Devaluing Human Existence

[MarcusOfLycia]

I recently ran across this article:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston67.1.html

I can edit this post and quote it anyone wants, but I figured it would save space to just post it this way. As a Christian, I tend to lump all philosophical/scientific/etc discussions into two categories: Those that explain things with God as their foundation and those that seek to undermine God as their foundation.

This is one of the latter. The idea is that altruism isn't a 'real' concept. Nothing we do is selfless. How is this anti-God? Well... it would be a short step I would think for someone to suggest this applies to God as well - after all, in the article it is clear that Altruism isn't true not because it is humans that claim it, but because they don't feel it makes any sense.

I hope I'm not reading into this too much, but it feels much the same as ideas about morality not really existing. I mean, if we go by the most radical of all claims, all taken together, we are left with a universe with the following properties:

1. No meaning
2. Love, hope, faith, nobility, goodness all are illusions - just chemicals
3. Death is eternal and impending
4. Life is very short
5. No such thing as choice or responsibility for choice
6. No eternal consequences for actions (good or bad in any degree)
7. No fundamental reasons to do anything
8. No explanation for the origin of anything - just assumptions to fit the above naturalistic conclusions
9. Nothing special about human beings - in fact, we are the bane of the Earth and should be stopped from expanding
10. No morality, no right and wrong, nothing that makes any atrocity any worse than any loving act - both are just different arrangements of atoms, fundamentally


What do others think? Especially about the link?

[Maytan]

An interesting subject, and a very difficult one for me.

Let me think out loud here.. This article makes it seem plausible to say altruism does not exist. I mean, even in the act of selfless-ness, you're still performing the action that was more valuable to you. (IE: valuing others more than yourself) Since you value the other person more than you value yourself, you're still entertaining the choice that was more valuable to you. The same could then be said of God, creating something was a more valuable outcome than creating nothing at all or creating something different than the thing(s) He created. This still puts emphasis on God valuing human life, however. So, it isn't necessarily a problem for Christianity, is it?