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Following the common atheist mythos that scientific academia agrees with, the universe came to be out of randomness (unspecificed quantum fluctuations in the primordial singularity), is possibly just one of the near infinite number of numbers (as per M theory), biological life is the result of abiogenesis, meaning randomness and chance leading aminoacids to create living creature (through a process not yet identified), and environmental pressures explain everything as to how unicelular organisms came to form the current humans by the vector of evolutionary theory. All of what existed, and all the aforementioned phases have no intrinsic value, importance or significance, since after all, they're just statistical randomness manifesting itself.
With that in mind, why should anything be attributed any importance? It's really puzzling how while agreeing with all the corpus above, self-described atheists still go out to boast how much they care about humanity, human rights, the ecological situation of the world, LGBT inclusion, freedom or whatever new totem there is. Why? what's the point? Why be moralistic about "oh look at how honest/charitable/courageous I am" if ultimately there is nothing of meaning to it?
Granted, a few genuine atheists do exist and they can be found in literature or philosophy. Stirner is perhaps a good example that criticises this hypocrisy from the part of egoists (which are after all what atheists really come to be) that dont take their philosophy to total coherence:
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Sacred things exist only for the egoist who does not acknowledge himself, the involuntary egoist ... in short, for the egoist who would like not to be an egoist, and abases himself (combats his egoism), but at the same time abases himself only for the sake of "being exalted", and therefore of gratifying his egoism. Because he would like to cease to be an egoist, he looks about in heaven and earth for higher beings to serve and sacrifice himself to; but, however much he shakes and disciplines himself, in the end he does all for his own sake... [on] this account I call him the involuntary egoist. ...As you are each instant, you are your own creature in this very 'creature' you do not wish to lose yourself, the creator. You are yourself a higher being than you are, and surpass yourself ... just this, as an involuntary egoist, you fail to recognize; and therefore the 'higher essence' is to you – an alien essence. ... Alienness is a criterion of the "sacred".
The book proclaims that all religions and ideologies rest on empty concepts. The same holds true for society's institutions that claim authority over the individual, be it the state, legislation, the church, or the systems of education such as Universities.
Stirner's argument explores and extends the limits of criticism, aiming his critique especially at those of his contemporaries, particularly Ludwig Feuerbach, and at popular ideologies, including religion, liberalism, and humanism (which he regarded as analogous to religion with the abstract Man or humanity as the supreme being), nationalism, statism, capitalism, socialism, and communism.
— Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p 15.In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies – an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e. g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.
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Another example, and perhaps a very impressive one since he not only reached full coherence in his ideas but put them into practise, was Donatien de Sade, who made it a very important point in his books to highlight how much he doesn't believe in any notion of God or the metaphysical plane even, instead fully spousing naturalism and abiogenesis as explanation for everything. I read enough from "Philosophy in the bedroom" to see him take the argument to all its final outcomes, meaning that murder and crime aren't somehow something to be shocked at, since ultimately they stem from the natural passions of men, and they feel good, which is after all the only thing an animal should care about. Any concept related to morality is fully vacuous and even the genocide of humanity doesn't mean squat since after all, it came from material randomness and nature could probably recreate it if it so wished it, so there's no need to fret over it.
So... why aren't the rest of you like this? Why be this hybrid Christian ethics person that however refuses the basis on which said ethics are built? Years ago I already heard someone aptly point out how what we call 'atheists' in general, are better referred to as 'post-Christians', who seem to be unable to really interiorise the meaninglessness and void that their philosophy of choice entails and instead emulate in some mediocre way the ethical model that traditional religion has. Pretty weak.
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