When I look at many "atheists" I don't see atheist as much as I see anti-theist. I see people who have some pet vice they refuse to part with and then they fabricate rationalizations as to why God shouldn’t be allowed to exist, i.e. evolution or suffering. To me the first is immaterial and the second is hypocritical.
It was the Bertrand Russells and Havelock Ellises of the world that convinced me of this theory. They loved to fornicate and lead riotous lives but they also seemed determined to make war against God as a means of excusing their behavior or at least skirt accountability. Such things always struck me as…
…cowardly.
I recall the passage where God speaks to Job from the whirlwind saying, “Would you annul my judgments so that you may be justified?â€
If the possibility of God is permitted for argument’s sake then that verse seems to trump all other arguments. If you want to lead a riotous life just admit it and carry on. If there is a God and you are to be held in account then claiming you authored a dozen books as to why God couldn’t possibly exist isn’t going to change your fate one iota. You will not be able to say, “I just didn’t think there was enough evidence to prove you existed†because the reply will be, “No, you just wanted to sodomize your colleague’s 13-year old daughter because you thought she was hot.â€
In short, they have enough willpower to sodomize 13-year old girls but not enough willpower to admit they don’t care how much it debases that girl from her created purpose. Selfish willpower cannot hide behind the lack of willpower inherent in such cowardice.
Now, I have always thought Nietzsche was on to something when he wrote Will to Power but I think being the first of his sort his work was pre-pubescent and under-developed. There is no need to declare God as being dead. On the contrary the ideal of God—with God being the ideal—comports very well with Nietzschean thought.
In philosophical circles there is what is known as Buridan’s ass. It is a fictitious mule that happens to find itself equidistant between two equally appealing piles of hay and because there is no factor to make it move toward one pile or the other it remains where it is, nothing happens and the mule starves unless some act of will imposes itself on the mule. This parable is used to describe the state of being and non-being. If the weight between being and non-being were equal that which was before the universe would move in neither direction and hence, never come into being. The only thing that could bring the universe into being would be an act of will.
God is, if nothing else a being of Will. He is, after all the great self-declared, “I am†a statement that should send shuddering shivers down the spine of any true Nietzschean.
From there we know the Being of Ultimate Will willed the universe into existence and He created in His image beings of will and set them amid a garden. In that garden He tested their will. When they failed it was because they sought to be as God themselves acting solely in accord of their own will. When man’s redemption is provided for he is instructed to remedy this failing by praying, “thy will be done†and so too was the final acquiescence, “If it be possible let this cup pass from me, but not my will but rather yours.†And an act of will it was to accept the torturer’s cross when a legion of angels were but an utterance away.
But it is deeper than this.
Unless I miss my mark the Nazarene was the one in whom all powers of creation were invested. The opening verses of John’s gospel say that nothing was made that was not made by Him. The helpless child that passed from the womb of an adolescent Jewess was the same being that cast a hundred-billion galaxies from His fingertips.
And yet He hung in bloody ribbon upon a stake, dead from pericardial tamponade.
If the power upon which all creation came to be was lying dead, where would life triumph?
In the will.
A will so powerful it can be more than simply eternal from beyond all time, it can resurrect itself within temporal boundaries from non-existent lifelessness.
Well-played, sir. Well-played.
The only fault-line I can find between Nietzsche and the Bible is that one might be jealous of God but jealousy is a petty emotion for those invested in themselves.
I consider myself a Nietzschean because I do want I do without apologies. I do not flee towards awkward theories of pan-spermia or hopeful monsters to allow myself to pretend God could never exist and I don’t wring my hands over theodicy because it is absurd to think my sense of moral outrage could condemn He who bestowed upon me my sense of moral outrage. I do what I do because that is my will. It seems foolish to apologize for it because if I was prone to regret it I wouldn’t do it in the first place.
But, just as I exert my will I look at the story of the Bible and find myself fascinated by it and its exertions of will even though by its own measures I could in no way consider myself one of its adherents.
DISCLAIMER: No 13-year old girls were sodomized in the authoring of this post.
