Ideas have consequences and the ideas of zealous anti-theists are no exception. Atheism's logical offspring is nihilism, the belief that nothing has meaning, nothing has value, nothing matters. Most atheists can't live with this consequence of their convictions so they practice a kind of psychological contraception that enables them to enjoy the thrill of casting off the shackles of tradition without having to face up to the results of their philosophical concupiscence.
Not all atheists are so timid, however. In recent years we've been witness to the horrors perpetrated by those who choose to embrace the full consequence of a rejection of God.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were two such young men. On a video they made before their killing spree at Columbine High School in April of 1999 they left no doubt about at least part of their motivation:
"What would Jesus do?" asks Klebold, yelling and making faces at the camera. "What would I do?" Then he points an imaginary shotgun at the camera, takes aim, and says, "Boosh!"
"Yeah, 'I love Jesus. I love Jesus.' Shut the f-up," Harris says on the same tape, made on March 15.
"Go Romans," Harris says later. "Thank God they crucified that a-hole." Then the two teenagers both chant, "Go Romans! Go Romans! Yeah! Whoo!"
Klebold, who reportedly had a crush on Christian student Rachel Scott, singles her out for particular disdain, calling her a "godly whore" and a "stuck-up little b-."
Scott was one of the young people they murdered.
Another example is Finnish student Pekka-Eric Auvinen who shot and killed eight others, including the female principal of Jokela High School, and then killed himself.
On his YouTube page he says, "I am a cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist, antisocial social darwinist, realistic idealist and godlike atheist."
He believed that he was serving nature by killing others. Atheism can offer no reason for saying that what he did was wrong. The atheist can only shake his head and say he wished he hadn't done it.
The most recent instance of an atheist embracing the nihilism to which his worldview has led him is Matthew Murray. Murray, calling himself "nghtmrchld26," posted a message on the internet that said this:
"I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @.%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill."
"God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.
Well, one problem few Christians are to blame for is the surge in mass killings in our schools, malls, and churches over the last decade or so. Those crimes, like most other crimes, are committed by people for whom God long ago ceased to be relevant. They're committed by people who have lost the sense that shooting people is any different than shooting game animals. They're committed by people who, if nothing else, are consistent in carrying their atheism to its nihilistic end-point - the belief that nothing, not even their own lives, means anything at all.
They're committed by people like this:
HT: Cracked
RLC