Atheism: Bumping into Reality: Bump of Me

Everybody has a hunger for meaning and significance….We want our lives to count for something…for them to be meaningful.  In a way beyond us individually…not just satisfying our own personal desires..

Jesus said ‘When is a prophet a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul.’  This grappling we each have with our ultimate meaning is called the existential crisis.  (aka. The Crisis or Existance- Us as human beings, being in the world and trying to make sense of our world)

Now, this makes no sense to atheists at all cause there is no sense to make of the world because there is no sense to the world b/c its just ‘molecules clashing in the universe.’

However, isn’t it the case that our souls hunger for deep meaning, for ultimate significance and for unconditional love and acceptance. This is all part of what it means to be human.

What do we do with this? What do with our deepest desires? what about our deep sense of brokeness?

That’s what this bump is all about…

                                    The Bump of Me

This bump has to do with the needs our souls have.

First point we make to make is:

                        Souls are Real

A Lot of people want to deny this, but we know they are real. Your soul is what you are aware of when you introspect.  (ex. Hmm, let me think about that.  I wonder how I feel about that?)  Whenever you introspect, you are beholding your soul b/c that’s what's doing the introspection.  So all people know they have souls. They haven’t thought of it that way…but we are aware of them constantly.

You are in direct contact with your own soul every conscious moment. (and some of your subconscious ones too, like when you are dreaming.) And you are the ONLY human being who is in contact with your soul.  Because of this, you know that you are not simply a piece of meat in motion.

To make the point more clearer, use this exercise.

-Close your eyes and picture your mom doing some work.  (maybe in the kitchen cooking, and the computer working…)

-When you see her there in your mind's eye, notice the color blouse she is wearing.

-Now ask, Where was what you saw?

It wasn’t in your brain…because you couldn’t crack your brain open while you were visualizing your mom and seeing your mom in there..It wasn’t in your brain.

            ‘Oh, that’s just my synapses firing in there.’

Well maybe your synapses were firing, but that is NOT what you saw….you didn’t see synapses…. You saw an image of your mom wearing a blouse of a certain color.  Where was that image?....

In Your Soul.

In fact you can immediately experience all 5 senses just using your soul.

            -You can See your mom’s blouse

            -You can Taste a strawberry

            -You can Feel fur

            -You can Smell a rose

            -You can hear Bethoveen’s 5th

It's not a vivid as your physical senses can deliver to you from the physical environment…but they are still there.

They are all real, but they are not in the physical world.  They are in the Non-physical world of your soul. So…your soul is real.

The exercise above is proof of it.

Another thing, the second thing we all know about human beings:

There is something wonderful about us

The wonderful thing about being human is not in our physical bodies….We are equal in our souls, and that’s what makes us special.  As human beings, that’s what makes us valuable.

This is why we can’t treat human beings like animals.  This is why we can gas termites, but not Jews.  Because you don’t do that to VALUABLE human beings.  This is obvious…this is part of the world we live in.  Our value is not attached to anything physical, which is why ethnic cleansing and racism is so bad. 

Our deep value has nothing to do with anything on the outside, it has to do with something on the inside.

This is a fact of the world.

How do we explain it?....This is the Bump of Me.

What worldview best explains this (The Bump of Me)?

Christian theism explains our innate beauty, our innate value, our innate moral obligation to other human beings….we are made in the image of God….We bear the imprint on our Souls (not on our bodies) of God himself.  And this sets us apart from everything else in the natural order.  But, in atheistism, do we have any reason to believe that human beings are special? No. We’re just evolved creatures…we are just the result of accident and chance.

This is part of the existential crisis for those who are atheist…because atheism reduces us to cosmic junk.  We are just biological accidents.  We are the ultimate unplanned pregnancy…  our physical parts are just stuck together without any reason or purpose…Human beings are nothing. and our lives mean nothing…..Except that any meaning that you want to give to your lives. 

This is the existentialist move. Those who embrace this as reality feel the need to just make their own decisions. But notice, you can make any decision you want on this view because there is no virality ‘out there’ that is judging it. 

On this view (atheism), nothing is ultimately valuable. Nothing is ultimately meaningful.  There is nothing that will ultimately satisfy, because we were made for something beyond us.  Atheism won’t satisfy our hunger for purpose or our hunger for justice or our hunger for immortality.  Because nothing ultimately matters.

That is why they call this view nihilism…(nothing-ism)... and when you start believing nothing-ism about human beings, bad things begin to happen.

So we know:

1- Humans have (are) a soul.

            (atheist can’t explain this, we can)

2- Humans are beautiful.

(atheism can’t explain this either, but we can…we are made in the image of God)

3- Human beings are broken.

(we aren’t just physically sick, we are morally broken (or more specifically morally to blame)

Everyone has a bad self image.  When we look down into ourselves and see something ugly we don’t like (bad self image), we realize the ugly thing is something moral that is broken.  There’s bad in us.  We try to deny it, but we can’t.  And when we think about the badness in us, we get a feeling about that, and that feeling in guilt.

Everybody feels guilty.  So why do we feel guilty?

We feel guilty because we are guilty.

The answer to guilt is not denial…the answer to guilt is forgiveness.

This is where Jesus comes in.

Atheism cannot explain the beauty and wonder of being human.  It can describe it, but can’t explain it.

Atheism has no answer to human brokenness.  So there is no consolation in true forgiveness.  But we do.  Christians do.  We have the answers that fit our world view. 

So once again, our world view fits the way the world actually is.

All that atheists are left with is to build their lives on what the great British atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell put it as ‘..the firm foundation of unyielding despair..’.....all they have left is Richard Dawkins universe of ‘..blind, pitiless indifference.’ ….that is the world that is consistent with atheism. 

But, it is not the real world…it is not reality.  We know better. And Christianity can explain that where atheism cannot. 

Lesson Summary:

1- Humans have (are) a soul.

(There is a transcendent element to being human. Something beyond the physical. It's the world of our souls. and this is something we all know if we are honest about it.  Atheism can’t explain this bump with reality, but we can.)

2- Humans are beautiful

(Humans have transcendent beauty and value. This is something we also know. Atheism can’t explain this bump with reality either, but we can.  We are made in God’s image.) 

3- Humans are broken

(Even though we are beautiful we are broken. Something has gone wrong.  That thing is moral. We are guilty and we know that too.  So we hunger for forgiveness. And once again, atheists cannot explain this bump with reality, but we can.)

It’s Christian Theism, not atheism, that provides the best answer for our existential yearning for significance, for meaning, for purpose, for love, for forgiveness.

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