The Atheism Delusion

“He who pretends to be an honest inquirer into the truth of a self-evident thing, is a knave.” – William Blake

All Christian groups hold that faith, not just good works, is essential to salvation. The Protestants hold that faith alone is needed. Catholics hold that faith must be backed up by works. But faith is the sine qua non.

This seems a bit unreasonable if, as is commonly assumed these days, you take faith to mean “belief that God exists.”

After all, how is that a moral issue? If you perceive that logic and evidence points to the existence of God, you believe that God exists. If you perceive that logic and evidence points to the nonexistence of God, you believe that God does not exist. First, you really do not have any choice in the matter—contrary to a lot of current postmodernist mumbo jumbo, one is not really free to choose what one believes. One cannot simply choose to believe, for example, that one is smarter than Einstein, however much one might want this to be so. Furthermore, if one could, to believe in the existence of God counter to both one’s logic and the evidence of which one is aware hardly seems a moral thing to do. It would be tantamount to a lie—lying to oneself, and to others. And thou shalt not bear false witness. It would be hypocrisy.

So how does this work?

It works only if you accept one simple reality: the existence of God is not in doubt. All cultures are aware of Him. Philosophers have proven his existence in a dozen different ways. I also suspect that all of us have some direct experience of Him—a good God would want to do this, so He surely has. His existence is engraved in our reason, our emotions, our imagination, and our conscience, if we look for it.

And if we are not looking, we are culpable.

Non-Christian religions agree: for both Buddhism and Confucianism, ignorance is a sin.

This being so, Christian “faith” does not mean an intellectual assent to the truth that God exists. It means trust in God, a humble submission to his authority and his mercy.

It follows that atheists (or agnostics) are not really people who sincerely do not believe God exists. And, frankly, the anger one commonly encounters from atheists, notably Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins currently, reinforces this assumption. Why be angry at a being who does not exist? Why be angry at people for believing in Him? Is such anger directed at those who believe in Santa Claus, or unicorns, or that Oprah Winfrey is Dutch? No—belief in God is apparently somehow special, for the atheists. Atheists and agnostics are not honest inquirers, but people who, for their own reasons, have turned their faces away from God, and stuck their fingers in their ears.


Now, according to Catholic doctrine, this is what sends a soul to hell: “a willful turning away from God… and persistence in it until the end.” In a sense, it is the soul who chooses hell, and for approximately the reason Satan chose it according to Milton: “better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.” They will not submit to a higher power.

It is hard to imagine a purer instance of this than atheism—save only the case of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that is, being confronted directly and knowingly by God and denying Him. Indeed, atheism may often be precisely this sin.

This is in essence the one sin that forces you into hell, because it is a case of choosing hell yourself. God will not interfere with free will. And truly free will means our decisions must bear their proper consequences. Otherwise our choices are not real.

Hence submission to God in love is the first of the Ten Commandments. Hence Jesus calls it the first and greatest of all commandments, summarizing all the rest.