Bible Answers to "Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart"

                 “Atheist in Mind, Humanist in Heart”.

It was the downfall of these two young men, Figdor and Bayer, not when
they melded in their book Atheism and Humanism as a religious belief
system of Atheism, but rather when they used the words “Mind” and
“Heart”, perhaps borrowing from or even striving to overcome Jesus’ own
summary of the 10 commandments from the LORD God Himself.

“And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master,
what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in
the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said
unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he,
willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
(Luke 10:25-29)

Look at those young American faces of brilliant college graduates, who
can doubt them; and the real force of their arguments is that they are our
cleaning cut and nice looking youth. You could imagine them in your
church or Boy Scout troop! Yet even as we doubt some of their Harvard
and Stanford Professors on an individual basis based on what they say
and teach, even so we must evaluate against the standard of the Bible
we trust the religion of the Atheist and Humanist that they themselves
express as a Belief system of 10 beliefs. {Yes, that is what they call
them online at http://www.atheistmindhumanistheart.com/about-book/ .}
Of course, it not commonly known there is a “Humanist Chaplain” at
Harvard; that the community of atheists humanists and agnostics at
Stanford with so many organized events and programs in the Bay Area,
that a Masters of Divinity graduate even from Harvard could state as a
belief as you will soon see, “There is no God” with the belief system of a
religion of atheism. We might be shocked to know that a Humanist
organization is tax-free, essentially our taxes support them, that serves
both Stanford and the Silicon Valley where so many youth have also
become instant millionaires, etc.

            “My Beliefs” of Bayer and Figdor with Answers

What the young authors, Bayer and Figdor express as the religion beliefs
of a humanist and atheist: {Are you surprised that they like so many
other atheists chose 10 beliefs, rules, or commandments for life?}

NOTE: This whole thing sounds like young men who gained the
happiness of popularity, wealth, and approval in their limited
academic environment of choice, likewise in the environment of
friends and associates of the silicon valley that made a god out of
computers, software, and technology.

1. The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis
for belief. {From Figdor and Bayer}

Answer: That desire to conquer the world like our pioneers of the
past hopefully will give them some eternal credit of some kind, but
the desire itself testifies to the first commission of God written in
the Bible but also in the conscience and consciousness of these of
the humanists and atheist religion.

2. We can perceive the world only through our human senses.
{F&B}

Answer: Yes, if the internal sense of conscience is included; and if
the eye can see design in the world demanding a great Designer. A
wonderful constructed scientific experiment to prove the creation of
life apart from a Creator was shown online with a sarcastic title of
something like “What Creationism Taught Me”, which by the way
did not work for him, as in his rational thoughts warped by the bias
of sin, did not consider the intelligence and process that it took for
the creation of the experiment, which is even more so for the
God/Father/Creator that made so much more at one time so much
more than a single cell and created an environment on earth and in
the heavens above that would sustain that life. Any discover in
science is a puny and limited effort to understand, sometimes even
duplicate, what God did on a world wise scale. Common sense and
the scientific method just will not let you get away from the example
of a native in the jungle stumbling across a PCB or some other
complex piece of technology fallen from an orbiting satellite. THE
DESIGN DEMANDS A DESIGNER. And what this poor mis-guided
soul of a superficial scientific method overlooked in his efforts to
prove humanism and atheism, is the human intelligence required by
the experiment creator, and intelligence made by God in the image
of God, is within itself a witness to the Divine Creator. However, it
like a toy or a gnat compared to “In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth...” (Genesis 1:1) It reminds one of a high
school or freshman college student repeating the Millikan oil drop
experiment to measure the charge and mass of the electron, then
declaring a re-creation of the universe was underway, while it is
obvious among the many human limitations is the limited space of
a lab big enough.

3. We use rational thought and language as tools for
understanding the world. {F&G}

These young men need a big dose of Millikan from “Evolution in Science
and Religion”, or even often certainly in the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle where efforts to measure effects what is being measured.
Millikan illustrated the human bias and lack of objectivity from both the
scientific and religious communities. It is almost impossible singularly as
an individual human or in a group of humans to overcome some inherent
bent of nature, training, or environment.

4. All truth is proportional to the evidence . Truth is proportional to
the evidence because our observations, coupled with the scientific
method, are good at predicting future events. {F&B}

ANSWER: Obviously little of their research and learnng has come
the Classical Christian evidences and apologetics like where
Millikan before them in asserting universal and absolute truth. Yes,
you can predict the Force (F), if you have measured the mass and
acceleration, and vice versa; yes you can predict the Energy (E) if
you know the mass and speed of light squared; but can you predict
without conscience, design, and the evidence of the Bible, predict
force itself, energy itself, and the Great Brains behind their
creation. Truth should include the Classical Christian Evidences for
God, Christ as the Son of God, and the Bible. Even as Linton states
in “A Lawyer Examines the Bible” that a man was never met
sceptical of these evidences who had sincerely without a pre-
conceived hypothesis of unbelief read the Bible itself. While we all
appreciate Harvard worthies from the days of John Cotton and the
Mathers all the way to Skinner, and we are not belittling or knocking
their educations at Harvard and Stanford, if they could become
intellectually honest long enough to admit that they give little time
to the Bible itself {we have known of many seminary graduates to
get a lot of relgion but little Bible}, or even to the Apologists of
Harvard like Simon Greenleaf, former dean of the Harvard Law
School who maintained a “prima-facie” case that the testimony of
the evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—would stand up in
any court of law, much less of Millikan in “Evolution in Science and
Religion”, and so on and on.

5. There is no God . There is insufficient evidence for a belief in
God. Believing in any particular god is playing the “religious lottery.”

ANSWER: Oh my my, these two young men of the Silicon valley
and Harvard show gaps in their education right there, and at te
judgment they will be held eternally responsible for such a bad
testimony at Stanford, Harvard, and the Silicon Valley. “The fool
has said in his heart, there is no God” (Psalm 14:1). Can you
imagine a theology without God, a Divinity school education and
degree without God. While we can appreciate their limited
intellectual honesty, to use some words from Trueblood, for
admitting like most humanists and atheist will not, that theirs is a
religion and a set of beliefs, most often very negative, don't talk to
hundreds and thousands of Christians and other Bible believers
with personal and pragmatic experience about any god, sounds like
a heathen of idol worship, for they and we are talking of God the
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the author of the Bible.

6. We all strive to live a happy life. We pursue things that make us
happy and avoid things that do not.   We believe that we seek
things that make us happy because introspection about our
thoughts and desires, and observations of others, are consistent
with this perspective.

ANSWER: In your faulty concepts and definition of happiness would you
consider non-joyous temporal choices for an ultimate and eternal
happiness like Jesus did on the cross, or many Christian martyrs have
done in testimonies to the faith? You know this belief system of these
young humanists is sounding more and more immature in that their
observations of others have been very limited even as a young life itself
is very limited.

7. There is no universal moral truth. Our experieces and
preferences shape our sense of how to behave. There is
insufficient evidence for objective moral truth. On reflection, our
views of right and wrong are inextricably linked to what sort of
people we want to be, our past experiences, and the cultural norms
of the times.

ANSWER: The Bible Itself is universal moral truth in the category of
Absolute truth of which Millikan spoke in the Yale lectures and wrote
in the Evolution book, it is contrasted to universal truth generally
accepted by the majority depending on time and environment.

8. We act morally when the happiness of others makes us happy.
We observe that people we consider more moral tend to derive
more happiness from making other people happy.

ANSWER: We act morally not only because a good Boy Scout is
“trustworthy, loyal, helpful, courteous, kind, cheerful, brave, clean
and reverent; but also because of the expectations of a holy
Creator to in turn be holy. And yes, Jesus summarized the
fulfillment of the 10 commandments as “Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and your neighbor as
yourself.” (Luke 10:25-29)

9. We benefit from living in, and supporting, an ethical society.   Ethical
societies benefit everyone because it is easier to live a happier life when
you are surrounded by other people who value cooperation and take
pleasure in your happiness. This is a mutually beneficial relationship.

ANSWER: Can either sound like a utopia from Skinner in BEYOND
FREEDOM AND DIGNITY, or with some measure of reality of world
history and now, all human societies of history are more adequately
described by Romans:

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God,
neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and
their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God
into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and
fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave
them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to
dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed
the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature
more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 1:
20-25)

10. Our beliefs are subject to change in the face of new evidence,
including these. Beliefs are subject to revision because the more
experiences you have in life, the more data you have to draw on, and the
more likely you are to formulate accurate conclusions.

ANSWER: This sounds sad and lonely without any absolutes. The
formulation of life conclusions are more like the rest of Romans 1:

“For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even
their women did change the natural use into that which is against
nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the
woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men
working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that
recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did
not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a
reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being
filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit,
malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud,
boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without
understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection,
implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that
they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the
same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:26-32)

Download this page in PDF.