The Necessity of Atheism

The phenomena which we observe do not act in a particular manner because
there is a law; but we state the "law" because they act in that
particular manner. It cannot be said that the laws of nature are the
result of a lawmaker; it cannot be affirmed that a supreme intelligence
told things in nature to act just that way and no other. If the theist
claims that a supreme intelligence issued laws for his own pleasure and
without any reason, then he must admit that there is something which is
not subject to law and the train of natural law is interrupted. If it is
claimed that a supreme intelligence had a reason for the laws which he
gave, the reason being to create the best possible universe, then it
follows that God himself was subject to law and there is no advantage in
introducing God as an intermediary. This contention would make it appear
that there is a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God
does not serve the purpose of the theist since he is not the ultimate
lawgiver.

The anthropomorphic conception of God, our Martian finds, is now denied
by most cultured theists; nevertheless, they still maintain a belief in
a deity endowed with consciousness. Professor H. N. Wieman states that,
"God is superhuman, but not supernatural. He is a present, potent,
operative, observable reality.... He is more worthy of love than any
other beloved ... He is one to whom men can pray and do pray, and who
answers prayer." This can be understood to be not greatly removed from
the fundamentalists' conception of God, but when he continues to say,
"God is that interaction between individuals, groups, and ages which
generates and promotes the greatest possible mutuality of good," and "it
responds to prayer and is precisely what answers prayer, when prayer is
answered," the personal "He" has suddenly changed to the unpersonal
"It." Emotions and intelligence are connected with nerve structures in
all sentient beings that we have experience and knowledge of. How can we
attribute these qualities to a being who is described to us as devoid of
any nerve structure?

In former ages the theist saw God in the color and construction of a
flower, in the starry heavens, and in a sunset or sunrise. The
biologists have driven the theists from this misconception, the
physicists have explained the phenomena of sunset and sunrise, and with
the advance of astronomy the heavens no longer proclaim the glory of
God, and the theistic arguments have shifted from worlds to atoms. At
the present moment the vision of God has narrowed down to a perception
of the divine intelligence noted in the design of the atom. Astronomy,
physics, geology, chemistry, medicine, psychology, ethics, aesthetics,
and the social sciences have left no room for a theistic explanation of
the universe. The mystics who proclaim God in their intuitive trances
are being crowded out into the light of reason by the researches of
psychologists. There are still many gaps in our knowledge, and if the
theist persists in finding the manifestation of a supreme being in these
vague zones of our present ignorance, he is at the mercy of the science
of the future. Science is concerned with mind as much as it is with the
material aspects of atoms and stars, hence the sciences of psychology,
ethics, and aesthetics. The entire universe is the province of science
and it is rapidly providing a scientific interpretation of all the
contents of the universe. It may well be a few more centuries before the
scientific explanation is partially complete, but it must be kept in
mind that science as we conceive the term is less than 2500 years old,
and out of this infantile period, at least 1000 years must be deducted
for the intellectual stagnation of the dark ages.

In tracing the retreat of the clergy from the arguments from the First
Cause, the arguments from design, causation, and directivity, the
Martian recalls the words of Vivian Phelips, "How is it that God allowed
earnest and learned divines to commit themselves to arguments in proof
of His existence, the subsequent overthrow of which has been a potent
cause for unbelief?"

"The finite mind cannot expect to understand the Infinite," retorts a
theist to our Martian. "What manner of reasoning is this," asks our
Martian, "that denies my finite mind the right to question the 'proofs'
of the existence of an Infinite, when these same 'proofs' are derived by
finite minds? The theist cannot infer God from the cosmic process until
he can discover some feature of it which is unintelligible without him."

(2) The belief in a deity, but the rejection of revelations, theology,
priestcraft, and church.

To the Martian the opinion held by these individuals presented two
difficulties. First, if the adherents of this hypothesis considered
their deity as a providence which took an active part in the life of
this world, then the objections heretofore stated against belief in a
personal god are still valid. Secondly, if they considered this being as
only a creator, who then leaves this world to its own resources, they
are only assuming a philosophical existence behind phenomena. Such a
being, they believe, they deduce intellectually. But actually who
created this creator? They assume a god who remains always hidden behind
phenomena, but such a god has no connection with the God that the
religious man worships and to whom he prays for guidance and for
blessings, for actual interference in the life of this world. Such
theories impress our visitor as but a feeble attempt at new concepts of
the same hypothetical deity, and it seemed to him that we already had
sufficient ideas of God to trouble our earthly minds.

(3) The god of the Physicists.

It was brought to the Martian's attention that two scientists, Sir
Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer, and Sir James Jeans, a
mathematical physicist, had still another concept of God.

According to Eddington, "Phenomena all boil down to a scheme of symbols,
of mathematical equations." He admits that this mathematics of nature
does not explain anything. They do not define reality, they only define