THE FOLLY OF A GODLESS FOUNDATION
There are movements of thought that present themselves as enlightened, liberated from what they regard as the restraints of faith. Among them stands atheism — not merely doubt, not the cry of a wounded heart wrestling with suffering, but the settled denial that God is. It claims intellectual maturity; it speaks the language of reason; it prides itself on emancipation from the unseen. Yet beneath its confidence lies a profound insufficiency.
For the denial of God does not remove Him; it only removes the ground upon which meaning stands.
If there is no God, there is no ultimate origin. The universe becomes an accident without intention. Mind arises from matter without explanation of why reason should be trustworthy. Morality becomes preference elevated to consensus. Justice is reduced to social agreement. Love is chemical reaction. Hope is psychological necessity. The human spirit, which longs for permanence, is told it is a flicker in a purposeless dark.
Such a worldview may be asserted, but it cannot satisfy the depth of human consciousness.
There is within man an ineradicable sense of transcendence. Across cultures and centuries, humanity reaches beyond itself. This is not mere conditioning; it is correspondence. Hunger implies food. Thirst implies water. The longing for ultimate meaning implies an ultimate Source. To dismiss this as illusion is to declare the most persistent instinct of humanity to be deception.
Moreover, reason itself stands upon ground atheism cannot secure. If thought is the byproduct of blind forces, why should it be trusted as a reliable guide to truth? If the mind is merely an evolutionary convenience, oriented toward survival rather than truth, then its conclusions about God are equally suspect. Atheism borrows the tools of rationality while undermining the foundation that makes rationality coherent.
The Christian confession does not begin with abstraction but with revelation. God has not remained hidden behind metaphysical speculation; He has made Himself known in history, supremely in Jesus Christ. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ are not mythic symbols; they are the decisive self-disclosure of God within time. The question is not whether man can climb to God by argument, but whether God has spoken. Christianity rests upon the latter.
Atheism often frames belief as a refuge for the weak. Yet history testifies otherwise. Men and women who have suffered deeply, who have faced persecution and loss, have clung to faith not as escapism but as encounter with a living Presence. They testify not to blind credulity but to sustained communion. One may dismiss their witness, but one cannot erase it.
It must also be said that atheism offers no ultimate resolution to evil. If there is no transcendent moral standard, then injustice is only violation of preference. The cry against oppression loses its absolute force. Yet the human heart protests evil as though it violates something objective and sacred. That protest aligns more naturally with the existence of a righteous Creator than with a purposeless cosmos.
None of this is written to condemn the struggler. Honest doubt is not atheism. Questions are not rebellion. But the categorical denial of God closes the door to the very Light that could answer those questions. It asserts finality where humility would inquire.
The Christian faith affirms that the universe is not self-explanatory. It declares that behind existence stands eternal Being. It proclaims that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It insists that reality is not chaos but creation, not accident but intention, not despair but redemption.
To remove God is not to simplify the world; it is to unravel it.
The issue, then, is not merely intellectual but relational. God is not an equation to be solved; He is a Person to be known. The refusal of God is ultimately the refusal of relationship. Yet the invitation remains open. The One whom atheism denies does not cease to seek. He addresses the conscience, stirs the longing, confronts the pride, and calls the heart.
For the denial of light does not extinguish the sun. It only leaves the eyes closed.
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Living God, who are before all things and in whom all things hold together, reveal Yourself to seeking hearts. Dissolve pride, steady honest doubt, and grant light where there has been denial. May those who question encounter not argument alone, but Your living presence in Jesus Christ. And anchor our own faith more deeply in the certainty that You are. Amen.
BDD
