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GUEST
ARTICLE
Why Do Men
Reject God?
Most people in the world, throughout the ages of history,
have believed in some concept of a Supreme Being.
They may have had a perverted sense of
Who that Being is, but they were convinced that there is a Personal Power
greater than man. Given the evidence available, faith is reasonable.
That is why the psalmist declared: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is
no God” (Psalm 14:1). The Hebrew word for “fool” suggests one who is
not thinking rationally.
Since
unbelief is neither reasonable nor the norm, one cannot
but wonder why some people become atheists. I am convinced,
after reflecting upon the matter for many years, that religious
disbelief does not result from logical conclusions based
on well-researched data. Rather, generally speaking,
emotional motivation of some sort is a primary causative
factor.
Consider
the following case. In 1996, Judith Hayes, a senior writer
for The American Rationalist, authored a caustic,
atheistic tirade titled: In God We Trust: But Which
One? In this treatise, Mrs. Hayes revealed two clues
as to why she left the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod)
and became an atheist.
As
a youngster, she had a friend who was a Buddhist. Judith
was very close to “Susan,” and she simply could not tolerate
the idea that her friend, who did not accept Jesus Christ
as the Son of God, might be lost apart from the biblical
redemptive system. So, rather than carefully examining
the evidence to determine whether or not the claims of
the Lord (as set forth in the New Testament record—see
John 14:6; Acts 4:12) are true, she simply decided, on
an emotional and reactionary basis, that Christianity could
not be genuine.
Eventually
Judith married, but the relationship degenerated. Mrs.
Hayes claims her husband was verbally abusive. Again, though,
instead of considering the possibility that she might have
been responsible for having made a bad choice in her marital
selection, or that her husband decided on his own volition
to be abusive (in direct violation of divine teaching—Ephesians
5:25ff.), she blamed God for her disappointment. “[H]ow
could I possibly have wound up married to a tyrant? Why
had God forsaken me?,” she wrote (1996, p. 15). God did
not forsake her. He honored her freedom of choice, and
that of her husband as well. Human abuse of that
freedom is not the Lord’s responsibility.
The
infidel William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) was known principally
for his skeptical poem, Invictus. As a youngster,
Henley contracted tuberculosis, and had to have one foot
amputated. He suffered much across the years and became
quite bitter. He wrote:
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody, but unbowed.
His
disbelief, however, was emotional, not intellectual.
The
late Isaac Asimov once wrote: “Emotionally I am
an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God
doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn’t
that I don’t want to waste my time” (1982, emp. added).
In
one of his books, Aldous Huxley acknowledged that he had
reasons for “not wanting the world to have a meaning.” He
contended that the “philosophy of meaningless” was liberating.
He confessed that the morality of theism interfered “with
our sexual freedom” (1966, p. 19). This is hardly a valid
argument for rejecting the vast array of evidence that
testifies to the existence of a Supreme Being!
Here
is an important point. When men have motives for resisting
faith in God, and when—out of personal prejudice—they are
predisposed to reject the Creator, they become “ripe” for
philosophical skepticism.
--Wayne
Jackson
REFERENCES
Asimov,
Isaac (1982), “Interview with Isaac Asimov on Science and
the Bible,” Paul Kurtz, interviewer, Free Inquiry,
pp. 6-10, Spring. See also Hallman, Steve (1991), “Christianity
and Humanism: A Study in Contrasts,” AFA Journal,
p. 11, March.
Hayes,
Judith (1996), In God We Trust: But Which One? (Madison:
WI: Freedom From Religion Foundation).
Huxley,
Aldous (1966), “Confessions of a Professed Atheist,” Report:
Perspectives on the News, Vol. 3, June.
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http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3859
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