The Folly of Atheism, Part 3

Reflections on Psalm 14:1

Atheists often accuse Christians of inventing the idea of God to cope with their problems, a la Freud, but that charge cuts both ways. We can argue that the atheist has a vested interest in not believing in God. The atheist or agnostic may be using his unbelief as a crutch to avoid responsibility to his Maker. The God of the Bible is an extremely imposing figure. Yes, he is a God of love, but he is also the Judge of all the earth who will ultimately condemn the impenitent. Some feel the need to deny God’s existence in order to indulge themselves without fear of judgment. In his book Ends and Means, Aldous Huxley explains the motivation for his atheism:

“For myself, as no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom…I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none and was able without difficulty to find reasons for this assumption.” 

Notice the sequence — Huxley craved sexual freedom and adopted a nihilistic worldview to justify his licentious behavior. His passions preceded and forged his position intellectually. For most, this occurs on a subconscious level. People don’t deny God’s existence for purely speculative or scientific reasons. That is never the case. Sure, they might have questions but something else lies beneath the surface. The heart desires autonomy from God and shuts itself off from anything that may impinge upon its wanton lusts. The wicked do not want to be held accountable to a God who sees all and knows all, especially behind closed doors. Thomas Paine, a militant deist and no friend to Christianity, correctly noted, “No man believes that there is no God, except for him whose interest it is that there should be none."

People despise God because he is infinitely holy, pure and righteous and demands that we be like himself. Sinners don’t want that kind of God. Even Martin Luther admitted hating this righteous God but for an entirely different reason. Luther did not hate God because he wanted to be unshackled from the moral law. At the height of his legalistic frustration and despair, Luther hated God because he thought the Lord required a righteousness he could never attain and would punish him for failing to achieve it. This was a no-win scenario that assured a dreadful end. 

What Luther would later discover through the Holy Spirit is that the righteousness of God cited in Romans 1:17 is not the righteousness of God by which he condemns those who lack it, but the righteousness he freely gives to sinners who believe in Christ through the gospel. This is true freedom; freedom from guilt, shame, and slavery to a written code that sets the standard but offers no power to fulfill it. The law issues a death sentence while the gospel swings the doors of paradise wide open.

In the gospel, God is our friend. Apart from the gospel we view him as the enemy. The unregenerate cannot stand his sovereignty because they want to rule their lives. Ultimately people do not reject God for a lack of evidence since they possess both an external and internal witness to his being. It’s an affair of the heart and that’s why we need the grace of the gospel. Now atheism can be theoretical or practical. The theoretical atheist denies God exists while the practical atheist, who in many cases actually professes faith, simply lives as if God does not exist. Next week we’ll consider how to deal with the former.