Too bad to be true
I’ve said repeatedly that faith and non-belief come to very few of us after prolonged and serious wrestling with intellectual difficulties. Click here. I suppose in practice that it doesn’t matter much how either comes to us [that needs qualified and developed in we wish to get an accurate view of Christian faith]. But when you read what some non-believers say brought them to or supports them in their unbelief you realise that much of it has nothing to do with logic or reason. [I’ve insisted the same is true about the faith of Christians.] Non-believers watch Christians descend into near despair at the death of a loved one that’s in Christ and they conclude that such Christians really don’t believe what they profess. Hmmm. True or false, that doesn’t have much to do with the truth or error of the Christian faith. It might be an appropriate indictment of some professed believers or a somewhat insensitive observation about a Christian immature in his or her faith and devastated by a loss uniquely felt by them.
It doesn’t take long to see that non-believers can be as self-centred and individualistic in their faith as any believer. It is a rare thing to hear them speak of the cosmic ramifications of unbelief. It’s usually talk about what their faith (non-faith) means to them. They admire beauty with more awareness, they bear the burden of heartache without external help, they seize the day and live more intensely, they’re happier because they plunge into pleasure more freely. They talk about their faith (non-faith) in the same way many believers do—it’s all about how it affects me. I don’t say that all self-reference can be faulted—not at all. But a little of it goes a long way and we (well, I for one) tend to think that where it is a fault it’s mainly Christians that are at fault. But in truth I know better.
And permeating so much non-believing speech is the sense that the non-believers take the higher moral and more truly human road. They have to be braver to bear devastating loss. They are more sensitive to the joys and pleasures and beauties of life. They have to have the courage to establish their own moral standards and the inner strength to keep faith with them. They’re less likely to be murderers because, as one person put it, they have only one life "to get it right." ["To get it right"—as if there was a right way to get it for which one should aim. Non-belief has no rational grounds for such thinking.]
But, you see, I don’t judge that all that is arrogance or swagger (though I believe non-believers are well capable of that). I think that for most non-believers it just isn’t possible for them to accept an existence without purpose and goodness. So they distance themselves from sheer rationalism and draw moral conclusions that must find their basis elsewhere than in unbelief.
It’s interesting that it’s the thinking non-believers that dismiss all talk of good and bad. Former atheist Anthony Flew refused to comment on the moral nature of the Nazi behaviour. He simply said that he didn’t believe people should be used as furnace materials. But he refused any attempt to justify his view. [And yet, in the area of speech and literature, he was a hard worker for social justice.] Bertrand Russell said that moral standards could only be what each individual decided. He genuinely (I judge) lamented that he had no rational grounds to condemn as immoral the horrors being perpetrated in the world. Walter Kaufmann said we should try hard not to call anything immoral. Lord Chichester-Hardy admitted the soil out of which his moral outlook grew was not his unbelief but the Hebrew-Christian shaping of society. H.J Blackham said that the greatest argument against his unbelief was its pointlessness. "It’s too bad to be true," he said. Jean Paul Sartre said the only world consistent with an atheistic view is an amoral one. No wrong or right!
I can easily see that societal existence would require laws saying what behaviour will or will not be acceptable but as the legal profession will remind us, there’s a huge chasm between legality and morality. In such a world there can be no praise for what we call "virtue" or blame for what we call "immorality". Prudence and pragmatics may dictate our policies but a worldview that can’t condemn Stalin’s manufacturing of famines takes some believing.
Non-believers still speak of "bad guys" and still lament that they won’t be "punished". When we hear speech like this we realise that non-belief has left the building and a human heart that longs for justice is searching.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to Bro. Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, The Abibing Word.com.