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June 1, 2005
Hello everyone,
In The Wise Man and the King: A Postmodern Parable, we spent some time examining what was effectively a study of atheism and our own tendency at times to unquestioningly accept the value-system of the surrounding culture. In response to that newsletter, Diana posted Wise Guys in which she asks us to consider her thoughts “more a testimonial statement than a generalization” and perceptively remarks: “Every atheist I know has reasoned that God does not exist.” I believe she has capitalized on something so fundamental to atheism that many overlook it: no one declares himself an atheist without first making a conscious decision to embrace atheism. In fact, we said as much in The Delicate Art of Losing Arguments:
[N]o one becomes a dedicated atheist without first considering the “God question.” We may say he has not considered it deeply enough or that he has closed his mind to its possibilities and we may very well be right in saying so. But we can rest assured that on some level he has considered this question. . . . . . An atheist has often given the subject of God more thought than many Christians, for to call himself by that name, he has indicated his commitment to that particular belief about the world. He has, as my professor suggests, committed himself. He has necessarily considered many questions about God, at least if his stance has any credibility at all. . . .
Along these lines, in the short and excellent article Re-Learning To Say “Please” And “Thank-You”, Catholic Canadian high school teacher Doug McManaman tells of a formal discussion he had with an American atheist: “[A]s the debate progressed I began to see what I have known for a while, namely that atheism is fundamentally a decision, that is, an act of the will. My friend has chosen not to believe in God, and he deliberately chooses to skirt and disregard the evidence.” McManaman goes on to suggest that he has never met a happy atheist, noting something revealing about both happiness and atheism alike:
The word “gratitude” comes from the Latin “gratia”, which means: agreeableness, or pleasantness. A miserable person lacks gratia, that is, he is unpleasant and disagreeable. But gratia also refers to the state of being thankful. So, the agreeable person is also thankful (gratia). He gives thanks, for he is grateful. The two meanings of gratia are intimately linked; for the one (thankfulness) leads to the other (agreeableness)—the state of being pleasant or agreeable.
Gratitude is first and foremost a recognition, or as the etymology of the word “recognition” suggests, a “re-knowing” or a “knowing-again”. It involves taking a second look and recognizing something that was not grasped at first glance. It is a recognition that what was given was given gratuitously (without having earned it).
* * * *Now one of the things that people have a very difficult time recognizing or rediscovering is that the very act of existence (esse) is given gratuitously. It cannot be any other way. Before a person can earn anything, it is requisite that he at least exist. And one cannot act before one exists. For the same reason one cannot bring oneself into being, for otherwise one would be prior to oneself, which is impossible. And so it follows with irrefutable logic that existence (which is received) is given gratuitously. And since being is most fundamental in things, my fundamental attitude ought to be one of recognition of the gratuitous character of my existence. My fundamental attitude ought to be gratitude to God for all that He has given me. (Re-Learning To Say “Please” And “Thank-You”)
An atheist, however, cannot offer to God gratitude for his existence, because he claims that God does not exist. Now I don’t suppose that it is impossible for a man to be both an atheist and also feel grateful to be alive, even if that gratitude is not affixed to any one person or thing, though I will go so far as to say that I do agree that most atheists tend to be more unhappy than happy partly because they lack the gratitude that (at least ideally) characterizes the believer’s life. We will examine this idea further in a moment.
“The one basic choice placed before modern man,” writes Sister Joan Gormley succinctly in her short article on Russian novelist Fedor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), “is that between the man-god of the atheists and the God-man of Christian revelation.” She goes on to make a very interesting observation: “No matter how valid is this or that element in the secularist critique of society, Dostoevsky sees the truth that those who ‘kill’ God also kill man. He also saw that man without God cannot remain free” (The Christian Response to Atheism: Dostoevsky). Man without God cannot remain free? How can surrendering to God be freeing? Isn’t surrender the complete antithesis to true freedom? Diana may again help us in her Wise Guys post: “I can also see this pride of individual wisdom stemming from obsession of ‘freedom’—not freedom from oppression but freedom from virtues. Like Jerram Barrs said at the end of the last video in the Building Up Bridges series, freedom (for some) has come to mean freedom to do what we want, to ignore suffering of others and live life for ourselves.” The question then becomes, “Is this kind of freedom freeing? Can man remain free without God?”
As our Lord says, we cannot serve two masters. In the end, the choice always comes down to self or God: “the man-god of the atheists” or “the God-man of Christian revelation.” Our Lord’s yoke is easy and His burden is light but the sinful self is an infernal and thankless taskmaster who is demanding and insatiable. The man who serves himself can never experience abundant peace and joy, no matter how contrary things might sometimes appear on the surface. Why? A world populated by only one is a mighty small world indeed and that is precisely what the world becomes when it is governed by the self. However, the world is not populated by only one, so our choice is to either embrace a lie or live in the truth. And if we live in the truth, it sets us free to find the great joy in celebrating others rather than being in constant tension and competition with them; we soon find that the joy of the Lord is not only our strength but our freedom as well, allowing us to move about in the world with a relaxed ease, content and secure.
Perhaps we should say just a few words more to get the most out of our reading. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was arguably the most famous philosopher of the twentieth century and is credited with being the father of (Modern) existentialism. That latter word, existentialism, can be slippery and somewhat difficult to define. We could easily devote an entire newsletter to what it is and what it is not, but we will simply say that as we use the term here, we are not talking about the Christian existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard, but rather that peculiarly Modern and atheistic philosophy that posits the self as the single constant of the universe. We might also do well to mention Sartre’s lifelong companion and fellow atheist Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), best known for her book The Second Sex. As you may well have guessed from their names (if you did not already know), both philosophers/lovers hail from France: Paris to be precise.
We should also briefly note two philosophical givens referenced in our article today: that of (1) subject and object and (2) necessary versus sufficient conditions. We looked at the concept of (1) subject and object in some depth in The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth. Simply put, you and I are subjects and the things we experience with our five senses are objects (which, in this specialized sense of the word, can include other persons as well); subject and object are the root words of subjective and objective. We summarized those terms by noting:
[T]hose properties which are found in the object are said to be “objective,” for they originate in the object itself. These are Locke’s “primary qualities,” which include “solidarity, extensions, shape, motion, and rest.” By rate of contrast, properties which require a subject to perceive them are said to be “subjective,” because they do not originate solely in the object itself, but are only fully made manifest in the end perception of the subject [through the senses]. These correspond to Locke’s “secondary qualities,” which include “color, sound, taste, smell, and texture.”
The other concept, (2) necessary versus sufficient conditions, refers to the factors required for something to exist or to be what it is. Necessary conditions are just that—necessary—for something to be what it is; they are indispensable. However, in and of themselves, they may not be sufficient to adequately explain that thing: that is, by themselves, they may not constitute all that is necessary to make something what it is. For example, if I say that a woman is a human being, that fact that she is a human being is a necessary condition of her being a woman. (Something that is not a human being could never be a woman.) However, taken alone, it is not a sufficient condition of her being a woman, for a man is also a human being and he is obviously not a woman. If we said a woman is an (a) adult (b) human being (c) with ovaries we might come closer to satisfying the requirement for conditions “singularly necessary and jointly sufficient” for constituting “woman.” Do you see the difference? It will prove a useful distinction in getting the most out of today’s article.
Now then, courtesy of First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, here is “Learning from Sartre” by John T. Mullen, in which he looks into the question of freedom and the difference between the man-god of Jean-Paul Sartre and the God-man Jesus Christ and our own tendency to conflate the two at times and become “closet atheists.” At the risk of undoing everything we just finished learning, while you may not find this article singularly necessary, I do hope you find it jointly sufficient—or at least sufficiently enjoyable. 
God bless,
Eric
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