Alex Rosenberg’s The Atheist’s Guide To Reality has to be the purest, most fundamentalist tome on materialistic atheism since Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, written over 2000 year ago. Arguing that all reality is just the relationship between sub-atomic particles, he said that the whole process is without design, goals, or purposes. “What is the purpose of the universe?” he asks. “There is none.” What purposes are at work in the universe? Same answer: “none”.
If, though, the meaningless and purposeless of the universe makes you depressed, Rosenberg warns against taking your “depression seriously.” Why? Because our emotions, including depression, are nothing but specific arrangements of neurons and chemicals, and what’s so serious about that?
Rosenberg, however, does have an answer for those discouraged by the meaningless of their lives. Because depression is merely a particular configuration of neurons, simply rearrange the neurons—and you can do this with pharmaceuticals.
“If you don’t feel better in the morning, or three weeks from now, switch to another drug. Three weeks is often how long it takes serotonin reuptake suppression drugs like Prozac, Wellbutrin, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, or Luvox to kick in. And if one doesn’t work, another one probably will.”
Whatever one can say about Alex Rosenberg, he is consistent, taking his premises, though faulty to their logical conclusion. In contrast, we work from the premise—much for logical, reasonable, and sensible—that all the complexity, beauty, and design in the creation points to a Creator. And through the divine revelation given us in the Word of God, we know that this Creator, Jesus, loved us so much that went to the cross. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” Romans 5:8.
Hence, not only is our faith more rational than Alex Rosenberg’s (because he is working on faith as well), it’s much more uplifting and hopeful too.
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