HOW I define “God” may not be like how the known “atheists” do it. Kindly bear with this limitation as you read on.
I am a Catholic layman, and I should admit that my fellow believers of the faith — especially the members of the clergy and those who studied theology — must have a better understanding of how human beings relate with a super being.
My God is the God of Abraham, the same God that I believe is the God of Islam and of Judaism. Along with them, I submit to monotheism. My belief diverges from those other beliefs where Jesus Christ is worshiped as the son of the common God. My Catholic faith tells me that Jesus forms part of the Holy Trinity — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — constituting three persons in one God.
Despite the divergence, the idea of theism is that there is one all-knowing, omnipotent being to whom one submits. Known figures who call themselves atheists deny the existence of a God as I know Him, moreover, reject the human worship of this God. They believe this practice inhibits the search for knowledge. They are instead more comfortable with the idea of promoting science.
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), the multi-awarded physicist and mathematician, whose works included theorems on gravitational singularity within the general relativity framework, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation (called Hawking radiation), was a known atheist.
In a 2011 Discovery Channel interview, he said:
“We are each free to believe what we want, and it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization. There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.”
Nevertheless, he would be quoted on another occasion thinking (like Karl Marx, who said that “everything must be doubted”) of the possibility that the existence of God was also compatible with an open universe. He said, “All my work has shown is that you don’t have to say that the way the universe began was the personal whim of God. But you still have the question, ‘Why does the universe bother to exist?’ If you like, you can define God as the answer to that question.”
Marx, who, together with Friedrich Engels, wrote the “Communist Manifesto” that became the seed of communism for as much as half the world population, thought that “material conditions and economic structures determine human consciousness, not supernatural forces.”
Marx argued that “humanity creates God in its own image and must reclaim its autonomy to achieve true freedom.” A famous quote attributed to him relates to religion being the “opium of the people.” The idea of a God offers a feel-good experience that the status quo seemed good enough, preventing people — especially those he called the working class — from rising for change.
Here are more snippets of what can be construed as an endorsement of atheism:
Thomas Edison, the American inventor, said that “religion is all bunk.” Fellow inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin weighed in: “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”
Ernest Hemingway, another American, and a writer: “All thinking men are atheists.”
Another writer, this time a Frenchman, Victor Hugo, said: “Religion is nothing but the shadow cast by the universe on human intelligence.”
Another writer, the Russian Leo Tolstoy, said: “The teaching of the church is in theory a crafty and evil lie, and in practice a concoction of gross superstition and witchcraft.”
Science does not even have to be the sole source of new knowledge. Experience may substitute for it.
Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain, saw firsthand the proof debunking what the Catholic Church then held as a sacred truth: that the earth was flat. What he said reeked with sarcasm: “I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.”
Magellan’s expedition ironically planted the seeds of Catholicism in the Far East.
A key takeaway to be derived from an atheist leaning is that human knowledge liberates and provides more freedom. Faith in human capacity for discovery exposes who the atheist’s God is.
Like Moses, who saved his people from slavery, the atheist preaches how the march of knowledge offers the path of deliverance from ignorance, from superstition, from witchcraft, and from indifference.
If the atheist has a God in him who saves, given his capacity to investigate and pursue knowledge, the variety of theism expands according to the notion of how one gets saved.
Some believe money saves them from many inadequacies. Wealth becomes God.
Others believe connections bring them from one point to anywhere they wish to conquer and control. Fame, power, and more wealth become variations of the same God.
And there are those who believe in the law of Moses. They try to live it, unmindful of the distractions coming from other gods. They do not kill, steal, or lie. They make peace, not war.
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