'Richness' of life in atheistic-naturalistic-materialistic worldview: superficial

 

AIMING TO SHOW PERHAPS that his worldview is far from being unhealthy, today’s most celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins affirms that atheists’ naturalism produces the “richness” in human life.

Quoting his co-atheist Julian Baggini, Dawkins writes in The God Delusion (2006), “What most atheists do believe is that although there is only one kind of stuff in the universe and it is physical, out of this stuff come minds, beauty, emotions, moral values—in short the full gamut of phenomena that gives richness to human life”. This is in consonance to the assurance he gives to the reader in the Preface of the bookthat one can be an atheist and be “happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled”.

Indeed, if Dawkins’ naturalism, materialism, and atheism could in truth lead to a “happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled” life, then his worldview could at least be deemed practicable—an element also significant for his philosophy to be considered sound.

However, Dawkins has not explained how one can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled by embracing his worldview. He merely says in his book that that is the first of his consciousness-raising messages. But such a message appears to be not a consciousness-raising at all when one realizes that “happiness” is not what he really feels when he sees the suffering in this world day by day while subscribing to atheists’ worldview that it is all for naught. As illness and death reap havoc among friends and relatives while a person has no hope or faith to cushion the blows, we wonder how he can be genuinely happy.

            Regarding being“balanced,” we wonder how many people can be balanced by embracing the belief that life is short, life just ends here, and that death is merely a return to non-life state. As one scholar comments, “Why be balanced, if you could die at any time? Why not “eat and be merry” instead?”

As for being “intellectually fulfilled,” we once again wonder how fulfilling it is to believe that all the knowledge we attain and all “human thoughts” are mere “interconnections of physical entities within the brain” or perhaps some form of chemical reactions in our head. Thus, we also wonder how based on this definition of human thought Dawkins can support his consistent egotism that atheists are intellectually superior and everybody else is blind, stupid or close-minded.        

As happiness, being balanced, and being intellectually fulfilled in Dawkins’ worldview are only superficial, the practicality of his worldview is thus also artificial.
 
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For us Filipino life is very specific because we do things that make us happy and fulfilled. Happy thoughts, Balanced life, Having a moral values, being Christ Centered those are reasons why we should treasure our lives because no such word "impossible" if you can do the things that probably do by your own suffering. Life is not permanent we just borrowed it from god so make sense do things that make god so much happier, always be knowledgeable to the decisions we made.

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