It's essentially the same question/observation that other non-freethinker, Dostoevsky raised. What he goes on to say is also interesting.
"Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of toleration." (John Locke, Treatise of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration)
In other words the atheists have climbed out on a limb and then sawed away at the branch they are standing on. They now hang there in mid air like Willey Coyote with a stunned look on their face, incredulous that Gravity actually exists. They have tried to compensate for this lack of ethical and moral grounding by appealing to the emotional vestiges of Theism and by appealing to the innate God-given sense of good and evil even though they have no sufficient reason for doing so given their materialistic philosophy. |
