“The fool has said in his heart, there is no God,” Psalm 14:1.
Jesus warned against lightly calling people fools in Matthew 5:22. “Anyone who says 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of Hell.” A “fool” is not an unintelligent, dim-witted person. The term as used in Bible times implies wicked godlessness and rebellion, worthy of damnation. Rabbis used this term to excommunicate people. Over the years words change. A fool in the Biblical sense is one who rejects God's revelation--who rejects God.
Most people make one of two assumptions: Either the universe is the result of random events, which makes life a matter of chance...or an Intelligence beyond the universe has created life and has given life meaning.
Today we have more than mere atheism to deal with; we have militant, intolerant anti-theism. Atheists are on a crusade to discredit and destroy religion. It isn't enough to live-and-let-live; they hope to eradicate faith in any Higher Power. They regard religious education as child abuse, and faith as mental illness. Books such as The God Delusion claim all that's wrong in the world is the fault of religion. They've taken their outrage with fanatical Islam and have extended it to all religions. They conveniently forget that more people have been slaughtered by atheists. Add up the killings of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong, and the numbers are astronomically higher than any so-called “holy wars.” Atheism is much more dangerous. Alister McGrath notes, “It's easy to argue that atheism is better than Christianity: you only need to ignore the good side of Christianity and the bad side of atheism.”
There's a huge moral dilemma in being an atheist: If there is no God, human existence is an accident, and anything is permissible, with no final accountability. Atheists claim we can be “good without God”, but how do they define “good”? An atheist complied Ten Commandments of Atheism; two of them state: “We all strive to be happy” (whatever that means) and “All our beliefs are subject to change.” What's good today may not be good tomorrow. McGrath continues: “We're not denying that atheists have moral values. We're simply asking how those values are derived and justified.” The question isn't whether atheists can be moral, but whether they can come up with any solid sense of right and wrong in a universe without God. Atheists claim that “religion is evil,” but if there's no God, nothing is “evil.”
The atheist worldview claims that there are no absolutes--so we make our own truth, according to personal, arbitrary preferences. In other words--total freedom and no rules. We decide what we'll be and do and we're free to reject any authority other than our own interests. This means that any offense--no matter how depraved or egregious--can't be condemned. If there's no God, why not live any way you like? Rejecting God conveniently eliminates any afterlife punishment or reward. If we don't have to answer for our lives, what's to stop us from a life of debauchery? To be accountable to a holy God opens us to being exposed as unholy. Atheist philosopher Audous Huxley admitted: “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning…the philosophy of meaningless is essentially an instrument of liberation.” Thus, anything goes, which is simply taking atheism to its logical conclusion.
The problem atheists have isn't (as they claim) that there's insufficient evidence. Their problem isn't intellectual but moral. Another atheist stated: “I want atheism to be true...it isn't enough that I don't believe in God; I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that” (Thomas Nagle). Still another admitted that belief in God “would require a radical change in my way of life, a basic alteration in the direction of my day-to-day choices...the simple truth of the matter is that I did not wish to live up to being a genuinely religious person” (Mortimer Adler). In other words, belief in God requires a radical paradigm shift of worldview and lifestyle. Doctrines affect our decisions, and beliefs affect our behavior.
Phil Yancey tells of a skeptical friend who used to ask himself the question, “What would an atheist do?” in deliberate mockery of the What Would Jesus Do (WWJD) slogan. He finally stopped asking because he didn't like the answers.
In Romans chapter 1, the Apostle Paul states that we all have an innate sense of the divine. Helen Keller told Boston minister Phillips Brooks, “I always knew that there was a God, but I didn't know His Name.” Intuitive understanding of the divine is damaged, suppressed, and corrupted by sin. Yet God's fingerprints are everywhere. We see the Creator reflected in nature, in music, and in our hearts. The complexity of DNA, the loveliness of a sunset, the birth of a child, the order of mathematics should convince people. It's been noted, “Even the convinced atheist--if he is the slightest bit reflective--has his doubts about atheism--whether they occur in a foxhole, hospice lobby, concert hall, delivery room, board meeting, or wilderness hike” (Brian MacLaren).
God is also seen in selfless, sacrificial human actions, inexplicable to those who hold to the survival of the fittest; actions which can only be explained as evidence of divine transformation. Christ-likeness is a witness to the reality of God in us. “The sacred deed is the divine in disguise” (Abraham Heschel).
John Lennon famously sang, “Imagine there's no religion.” There would be less religious fanaticism, but there would also be less love and less hope in such a meaningless world. Atheists point out the moral failures of religion, but fail to recognize the contributions: the establishment of schools, hospitals, of prison reform, civil rights, addiction treatment, the abolition of slavery and efforts to eradicate world hunger. Imagine a world without that! Religion has inspired more movements for social justice than atheism ever has.
An atheist was asked to say a few words of comfort at a graveside. He looked out at the mourners and said: “She is no longer in pain.” Atheists say that the dead no longer suffer…because, in their view, they no longer exist. Death leads to nothingness. And while alive, we have a meaningless existence. Cold comfort indeed. “For atheists, suffering is pointless, and we are alone in the universe—and that is exactly what we should expect in a world that itself has no purpose” (Alister McGrath).
St. Thomas Aquinas observed: “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Yet even with faith, some live as if there is no God. They function independently, they act as if they're in control, they think they're self-sufficient, they take credit for their accomplishments, they take no account of God's will, they neglect worship, and they pretty much leave God out of the picture. They are “practical atheists.”
Some people are atheists because of professing Christians who represent God poorly. An atheist stated: “It's hard to believe in God when it's impossible to tell the difference between His people and atheists.” That's a clear wake-up call. Are we living our faith before the watching world, or living a lie? Do people see Christ in us? May the reality of the Divine shine in us for all to see.
