THE EMPTINESS OF A GODLESS EXISTENCE

An atheist argued:

·       “Why is there so much straying from the true path that Daniel Mann has so frequently alluded to?”

There are many possible reasons for this. So I am reluctant to judge, especially since I don’t know you and can’t look into your hearts. However, I strayed at the age of eight. At home, I hadn’t received any instructions about God. However, we would recite prayers at school. Therefore, I would crawl into my bed at night and recite what I had learned – the 23^rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, and I received some amazing answers to my prayers.

However, by my eighth year, I understood that I was Jewish and that Jews do not do that sort of thing, and so I quit praying entirety. I put my ethnicity above my experiences with God and rejected Him, to my great loss.

Here is what I have more problem understanding – How can anyone be content with atheism – a barren wasteland containing no value, hope, meaning, or purpose for life, apart from what we arbitrarily assign to it.

Yes, I can understand the great liberation you can feel when you suddenly believe that you are now the creator of your own life, the captain of your own ship. You are now free from judgment, because there exists no objective standards by which you can be judged, and can live your life any way you darn well please.

However, I had lived as a nihilist for a few years and it just about killed me. Therefore, it is hard for me to understand how people will remain in its barren wasteland, without further seeking.

Atheist and existentialist, Bertrand Russell wrote, Why I am not a Christian. Without a God, Russell recognized that the existence of values and morals resulted purely from an act of the human will.

At first, becoming the Creator can prove very exhilarating! As a college freshman, I became convinced that I was absolutely free, not bound by any laws, rules, or the paralyzing and tyrannical opinions of others. I would be bound only by what I created.  I told myself that I had the courage to face the emptiness, from which cowards fled, and to fill it with whatever I desired. It felt good to know that I, Atlas, bore this world of my creation upon my own stout shoulders.

However, my aching shoulders began to weary under the weight. I had failed to realize that with my exalted position as Creator, came certain burdens. I found that I had to continually convince myself, against all the contrary evidence, that I was indeed Atlas. In trying to do so, I later realized that I had alienated myself not only from reality and others, but also from myself. It was like fighting my way upstream against forbidding and unrelenting white water.

Godhood grinds to powder any who try to assume its mantle. Years later, Russell confessed,

·       "I wrote with passion and force, because I really thought I had a gospel. Now I am cynical about the gospel because it won't stand the test of life."