The Irony of Atheism

There is an irony in atheism.  The atheist must posit the existence of God in order to not believe. In other words, atheism does not exist without the assumption of  someone or something to not believe in.  The formal definition of an atheist is “a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.”  To disbelieve or lack belief, an atheist must disbelieve or lack belief in something. Atheism cannot stand on its own. Atheism always assumes the existence of a god or gods in order to be able to negate their existence. Atheism without God makes no sense. It only makes sense in relation to the possibility of God.  

What does the atheist say?  “ I don’t believe in God,” or “I don’t believe there is a God or gods.”  He or she could say, “I believe there is nothing beyond this life,” which is a faith statement in itself,  based perhaps upon personal experiences of the physical world, but not a statement of omniscience.  In other words,  he or she does not know everything in or about the universe, or experience the substructure of the material world, or know or understand the quantum nature of physical things. And if God is supernatural, as is claimed, then God is above nature and not material or measurable by human instruments. The atheist, by being bound to the material world, and only able to measure material things, cannot measure the supernatural; he can only deny its existence. He cannot know or prove that there is no supernatural reality; he can only assert it. But even the denial by a singular human doesn’t mean much, since that denial is an act of personal opinion or belief.  And again, he is denying the existence of a Creator, Supernatural God, which he again assumes in order to deny its existence. In order to deny an object, you must first posit its existence or you don’t have anything to deny. In other words, atheism cannot exist in a vacuum. It can only exist if it presumes a God or gods to reject. 

But let’s be honest. The atheist does not go around with any gusto denying the existence of Zeus or Thor. In the West, at least, the atheist primarily directs his anger at the belief in the Christian or Jewish God, and perhaps the god of Islam.  And, in most cases,  the reasons for the rejection of the idea of God is the perception of injustice in the world, the experience of suffering and evil, or the loss of a loved one to disease, murder, or accident.  The questions raised by such things are  “how can there be a good and loving God, if he allows such injustice to exist in the world?  And “if he is all powerful, why doesn’t he stop it?”  The conclusion is either God is not good or all powerful, or he doesn’t exist.  These are deep questions that deserve extended answers, but they are not proofs of God’s non-existence.  A short answer is that God made you in His image, which includes freedom. And being free, you have a choice how to live your live, and some people choose to do evil rather than good. Freedom is good in itself, but freedom has in it the potential for everyone to do wrong and make bad choices. That is essentially what happens in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  God cannot stop you from doing evil without taking away your freedom, and if he takes away your freedom, you are no longer human. 

But even deeper still is the fact that merely by asking these questions about evil in the world, it shows that everyone has an inward sense of right and wrong, justice and injustice. In other words, everyone has a sense of how the world should be, as opposed to how it is. That innate sense of justice speaks to a conscience, and that speaks to an inward reflection in the mind and heart of an ultimate order to the universe; an order that is  good. By contrast, if all is mere accident, why should we be burdened by a sense of right and wrong in a universe that has no purpose?  Would not justice and injustice be a fiction we have imposed upon the world? Accident, disease, murder, rape and death are all just equal outcomes to a world that has no ultimate purpose. Morals are a fiction of the mind, induced for self-preservation, not an external or objective standard by which we can measure right and wrong. The world is mere chaos and accident and it all ends for us in death, which equalizes everything. Whether we live long and happy lives or die by violence at a young age, the end is the same for all: nothing…. according to the atheist. 

Humanist morals, then, are just a mask used to hide the emptiness of a proposed value system without any foundation in reality. Right and wrong mean nothing in a world of accident. Things just are.  The human construct of morals over a chasm is just an attempt at self-interest and self protection, but nothing more than a delusion.  In the end, might makes right; the survival of the fittest is evolution in action, the use of power and people to obtain goals, and treating fellow humans as cattle or expendable resources is the nature of the game.  Sound familiar?  Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Nietzsche, and Machiavelli all endorsed such a view. 

But if you have a conscience, and claim to be an atheist, and still value concepts of right and wrong, then you are listening to an inward beckoning of faith in an ultimate good, where justice reigns and wrongs are righted. That too is an assumption of the good, which in spite of all evidence in the world to the contrary, is an appeal to or at least a hope in the possibility of a good God. Do you have that hope within you?