risk (or give) your life for anything if nothing is transcendent–if ALL there is is this life alone? If there IS no transcendence or “God” or anything beyond what you feel and want right now; In that case, there is no rational reason at all!
If ALL is material, then there is no good reason, from a personal stance, to do ANYTHING that is not manifestly prelude to a very certain payoff for YOU.
There IS no honor, valor, or morality without a belief in SOMEthing more than one’s current experience. Some sort of transcendence. SOME kind of “Truth-Teller.”
For the materialist, all morality is just socially convenient myth at best. There is no transcendence at all. A person conquers according to his or her strength and prospers according to his or her wit and whatever he (or she) does is certainly no moral crime. Just “Imagine!’
But the hard truth is that there IS no morality without God. And there is no virtue in bravery or sacrifice without God–without God, those are concepts meant ONLY to fool people into making things better for others. You know, The Winners.
So it is more than a bit ironic to hear those who proclaim themselves atheists put forth moral principles–principles that require God to make even a lick of sense!
Look, if you are an atheist, there ARE no moral truths! There is ONLY Nihilism. And Post-Modernism is explicitly Nihilistic. But then again, ALL atheistic belief belief systems are, at their core, Nihilistic. And it is logically necessary for it to be so.