The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

Okay, not all atheists. Just those militant ones that put up the crass signs. The ones like Bill Maher who equate belief in God to belief in the Tooth Fairy. They can’t just let you live your life as a believer. And the question always bothered me. Why? Why are they so hostile, so aggressive? Why do they want to destroy Christmas, and Easter, and trash the bible, and spit on Jesus, and yell and scream if anyone mentions the ten commandments or tries to say a prayer in public? And a couple of days ago the answer came to me.

They’re not trying to save us from the folly of our belief, perhaps the only acceptable reason for their actions. They are trying to take the place of God. Not in the heavens, but here on earth. It’s all a matter of control. If we have allegiance to a supreme being, something outside of our physical world, we can never be completely dependent on them (the atheists). Atheism is a narcissistic form of belief by its very definition: I’m the smartest, most wonderful thing in the world; there is no God.

There is no “leap of faith” possible for an atheist, because he/she can have no faith in anything outside of him/herself. I believe in God because I left that possibility open, and experienced events in my life that caused me to be a believer. Atheists won’t ever experience that, because the door is shut; they won’t even open it a crack. But they’ll invent beliefs that are at least as difficult to accept, like one of the latest — the big bang was caused by multiple universes banging into one another. Of course they don’t have a way of explaining where all those other universes came from… yet.

So they really have no other option than to ridicule God and those who believe in Him/Her/It. The Jews believe(d) that pronouncing the name of God was forbidden. Because He was so powerful and holy and awesome? Not exactly. Pronouncing His name, they correctly believed, would give Him form, make Him into a “being,” even a familiar one, instead of this formlessness that pervades every facet of our lives and universe(s).

Jesus gave us something with which to identify: a perfect being performing miracles with powers we all possess, but are too confused to exercise. The son of God, which — as he kept repeating — we all are (daughters, too.) Some atheists believe in the existence of Jesus, but not in his heavenly connection.

This piece began as an explanation of the aggressive atheists’ push to displace God. So I’ll end it that way, too. Atheism, in my view, is a completely narcissistic form of belief, one that refuses to yield control or devotion to any higher being and therefore needs to exterminate any thought in that direction.

I’m just sayin’.