When I was a boy, so long ago the New Atheists were young men, atheism was sold to us in many a science fiction book as freedom from the sexual repression that was killing us all. Someday, writers like Isaac Asimov promised, sex would be less of a mystery and a great deal more available. Meetings of atheists were proudly freewheeling.

They were governed by science and reason so they were going to get rid of archaic sex rules. At least in their conferences and sub-culture they did.

How did it go?

It did not go well. A new generation has arisen to suggest that the end result was using women like tissue paper. I know this is true, since my students had to deal with atheist big shots who seemed to think every female worker was a dating opportunity. A new generation of atheists rightly challenges the ugliness, but good luck prevailing.

The alpha males have no reason to do more than give lip service to any system you create. On the other hand, as they age, they might worry about an ethical system that might suggest they have a duty to die and stop using up resources. A Christian leader who has lived his life consistently with Christian values knows he can find a Christian place to let him die with dignity. An atheist leader has no such promise.

Our morality endures. Atheist morality keeps trying to say we ought when all they have is this is. Atheist morality changes all the time and yesterdays virtue (free love!), becomes todays vice. Sadly, there is no reasontothink that atheist leaders will listen to critics for now.

Is still does not give an ought and people with power in a system without transcendent morals will find reasons to ignore any barriers to their desires. Fighting the good fight is hard enough for those of us who believe in a real hell and moral absolutes. . . we have our own hypocrites, but at least they are hypocrites. Religion helps buttress morality.

Expose a pastor as a hypocrite and you harm his ministry. If you are creating your own meaning, you cannot be a hypocrite, just sly. You might be a cretin, and some of the leading atheists plainly are, but that judgment is based only on someone elses self-created meaning. When a traditional Christian sins, he might try to hide it, but he cannot claim it is virtue. The same thing has not been true with theStar Trek: the Original Series generation of atheist leaders.

They meant to set up a system where middle aged white men got power and women.

They are those who fame got them accessto the liquor cabinet as a localized celebrity and then they abused the liquor and the power. There is a reason that atheists lose more of their own children than any other group: the movement is ugly to the core. Findone atheist, secular, or non-religious web site that isnot dominated by being against everyone else and you have found the black swan. They exist, but they are rare.

When atheism is mostly white people angry with bad religious childhoods, there is not much future to the movement.Atheism is the only mostly white, mostly Western phenomenon in the world that gets good press as the cutting edge of history and that is not enough. Atheist kids get it and most leave as a result.They know the truth: the whiter the town, the more secular it is. The more diverse the town, the more religious it is.

Atheism cuts you off from African culture, Indian culture, and the parts of Chinese culture that are not running atheist motivated concentration camps. What do you have? The truncated bits of the West that does not include Shakespeare, Bach, Newton, Handel, or Michelangelo. You do get Isaac Asimov, the Amazing Randi, and Daniel Dennett.

It is all a bit sad.

If you inherited a Christian culture from your folks, you might leave, because you think you can keep the good and get rid of perceived evils. What do you inherit as an atheist? Read the Atheist Net. Eliminate rants against religion and you are left with almost nothing. . . except a population shrinking in every part of the world that is not mostly white. You are angry white males that hate Trump.

Thats not much on which to base a culture. Christians can be scientists, philosophers, and (mostly) ignore atheists. Periodically atheists get control of a country and start killing people, but fortunately, our American brand of atheists seem far from powerand more benign.

The second generation of atheists, the converts from some religion and the few kids who stayed, are busy trying to deeply reform the misogynistic, exploitative culture of the old atheist boysnetwork. I wish them luck. However, they should be warned: they too have a morality based on nothing other than what they prefer. They will be radically rebooted by the next generation, because all atheism has culturally been against something. When it is not us, they have to have the last generation of atheists.

They are a culture of repudiation and anger based on hurt. If religious people were not bad, there would soon be no atheists. For that reason, all of us who love God, Love Himself, cannot be triumphant in the rise of a second atheism. Mostly we look to our own problems. . . except when a cock a doodle doo from some new atheist reminds us that atheism has not been harmless. You can be moral without religion, though most agree religion helps, but there is vanishingly little evidence that an atheist can stay moral without religion.

Religious minorities all over the world have left and formed new cultures. Atheists stay and hope to hijack what is there. If not, they have never succeeded in making a culture.

It has been damnable, even by the standards of this generation of atheists. Because of reason and experience, I am a Christian. Maybe I am wrong and some other interpretation of reality is better, but this much is relatively sure: atheism is a dead end. They did not get ought from is in 1970 and my bet is they are doing no better now.

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The Two Atheisms: How to Know Smart People Cannot Get Is From Ought - Patheos (blog)