ATHEISM

Dear Friend,


You mention atheism as though it were a reasonable position to take. Atheism, as the word suggests, is an assertion of not something, a denial. It is not enough to be against something. That's the ideological position of a two-year old in the throes of just saying "no," as with the Republicans. To have a position one has to be for something.

The basic problem with atheism is that it is boring. When I was in a class in logic while working on a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Arizona in the 1960's, after the professor went though all the traditional tests of truth, such as, correspondence to the facts, internal coherence, pragmatic workability, and authority, he ended up the lecture waving his cane in the air, declaring "that at minimum, the truth had to be interesting." Nothingness is boring.

I've never met an atheist in the throes of trying to prove nothing, an impossibity, who was not a complete bore, and a condescending bore at that. Atheists usually announce their nothingness as though they were adopting a morally and intellectually superior position to that of a believer. I see no superiority in boredom. Atheism is an archetypal nihilism. The most sensible response to an announced boredom is a yawn.
The atheist claims the existence of God cannot be proven. Of course, the existence of God can't, only a medieval scholastic or a perfervid Fundamentalist would try. A belief in the existence of God is a presupposition, not an argument or a proposition. People presuppose the existence of God because it allows them to make sense out of things, specifically their lives. A belief in a coherent universe is more likely to come to pass with a belief in the existence of God rather than by happenstance and chance. That is not a proof of the existence of God, it is a presupposition used to make the coherence of the universe intelligible, an act of faith. Chance and happenstance are also presuppositions and acts of faith.

Albert Camus said it best, "I would rather live my life as if there was a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is." "You pays your money and takes your choice."

None of this has anything to do with the nature of God because speculation about the nature of God tends to be humbug. Max Black, late professor of philosophy at Cornell University, wrote that humbug is a "deliberate misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed" (Cornell University Press, 1983). Much of contemporary religious language is humbug.
The fact is that everyone begins with a faith. A scientist presupposes that there are universal laws in the universe, but since no one has ever been to all places in the universe to test that proposition, it has to be a presupposition. There is no way to prove the existence of God, and, as such, it is an act of faith, a presupposition.

Belief, finally, comes from experience, not rationality. As such, it is primitive, that is to say, before reason. A disbelief in God renders life "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable," and, therefore, I choose to believe that which makes life very interesting with "glimpses of eternity" that can be stretched out a whole lifetime. “I all but touch Him with my outstretched hand.”