The Ardent Faith of the Atheist

An atheist has an easy task, arguing against the existence of God.* In a debate based on visible, physical or intellectual evidence, the debater on the side of theology doesn’t stand a chance.

Atheists, presuming to understand their opponent’s conception of and relationship with the Supreme Being, cite the reasons why they are mistaken. They recite the facts, the contradictions of logic and reason as well as all the scientific evidence that proves there is no God. Demonstrating the inviolability of reason, their arguments are irrefutable.

A fourth-grader can contest the Sunday school version of the Judeo-Christian deity, the God of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. However hardly anyone these days believes in the God whose existence the atheists are contesting. People of faith accept the Bible stories and the parables as just that: symbolic, imagistic transmissions of an inexpressible truth. Science can never conclude how the universe came into being, for example; but creation narratives allow human beings to attach a spiritual meaning, an emotional rather than intellectual value to the fact of our existence. Is knowledge more important than feeling?

Atheists insist on naming the inherent contradictions: How a “good” God allows misery, disease, birth defects and gas chambers? They say our worldly reality is inconsistent with the idea of a Heavenly Father. The atheist makes the ironic assumption that they know what God is. They believe firmly in a God that they don’t believe in.

Of course we can’t know what God is. We’ll never know what caused the universe to exist. We can’t conceive of eternity or infinity or even death because we can’t experience it. Does that make me say that death doesn’t exist? Or would anybody argue against the idea of infinity just because it’s imponderable? A life without some mysticism is a limited experience.

Despite one’s theological notions a belief in God is ultimately and essentially a reverence for existence itself, a willingness to consider the very fact of existence to be sanctified. Everything that exists is holy because it is real, powered and filled with an inexplicable energy that ultimately unites everything.

Puny man’s brief voyage on earth is surrounded by mystery. Belief in God is simply a way of saying we believe that life itself, in all its wonderful and painful reality, is a blessing.  The rest of it is altars, statues and stories.

*Am I demonstrating my side of the argument by capitalizing the word? Or just being polite?