This placard encountered on facebook here, with this addition from the poster:
" 'Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...' — C.S. Lewis "
This assay endeavors to be witty on the basis of a number of disingenuous straw-man arguments and projection. It fancies itself an artful attempt at objection to atheism, but ends up failing as badly in its aim as the erstwhile flat-earther complaint, "If the earth is round, why don't we all fall off?"
Let's see exactly what's wrong with it.
Firstly, the attempted lampoon, in trying to attack atheism, fails to address it at all. Instead, it tries to aim its spit-wad caliber missiles at firmly evidenced, scientifically based, standard cosmological and biological principles; and doesn't even represent them accurately. Know what you're attacking before you rush head-long into idiocy.
Atheism is not a belief system. It has no dogma and promotes no claims. It is the simple *lack* of belief in a god or gods. We are all atheist with respect to the gods we don't happen to believe in. Do we believe in Amaterasu? No. Most likely because most people don't even know which of the many gods that is. We are atheist in respect to it. Don't think your particular god is special, or any different than any of the rest. People who define themselves as atheists today simply lack a belief in all gods. So right from the start, "Atheism, The belief that.." is fallacious.
Secondly, no one I know of on this planet holds the belief that "there was nothing". Not cosmologists; who only extrapolate on the basis of sound evidence back to a quantum singularity; which is something, not nothing; Not agnostics, who don't address the subject at all on the basis that we can't know either way about gods, creation, something or nothing; And not theists, who are the ones who postulate a variety of incongruous and mutually incompatible *magic* creators, without any evidence for such beings, who *magically* brought everything into existence with no description of the method. They postulate without basis a supernatural cause, and fail to explain the connection between that cause and its effect. That is the very definition of magic.
Yes, it is the theist who believes in magic, not the atheist.
And the bottom line is, there may or may not have been nothing. We don't know, but atheism has nothing to say on the subject.
And Thirdly, the poster's assertion of atheism being too simplistic, on top of her tired old claim that a universe without a god has no meaning, via C.S. Lewis; That is what is too simplistic. Human beings assign meaning to their lives and the elements in their lives. That is not a depraved view of meaning by any stretch. It wonderfully speaks to the way we can describe how we fit *naturally* into our world and this universe. There is no need, and indeed no evidence to assume some supernatural meaning-assigner. That, in and of itself, is yet another instance of projection; of anthropomorphizing the universe as an intelligence. That's what is too simplistic, too juvenile, and not well thought out.
Is atheism simple? Yes. Is it too simple? Not unless you try to misconstrue it as a belief system, or a means by which answers are derived. But atheism is, as I've stated, not a belief system. It makes no claims. It doesn't pretend to answer any questions, and doesn't seek, unlike the many religions of the world, to fill in the gaps of our knowledge with the unsatisfactory and dishonest place-holder of "god did it". That's not an answer. It describes nothing; explains nothing. It has no basis in reality. It is honest to admit there are things we don't know. Making up gods for those things we have yet to figure out is no answer at all.
The next disjointed and overreaching assertion religious people usually jump to is that atheists don't believe in anything at all then. That's not true either. Just because atheism doesn't provide a belief system by itself, doesn't mean that we, as human beings, don't derive our beliefs elsewhere. We just don't happen to tie them to unsubstantiated myths, fairytales, or imaginary friends. I for one, value belief in things that are supported by evidence. Some atheists find meaning in the pursuit of science, others in the tasks of humanism.. or both. There are many belief systems that have nothing to do with the idea of gods, even religions- some forms of Buddhism, for example. We shouldn't assume that those who differ in their beliefs from us are in some way devoid of belief, meaning, ethics or morals.
To finish up, let's look at some of the *filler* in this supposedly clever epithetic paragraph.
"..nothing happened to nothing.." - Utterly meaningless. Who would claim such a thing? Though atheists usually cannot be generalized in most ways religious people would like, I can assure you, we would not.
"..then nothing magically exploded for no reason.." - A quantum singularity is not nothing. It didn't explode, it expanded. To say that everything that occurs has to have a reason, i.e., goal oriented intelligence behind it, is just another case of anthropomorphic projection, again. This is not to say that there isn't a valid question of "how". There is just not always a "why". These two questions are often conflated by religious people who can't seem to wrap their heads around the difference.
"..creating everything.." - Yet another case of not being able to wrap their heads around the concept that not only isn't everything "created", but that most things are not "created". Human beings create things. That is the only verifiable example of creation that exists in the universe so far. Human beings like to project that perception of creation onto other things that seem complex. Just because something is complex doesn't mean it's created. This simply boils down to an argument from ignorance on the part of religious people.
"..and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself.." - I've already shown how magic is a hallmark of religious belief, not of atheism, nor of science. Science does very well at describing rationally, logically and with supporting evidence how order can arise from natural physical conditions. Read a science book. If you think your god put stuff together like lego pieces, then describe exactly the method by which he did this and how such a claim can be independently substantiated. Do that, right after you show that your particular god exists and acts upon this universe at all.
"..for no reason what so ever [sic].." - Again with the fallacy that everything has to have a "why"-based reason. If you think that everything has to have such a reason behind it, then do please explain why that is in the first place.
"..into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs." - Now who's being too simplistic? Oh wait.. it's this sophomoric, fallacy-soaked, straw-man laden attempt at cleverness that has been too simplistic all along.
"Makes perfect sense." - Yes, It does, when you both represent the concepts you're attempting to describe accurately, and know what you're talking about.
