[SOC]

Lately, I have been having my worldview adjusted a bit. Well, actually, it is a lot. I am dealing with an existential crisis of sorts. It is something fundamental, and it has to do with moral sensibility. My recent post on atheism and nihilism details some of that crisis. Then, there is this fucking piece of shit that shot up the movie theater in Colorado. I am dealing with what can only be called good and evil.

I am moving away from atheism. This will be anathema to many of my readers, and I will certainly be hated for it. But I see no other way to be. What is moving me in my thinking is what I call the "C.S. Lewis argument." Lewis discusses it in Mere Christianity. The gist of it is like this. All human beings have a moral sense. That moral sense is normative. Then, Lewis reckons with the person of Christ. But for me, it is primarily about that moral sense that is in all of us. We can't make a single argument without it.

A good atheist will say that we should follow the scientific method. The scientific method depends on scientists telling the truth. But why should they tell the truth? Why not lie? Why not advance your career with shit that is false? People already do this in other areas by padding their resumes or fudging their numbers at work. Why should science adhere to any such morality? At the end of the day, science depends largely on the morality of scientists. They are not always ethical in this regard. The only antidote to bad scientists are good scientists.

The movie theater madman, James Eagan Holmes, was a student of neuroscience and a brilliant person. I don't know what his religion is, and the current Wikipedia entry says his family was Presbyterian. But that means nothing. Either Holmes is a nihilist or deeply influenced by nihilism. This nihilism is what lead to the tragedy in Colorado. While people debate mental health and gun laws, no one seems to see or understand what really lead to the tragedy. Holmes lived completely for a brief time as a completely free agent in a world without meaning. He could have easily done something heroic, but he opted to become a monster. Holmes is not simply some freak. He was an educated and brilliant young man. And his lack of remorse shows that his soul is empty. He has numbed his conscience to a point of indifference such that even his own fate is of no consequence to him. He is almost identical to Meursault in Camus.

Atheism and nihilism are the same thing. Atheists will try and refute this argument, but they can't. James Eagan Holmes is what you get from nihilism. The counter to monsters like Holmes would be the person of Christ. If James Holmes sought to embody chaos and evil, we can see how Jesus embodied the good and left the world to consider and contemplate its own evil. Naturally, atheists seek to deny that Christ ever lived and those disciples and followers of Christ were all a bunch of deluded liars. But if delusion can produce a person like Jesus, I want that delusion. This is because the "reality" is what produces someone like James Holmes.

Atheists attempt to make the argument about what is true and false, but that argument is meaningless without good and evil. Atheists are like fish that deny the existence of water. The greatest thing evolution has ever produced is the human conscience. That moral guide and restraint is what makes everything human possible including science. But is conscience really just the good habits of clever monkeys? A study of chimpanzee behavior indicates that this is not reality. Chimps routinely kill each other. They are capable of great violence against their own but also have a stunning ability to display empathy. In this way, they are not much different than humans. But why have empathy at all? Clearly, empathy confers no survival advantage and actually puts one at a disadvantage. Why should one have compassion for another individual? How does this promote yourself or the species?

There is no kindness in nature. Compassion is a luxury in a world of savagery and violence. Snakes and whales lost their limbs as they became useless, so nature edits out the unnecessary. Yet, for humans, conscience was a necessity. Why? Even insects manage to not devour their own kind. Do wasps have a conscience?

The fact of reality is that we are left with a choice between being intensely mean, violent, and self-seeking or being empathetic, compassionate, and altruistic. For some reason, we feel that we must choose well in this regard. And we are left with guilt for choosing poorly. Humans don't need guilt to do the right things since many are motivated well enough with avoiding bad consequences. Guilt seems to stick to those who do wrong things, do them repeatedly, and will probably not stop doing them. Almost any action can be justified in the name of survival, yet we lament those actions nonetheless. It makes no sense.

Lewis linked this sense of conscience to the divine. If we need proof of the deity, we need look no further than our own hearts. I will continue to wrestle with this argument, but for now, Lewis is winning.

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