On the irreconcilability of the Christian and Atheistic way of looking at Ourselves and the World. Part 1.

Part 1 of 7.

“The Christian religion then teaches men these
two truths; that there is a God whom men can
know, and that there is a corruption in their
nature which renders them unworthy of Him. It is
equally important to men to know both these
points; and it is equally dangerous for man to
know God without knowing his own
wretchedness, and to know his own
wretchedness without knowing the Redeemer
who can free him from it. The knowledge of only
one of these points gives rise either to the pride
of philosophers, who have known God, and not
their own wretchedness, or to the despair of
atheists, who know their own wretchedness, but
not the Redeemer.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). Thoughts.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Section VIII The Fundamentals of the Christian Religion

1. This is not simply an intellectual problem.

When someone says that “I believe in God.”, they are not as some suppose, saying that they believe in exactly the same world as someone that does not believe in God with the exception of one additional invisible being that others cannot or will not see.

They are really saying something about what they think about the entire universe in which they exist and their place in that universe.

The atheist is really speaking of everything too, and saying that everything that exists means something else, perhaps… nothing. But to say that everything means nothing is still to assert a meaning. This is the inner incoherence of atheism. It asserts the meaning that there is no meaning. That the empty void of space is really of equal worth, value, and meaning with all that we find ourselves to be.

When all is said and done our families, our friends, the rise and fall of nations, the scope and breadth of history and the tales that it tells are all, in truth, for naught. The emptiness is staggering and the futility amazing but the steadfast atheist will face the silence with a poise and good humor that can make him a sort of tragic hero to those inclined to the same kinds of pessimism and self disregard. But there is nothing that is good and nothing that is heroic if the hero himself is nothing that really matters and if there is nothing to being good but the flutter of certain chemical reactions in the brain which ultimately are reducible to physics, not meaning. For the atheist, being an atheist is the location of all of your atoms. There is no noble truth. No true sense of justice. And the prideful assertion of their overwhelming intellect is simply a trick of the light upon an overactive cerebellum, soon to be as quiet as the dust.

In that, good and evil, truth and falsehood, love and hate, are really all the same and that this is true, and perhaps even that this good, is part and parcel with the dream.

Are we merely the effect of a random collocation atoms in the void? Just an accident of matter that will soon return to its previous state of absurd stillness? Well then we need to bite the bullet and state boldly what this entails without staggering off into vague notions of good and evil that have only to do with God’s Creation and nothing to do with the accidental nature of matter in the void.

And that is, that nothing matters and everything is permissible. There is no evil so bold that it cannot be engaged in with complete impunity. The only thing that can be said to be wrong is thinking that something can actually be wrong. And death is every bit as great a goal as living ever was. In fact it is greater, because life, in the philosophy of atheism, is an accidental disturbance in a previously orderly universe. Only death and oblivion are our natural estate. Thus, in a strange way, death is the god, and life is a sacrilege.

Now there are many kinds of theists. There are those that were born and raised to know God and have never known the world or themselves without God. Theses are doubly blessed and the most fortunate among us, though they are frequently accused by the world of cheating. As if being born with all of you members and senses in order were some kind of ploy against the system. A fraud against those born blind, or weak, or poor. Is it good to accuse God of cosmic nepotism because some are born knowing Him and know Him all their lives while some grope in the dark for years before seeing light? Does He play favorites? Perhaps He has different plans for what He wants to do with different people and these are the means that He uses to bring different things to different people.

Whatever it is, there are also those that come to know Him, through learning, or experience, or simply exhaustion with trying so hard to be nothing. Its hard to be nothing and when we who are the image of God Himself try to pretend that we are nothing, that we really don’t matter and have no reason to live, we destroy ourselves bit by bit, day by day, until many people simply give up on trying to be atheists is a world very hostile toward practical atheism.

They simply cant live up to atheism’s high ideal of their own uselessness and emptiness and even against all of their best intentions to the contrary they begin to believe that they are more than complicated dirt that is confused about its dirtiness. Against all of their hopes to the contrary they begin to think of people as important, of human suffering as something to be mitigated, and of themselves as something of actual worth and meaning.

The wonderfulness of man speaks to them of something even greater in their source than that which they find within themselves, and this drives them to look not so much at the dust at their feet to try to understand themselves, but to something above themselves. It seems that human experience as it is, is not in any easy way reducible to the clockwork machine reactions of a simple cause and effect universe that is no greater than the sum of its parts. And there may be no parent that has ever looked into the eyes of their newborn child and failed to catch that fleeting glimpse of the Deity. We find ourselves to be insufficiently designed to be nothing and that traps us in somethingness, whatever that somethingness might be. As frightening as it is, we are more than the sum of our parts and destined to be a part of something great and meaningful.

Atheists often mock these people born of their own infertile womb as people not strong enough to be atheists; not strong enough to admit that they are nothing. But if we really are the nothingness that materialists tell us that we are, then thinking that you are meaningless and thinking that your life really does mean something are really equal to each other. So to object to a difference of opinion between one meaningless opinion and another is at least on its face difficult to reconcile.

It would seem, that before you can argue that to think that one thing is actually better than thinking another thing, you would first need to believe that something can actually be good. There needs to be something good before there can be something better. But Good is really Christian ideology and they shouldn’t be borrowing from the Christian worldview in order to attack it simply because their own philosophy is not a sufficient base from which to explain their own existence, as it is. Much less to try to dis-explain someone else’s worldview after you have already made all worldviews equally irrelevant.

People that say that we are all really nothing, should object to nothing.

The Apostle Paul said this about what is really going on in the mind and heart of those that choose not to know the things they know so well.

Romans Chapter 1:16

For I am not (ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”

18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who )suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

20For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

21For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

24Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

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Christopher Neiswonger