Here, I'll examine a certain merging of philosophy and politics: atheistic libertarianism. Libertarianism is a political ideology that espouses very limited government, with the government protecting the natural rights of its citizens in a just way and not interfering in their lives any or much further. Penn Jillette is an example of an atheist who advocates political libertarianism. But this is actually an incongruous combination, for the conclusions of libertarianism hinge on whether or not moral truths and natural rights exist--and if atheism is true then there are no moral rights and obligations for a government to defend, and thus there would be no objective boundaries defining what a government should and shouldn't do. I will show in this post how illogical the very concept of atheistic libertarianism is.
Atheist libertarians like Penn Jillette are appealing to a standard outside of and above whatever existing legal system and government they live under. Yet this means that they are living contrary to what logically follows from atheism. No government could even have any objective moral authority on this worldview since there would be no moral standard to conform to; on atheism it is not that morality would become arbitrarily decided by those in power in the absence of a deity to ground it, but that there is no moral authority or truth at all, regardless of what any person feels or says.
How can moral truths exist in an atheistic cosmos? This is a metaphysical impossibility. Even if they did, how could they possibly be known? This is an enormous epistemological problem. And even if they existed and could be known, what would the point of abiding by them be? This is the existential issue. I will explain each problem below.
First, I'll address the metaphysical problem. Without a deity, there is no moral authority in the universe, and thus there is no standard of right or wrong, and thus there are moral preferences or feelings but no moral obligations or truths. There is a way things are, but no such thing as a way things should be. As for the epistemological problem, even if it were possible at all for both atheism and moral realism to be true simultaneously, a person could never actually know what the existing moral truths are. A person could see that he or she has a conscience and that his or her society upholds a loosely-shared values framework. But that is all, and neither conscience nor society verifies a moral claim, as neither can actually demonstrate that a particular moral belief is true. Since the existence of morality requires the existence of a deity, and conscience and society are fallacious grounds for moral beliefs, that deity would have to reveal moral truths to humans [1]. Then, existentially, in terms of purpose and meaning, there could be no point to living ethically if both atheism and moral realism were true. There would be no point in being moral because there would be no judgment to follow terrestrial life, and every person would reach the same destination. There would be no ultimate moral accountability.
Atheist libertarians live in a philosophical contradiction, denying the only metaphysical basis for the rights they claim exist independent of government recognition. And that's not even factoring in the epistemological errors and assumptions they must make to even be moral realists while holding to atheism, which is itself objectively false on its own [2]. Biblical ethics--Christian theonomy--is not only compatible with some forms of libertarianism, but also by necessity is ideologically paired with libertarianism. A law or government action is not just unless it aligns with objective morality; objective morality can only exist if a deity exists and has a moral nature; any laws that contradict this objective framework are unjust and unnecessary.
[1]. See here for more elaboration on the metaphysical and epistemological issues I mentioned: https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html
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