The Foolishness of the Godless?

So a while back Colin's post on the Sacramento Seminarians blog got me to start reading the Bible in a year.

Ok, so I'm a few days behind already but that's not the point. I've been having a lot of discussions with some of my anti-theist friends recently, and oftentimes what the debate of the existence of God ends up coming down to is not really rational argumentation and logic, but rather simple belief; it is hard for me to see people so easily deny the true hope, joy, and life that comes from faith, and it is hard for many atheists to see people so hopeful and joyful from what they consider a delusion.

But one of the things that has been impressed on me very deeply is that the modern atheist thinks that he is being novel in his belief. Atheists believe that atheism is on a rise because they are finally asking questions that have never been asked, that people are finally thinking in ways they have never thought before. In fact, it is only the hubris of modern society that is driving the secular revolution. In fact, it is people's ignorance that gives modern atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins any ground at all- they must count on the fact that people do not realize their "new" challenges are the same issues faced (and answered) by Christians since ancient times. Whether it be accusations of plagiarism from other faiths (Mithras, Egyptian, etc.) or what they consider "unanswerable" proofs of God's non-existence (God does not heal all people, amputees, the Bible is racist and sexist, the existence and problem of evil, etc.) rest assured that these challenges are not new. Society today thinks that religion is stupid and irrational, and that it has never thought about these questions and therefore has no answer. Our modern society does not know or has forgotten that our saints rank amongst the greatest thinkers of all time, and they in no way shirk or avoid these questions.

Don't let society push you around; don't be trumped by pop amateur philosophers like Hitchens and Dawkins (one is a journalist, the other a biologist), let the lion that is the teachings of the Church out of its cage. Go read St. Augustine's City of God (or at least parts of it, it is super long), read St. Thomas Aquinas or Blaise Pascal (mathematician, physicist, and, surprise: Catholic apologist). Realize that the Church is not irrational, it is not solely emotion and experience based; rather it unites faith and reason to elevate both to their designed purpose. There are reasons for faith. Don't let anyone tell you there aren't.

The reason why I was thinking about all this is because my Scripture reading was, aptly, from the Book of Wisdom. The modern atheist thinks that finally modern people can come to terms with God's nonexistence- they are finally enlightened enough to be at peace with this "fact", free from the superstition that grips the religious. Is this new, is this novel?

Compare the words of the modern atheist to these ancient words from the Book of Wisdom:

"But the godless call for Death with deed and word,
counting him friend, they wear themselves out for him;
with him they make a pact,
worthy as they are to belong to him.

And this is the false argument they use,
'Our life is short and dreary,
there is no remedy when our end comes,
no one is known to have come back from Hades.
We came into being by chance
and afterwards shall be as though we had never been.
The breath in our nostrils is a puff of smoke,
reason a spark from the beating of our hearts;
extinguish this and the body turns to ashes,
and the spirit melts away like the yielding air.
In time, our name will be forgotten,
nobody will remember what we have done;
our life will pass away like wisps of cloud,
dissolving like the mist
that the sun's rays drive away
and that its heat dispels.
For our days are the passing of a shadow,
our end is without return,
the seal is affixed and nobody comes back.

'Come then, let us enjoy the good things of today,
let us use created things with the zest of youth:
take our fill of the dearest wines and perfumes,
on no account forgo the flowers of spring
but crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither,
no meadow excluded from our orgy;
let us leave the signs of our revelry everywhere,
since this is our portion, this our lot!

'As for the upright man who is poor, let us oppress him;
let us not spare the widow,
nor respect old age, white-haired with many years.
Let our might be the yardstick of right,
since weakness argues its own futility.
Let us lay traps for the upright man, since he annoys us
and opposes our way of life,
reproaches us for our sins against the Law,
and accuses us of sins against our upbringing.
He claims to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord.
We see him as a reproof to our way of thinking,
the very sight of him weighs our spirits down;
for his kind of life is not like other people's,
and his ways are quite different.
In his opinion we are counterfeit;
he avoids our ways as he would filth;
he proclaims the final end of the upright as blessed
and boasts of having God for his father.
Let us see if what he says is true,
and test him to see what sort of end he will have.
For if the upright man is God's son, God will help him
and rescue him from the clutches of his enemies.
Let us test him with cruelty and with torture,
and thus explore this gentleness of his
and put his patience to the test.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death
since God will rescue him- or so he claims.'"

-Wisdom 1:16-2:20

Why does God not simply save us all? Why did He not save His own begotten Son? God's love and justice is greater than ours, more than we can imagine, more than this world can offer. People who do not see with the eyes of faith will try and test us, but we who do see with the eyes of faith see beyond this ephemeral world. We see a world that is not a freak occurence but one with a purpose; we see that our reason is a gift, not merely the emergent property of our biological existence and neuron firing; we see people who are not mere passing matter but who are destined for glory. We see a world not governed by happenstance and relativity but by eternal Truth.


Holy Spirit, guide us in Your wisdom. Amen, alleluia.