls himself, the one that talks to himself, the one that lives and breathes, this person will totally cease to exist in a split second.  In the blink of an eye this one you call you will go from being to complete non-being.  When man killed off God, man also committed suicide.

For man without God, moral and ethical values are nothing but a personal choice. At the most, ethical and moral values are based on the culture in which a man lives. Have you ever heard an atheist say that something is always right or wrong? One thing that he cannot say is that something is always right or wrong for everyone. For man without God, there is no ultimate moral Lawgiver. And if there is no ultimate moral Lawgiver, there can never be any objective right or wrong. Because moral and ethical values are not put in place by a Creator God, an atheists values are based on his own personal taste, and at the most, his culture. He can never state that some evil act is always wrong for everyone, everywhere.  If God doesn't exist, who is to say what values are right or wrong?

We can use rape as an example. If the atheist were to state that rape is always wrong, what does he base that on? Without an ultimate moral lawgiver God, he can never say that some act is wrong for someone else. It’s possible that everything in him would want to scream out that rape is always wrong. But without God, he has no right to tell someone else that some act is always wrong because he knows full well that moral and ethical choices are a personal matter.  If at any time he would state that rape is always wrong, he has put his faith in a moral lawgiver God that says that rape is always wrong.

When ones moral and ethical values are a matter of personal or cultural taste, anything goes. Hitler knew this well. Hitler lived his life as every man without God should live. He made his own moral and ethical rules. If there is no Creator God that put objective moral and ethical rules in place for every created human on the planet, a persons moral choices are on the same level as what clothes each individual chooses to wear. Hitler lived in a different culture, hence he had different ethical values. Without God, no man would have a right to say that what Hitler did was wrong.

Or what about the Nazi concentration camps? Can an atheist state that those camps were an evil act? No, he can’t. Now, I know that many atheists do get upset because of a statement such as that. But for man without God, this reasoning is the only logical conclusion. If God doesn’t exist, then neither do absolute objective moral values. The Nazi’s lived in a different culture with different ethical and moral values. The choices they made were their choices, and only theirs. No atheist anywhere has a right to impose his own moral views on someone from a different culture. Without God, everything is permitted and we all live life completely for self.

Without God, there is no afterlife and no immortality. Although an atheist might crave for someone like Hitler to be punished for what he did, if God doesn’t exist there is no punishment in an afterlife because there is no afterlife. For man without God, he must accept that although Hitler was responsible for the slaughter of millions of people, Hitler will never have to face any punishment for his acts.

Allow me to give you a quote from a man that has been tortured in communist prison camps. His name is Richard Wurmbrand.

For man without God, how does he respond to evil.  Without an ultimate moral lawgiver God, does evil even exist? This question was posed to the famous atheist, Richard Dawkins. Just as other atheists have discovered, without God they can never say that some evil act is always wrong. So Dawkins has come to the conclusion that in reality, evil doesn’t even exist. His answer to the problem of evil? DNA! Dawkins believes that there is nothing evil, just confused DNA in individuals. And what is Dawkins answer to why people believe in good and evil? It’s a virus! In 1993, Dawkins gave a lecture to the British Humanist Association. In his lecture, Dawkins explains that any person that believes in absolute moral values, any person that believes in good and evil, that person has a virus in his mind! In other words, anyone that believes in ultimate ethical and moral values really needs to be reprogrammed to repair the DNA and rid people of this virus of the mind. This is what atheism has come to. Dawkins knows, just as any atheist, if he were to admit that some evil act was always wrong for everyone everywhere, he would be leaping into a faith in an ultimate moral Lawgiver God. So to fix this problem, he just denies that there is such a thing as good and evil.

The misery of man if God doesn't exist shows plainly in how he responds to something like the abuse of innocent children, even if this abuse takes place half-way across the world.  What man wouldn't want to cry out, "It is wrong!".  And yet, if God doesn't exist then evil is only what each person describes as evil.  An evil act to one person might not be wrong to another person in a different culture or country.  If there was no Creator that said, "These are My moral laws for all of mankind and the universe", man has absolutely no right to judge an act as evil or wrong.  The atheist doesn't want others to tell him what is right and wrong, so without God he has absolutely no right to tell someone else what is right and wrong. 

For man without God, what is his ultimate purpose in life? Nothing but death. If there is no Creator God, the universe and life was just a random blind mistake. For man without God, his life has no more ultimate purpose than a worm struggling to cross a busy street. Both he and the worm are products of random chance, blind evolution with no ultimate goal other than non-being. Many atheists don’t appreciate to hear an analogy such as that. But without God, immortality does not exist. He started in nothing and will end in nothing and there was absolutely no purpose for his life. He is one heartbeat away from non-being, just as the worm. Sure, maybe he believes his life has purpose because of his family, or maybe because he enjoys helping someone. But without God, what is the ultimate purpose of those he loves and helps? The same as his, total non-being. Anything he does on earth only has temporary relative meaning. There is no ultimate purpose to anything because there is no ultimate purpose for him to be alive. His entire reason for being alive is due to blind chance, a random roll of the evolutionary dice. Does it even matter that he ever existed at all?

This is why no atheist can truly live his life as if God doesn't exist.  If he did try to live his life according to his beliefs, he knows how his life would be nothing but misery.  To know that his life was only a mistake with no ultimate meaning other than death makes it impossible for him to live a happy life.  This is why he must ignore his core beliefs and jump into a faith in a Creator God by pretending that absolute moral and ethical values exist and by pretending that life has purpose.  And because his life and the universe was only an evolutionary mistake with nobody guiding anything, the only thing he can do is give the universe meaning.  But to do this is to create nothing but self-delusion.  He might give the universe one type of meaning but then someone else will give it another meaning, so who is right?  If God doesn't exist, the universe and life was a mistake and to pretend it has meaning is to ignore the consequences of believing that God doesn't exist.

Some will say that although God doesn't exist, man can still assign universal moral values to the world just as man created  scientific laws for the universe.  This is also self-delusion because man, who is nothing but a freak of nature, did not and cannot create the scientific laws of the universe.  One reason is because man didn't create the universe, so all man could do was discover the scientific laws of the universe, not create these laws.  And even though he admits that there are scientific laws that apply to every human, he must still admit that moral values are at the most a cultural choice.  He must also wonder how these universal scientific laws were created and put in place if there was no personal Creator to create these laws. An impersonal unthinking universe can't create either scientific or moral laws.

What about truth? For man without God, he says he knows that God doesn't exist and that anyone that states that God does exist is simply wrong.  So what the atheist means is that his view is true and all others are false. But for objective truth to exist there must be a ultimate Being that says that there is objective truth and objective right and wrong. If the atheist believes there is no objective right and wrong, how can they state that their belief is objectively true and right? If God doesn’t exist, neither does objective truth.

I have often wondered if most atheists really believe what they must logically believe to be an atheist. For man without God, he cannot push his own moral and ethical values on anyone else. He cannot state that some evil act is always wrong no matter where one lives. He cannot state that life has any ultimate purpose. He cannot believe in any immortality. And, he cannot ever believe in any punishment for evil acts, nor any reward for good acts in a afterlife.

Recently, I was speaking with an atheist concerning all the views he must logically hold to as an atheist. He admitted that because there is no Creator God, every moral and ethical choice is only a personal matter, a choice for each person to make on his own. He stated to me the fact that he would feel sorry for the children of a parent that believed in a Creator God. His point was the children would be harmed and their mind abused because of a Christian parent “pushing” God’s moral and ethical views onto their children. Furthermore, he said that those kids would be “in serious trouble” by telling them that some God “up there” was telling them how to act morally and ethically.

I would like to include here my response to this atheist. Because of his comments about all the harm that can be inflicted upon a child by telling them about God’s ultimate moral and ethical laws concerning mankind, and because this atheist admitted that without God there can never be any objective moral right and wrong for all of humanity, my response to him was in the form of a hypothetical conversation between an atheist and his daughter:

(Daughter): “ Dad, do you believe that it would be wrong for a girl to be raped, even if she lived in another country?”

(Dad): “Well honey, I wouldn’t like it, but I can’t say that it would be wrong.”

(Daughter): “Dad, do you think that child abuse is always wrong?”

(Dad): “Honey, I would never do anything like that myself, but I can’t say that child abuse is always wrong.”

(Daughter): “Dad, my teacher at school said that a man named Stalin did bad things to innocent people. Was this Stalin person wrong to do that?”

(Dad): “ Sweetie, I want you to know that I would never do the things that Stalin did, but I can’t say that what he did was wrong.”

(Daughter): “Dad, is it always wrong to steal from someone?”

(Dad): “Well, I can’t say that stealing is always wrong.”