Irrational Atheism Inhibits Thought
November 12, 2015
INTERESTING reflections by John C. Wright on the demise of rational atheism and the decline of thought:
In my youth, it was possible for a man to believe in absolute truth without believing in God. All rational atheists so believe.
In the modern climate, it is realized that the belief in absolute truth forces one eventually to recognize absolute standards in moral law, that is, a law unbound by time and space, and the existence of such standards logically imply a law-giver to whom one is morally bound to obey, but the only lawgiver unbound by time and space must be a supernatural one: a god.
While it is a logically self-consistent philosophical position to hold, as I did, that moral law can be objective without a God to legislate it, one finds that the intellectual elite of the West cannot maintain that position: because the emotional reason why they wished to escape from God in the first place was because they wished to escape the moral law.
In order to promote and protect sin, even well educated men, once they lose the belief in God, soon find themselves unwilling, or perhaps unable, to articulate any rational reason defending the position.
The habit of argumentation falls to one side. Schools no longer teach it, and men can get doctorates these days without ever once, not once, participating in an honest question and answer about any intellectual matter.
The ability to entertain an idea without believing that idea is lost. The art of debate is lost. The art of thought is lost.
And the atheists, by their own unwillingness to look truth in the face, lobotomize their own ability to support or defend their position. Their atheist philosophy becomes merely an emotional decoration to their life, a plume for their cap, something they stock on the shelves of their empty brains like bric-a-brac.
Sin darkens the intellect. The reason why is because reason shows the sinner what his sin really is. He reaches the point of no return: either he abandons sin, and repents, and embraces the cold truths of reason, or embraces sin more closely, doubles the dose until he overdoses, and abandons reason.
