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The Delusion and Arrogance of Atheism

Even In the Face of Science Itself Increasingly Revealing That Our Existence is More & More Inexplicable, Thus Leading to a Divine Creator as Being A Far More Plausible Explanation Than Not, Atheist Apologists Continue In Their Delusion and Arrogance.

Skipping whether a person is well-intended when doing so, why, when scientific research itself reveals an increasing inability to explain and comprehend life’s greater unknowns, would a person/scientist continue to outright dismiss any other explanation, such as divinity, which by its very nature is, admittedly, inexplicable and unknowable? I’ve recently watched some of the top atheist defenders and they come across as no less than stubbornly arrogant. Their arguments loop around to nowhere, prove nothing conclusive and then loop around again without reaching any credible conclusion beyond the childish “If I can’t see it or measure it, it doesn’t exist” approach. Its kinda disheartening and I feel more than bad for them. What is more bothersome to me is my inability to comprehend what argument exactly they are trying to win, but its surely not what they are stating, their God of rational thinking and science falls shorter than ever in explaining the nature of our existence.

I can fully accept you might have the opinion that a certain dogmatic or ethical rule in the name of a certain religion seems silly or even wrong, but let’s be clear, any of those dogmatic criticisms have nothing to do with whether or not divinity actually exists. Neither does the question of suffering. Whether suffering exists or not is an entirely separate question from whether divinity is the reason we as Creation exists at all. And the very fact that there are in the most absolute terms, absolutely no one else from any other planet in any galaxy anywhere to visit with over a Starbuck’s latte and chat with on the subject is your very first clue as to how divinely rooted we all are far beyond the explanations of science. What bothers me is that there is neither a dilemna nor question, yet the atheists talk as if there is. We are required to then have respectful discourse with them, but that is an approach I entirely disagree with because it is pointless, it feeds into their ongoing delusion and deception, malice or not intended. That doesn’t help anyone.

This state of affairs leads me to difficult yet fair questions: Why would a person even bother at all to take the position against divinity? What exactly is gained by taking such a position? The answer is nothing. There is simply nothing good to come from choosing to live a life rooted in rational thinking and science because of the very obvious fact that neither of those even comes close to explaining the unique unknowables of our existence. Personal pride or a type of arrogance? Why would a person even hold in their heart and mind the need to declare that they don’t believe in divinity of some sort? What would be so consequentially bad or wrong if they did? When offering explanations of how and why we are here, which is clearly and evidently for example, scientifically impossible and inexplicable miracle, then why ignore the only other answer possible?

It is a very odd thing for a person to hang their hat on, an unknown negative, that there “isn’t” any form of divinity or spirituality at the root of our existence. What do you care if “divinity” is the explanation for how and why we exist or not? Your own science has still not provided an explanation, not even close. The further down the line our scientific discoveries progress, the more complex and inexplicable and therefore, miraculous they become. Such as statement is no less than the evident fact stated by the atheist themself. So what is the compelling reason to be forcefully against divinity as the reality of our existence? I can’t come up with an answer that is beneficial to any single human being. Again, I am speaking of the presence of divinity, of spirituality, not a particular religion’s dogmatic rules which surely do raise questions as to how much they are needed because in fact, in God’s eyes, they are surely not needed. God, for example, in the Judeo-Christian ethic, absolutely does not care if your male child is circumcised or whether the priests wear flowing green robes at Sunday mass in a stained glass church with a choir and organ. These are nice culturally-rooted experiences, but they are just man-made constructs. Jesus was a street preacher saving and healing the poor. The Christian claim is that his blood paid for his Resurrection and we can only join him by also dying to ourselves and joining him in the Resurrection. That means carrying our crosses and loving one another, putting God first, allowing, wishing, urging surrender of our own flawed ego and will to the living spirit of divinity to be expressed through us, which will then properly align all of our worldly priorities, values and needs. Period.

Atheists need not offer their argument about the flashy religion stuff and dogmatic rules. In this respect, the atheists are right, the existence of man-made dogma does nothing to tell us whether or not divinity exists. Yet, I am beyond humbled at the reality of God’s divine grace and mercy. I am best to be at the whim of these as a vessel of God’s Will. That’s where we find the rubber hits the road, not whether I properly “sit,stand, kneel” every Sunday at a church service.

The revelations of scientific research itself clearly tell us that the more we know, the more we don’t know. Science has, by your own admission dear atheist, utterly failed to explain itself. And on that note, let me point out I will repeatedly follow the track of thoughts on the existence of the Universe found in Bill Bryson’s book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is as close to being a terrific “can’t put it down” book as I could imagine.

So why the joykill thing; why take away from yourself and everyone the joy and amazement and fascination of obviously knowing our existence is no less than wonderfully miraculous as it is inexplicable and incomprehensible? What is gained by rejecting the known, perfect answer to Dawkin’s asinine question, “What kind of a God, if there is one, would come up with an answer that includes sacrificing his own son as a way to redeem us all from our imperfections?”

The answer to that question is so obvious I can’t believe Dawkins would actually ask it without then stopping to realize his stupidity. The answer to that question clearly points to the existential meaning of life itself, the only possible purpose and explanation for why we human kind would be here at all on this one single planet - which revolves around the compassionate, nurturing, sacrificial creation of ourselves through our union with one another as a man and woman. The root of any meaningful life is sacrificial love and suffering you nitwit, so why do you even ask that question, let alone ask it whilst brimming with arrogance? There is no other explanation nor root purpose which is responsible by design for our existence and everything we see in nature fully supports that central theme of our existence on planet earth since the known history of man. Yes, dear friend, the core of life is men and women making and nurturing babies who become men and women together making and nurturing babies ad infinitum including the natural balance and blend of joy & suffering in all their forms. All else in this world, as valuable and meaningful and fascinating as we may deem it to be, still falls a distant second in importance and value, or at least it should, to that central prime directive.

What happens next is that the deeply flawed world we live in, including our own flaws and weaknesses, come together to distract us from the singular, unique priority of this central prime directive. For example, ask a man and woman with a boy and girl child, happily married to one another what their priorities of devotion and attention are and they will naturally respond with something like,

“Our family is root of our lives, taking care of each other, caring for each other’s well being, caring for and preparing our children for the future to do the same in the world.”

This is obviously the only proper, healthy ideal. It is the emotionally proper and obvious answer to the question and it would be a reverberating, lasting regret in some way every single time in which that ideal was not achieved. No person celebrates or encourages for this ideal core family unit to not exist. Any failure is accompanied by regret, pain and loss across all dimensions of space, time and even generations. If the father or mother in this family unexpectedly died younger, it would be make life more difficult. If one of them behaved badly and ruined the good state of the marriage and family unit, or even left, or made the other one feel they must leave, breaking up the family, that result would lead to many additional regrets and hurt and loss. What happens next is that those emotionally wounded people begin to lose their minds as to that original central prime directive. They all fall into a variety of complex worldly matters which further confuses, distracts and misguides them. The husband, instead of following the only proper order, sacrificing himself and being devoted to the well-being of his wife and children, with his wife appreciating and reciprocating toward him in return as she recognizes it. Instead he is not attentive to them as he should be. He is merely self-absorbed, selfish, not attentive, regardless of why. This can manifest in a variety of seemingly innocuous ways. Or worse, he may be abusive, he cheats with other women, he drinks too much, maybe all three.

Then the boy in the family, thinking that this is normal behavior in a family, mostly likely grows up and into that same pattern with his future woman. The young girl who spent her childhood emotionally tiptoeing around her volatile father figure might grow up learning to hide her feelings in fear and lie to protect herself from the threat of men, while unconsciously attracting them in relationships as a means to filling what feels comfortable to her unconsciously. In essence, the young boy and girl grow up modeling what their own parents did in their own flawed nature. In addition, they may do drugs, engage in felonious crime and/or violence, creating even more trauma and devastation in their wake. The woman may then become a radical feminist trying to upend the rules of society against her perception of evil men. They young boy treats women abusively and avoids the feminist ones especially. Neither of them is capable of the paradigm of the ideal, natural father/mother/children nurturing and caring for each other and their children. Life’s imperfect nature hurt their psyche, and well, here we are, round and round we go. We have a hopeless human mess.

Let me be crystal clear about the two general family descriptions above; both exist. Half of the world’s families are happily and healthy together, both father and mother, husband and wife, properly devoted to one another as their core priority in life, while the other half of family/marriage structures are not doing as well with approximately half of those ending as broken, dysfunctional families manifest as abandonment, divorce and separation. Rare is the happy, amicable divorce with kids where the adults and the kids are not emotionally traumatized by the experience.

In these cases, the man is not a proper, admirable man. He is a failure. Or maybe it is the woman and often, both. Let me further be clear; a bad outcome is never ok even while it is never intended. It is never desired. It is never wished for. Nobody, not one single person on planet earth ever wants that outcome of avoidable miseries or wishes it on others. It is regarded by society as indisputably, unfortunately bad when a family/marriage unit is unstable or ruined.

I must say it again, many family/marriage units, around 50% of them, are happy, healthy and emotionally ideal. They are the penultimate, natural role model for us to look up to, to admire, and to aspire to. No person did not hope to have been part of an ideal stable family/marriage structure. The only population in society for whom this model is truly problematic is the population of gays, a relatively small percentage. That exception to the natural male/female/family order is well worth exploring with compassion, but not our focus in this writing which is ultimately about aspects of atheism in comparison to aspects of divinity / spirituality which is imbued in and inseparable from our very human nature, regardless of whether you might deny it exists or not.

I might say, as a fish swimming in the ocean, you are in no position whether to question what or where is the ocean, are you?

If you say to me that what I say to you is impossible, isn’t that exactly the point? You can’t say to me, “there is no God, science only proves science and my brain cells produce my reality, while at the same time acknowledging something is impossible. If lots of things are inexplicable and impossible, then science falls short, all certainly does not come from your brain cells and indeed, science falls far short. Where do quarks come from? Don’t know. Neutrinos? Don’t know. How can the expectations of the testers affect the results in the particle accelerator? That’s impossible. Yes, it is. Still we don’t know. Never will know. Yet an atheist declares there is no divinity.

Wrong. We do know. The eternal unanswerable is perfect, it is divinity itself staring you in the face and I guarantee the next largest interstellar telescope is only going to reveal more of what is even more impossible and inexplicable. You will never know God as anything except unknowable, except known inseparably in and through the living world and spirit of one another. That is the design and the miracle of it. There is no more and there is no less. The singularity Bryson describes on page 28 is unexplainable and impossible to comprehend; it is divinity. In fact, not only is divinity simply just there, it is only manifestly known to exist by us here on planet Earth and nowhere else. So the entire scientific body of explanations which atheists follow are built upon a divine impossibility in the first place. That’s not a particularly strong argument, though again, many atheist arguments are wonderfully intelligent, admirable and compelling at first glance.

Let’s consider space for a moment. As Bryson beautifully describes, space is enormously enormous.

“Nobody knows how many stars there are even in just the Milky Way - (estimates are one to four hundred billion) And the Milky Way is just one of a one hundred and forty billion or so other galaxies.”

I extrapolate from a Carl Sagan quote on the odds of us even being here at all, “if we were randomly inserted into the universe, the chances you would be on or near a planet are less than one in a billion trillion trillion.”

Yet, even as he writes about the very impossibility of it all, Bryson somehow arrogantly offers this, “For a long time the Big Bang Theory had one big hole that troubled a lot of people - name that it couldn’t explain how we got here.”

What? It has “one” gaping hole? You just devoted pages to telling us about a host of unexplainable things. There are a billion trillion inexplicable gaping holes! It is infinitely unsustainable and inexplicable that we are here. He says so himself and so do all the other atheists in the course of offering up their ideas on our existence, which they somehow then claim all of which comes from our thoughts from inside the neuro-chemical juice in our brain cells, but without knowing how or from where, but yes yes, oh yes, it is ridiculous to consider that there is divinity; its an absurd religious notion they say! Wow.

Bryson then next explains that early on, the heavy gases necessary for “life” didn’t exist and were formed later by the ensuing supernovaes. Well, isn’t that delightful! Ahh, now we understand how we got here, the supernovaes made the needed soup ingredients! No, no, no we don’t know a damn thing according to science about how we got here. He brilliantly and correctly keeps telling us about things which are both impossible and ungraspable followed by the theory he just finished telling us has infinite inexplicable holes in it. I agree Mr. Bryson. They are, so top talking brilliantly and wonderfully and wittily as you admirably do out of both sides of your mouth. Better we shall postulate that we are a mathematically impossible cosmic accident and on top of that, profoundly alone, yet dismiss that there are “miracles”? Oh, heaven forbid that, eh? Does Bryson not understand that his wonderful science book is itself a treatise of entertaining explanation on endless trillions of miracles inexplicable by science?

And how are miracles explained? They’re not. They’re divine. They’re miracles for Heaven’s sake! Is this arrogance? I really don’t know.

The average distance between stars is 30 million million kilometres with the nearest stars, the Alpha Centauri cluster of five, only 4.3 light years away. We need 88 THOUSAND YEARS traveling at 52,000 MPH, or something like that, to get from here to there, the closest set of stars with the vast majority of the rest of the countless billions of stars millions of times further away on average. Yet we’re discussing this and sipping espressos from our perch on earth only because of the physical chemical soup in the cells of our neurons which no other species on this singularly lonely earth comes close to possessing? Ok. Ok, enough of this angle.

Tolerating the Denials of Atheism

It is incredibly difficult as a person of faith to tolerate the delusions, denials and, more than anything else, the misplaced arrogance of someone who proclaims their version of “I am an atheist” or “I don’t believe in a Creator”, as if they actually do know anything at all about such matters, or as if what they profess to believe has anything to do with what reality is. In terms of what an atheist guru actually knows, it can easily be said they know plenty intellectually while they don’t know anything at all to any degree of certainty; their entire premise is rooted by its very nature, eg., as impressive as a brain’s workings are, in the flawed roots of their own limited intellect and emotion and no more, which is supposedly found only within the various water and chemical based cells of their brain and body, from which all of our perceptions of life, existence and humanity somehow came from and emanates outward (may I gently remind you of the miraculous impossibility yet evident reality of it) here and only here, on planet Earth.

I can’t express more enthusiastically how much I appreciate and enjoy the perceptive mind found in the writings of Bill Bryston, in particular his book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. Never did a man’s prose so wonderfully elucidate the nature of the universe, the vast, complex base of knowledge we possess, while simultaneously by his very writings, tell us that it is all inexplicable and incomprehensible. For a zillion zany reasons, his book is any sane person’s must read book.

However to imagine, to consider, let alone to arrogantly insist, that there is not found in human kind, here and only here in our human existence on Earth, an integral guiding, all-encompassing divinity, the term Creator, along with and integral to our physical science-based existence is a far more absurd idea than that there is a Creator. Its an easy argument and of course, that very argument is the singular purpose of this writing.

One can and should respect the character of a man, while at the same time we should be free to clearly communicate to him that we don’t respect, but may tolerate by virtue of having no choice, his foolishness and mistakes. We human beings are a messy, inconsistent lot, manifest each day in highly complex, disturbing and frustrating ways. Put more bluntly, even really admirable, intelligent, sincere people say and do the stupidest shit sometimes. A perfect and dangerous example of this are some of the thought-streams that pour forth from atheist guru Richard Dawkins. I can’t and dont’ watch his interviews often and when i do it is always within the very first minute that he is spewing forth some purely theoretical intelligence of which he absolutely and completely does not know to be the case. I recently watched him ask an audience something like “What kind of a God could not come up with a better idea on how to love and save man kind than to sacrifice his own supposed son?” I have no choice but to admire the man for his brilliance in asking the question, immediately followed by scratching my head as to how he somehow asks a great question yet doesn’t also find the perfection which exists in the answer to the question. I must also of course ignore that he is himself a human being who is actually judging God. Now that’s funny and ironic. I can’t even fathom what it is that is going on inside the poor man’s head that makes him incapable to answer the question correctly himself.

All one has to do is ponder the palpable unavoidable reality of struggle, suffering and sacrifice which defines in large part the nature of our existence. Yet, he still asks this question? To be fair, and as to make sure you the reader don’t think I too am suffering from any form of arrogance, let me offer that the body of atheist argument is impressive as intellectual and emotional fodder. It does serve well to keep people’s wondering minds busy and it offers some impressive arguments which should make any decently aware man think harder about his existence. Having said that, the body of atheistic argument at the end of the road simply and obviously falls short. And that’s the part that the typical atheist is incapable of discussing with you because it gets down to the brass tacks of the arguments on both sides.

Let me make it further clear as to the argument in favor of God,; there is no argument. Divinity simply does exist; it offers and needs no argument and it is not at all interested in whether any of us might happen to believe it; that just puts us full circle right back around to the individual manifestations of our own degree of denial, delusion and arrogance.

Whether any one of us is capable or stubborn in not seeing and accepting divinity, does not make it not so. In fact, if you happen to be inclined to declare from your pulpit, “I am an atheist” I am in a way not even advocating that you “stop” thinking that and repent as though you were judged to be a bad person. That would indicate my judgment of your wrongness, of which I am not entitled. Rather, if you just let yourself “be” as you are on this single planet in all the universe and at the same time, also just let the universe “be” as it is, you’ll then be finally doing nothing more than being and existing in this miraculous place, allowing yourself to see and be in what is, indeed, simply here and there. And what is simply there, or rather here, surely includes divinity, whether you much like it or recognize it or not.

Mind you, here’s another point; many of the body of atheistic arguments are impressive, rather like the body of works over the centuries known as philosophy. So by all means, I would never suggest to you that the body of philosophy writings starting with perhaps Socrates and Aristotle, and then running all the way up to today’s Bertrand Russell, is a body of senseless garbage because all that matters is what we find in the Bible or some such nonsense. That would be classic Christian arrogance and needs to be admirably avoided. I mean to say, there is great value in taking some time to become familiar with such bodies of intellectual work as a matter of interest, knowledge, growth, curiosity and growth as a person. Go for it. You just have to read every word with a grain of salt and knowing that even some of its depth was written by the author while drunk or high on some other drug.

Each of us is required in this dangerous world to be vigilant in protecting and guarding our minds and hearts and those of our loved ones, from the endless variety of false proclamations rooted in false ideas. Many a good man in history has been ruinously led astray by not more than stupid idiots, or perhaps by clever, calculating criminals and worst of all, by those who seem on the surface to be well-meaning relationship or business gurus who have been divorced twice and have had multiple business and career failures. None of what false prophets and charlatans have to teach you has anything to do with whether or not divinity exists, which is an entirely separate matter as to any rules, universal principles or formulas for a hopefully meaningful life which they offer. By all means, read every Dale Carnegie book, go to a few guru seminars and walk on fire, hire a coach, put yourself on a wholistic yoga / vegan lifestyle journey if you wish and start eating meat again next year if you wish; all terrific ideas from which you as a person may gain benefits and growth on your journey.. But the moment anyone starts trying to tell you why God doesn’t exist, ya gotta head for the door away from these idiots who talk like they think they actually know; run the other way and do not look back. Like Lot’s wife, you’re in danger of turning into a pillar of salt if you don’t.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people hang their hats on what this Hawkin’s fellow has to say. Sam Harris and a few others too, so then its just one big happy, arrogant secular delusion not beyond much more than the God of mindfulness and presence. The musings are wonderfully intellectually admirable on the surface, but only as long as one joins them in ignoring what they are ignoring, the growing body of inconveniently inexplicable stuff. Sam Harris can easily be regarded as far more palatable and interesting to listen to in comparison to Dawkin’s trademark rudeness and arrogance. But please, none of what they have to say changes the nature nor divinity of our existence. Please do respectfully listen to their philosophy and models to gain some insights while never forgetting that they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about in their pointless struggle to disbelieve. While, they should rather feel privileged and wise to embrace rather than deny our miraculous and tiny existential bubble, they don’t and likely won’t. Again, humans are just plain nuts. And the spiritual extremists and charlatans on the other side are just as bad, if not worse for being so misguided and emotional.

The machinations of intellectualism go round and round while the living spirit of charity and self-sacrifice is settled, needing no explanation nor proof as to their proper and right fundamental nature found in the depths of humanity. When our fallen man’s mind and emotions are led astray from the universal truth rooted in the living spirit of charity found in an infinitely vast universe which was created solely for the purpose of our human existence, then do we witness in despair the gross abominations, selfishness and stupidity of which we are seen to be capable of throughout history. Surrender and devotion to your “higher self”, or more specifically in the case of a Christian’s core belief, Christ’s shed blood addresses the plight of fallen man, with or without his acknowledgement. Though on the point of our own faith adequately sanctifying one who is innocently faithless, some may also disagree.

The very divine existence and nature of man is one of suffering, struggle, redemption, charity, humility, self-sacrifice accordingly in alignment with the living spirit of our universe’s divinity. The more we are less and become less, the more rich we become. There it is in all its simplicity and absolute power. The first line of the Buddhist writings? Life is suffering. That unquestionably being the case, charity and sacrifice easily fall next in line. I’ll stop the list of virtuous sounding words right there so as to let you add your own few additional virtues as you perceive them to be in this world. These root virtues are the direct, existential manifestations of divinity, the Creator’s unknowable mystery of grace and will, expressed through the lives of each of us as human beings.

Along the way, many of us go astray and lose touch with our true divine nature. We get caught up instead, for a variety of reasons, in our physical, worldly nature and in that place, we are capable of despicable evil, aren’t we? When considering the words describing the root meaning of our presence here, you might think to add the word “love” to the list, but this is not wise. It is far too general a word which expresses far too much. Its layers of meaning need to be sliced and chunked down ever so nimbly. You might also be thinking “happiness” but I will immediately ask you please avoid that word as well, for I can think of no more pathetically overused, misused and abused word than “happy” to describe what humans supposedly need and want. “Happy” in the sense most of us consider its daily meaning is quite temporary, quite fleeting and actually occupies a quite low overall percentage of our daily lives. When the principle is pointed out to them, most people can quickly recognize they naturally desire not a happy life as much as a meaningful life, even if such meaning includes struggle and suffering, which are inevitable and unavoidable, and which are integrally linked to our experience of joy and love. There is simply no other place to unite this mysterious experience to than the redemptive plan, wisdom, mercy and Grace of our divine Creator.

Mario Cavolo

Shenyang, China Spring 2019

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