Pity the poor atheists …

By their own reckoning, no matter how brilliant they are, no matter how much knowledge they accumulate in their lives, be they ever so long, all that learning dwindles to insignificance compared to the vastness of their ignorance. They will die in ignorance, and that will be that. The more ardently they burn for the truth, the more tragic their life of unrequited love must appear, even to them. It’s not surprising that atheists are at risk of succumbing to relativism, or even outright nihilism.
But for us who believe in the One Who said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” not only do we love the Truth, but the Truth loves us back. Our Lord has promised, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” If we are faithful and persevere in faith, hope and charity, we can look forward to the time when we “will all be taught by God.” Father Richard Neuhaus (God rest him!) used to say that human beings are hardwired for truth. It is in our nature to long for the truth. That longing can be, and for the faithful will be, fully satisfied.
It’s interesting to me that some of the more famous atheists out there now are scientists. The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce wrote: “The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds … that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale …” In his book The Last Word, Thomas Nagel finds Peirce’s views “entirely congenial”, yet he is troubled by their “alarmingly Platonist” tone. He goes on: “They maintain that the project of pure inquiry is sustained by our “inward sympathy” with nature, on which we draw in forming hypotheses that can be tested against the facts. Something similar must by true of reason itself, which according to Peirce has nothing to do with “how we think”. If we can reason, it is because our thoughts can obey the order of the logical relations among propositions – so here again we depend on a Platonic harmony.” (p. 128-9).
Why is this view “alarming”? Nagel explains: “… it is hard to know what world picture to associate with it, and difficult to avoid the suspicion that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious … even without God, the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable. The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.” (130).
Nagel has the honesty to admit: “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers … I don’t want there to be a God: I don’t want the universe to be like that.” (130). Atheism as wish fulfillment. That’s a nice twist! Here’s another one, by a famous poet, a Nobel laureate:
“Religion, opium for the people. To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in the afterlife. And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”
(Bonus question: guess this author! Answer next time.)