The Atheist's New Year's Resolution

 I just came across this on my Twitter newsfeed:

Characteristically excellent advice from @MickNugent: https://t.co/s6mHoPl75D New Year resolution to follow it.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) January 2, 2016

Just so I won't be accused of having not read the article, let me read it now ... ok done.

My initial thought when I saw the tweet was, Why? Why, from the atheistic worldview, should this even be your new year's resolution? Why is it even excellent from your perspective?

Incase the reader doesn't know, this is the atheistic worldview as I understand it to be:

We are an accident. Evolution brought us here. The world has no purpose. We are only matter. Our mind is simply caused by chemical reactions. 

There are a lot of things I like about the article and think is good. For example, challenge #2 "Promote robust civil dialogue not Internet rage" is good because then it will allow people to better understand each other as we dialogue. The Christian worldview believes everyone deserves respect because we are made in the image of God, we are morally obligated to treat each other with respect. But, when it comes to the atheistic worldview: Why? If ultimately we are matter and chemicals, we die and we are gone, then why civility?

Let me just take 3 examples (I arbitrarily chose the number 3, I'm pretty sure there were more things I noticed as I was reading the article):

• Challenge #1 summary talks about giving Muslim respect by opposing Islamophobia, and criticizing abuses on Muslims by Islamism.  From the atheistic worldview: Why is respect important? Why address abuses?
• Challenge #3 summary says "do constructive things, and be seen to do constructive things, while explicitly self-identifying as an atheist." Why must we do constructive things?
• Challenge #4 is to promote fundamental human rights. Why must we do that?

Ok, I definitely think I there are more, but I think the reader gets the point. There are many ways to approach dialogue with an atheist, but the foundational question that keeps coming back is this:

"On what basis does an atheist have to do what s/he is doing? Why must the atheist do 'this' and not 'that'?" This goes back to Pastor Jeff Durbin asking, "So What?" (there are 3 links there). It seems with the atheistic worldview, there is really no basis to keep any of the resolutions in general, let alone keeping 5 challenges of the article as resolutions.