Atheists and Anti-Theists

There are Atheists and there are Anti-Theists. Atheists like to hone their debating skills against hapless Christians. They use debating tricks like, "show me corporal evidence of an incorporeal being", or entertain us with riddles like, "can god create a stone he cannot lift". These games do not convince anyone, they merely score "points" for an imaginary debate that the atheist carries on with the world. It's a tiresome game for shallow pseudo-intellectuals, like speaking Klingon at a party.

Anti-theists believe in God, but they oppose Him. They pretend to disbelieve in God in an attempt to hurt Him, generally in retribution for some perceived injury. There are anti-theists who oppose God for ideological reasons: either God has not presented enough evidence of His presence to satisfy the anti-theist, or the anti-theist simply does not like the way God runs the universe. More commonly, the anti-theist is trying to force God to reveal Himself by his open and vocal defiance. Anti-theists want to give God a good, long lecture.

Anti-theists generally grow out of their adolescent rebellious phase when they become parents. A father can relate to His Father in Heaven, because fathers have to go through the same kind of bittersweet agony that afflicts Christ. A good father must allow his child to get hurt from time to time. This is not easy for fathers, but the alternative is unthinkable. Children who are protected from any kind of disappointment or conflict become weak, pathetic specimens living on their parents' couch.

Anti-theists oppose God because they think He is arbitrary and cruel. They would prefer a world where no one dies and no one gets hurt. As fathers they would create a world where their children cannot get a knee bruised or their self esteem ruffled. Every game would end with winners all around. Every day would be everyone's birthday, with nothing but candy, cake and parties all day long. If you think that sounds like a childish version of Heaven, you might be right.

A good father watches his child run out on the softball field with a hope and a prayer. When he sees his child fall, he prays: "get back up". If the child lays there in the dirt squalling, a good father will go out there and hug him and dust him off and give him the courage to get back into the game. This is what Our Father will do for us, if we let Him. An anti-theist would create a very different kind of game, where pillows replace bats and an army of doctors or psychologists run after the kids to protect them from any injury. However, an anti-theist will never know the warm glow that a father feels when he sees his child fall down and then get back up again on his own with only a few tears.

Christians want to make God proud. Anti-theists want to hold God accountable for the state of the world. Our Father wants us to grow up and become adults, not big babies. Anti-theists cannot accept that the process of growing up requires a certain amount of discomfort and disappointment. They do not understand that the practice of virtue comes from seeing the consequences of vice. They wish there was some other way to become an adult. But there isn't. And that's why we will always have new anti-theists among us, because the old anti-theists grow up and raise children who defy their rules and then we have a whole new crop of anti-theists.

Adolescent rebellion is built into us. We are designed to rankle against authority, so that we might move out of the protection of our childhood homes and learn what we can from the world on our own. We must step out from beneath the shadow of our parents and be exposed to the bright sunlight. Growing up can be painful but the alternative (Peter Pan in Neverland) is an aging childishness, a lifetime of immaturity. This lack of mature perspective is what I see in anti-theists. Just as we should not hate our parents for making a home for us and setting household rules, we should not hate God for making a world for us and giving us detailed instructions on how to best live in that world.

Children make a mess of their rooms. Parents try and teach their children to pick up after themselves. Our Father would also like us to learn this lesson. We have made a mess of this world. We can't run away; here is where we stay. Rebelling against Our Father will not clean up the mess we made. Fantasizing about science fiction will not solve our problems. We could run away and squat with like-minded rebels in relative squalor, or we could face squarely the objective reality of the situation, accept that we have a messy room, and start setting things to rights.