In Praise of Atheism

The blistering irony of this entrenched school of Creationists is that every one, down to the last purblind book-burner, seems dead-set on roping the theoretical world down to a base of the most exhausting uncreativeness. The stale, repeated dogmas that exemplify man’s unique capacity to combine a mind-stabbing irrationality with a Grand Inquisitor’s hate; the deep-seated determination, stemming from a well-masked resentment, to debase all freedom and happiness; the anxiety, and, overall, the fear of something completely foreign to them: these things and other unutterable absurdities somehow always combine in just the right proportions to produce those blithering dogmatists—a process which might, with a laughing glimmer of divinity, be the sole stirring argument against an evolution that thins the cowards and weaklings.


The paradox is that most Christians deny God as they affirm him, shout the existence of an all-powerful God while limiting that power to their own ability to conceive its manifestations. All hail the God of the Picket Sign.

But I must ask, is the amount of time and effort, the emotions and souls lying broken on the wayside, the men and women you’ll distance forever with your almighty and arbitrary vehemence—are all these things worth it? Does the how of this divine existence matter more than…than existence itself? Would you, you silly child, argue with God your father if he told you himself that he liked to take his damn time?

Let’s examine the case.

First, the Biblical material. We have a mythological creation story. Correct, kind, blind sir, mythological. Examine the context: historical, cultural, linguistic. In fact, we have two creation stories (catch that?), written about four centuries apart and by completely different traditions. No sir, Moses had no part in this. That’s a fact. In fact, the two stories were not really authored by anyone—they are all that remains of a transcribed oral tradition. And just like the cosmogonical stories of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and all the surrounding….

But let me just stop here, because I have a feeling we have just encountered a larger problem. The problem, Sir Creationist, is that you have already stopped listening to me. If you are a bit more sophisticated, you will take advantage of this pause to launch into your rehearsed assortment of anti-liberal bullshit and condemnations of modern science, painting fallacies through my words and misinterpreting to no end, digressing about my fundamental presuppositions and whatnot. If you are the common Creationist layman sort, you will simply give me a dirty look and call me a damned atheist.

No, sir. I am no atheist. The truth is, I might just possess more faith than you. What? Yes, by the highly scientific definition of faith as non-leaningness, I do. For I am not leaning on my stilted argumentative techniques, my contrived proofs and disproofs or my general hatred of any unimpeded son-of-a-bitch who dares to defy society’s faceless mandates (i.e. God’s eternal Law). Faith is infinite resignation: to give up all that has previously given you that sense of security, all that you have previously relied on, whether it’s your stocks, your bonds, your wife, your groundless theories, your preacher’s jokes, your way of life. Jesus said to lose your life for his sake (Matthew 10:39), to leave everything, and it is peculiarly significant here that he also commands us to have no place to lay our heads.

(You see, I am capable of digressing about the elusiveness of faith, the delicious seduction of an unattainable definition. My metaphors lie pining, my words fall short. Your faith is a legal document. You should be ashamed of your ABCs.)

The goal is to seek the truth without cementing it. The goal is to follow God’s commandment against idols. The goal is to worship God over our theories of how He did it.

But these Christians still murder the wide-eyed mysteries of the universe. I say, long live the atheists, the killers of God—for they have opened up the door to a stranger who knocks. They are the salt of the earth when the salt loses its saltiness.