9. Y’all Just Don’t WANT God to Be Real

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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