Have you ever been in a situation where you just did not want something to be true, and no matter how much evidence was brought before you, you would do whatever it took to ignore what was so plainly in front of you?  Maybe you had a vested interest in keeping whatever it was “false,” maybe you just could not bring yourself to accept the evidence, whatever; it really doesn’t matter why it happened, just that it happened.  I am not ashamed to say that I am part of this club; it’s an element of our behavior that makes us human: we have a hard time accepting new information and assimilating it into our existent worldview.  Now, I’m not saying that this stubbornness of not believing something based upon evidence presented plainly to one’s face completely and accurately describes our atheist friends, but its contemplation does bring up some interesting parallel scenarios.

Listening to the impassioned rantings nowadays of Internet and professional atheists alike, one gets the sense that they do not just disbelieve in God and disbelieve in the evidence and arguments provided for His existence, but that they really just do not want Him to be real!  It seems that they are willing to do and think anything to ensure that God “doesn’t exist” (as if their beliefs about His existence could make Him any more or less real).

The universe is too big!  Er, wait, or is it too small? I don’t know: it doesn’t matter!

Many atheists today will claim that the universe is simply too vast for God to care about us human beings and our well-being, beliefs, and actions.  “Why would this supreme Being care about a tiny speck of dust in the vastness of the universe?” is a very common inquiry.  As the Amazing Atheist once said in a video concerning the death of Fred Phelps, the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church: “Because God really cares about a bunch of primates on a backwater speck of a planet in the cosmos and where they stick their genitalia?!”

This strikes me as a false dichotomy though.  Theological complaints aside—specifically concerning the nature of God as Love Itself and the fact that from reality this stems all of the Catholic Church’s teachings on sex, end of life care, poverty, and a whole host of other issues (all worthy topics for future posts)—it seems as though the atheist’s position is merely one of stubbornness and not of reason; it appears internally inconsistent.  To prove my point, let’s take a parallel scenario and see where we end up.

Suppose everything in this new, alternate reality is exactly the same as it is now, except that our universe is only the size of our Milky Way galaxy, or even only as large as our solar system.  (This obviously calls for us to suspend our disbelief regarding the expansion of the universe and how science tells us that it actually needs to be this big for the force of gravity not to have collapsed the whole thing shortly after the Big Bang.)

Can anyone guess what the line from your typical aware-of-the-cosmology-debate atheist would be?  I have an idea: “Gee fellas.  You know what?  When I look at the universe, you know what I think?  I think that if the Christian God were real—this all-powerful, all-knowing, Supreme Being those whack-job Christians are constantly blathering on about—the universe would be bigger.  If He was real, He would have created a bigger, more majestic universe!”

Notice the problem: when the universe is too big, God is not real, because, well, why would this Divine Being care about lil old us, huh?  But, when the universe is too small?  Ah!  Isn’t this God I keep hearing about all-powerful?  Whaddup with this janky small-ish universe?  Shouldn’t He be proving to me that He is real with majesty and grandeur and whatnot?

It really seems to me that atheists are not thinking clearly when they say these things.  It seems to me that their responses are more akin to an emotional reaction whenever God is brought up and not grounded in any kind of sense.

You just wait and see: when we find aliens, you’ll realize that we’re not special at all.

Astronomers and physicists are obsessed with finding other planets with intelligent life.  It seems as though every other article I come across on my daily Internet strolling is about extraterrestrials and how we’re literally *this close* to discovering intelligent life *holds pointer finger and thumb really, really close together to demonstrate how close we really are*.  (No, for real though: it’ll be any day now, just you wait and see.)  This frenzy was even more fervent in the decades of old.  The Drake equation is a famous example. 

Developed by Dr. Frank Drake, an American astronomer and astrophysicist, it was designed to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.  These scientists’ insinuations were that if we found extraterrestrial life, then the meaning of human life and intelligence would be of less value and importance: after all, we would simply be one among many, and this was not even accounting for the many other billions of galaxies in the universe at large!

That equation was developed in 1961, and after all this time, guess how much intelligent life we’ve found in the Milky Way, or anywhere for that matter?  Nothing.  Zip.  Zero.  Nada.

This is not to say that no such life exists at all, only to contrast it with the mentality of today’s scientists and intellectuals.  (I personally would not be shocked one way or another: the Catholic Church’s teachings will not be contradicted one iota if there is intelligent life out there in the universe or if we are all alone; it really does not matter.)

Now, the thinking is much less optimistic.  Many scientists nowadays are conceding that we may very well be alone in the cosmos, though the recent discovery of Kepler-186f—a rocky exoplanet about 500 million light years away, roughly equivalent in size to Earth, and in the “Goldilock’s Zone (not too close and not too far from its sun)—is sparking new optimism in the search.

But again, you will notice the internal inconsistencies with atheists’ views on the matter of extraterrestrial life.  When we are confident in the 1960s and 1970s that we will indeed find intelligent life in the universe other than human beings, well, isn’t it terribly obvious?  We’re not special!  God did not create all this for us, and we do not have a special place in the grand scheme of things; we share the universe with a bunch of other intelligent beings.  But now, when the prospects of finding such extraterrestrial life are much more dismal, well, isn’t it obvious?  God obviously cannot exist!  He is not even powerful enough to create more than one species of intelligent life: some “Intelligent Designer” this shmuck is!

Again, this smacks of hypocrisy and doublethink, and I really cannot wrap my mind around how atheists get through their days holding these so obviously contradictory views.

You know what?  God doesn’t help people who are being raped or anything like that, so yeah: if He was all-powerful He would.

This is always a fun one.  Atheists look at the state of the world around them and they see suffering, evil, and death, and it is ugly—and I agree with them.  From this dismalness, however, atheists see a lack of God—they see God’s nonexistence, whereas I see God and His Providence bringing good even out of the most horrendous of evils.  This is a fundamental disagreement between the two camps, and not an issue that I wish to concern myself with in this particular post.  (Is it a topic for another post?  Most definitely.)  The point of this observation of how atheists respond to the evil so very present in the world around them is to contrast it with how they view the Old Testament.  In modern times, atheists see God’s lack of intervention in the sufferings endured and evils committed by men as proof of His nonexistence, yet this contrasts interestingly with how they view the God of the Old Testament, YAHWEH.

I have yet to hear of an atheist who did not complain about, have a major beef with, or cite the Old Testament as rock solid evidence attesting to the cruelty of YAHWEH, and why this prevents any so-called “rational” person from believing in the Christian God: hence, why they do not.  Now, this post does not concern itself with the information present in the Old Testament and how it fits into Christian Tradition (again though, a post for another time), but I cannot help but take notice of the irony of the situation.  These same atheists who complain that God is so very distant and inactive in our modern times then turn around and viciously condemn YAHWEH when He is near and active in righting wrongs committed by the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and in the heathen nations in the land of Canaan: nations which offered children in sacrifice, committed horrible offenses like infanticide, and ran rampant in sexual immoralities in their frequent participation in orgies and homosexuality, among others.

The bottom line is that these peoples were not very… “wholesome,” and that’s putting it mildly.

The point is that the atheist complains when God is seemingly distant (like today), but also complains when He is active and near to His people during Old Testament times.  Sounds like a recalcitrant child to me, and not an über-rational secular humanist or however it is that they identify.

The fundamental observation is this: the atheist is determined not to believe in God no matter what.  The universe is too big; therefore, God’s not real.  The universe is too small; therefore, God’s not real.  We’re gonna find so much life in the universe; therefore, God’s not real.  We’re probably alone in the vastness of space; therefore, God’s not real.  God allows rape; therefore, God’s not real.  God punishes deeply evil and immoral nations in the Old Testament; therefore, God’s not real.

In what scenario will atheists concede that God is real, I honestly do not know.  It seems to me that the atheists have crafted a kind of lose-lose situation for God: He’s damned if He does and damned if He doesn’t.  I think it is more likely that the atheist—who professes to keep an open mind about God—is really more in the business of avoiding God.

“The atheist can't find God for the same reason that a thief can't find a policeman.”

-Author Unknown

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Take a moment to watch the video below by Jaclyn Glenn.  (She doesn’t omit anything important from the original.)  I’ll wait.

Seriously, watch the video so that what you’re about to read makes sense.

Finished?  Good!

For starters, I am less disgusted with how she attempts to slander Christianity (extremely ineptly) and more disgusted with how poor her logic is in the attempt.  For a self-professed “logical” person (she even wears snazzy LOGIC tees for gosh sake’s) to use so many poor comparisons, poor logical connections between points of information, and just downright false information is astounding to me.  She should be ashamed of herself and strive to live up to her calling to be “logical” more faithfully next time around.

Now, for starters, it seems to me that her opening the video using the term “Christian propaganda” is just a ploy to indicate her disagreement with the message in the video.  I wonder if I would be similarly permitted to call her channel “atheist propaganda” because I disagree with the things that she says?  She simply tosses in the word “propaganda” (something with a blatantly negative connotation) and lets that word’s ugly subtext do her arguing for her, but this is disingenuous, and she knows it.

She should actually address the video instead of leading off her own video response by poisoning the entire discussion with a nasty (and in this case, untrue) word like “propaganda” when it so obviously doesn’t apply.

But on to her discussion.  She begins with this nonsense:

“I’m not saying that even if the Jesus character were real that He would have deserved a crucifixion, but what He did was an uprising against the government; anyone would have been killed for that!  It had nothing [she’s quite emphatic here] to do with who He was or who His followers thought He was.”

She then goes on to say:

“Oh, and not to mention that Holocaust victims are actually real people and so are Holocaust survivors’ descendants.”

Seems pretty real to me.  How about for you guys?

It seems to me that she is making the ludicrous assertion that Jesus is somehow less real than Holocaust victims.  Sorry to disappoint you, Jaclyn, but no one sane actually believes that Jesus never existed.  It is a widely accepted fact that the man was a historical figure who actually did roam the land of Galilee 2,000 years ago, and only the most foolish of lunatics believe otherwise.  In fact, Bart Ehrman, a former Fundamentalist Christian turned agnostic, wrote a book detailing how Jesus (a man) “became” God, but actually demonstrates that the man himself existed in order to build his case.

And yes, His execution totally did have something to do with who He claimed to be, who He was, and who His followers thought that He was.  The Sanhedrin (the council of Jewish leaders) had Him brought in at night to question Him, and when asked if He was the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One [God], Jesus replied “I AM.”  For this crime of blasphemy, the Jewish leaders had Him brought before Pilate to be killed.

Jaclyn’s main argument is that anyone would have been sentenced to death for causing unrest in the Empire, and she is probably right.  But here’s the problem with her “logic”: while it is most definitely true that Jesus was the source of much unrest in the land at this time, the primary reason that He was sent to Pilate to be crucified was because of who He claimed to be.  The unrest was a natural outgrowth of that assertion by Jesus and belief by His followers.  This is what caused the unrest, but that unrest would never have happened if He had not claimed to be the Son of God.  So, actually, His crucifixion did in fact have just about everything to do with who He claimed to be, who He was, and who His followers thought that He was.  Nice try Jaclyn; close, but no cigar.

Yet another gem from the powerful mind of Ms. Glenn:

“And just because His followers thought that He was saving them from sin, it doesn’t mean that He actually [again, super emphatic for whatever reason] saved them from anything.  A belief doesn’t make something a reality.”

And yet she does exactly this when she talks about Hitler later on in her video!  Hitler believed that he was acting in accord with Almighty God in exterminating the Jews, and he believed that this was in accord with Christian teaching and tradition, but the fact of the matter is that it was not—far from it, in fact.  She is right: belief in something does not necessarily equate to that something’s truth. She, however, ignores this obvious fact (one that she had just stated) and essentially makes this nonsensical assertion: when Jesus’ followers “believed” that He saved them from sin, they are crazy and worthy to be maligned and ridiculed as such, but when Hitler “believes” just as intensely that he is acting in a Christian way in starting WWII and the Holocaust, well, shit, he must be doing just that!  She contradicts herself big time here.

She then goes on a whole spiel about the death and Resurrection of Jesus (as if she actually knows a thing about Christianity other than what the Amazing Atheist’s Douchebag Bible has told her).  She says:

“Jesus—God Incarnate—knew what was going to happen.  He knew that He was going to *“die”* and then rise from the dead again three days later.  So… I’m sorry: He didn’t actually die; that’s not really that big of a sacrifice, knowing that you’re just gonna be in a coma for a few days and then wake up.  It’s not really the same thing as being dead.”

Well, you’re right on the first bit: congrats.  Jesus was, and is, fully God and fully man.  And yes, He did have divine foreknowledge concerning His eventual death and Resurrection.  How you start there and then jump to the next bit of your argument really is baffling to me, however.

So the fact that the Son of God, the Word, God Incarnate, “knew” that He would suffer, die, and rise again three days later somehow diminishes both 1.  His sufferings and 2.  His death?  I’m not buying it.

As for point number one: just because He knew that He would suffer and die, but then later rise, in no way diminishes the terrible pain and anguish that He underwent.  Remember: this is God we are talking about.  He had no need to come down and suffer and die for us: He is perfectly sufficient without us.  But the fact that He did so while we were set against God in our sins—enemies of God—is a testament to the true love and commitment that Jesus had for us.

"And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."

In addition, it seems that knowing in advance the agony and pain that awaited Him would be all the more reason to flee such a dismal future, right?  Doesn’t the fact that He persevered in the face of torture make His act even more praiseworthy than if He didn’t have foreknowledge of what was awaiting Him?

Jesus, just casually moving freely toward impending death.  But no biggie, right?

Finally, it seems that Jaclyn is forgetting the very important detail that Jesus was, and is, fully God and fully man. What man relishes the thought of his future prosecution, persecution, and eventual execution? None. What man wants to die a gruesome death? None. As a man, He feared death and pain just like any other man, yet He persevered. She is unfair in her criticism of the sufferings Jesus would have to undergo with attempted appeals to His foreknowledge (which in no way diminishes the act itself, and in fact, probably increases the laudability of it), and with her disregard of Jesus’ true humanity.

As for point two: I am honestly shocked that she could even say that He did not actually die!  So because He rose three days later, He was never actually dead before that...?  From what was He rising?  A nap?  He was dead, Jaclyn!  The Romans made sure that everyone they were charged to execute actually died; they were known for their record-keeping, organization, and dedication to seeing a job through.  People put on crosses always died, Jaclyn. The Roman soldiers would never have let live a man that the leaders of the Jews wanted dead so badly.  This is just plain silliness.

She also makes the claim that she does not want to get into an “elementary school level debate” about whether or not Hitler was an atheist or a Christian because she “gets annoyed” when people say that she “has so much in common with Hitler” when they find out that she’s a vegetarian because “apparently Hitler was also a vegetarian.”

It is funny how she absolves herself from any association with Hitler with both of them being vegetarians—“there is no possible way that this links me and Hitler together in any way” she thinks to herself—yet she will go on to slander an entire group of believing Christians for the actions of a single madman just because they allegedly share the same belief.  I smell hypocrisy: anyone else?

Having authentic black and white pictures of WWII scenes (especially with Hitler and the pope) while she voices-over does not give her “point” any more credibility, and I really do wonder why she thinks that it does any such thing.  Hitler’s being “baptized a Roman Catholic, being an altar boy, wanting to become a priest, attending Catholic monastery school, and later expressing his ‘Christian support’ to the German citizenry and soldiers” all have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Hitler was actually a Christian.

Just like Jaclyn used to be Catholic and did all the things little Catholic kids do does not mean that she is today a Catholic, right?  In fact, I know that she would vehemently resent that label.  So why ignore this same reasoning with Hitler?  What’s the matter? Don’t wanna claim him as your fellow atheist?  Because that is what he was, Jaclyn: he rejected Christian teaching wholeheartedly.  It was just an effective way to galvanize power and support for himself in the early years of Naziism.

Notice when he did these things: was it in the early years or later years of his rise and rule?  He obviously needed to employ Christianity as he tried to gain power because he knew that people would gravitate toward it, since it was familiar.  After he had consolidated all the power of the State and had literally become the State, the teachings were never thereafter heeded in any serious manner but were kept in place as a mere convenience and prop for use by the Nazis.

Finally, she brings up Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto.  (I was wondering how long it would take her to do that.)  Here are the two quotes she utilizes: “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord” and “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity.  Our movement is Christian.”

This just goes back to my previous point about belief and the truth of a belief.  This was also Jaclyn’s point: “A belief doesn’t make something a reality.”  So Hitler believes that by exterminating Jews he is doing God’s will and that his Nazi movement is Christian… so what?  Who cares?  Does this mean that he is in fact doing God’s will and that the movement is in fact Christian?  Crazy people believe a lot of crazy things; do we regard every utterance by a sadistic madman as Truth Itself?  No, but apparently we’re willing to make an exception for Hitler because, well, because everyone hates Christianity, right?

I mean, who wouldn't believe everything this guy said, huh?

She closes with this utterly scathing remark: “How dare you use the death of millions of people to propagate your beliefs, especially whenever those beliefs—Christianity—is what played a major role in this happening to the Jewish people to begin with.  How dare you!”

I think that I have shown that this is not what happened in the video at all.  But I do have a counter remark: How dare you, Jaclyn Glenn, use a video that is attempting to evangelize as a prop to spread your hate, pettiness, and illogic.  You make this a habit: picking on people (and doing it poorly) in order to spread your vicious brand of atheism.  It’s time someone called you out on it.  This is the first time that I’ve been in a position to do so; otherwise, it would have come from me sooner.

Let me know what you guys think in the Comments section!  Was I off-base?  Is Jaclyn actually right, or am I?

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I would just like to start out by stating that I have much respect for the likes of Jaclyn Glenn, T.J. Kincaid (The Amazing Atheist), Hemant Mehta (The Friendly Atheist), and all the rest.  I am inspired by your commitment to spread what you believe to be the truth about God and religion based upon the evidence available to you and your perception of that same evidence’s value.  It takes a lot to put yourself and your ideas out there, and you guys do it fearlessly and with unique styles.

I would also like to apologize in advance because you guys are all fundamentally wrong about a crucial piece of the Christian worldview—and it concerns the nature and reality of Heaven.  (Did you really expect anything different from me?  I didn't think so.)  So, following is a brief list of common misconceptions/mental farts concerning Heaven (which y’all willingly—and eagerly, I might add—perpetuate).  I will be clarifying exactly what Christians believe concerning this portion of the afterlife and those misconceptions.  So let’s get to it, shall we?

Let’s start here.  I must make a desperate plea to all atheist, agnostic, and non-theistic persons out there on the Internet, in print media, wherever: stop listening to the Fundamentalists and Protestants (but especially the Fundamentalists)!  Fundamentalists give all Christians a bad name.  Pretty much no serious Christian takes them seriously, or even particularly likes them (at least, I don’t).

Fact of the matter is that it’s easy to rip on the Fundies for their views on Heaven (and just about everything else)!  (And you’ve all figured this out, and that’s why you do what you do: easy prey.)  It’s like taking candy from a baby!  They are not intellectually prepared for the hard scrutiny to which you all mercilessly subject them, and I applaud you for your bluntness.  Good on all of you for calling them out!

Now the bad news: I challenge you all to take on a real Christian intellectual.  Try John Lennox (professor of mathematics at Oxford), Peter Kreeft, (philosopher at Boston College), or Trent Horn (Catholic apologist), then tell me you think Heaven is a bunch of B.S.  Until then, let’s stick to what the true Christian church—the Catholic Church—says about Heaven, shall we?

1.  Faith Alone?

Your typical Fundamentalist Christian will claim that it is his faith in God that will get him to Heaven, and that it is your (the unbeliever’s) lack of faith which will invoke His ire and get you sent to Hell where “you’re going to burn in eternal hell-fire for ever and ever and torture and pain and misery” as I believe Jaclyn Glenn once said.

Fact of the matter is that they are just plain wrong.  It is not just faith that will get you into Heaven.  Furthermore, what really befuddles me is why atheists do not simply reference the Bible to shut the Fundies up. (Because—and I hear this constantly—atheists, agnostics, and skeptics have read that thing cover-to-cover, found every conceivable flaw and inconsistency therein, and know so much more about the Christians’ holy book than even the Christians themselves do!)

Point-in-fact: even a cursory reading of the Bible  will show, very clearly, that the only place the phrase “faith alone” appears in Scripture is in the Book of James, and it there that it is explicitly condemned!  Therefore, it is evident at least that our salvation comes *drum roll, please!* not by faith alone!  It does, however, come principally through the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and secondarily by faith and works, which are only made possible by God’s grace.  So yeah.  Catholics: 1, Fundies, Protestants, and atheists/agnostics/skeptics/non-theists: 0

2.  God is a dick who is going to send me to Hell against my will!

Again, wrong.  God is a just judge, yes.  A just judge gives us what we deserve, right?  Well, we merit what we have desired our entire lives.  Lives centered on pride, hatred, lust, disobedience—ourselves—merit us Hell; lives centered on humility, kindness, love, obedience—God—merit us Heaven.  The upright life merits Heaven; the dissolute life merits Hell.  We reap what we sow; it’s really that simple.  The basic fact of the matter is that God will not give us what we do not deserve, and what we deserve is what we’ve been telling God we’ve wanted our whole lives, by how we’ve lived our lives.  Unbelievers have been telling God all their lives that they reject Him by their thoughts, words, and deeds in this life.  They will separation from God.  In Eternity, we simply get what we have ultimately willed our whole lives.  The atheist merits eternal separation from God—Hell—while the Fundamentalist, no matter how misguided his Christian worldview, merits eternal communion with God—Heaven.  God, terrifyingly enough, will give us what we want.  How's that for a great dad?

3.  Yeah… I’m pretty sure I’d rather be in Hell.  It sounds like waaaaay more fun.

This is always an amusing one.  I’ve heard the argument made that Hell would be preferable to Heaven because there would be lots of cool people down there (e.g., famous atheists like Darwin).  In Heaven, it would just be a bunch of whack-job Christians with no brains praising a God that’s pretty much THE definitional standard of THE ultimate douchebag.  I have also heard some atheists say that in Heaven, your mind would simply break down; because for real though: how long until you ran out of things to do up there?  For how long can you really play board games, if you’re being honest with yourself?  100 years?  1,000 years?  How long, the atheist demands to know, before you degenerate into a pile of mush and your very self just gives out from the mental strain of simply existing for so long?

At least in Hell, the atheist argues, I can chat with all the God-hating intellectuals.  I just have to fight through the agonizing pain long enough to strike up a conversation with Bill Nye, maybe, and hope that he takes a fancy to me and agrees to chat about such-and-such.  In Hell, they argue, we would only last a week—if that.  They point to real-life scenarios where people break down from torture, and they extrapolate that out to the far more severe pains of Hell and draw the conclusion that we would somehow “get out of” the torture and misery of Hell, simply because we would not be able to handle it after a certain point.

Again, sorry to disappoint, but let’s just think this through briefly.  The atheist is willing to concede (for argument's sake) that Hell exists.  He then demands that all the same old Earthly rules apply there.  He is willing to believe that his mind will just “give out” after some finite period of time in Hell because it will have been too much for him to handle by Earth’s standards.  This makes absolutely no sense!  There is no such place as “Hell” on Earth, right?  Yet, the atheist is willing to believe that all the same rules of torture and breaking points must apply in Hell as they do on Earth, even though Hell is perhaps the most otherworldy thing that we can imagine!  What part of “eternal torture” are they not grasping?  The very fact that we even posit a Hell (a place of which there literally is no compare and which, by definition, flies in the face of all that we currently know is possible, or even likely, about the natures of pain and time itself) presupposes that things probably don't work quite the same way there; but hey, I've been wrong before.

4.  You are all just robots in Heaven!

Nice try, but again, false, as are all the rest.  This seems perhaps the most plausible, however; I will grant them that.  I mean really: who would want to spend Eternity worshipping God?  He sounds like a narcissistic asshole, right?

Wrong.  In Heaven, we will worship God, first, because that is what we have willed to do our whole time on Earth—our lives were a prayer to and kind of active worship of Him—and second, because He is worthy of worship—in fact, the only thing worthy of praise and adoration.  He is every perfection desirable.  He is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.  What better thing to worship than the Being who literally is Perfection Itself?

I do not lose my will in Heaven.  The choice to sin, odd enough as it seems to us now, is not a choice: not really anyway.  If only we knew, really knew, what we were rejecting when we sinned (our Ultimate end and joy), the suffering we caused Christ, and the damage we do to ourselves, we would never do it.  Sinning is a denial of our very selves, who we were made to be.  We reject the Designer's plan for His design when we sin.  In Heaven, this is made plain to us.  We will not sin for utter love and adoration and rapture of God.  Our choice to sin will be as stark to us now as our choice between eating our favorite meal in the company of our oldest and best friends... or getting mugged.  Or to have sex with the person of our heart’s deepest longing (our spouse)... or to step on a rusty nail on a cold November night.  It will be a no-brainer!  The deck is so stacked against sin and so in favor of God (infinitely more in his favor, actually) that sin loses every time—as it should.

Furthermore, we retain our freedom of will for sure, but we will also gain a new kind of freedom: freedom from sin.  The heavy rod of our taskmaster (Satan) will have been shattered, and we will no longer be subject to the various pressures and weaknesses and failings of Earth and our previous mode of existence.  We will have gained true freedom: freedom to be ourselves, the people God has called us to be from the consummation of the world, a place where God's will is done perfectly 1. because we all yearn and ache to do it (because we had prepared ourselves on earth) and 2. because we are truly free now to to do it always.  We will have gained interior freedom, a freedom that eliminates a divided mind, will, and heart. Doing the will of God will be what is always done because it is the only thing worth doing—or even possible.  (Selfishness and disobedience seem like options, but in the Face of God, they melt away to nothing.)

I hope my atheist friends will reconsider their stances on the afterlife and consider seriously what I’ve written here.  I hope they will look into some solid Catholic literature and live up to their call to intellectual honesty that they so strictly impose on all the rest of us.  I await their replies!

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