The Impossibility of Atheism

As the saying goes, "There are no atheists in foxholes". Even the most hardened "atheist" will pray if things get too dangerous, even if it's only a "God help me"!

From The Imaginative Conservative

By Fr Walter Farrell, OP

Paradoxical as it may seem, it remains true that man is perfect in exact proportion to the subjection he gives his superiors, to that subjection given the Supreme Being who is the First Cause and Last End of every creature.

As a matter of fact, there cannot be atheism. Man may vociferously deny that he had any first cause, though his very existence reveals the falseness of his claim; but he cannot even deny that he has a last cause, a final end, without paralyzing action and reducing it to the spasmodic twitchings of madness. Man must go somewhere, for his life is a motion and every act is a step toward a goal. Man’s goal is his god—an odd god, perhaps, represented by the figures on a bank statement, the sweetness of pleasure, the exhilaration of power, the oblivion of a party, a state, a nation, or even man’s own puny self—whatever it is that the modern atheist aims at, to that thing he pays the tribute of religion. That is his false god; more hideous, more ludicrous, more pathetic, more calamitous than the ugly idol of a savage.

The abstract too often leaves us cold. But there is no need of keeping to the abstract in treating of the barrenness of irreligion. A glance at modern opinions of the nature of religion will give us a quick and accurate view of the barren spaces within the human souls of this twentieth century; a vivid, concrete summary of this chapter.

According to some men today religion was born of ignorance, consists in the worship of the mysterious as superior, and is destined to disappear with the advent of knowledge. That is, religion is unworthy of an intelligent man; or, at best, it is an object of amiable toleration because of the practical good it may accomplish among unlearned and simple souls. To other men, religion is a manifestation of fear, cowardice, a desire for escape. It is a perpetuation of the protections of childhood and flight from the realities of life; it pushes a solution of the questions of life farther and farther away, even into a distant, future life. In a word, religion is unworthy of a brave man. Still others see religion as a sop for failure, an excuse for lack of accomplishment and drive, the opiate of the downtrodden keeping them satisfied with the unsatisfying things of life. A thing, that is, unworthy of a successful man.

Or, again, religion is described as an emotional outburst, satisfying the side of man’s nature that escapes knowledge. It is a matter of feeling, of religious sense, of religious experience. Consequently it is as varied and independent as the emotions of each individual; it is strictly personal. At the other extreme is the school which today looks upon religion as a substitute for intellect or a rival of it. Religious intuition reaches the truth which reason falsifies. Ultimately this means that man is not a rational but a purely emotional animal; his guide is not his reason but his feeling, even though that feeling be called religious.

All this has been a negative statement of modern barrenness. The positive statement is no more encouraging, a statement that is readily had by examining that to which men subject themselves today. There is an almost universal denial of a first cause among contemporary American philosophers; translated, that means that man has subjected his intellect, not to God, but to the falsehood of a self-explanatory world, to a falsehood that the existence of the smallest of things effectively refutes.

If we look at the whole life of man, rather than at his intellect alone, we see that the men of our century have linked arms with the men of all ages in subjecting themselves to something; and they have embraced almost everything that has been offered by the ages in the way of a false god. We too have our modern idols, modern only in that they wear twentieth-century clothes: wealth, success, political prestige, party or race supremacy, even pure selfishness. There have been some men in every age who subjected themselves to false gods in pursuing false goals; which is to say, that in every age some men have subjected themselves to things beneath them and consequently have condemned themselves to degradation and tyranny. Our age is no exception.

If it is true that barrenness is spreading in the human heart of today, that is, if it is true that man’s perfection consists in his subjection to the true God whereas men of today are subjecting themselves to false gods, then this lack of perfection should show up in the lives of modern men. But does it? Well, the natural place to look for an exhibition of perfection or a manifestation of its defects would be in the crises of human life. How do we meet those crises? Do we meet them strongly, as an evidence of perfection, or do we meet them with weakness, cowardice, surrender?

There is no need to develop this thought. Let us just mention the modern attitude toward such crises of human life as its inception. Are we meeting the crises of birth or exhausting ingenuity in trying to escape it? How about the crisis of manhood, when an individual comes to an age which demands that he face his own responsibilities, where he is his own master with his own rights and his own obligations? Are we admitting those obligations, embracing those responsibilities or are we trying to flee from them even at the cost of denying our humanity? And the crisis of marriage—are we meeting it squarely or are we leaving doors open, like cautious burglars, that we may escape from it at any moment? Do we face the crisis of sickness or do we hide it away in institutions, pushing it out of our minds while we rush into a whirl of pleasure to drown its least hint? The crisis of death? What is it to us today except the ultimate in despair, the end of all things; not to be met, but to be avoided as far as possible, as long as possible, at any cost—indeed to be escaped by denying life itself in asserting that only change exists.

Paradoxical as it may seem, it remains true that man is perfect in exact proportion to the subjection he gives his superiors, to that subjection given the Supreme Being who is the First Cause and Last End of every creature. This truth is buried so deeply in man’s heart that, however much he may reject God, he will still insist upon subjecting himself to something, to someone, because of that profound realization that only in subjection can he come to perfection. Religion, we have seen, is a matter of strict justice; it merely gives God His due. And we cannot give God anything without perfecting ourselves. There are two sides to the coin of religion: on one side is the worship of God; on the other, the perfection of man. The two are inseparable. As the worship of God is neglected the perfection of man decays; as man perfects himself, so also must he perfect the worship of God. There is no other recipe for perfection than that of subjection, for it is always true that he that will lose his life will save it, and he that will save his life will lose it. It is only by giving that life utterly to God that it becomes solidly our own.

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This essay is taken from A Companion to the Summa, Volume III: The Fullness of Life.

Republished with gracious permission from Cluny Media.

The featured image is “Christ disputing in the Temple” (1545), by Jacopo Tintoretto, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.