The gods of atheism
Quoting from the film The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” I would imagine an even more pernicious ruse, is convincing men that they can become like God themselves. This is in fact the claim of the Serpent in the infamous garden scene, charming Eve with his enticing pretense “…your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, to know good and evil.”1 Before taking the fruit Eve couldn’t have known what this knowledge meant, yet she concluded there was wisdom to be gained — to be wise like God. This is the temptation offered to these ancients, to become like God is to become a god. Of course the eternally insurmountable problem with men becoming gods? God Himself. In Job we read His response to those who would elevate themselves and challenge Him:
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!”2
So if one wishes to become a god among men, they must begin by convincing men that God doesn’t exist, removing the most powerful obstacle in their murky path. This is a challenging prospect, we are drawn to marvel at the grandeur around us and to seek our place within it, to pursue an understanding of The Creator and our purpose — it’s as if such an impulse was programmed into us. In fact it is this motivation that established the sciences. Suppressing this instinct has required centuries to develop momentum, and mountains of treatises to convince us; perhaps some even cleverly articulated. But it’s a tale as old as our garden story, designed to supplant The One Who Is.
And of course the knowledge of good and evil isn’t the wisdom to choose between them; our chronicles are littered with our own shortcomings. It’s abundantly clear to us what is good or evil, Eve swallowed this knowledge and bequeathed it to us all. It is the good who humbly acknowledge the dignity and nobility in others; the evil who impose themselves upon us, and believe they possess some authority to do so. When one claims jurisdiction over The Divine, what they invariably reveal is their own delusion: a craving to be viewed as divine themselves. The face of evil is revealed when man begins to deify himself, and his own wisdom — his complacency is his greatest of follies. Who could be more deserving of judgement, particularly from the One Who Is? An acknowledgement of God compels nobility, as it calls us to recognize His Image in one another.
More and more loudly we hear the pronouncements of the atheists, proclaiming that everything means nothing. Is it any wonder that each generation becomes increasingly discontent? What purpose does it serve to convince the living that life lacks merit? The world we regard around us lacks purpose? And if true, what consequence could such declamations have? And why should we bother to listen? We have only to examine history to see the outcome of such nihilistic demotions of life; the blood of the masses who rejected these god-men. Sentiments like these provoke corruption, “There is none but me to whom I must account.”
What is it they are really telling us? That we should rely on our reason to determine our paths? No, that’s not what they claim at all. They don’t want to leave it up to us to reason for ourselves, they want you to put your faith in them; you’re only human after all. They are in fact your new gods. If they really wanted you to use your own reason, they wouldn’t battle against those who reasoned themselves into faith. It is not reason they want to determine the course of humanity, they want to be your priests and give you commandments to follow. Yet their blind faith in evolutionary superstitions and prophetic visions of invisible ort clouds, dynamos, and giant asteroids striking planets to overcome the great unconformities to the beloved doctrine. Don’t look at the seashells covering our mountaintops, there was no flood here! Dead fossils are a living testimony to old ages, never mind their soft tissues fresh and pliable. Of course they dug up the arrows pointing from this life form to that one! Sure they lack the words to describe the irreducible complexity in the cell, but they have all the answers you need, and the questions… well, “Just give us time, we’ll prove all that’s written in our heavily cited journal bibles one day” they tell us, “you gotta have faith!”
This is the failure of the gods of atheism, as their sermons set the world ablaze. “Cast off your religious delusions and follow us to Utopia” they preach. “It is your sinful traditions that have brought hell on Earth. So you must repent! and be saved!” An oddly familiar admonition, such lessons we can hear on any given Sunday. The astonishing irony compels us to wonder, can they not devise a different message? One that doesn’t call to mind the faith they wish us to abandon?
Even such contentious axioms as “More people have died for religious causes than any other” upon closer examination we find that tyrants have always used demagoguery religious or otherwise to garner power from their noble constituents, and it is ultimately a lust for the power of godhood that lies beneath the atrocities in human history. The new strategy for such men is to declare it “enlightened” or “science”, though no field of science dares examine questions of theology, “No matter! It’s science because we say so!” they chide, and we aren’t worthy to question their doctrines. But I do have a question: how has human reason been so utterly useless to prevent the horrors of mankind since the enlightenment? The reasoning of men has begat viciously unreasonable outcomes. It is only an acknowledgement of accountability to a higher authority that can stifle such shameful behavior in us all, and give comfort those who have been its victims. Something the material sciences and atheists are quite insufficient to address: anything of real consequence to the human soul, or matters most profound to the human condition. They claim that no violence has happened on their watch, ignoring their nuclear past, and chemical weapons devised in their laboratory temples — their own bloody hands awash with their cancerous mistakes.
These god-men seek to illuminate the failures of the religious and obscure their own, rather than honestly investigate the fearful question of God. Yet man’s corruptibility is not an indictment of God but man, regardless of his religious declamations — all the more reason to reject reason. If one wants to contend with the Almighty they should ‘gird up their loins like men’ and seek Him out directly. Such is the clamoring of the gods of atheism, no more noble than the murmurings of those they condescended to. These would-be gods demand our adulation, whether they are deserving is another matter entirely.
1 Genesis 3:5 NASB
2 Job 38:2-4 NASB
0 Leave a Comment