Latest / The Salty Pastor / What in the Sam Hill is Atheism? [Episode 110]
Transcript
- Ep 110 Doug: Welcome. I am Dr. Douglas Peake and I am your salty pastor. Now the purpose of the salty pastor podcast is to help you grow in your faith with two 30 minute podcasts each week. The first one drops on a Tuesday and focuses on teaching you the Bible, what it says and what it means. The second drops on a Thursday of the same week, and it focuses on how to take the biblical principles we discussed on Tuesday. And apply them to the real world situations. Finally, the sermon on the following Sunday encapsulates what was discussed on the salty pastor. Now people are using the salty pastor podcast to grow in their faith in a tangible, easy to format way. The salty pastor is not designed to tell people what to think, what to wear, what music to listen to, or what dietary habits they should have. It is designed to help you think for yourself. Grow your faith. So you develop strength, courage, confidence while navigating this life. Now, these special episodes are designed to help you get the most out of the salty pastor and jump into the current podcast without having to go back and listen to a hundred episodes in order to catch. These specials, cover basic ideologies that I often reference or have discussed at length in the past. So by listening to these specials, you are ready to dive headlong into the salty pastor podcasts and watch your faith grow. So today's special. Is this what in the Sam hill is atheism or scientific materialism? First I'd like to kind of define what scientific materialism or atheism really believes or postulates atheism or scientific materialism believes that there is nothing beyond the physical or material realm. Basically the galaxy. We live in mince, all that exist. The universe w even though it began 15, well, actually about 14 billion years ago in the big bang. And it is slowly cooling and moving outwards. This encompasses all reality. Therefore, there is no spiritual part of you as a human being. You don't have a soul, you actually don't even have. A sentient consciousness, Sam Harris would phrase it this way. He's a leading atheist. He would say, there is no you, that is actually you. So there's no sentient part of who we are as human beings. He says it's a practical and effective illusion, but it is an illusion. None the less. Now part of the reason why they teach this is because if we evolved in this universe, then there is nothing beyond it that would give a sentience our brains and our bodies are just more effective machines and they only have one design in an evolutionary style reality. And that is to propagate its own DNA. Consequently, when it comes to you as a human being atheism teaches that there is no real you. Now, the second thing that atheism teaches is that because we live in. System of material world. And because we are products of the evolutionary process, every single decision you make is actually predetermined. Sam Harris would say that there is no such thing as free will. This means that the choices that you make are not a process of you evaluating your options, transcendently considering the outcomes or the effects, not running it through a deep sense of moral convictions. And then coming up with the best choice, he would say that if all determining factors were equal in another person's life, they'd make the same choices. So there is no free will atheism and scientific materialism is what is commonly known as deterministic. Finally, and this is the most important thing that atheism and scientific materialism teach is that there is no objective morals or duties. Now, people who believe in a God say the following logical syllogism. If there is no God, there are no objective morals or duties and atheists who are intellectually honest, all agree. Atheist like Sam Harris, Bill Maher, Dillahunty, and the list goes on and on all agree that there are no objective morals or duties for human beings. Now what this means is that if you're an atheist, you can be a moral person, but if you're not a moral person, it doesn't matter. Now, this is why atheism always leads to what philosophers call nihilism. Nihilism is when you come to the point in your life where you realize that your existence is meaningless. There's no point to your life. There's no purpose to being alive, being good and loving and helping other people is irrelevant because it doesn't matter in this cold, hard universe that has no personality, no thought no consciousness, your existence in the end. You're nothing you're meaning. You're worthless. You have no value. Nobody cares about your experience. Nobody cares about what you think. So just shut up and die. Boy, that's a really comforting thought. Isn't it? This is why so few people actually adopt the philosophical position of scientific materialism or atheism. Therefore, when you hear people identify as scientific materialists or atheists, don't ask them what they're against. Ask them what they're for. In other words, try to get them to articulate. What is the repercussions or what are the consequences of believing what you say you believe? Because it's easy to be a skeptic. It's easy to punch holes in things and tear things down. It's a lot harder to say, this is what I stand for. This is the vision of what I want to see happening in the future. It's what I think we can do to make a difference and help other people's lives. Of course, if you think that way, then you are certainly not an atheist. This is Dr. Douglas Peake, your salty pastor, helping you understand how to think for yourself. .