“Life’s greatest tragedy is to lose God and not to miss
him.”
--F.W. Norwood
Atheists might assert that they don’t acknowledge the
existence of God, but the view of some Christians and all Muslims is that at
some level even the confirmed Atheist affirms God’s presence. The innate
but neglected awareness of God typically surfaces in Atheist consciousness only
in times of severe stress, as exemplified by the World War II quote “There are
no Atheists in a fox-hole.”[1]
Undeniably there are times -- whether during the agonizing
days of a lingering illness, the seemingly eternal moments of a violent and
humiliating mugging, or the split second of anticipating the impact of an
imminent car crash -- when all mankind recognize the reality of human fragility
and the lack of human control over destiny. Who does a person beseech for
help in such circumstances other than The Creator? Such moments of
desperation should remind every person, from the religious scholar to the
professed Atheist, of the dependence of mankind upon a reality far greater than
our own meager human selves. A reality far greater in knowledge, power,
will, majesty and glory.
In such moments of distress, when all human efforts have
failed and no element of material existence can be foreseen to provide comfort
or rescue, Whom else will a person instinctively call upon? In such
moments of trial, how many stress-induced appeals are made to God, complete
with promises of lifelong fidelity? Yet, how few are kept?
No doubt, the day of greatest affliction will be the Day of
Judgement, and a person would be unfortunate to be in the position of
acknowledging the existence of God for the first time on that day.
The English poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, spoke of the irony of the
distressed human appeal in The Cry of the Human:
“And lips say “God be pitiful,”
Who ne’er said, “God be praised.”
The thoughtful Atheist, full of skepticism but fearful of
the possibility of the existence of God and a Day of Judgement, may wish to
consider the ‘prayer of the skeptic,’ as follows:
“O Lord--if there is a Lord,
Save my soul--if I have a soul.”[2]
In the face of skepticism blocking belief, how can a person
go wrong with the above prayer? Should Atheists remain upon disbelief,
they will be no worse off than before; should belief follow a sincere appeal,
Thomas Jefferson had the following to say:
“If you find reason to believe there is a God, a
consciousness that you are acting under His eye, and that He approves you, will
be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a
happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it…”[3]
The suggestion can be made that if an individual doesn’t see
the evidence of God in the magnificence of His creation, they would be well
advised to take another look. As Francis Bacon is noted to have
commented, “I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud,
and the alcoran (i.e. the Quran), than that this universal frame is without a
mind.”[4] He went on to comment, “God
never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince
it.”[5] Worthy of contemplation is the
fact that even the lowest elements of God’s creation, though perhaps ordinary
works in His terms, are miracles in ours. Take the example of as tiny an
animal as a spider. Does anybody really believe that such an
extraordinarily intricate creature evolved from primordial soup? Just one
of these little miracles can produce up to seven different kinds of silk, some
as thin as the wavelength of visible light, but stronger than steel.
Silks range from the elastic, sticky strands for entrapment to the non-adhesive
drag-lines and frame threads, to the silk for wrapping prey, making the egg
sac, etc. The spider can, on demand, not only manufacture its personal
choice of the seven silks, but reabsorb, breakdown and
remanufacture--self-recycling from the component elements. And this is
only one small facet of the miracle of the spider.
And yet, mankind elevates itself to the heights of
arrogance. A moment’s reflection should incline human hearts to
humility. Look at a building and a person thinks of the architect, at a
sculpture and a person instantly comprehends an artist. But examine the
elegant intricacies of creation, from the complexity and balance of nuclear
particle physics to the uncharted vastness of space, and a person conceives
of…nothing? Surrounded by a world of synchronous complexities, we as
mankind cannot even assemble the wing of a gnat. And yet the entire World
and all the Universe exists in a state of perfect orchestration as a product of
random accidents which molded cosmic chaos into balanced perfection? Some
vote chance, others, creation.
Footnotes:
[2] Renan,
Joseph E. Prayer of a Skeptic.
[3] Parke,
David B. p. 67.
[4] Bacon,
Francis. Atheism. p. 16.
[5] Bacon,
Francis. Atheism. p. 16.
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