An Irrational Insistence on Atheism

There is among many libertarians an insistence on atheism. This is irrational in that it does nothing to promote libertarian thinking. Why insist on atheism when it's so much easier to point out that Jesus was a libertarian anarchist.

Jesus accepted no law that wasn't based on the golden rule, and he accepted no authority other than God. Jesus was in other words a man who believed in natural law.

There's nothing in Christian doctrine to stop Christians from embracing libertarian anarchy. On the contrary, belief in political authority is distinctly un-Christian in that it gives some men the authority to define what's good and what's evil.

Those who insist on atheism are generally of the opinion that they are the rational ones, and that their insistence is merely an insistence on rationality. They want to convert Christians away from their irrational belief in God. However, there's nothing irrational about a belief in God. The reason for this is that there's no way to explain the phenomenon of free will without invoking some universal will present in nature.

Natural sciences see the world as part mechanical and part random chance. Hence, we're nothing but automata with a sprinkle of randomness. We have the appearance of free will, but no real power to change anything. Everything is quantum-mechanics. No physical outcome can be changed through our will, because no will exists. Will is not a physical concept.

But if this is the case, why spend any time arguing for liberty? If there's no will, we might as well spend our time doing other things.

To get around this, the atheists Arthur Schopenhauer insisted on the existence of a will, everywhere present in nature. Since we are part of nature, we have a will, and we can therefore change the outcome of events.

But how is this different from believing that God has given us free will? The concept of a will is no less metaphysical than the concept of God.

Furthermore, if a day comes when the concept of a will is successfully incorporated into the natural sciences, we're no closer to a resolution on the issue. Such a discovery can be used just as much as an argument for God's existence as for the opposite.

If God is a will everywhere present in the universe, the discovery of this will is no proof against God.

To insist that there's no God and at the same time insist that we have a free will makes no sense, because God can be defined as a will present in the universe. To insist that there's no free will makes even less sense, because a world without free will is a quantum-mechanical machine where no outcome can be changed by our will. Why insist on anything if the outcome is merely a mix of mechanics and random chance?

Without free will, there can be no moral judgements, no room for wilful change, no purposeful action. Life becomes meaningless, and liberty impossible.

Libertarian doctrine is based on the idea that we're equipped with a free will. Free will is in turn linked to the idea of a will present in nature, aka God. It's therefore irrational for a libertarian to insist on atheism, because atheism rejects the existence of the metaphysical entity that forms the basis of libertarian doctrine in the first place.

Creation of Adam

By Michelangelo - See below., Public Domain, Link