Longe Vite Bohemia!!

So I've realized that among the anti-theists, there seems to be a running theme. It is the theme of Bohemianism. For those out there who may not know what Bohemianism is, or who want my personal definition (by which definition Bohemianism will hereafter (I've been working at a law firm too long) will be defined) then I would say that Bohemianism is a sensual, carnal, Epicurean way of life. In short, it is satisfying the wild, whimsical tastes of the flesh on the basis that "it isn't doing anybody harm who doesn't want it."
This is the lifestyle of excess, the lifestyle of rebellion, the lifestyle of the sensualists. All is fair as long as it doesn't infringe on another's rights. Promiscuous sexual activity with consenting parties is fine, laudatory remarks about the base and carnal are the norm, wealth and indulgence to excess are permitted and discipline is frowned upon. This is not the stated position of such men as Dawkins, and Hitchens, but when there views are evaluated, one realizes they are as guilty of "moral relativism" as anybody, a stance which leads them to make comments that support a Bohemian lifestyle.
The irony of the Bohemian lifestyle is that though it is presented as the position of the sophisticated ant eh erudite, it has no philosophical standing, and, when rationally evaluated, falls apart under the smallest scrutiny. Consider the following: Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, states plainly that one finds the answers to morality in either Nietzsche or Aristotle. In other words, we are teleological creatures, as Aristotle says, or we are driven by the will to power, as Nietzsche says.
In my opinion, however, the analysis is easier. It boils down, in my mind, to a system of Nihilism or Mysticism. Either it is a mystical experience, and everything that we see, experience and do, has some form, some purpose and some grounding. This position holds up for more than a strictly Christian or mono-theistic standpoint. The average Buddhist, for example, would see the harmony, and the Taoist would support the idea of nature providing a cosmic balance. Ecologists as well tell us of the necessity for each specific organism to provide a necessary role for the specific ecosystem.
On the other hand, what is our role in the universe? The planet earth occupies an infinitesimally small part of the universe, and our lives are equally insignificant as far as overall effect and lifespan. In the words of Camus, like Sisyphus, all we can do is learn to love the rock. If not everything has some greater cosmic significance, than it can't be that any of it really does, otherwise it is a matter of arbitration, of imperfect judgment on our parts.
I, for my part, fall on the side of mysticism. I believe that there is harmony and purpose to all that is. For this reason, I cannot see the sense in the Bohemian lifestyle. While it is true that one must live in such a way that his life does not harm someone else in his actions, it is also true that his actions can inadvertently harm others. Engaging in debaucherous behaviors might not have immediately damaging repercussions, but they certainly do have an affect. The Bohemian can say, for all he is worth, that his actions have no far-reaching consequences, but the fact remains that the values he has retained are derived from the Christian/Islamic/Judaic/Buddhist/Hindu/Taoist society he is rejecting. He has picked and chosen his values. And for that reason, without religion his position would either be based on Confucius and Socrates or Nietzsche and Sartre.
But rather than taking these positions, he has hybridized Christianity with the things he does not like about it. For this reason, he has declared that Christianity is a blight, because it does not fit his standard, one which, he ought to admit, is arbitrary and only right based on a relativistic understanding of no positions being actually right. For this reason, the Bohemian is ridiculus (yes, the Latin spelling, not the English) when he declares religion to be the great evil, and when his position is scrutinized boils down to pure rhetoric and fails to withstand the gauntlet of rationality. Thus, it is more or less the antithesis of men such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh--it takes an opposite stance, but it is no better as far as being a reasonable position to hold.

Atheism from the perspective of a theist

In my experience, true, abject atheism is hard to come by. The reason being is probably because we live in such as theistic world that fully being able to deny any God existing has some kind of logical contradiction associated with it.
This isn't always the case, but I will try to explain it as well as I can. Pascal (whom I've already written about) stated that only the truly irrational deny any existence of a God, because in this existence they are inevitably damning themselves to either non-existence after life (if they are correct), or to eternal damnation. In Pascal's mind, the rational person will either believe in a God, or, failing to have enough faith for that, will at least seek some kind of God, not being content with the idea that there is no God and not being content with not knowing (an agnostic who stopped searching for God would be irrational).
And, in fact, in the world of philosophy, when atheism became a real factor, it was represented by Nietzsche, whose denial of God was so complete that he even completely denied the ethics of believers as having any real value to them.
But we have lost that sense today. We live in a morally relativistic world where we often forget that many of the basic fundamentals we follows (those not found in the universal law that all humans follow) are the result of our Christian heritage. But Nietzsche understood this. Furthermore, he understood that a lot of these basic guidelines we follow are the only things restricting us from being utterly and completely base and selfish. He understood that all humans have the "will to power" which he hypothesized governs our lives.
So, for Nietzsche, the fear of an imaginary God was a silly one, and the inhibitions that normally prevent us from trampling everyone in order to further our own desires was a silly list of pointless rules.
However, in today's world, the atheist finds himself often following these rules. Upon questioning, I find that I rarely get a coherent response as to why we, as selfishly driven humans, would ever sacrifice anything great for little or nothing (like the martyrs for example). Of course, the promise of a glorious afterlife seems to be the basic reason for a lot of people's ethical choices. In fact, I would go so far as to say most of Christendom follows many of their principles for that reason. Likewise, many other basic components of decency are lost because of their lack of emphasis in Christendom.
However, the one thing I am most perplexed about is how someone can fully deny the existence of a god. I understand that one can not believe in God, just as someone else can. However, while God is not provable, at the same time, God is not disprovable. I can claim to feel God's presence, or have a mystical experience, or see miracles or appeal to the order of the universe and our bodies, and someone else can just as easily call my experiences psychological, the miracles to be chance events and the order to not be order, but just the result of a chaotic explosion billions of years ago. However, in these refutations, my opponent has never shown how his thoughts prove no God. After all, God could have caused the big bang, evolution, chance events that continue to happen today and could have altered my psychological state to experience His presence.
So in my thinking, it makes more sense to state that one is an agnostic. It is clearly easier to say that one does not think that there is a God because he has never seen proof enough than for someone to claim that there is no God because he has apparently come by some knowledge that clearly demonstrates that there can be no God.
And so I rest with my first statement: atheism, as atheism is irrational. However, I must also add that dogmatic belief as unquestioned adherence to an unexamined tradition is also irrational.

Mysticism or Nihilism

I guess I could copy and paste verbatim what I wrote on facebook on this subject, but that was about a year ago and my thoughts have expanded a little bit.
We live in a very morally relativistic society. We always hear and in fact are usually guilty of saying things such as "Well, that's just your opinion." In our minds, what we think is right or wrong is not a system of absolutes. And, in fact, often times we view moral rectitude as a matter of politics.
However, it is a logical contradiction to state that everything is relative, morally speaking. For, if this is the case, then it is also necessarily the case that morals are null and void. There is no constraint in morals, and thus, the laws that govern society and are supposed to protect us are nothing more than a few people in Washington's ideas of what morality is. Thus, it would not be morally wrong to kill one's neighbor, cheat on one's wife, steal someone else's property or gain anything at the cost of someone else, as long as it was done in such a way that the person performing the action thought he was in the right.
This leads us to a Nietzschean point of view. Once again, whatever we do is part of our will to power. Nothing that we do is "evil" since "evil" is an invention of those who feel contempt for others. This leads to the ever popular idea of "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."
Here's where everything comes to a head. If our moral actions are relative, than there is no consequence for anything after we die. Thus it can also be deduced that there is no afterlife, and that this is all there is. This is where the Existentialists get their strength, but also where they fail to fully follow through with their logic.
If everything we do has no bearing on what happens to us after we die, than there is no significant difference, in terms of post-mortality, on how it affects us. Since the universe is billions of years old, and will continue to exist for billions of years, and we live for generally a maximum of a hundred years, it is obvious that our lives count for probably no more than a billionth of the time of the universe. And since right now there are six billion people alive on this planet, the impact we make in that one billionth of the universe's time is probably only a six billionth. Thus in the grand scheme of things, whatever we do, in all likeliness, amounts to no more than a pentillionth of any kind of significance on this planet. If there are other populated planets in the universe, than it is even less. Thus we see, that if we have no future to look forward to, it's not a matter of "living it up" because there is nothing to live up. If we can look past the noses on our faces, we will not only realize that our time here is extremely finite, but the space that we occupy, in terms of the universe, is infinitismal. And, if current scientific thought is correct, our universe, which was born of the big bang, will eventually collapse, and a new universe wil be born, continuing a cycle of infinite temporality.
Therefore, if there is nothing to look forward to, we, ourselves, are nothing. The question of morality becomes one that has no purpose, since we ourselves serve no purpose and occupy a space and time unimaginable to comprehend. We cannot fathom how insignificant we are.
On the other hand, it might be the case that everything matters. Perhaps there is a glorious afterlife for us if we live according to what is right. In that case, there must needs be a set of defined morals and ethics, otherwise how would there be any kind of reckoning after we die? If there is some form of an afterlife, than it is most likely that every single action we perform has some significance, and that every action we fail to perform has some consequence. In this model, we find ourselves with the possibility of some great reward, but at the cost of moral rectitude instead of moral ambiguity.
It is difficult to acknowledge that we live in a world of extremes, but we often over-estimate the true gray area of the world. One cannot be a follower of Christ if some great teaching of Jesus is completely ignored. One can also not be a physicist if he considers natual laws to be "relative." In our modern world-view, we have come to scoff at those who think of scientific discoveries as "relative" but we still believe that relativism can be present in ethics, philosophy and theology. It used to be the case that philosophers would compete over whose ideas were correct and whose view of virtues was right. Men would argue in the marketplace about who they followed and why they thought the other person's views were skewed. Now we live in a world where the idea of "live and let live" is prevalent.

So, we must ask ourselves, is it a matter of Nihilism, and nothing has any significance, or Mysticism, and everything has a purpose and place?

Of course, answering the question that there is a definite set of morals to which we should adhere does not, by any means, answer as to which ones should be followed. The question of moral rectitude is not one which I can personally define with guaranteed accuracy, nor one that I feel confident that I understand. A quick glance through the newspaper, especially the Editorials, will reveal how complex a question moral rectitude actually is.