Except for the a posteriori contingencies of facts and fantasies, attributed to the works of God, it is ludicrous for one to announce his atheism and even then its posture has no meaning. The so-called atheist himself is subject to the same existential litter that all of us are exposed to. He may rightfully denounce them but he cannot logically renounce the underpinnings of what we experience; for, they did not — contrary to the Bible’s postulate that in the beginning there was nothing — develop out of a pure vacuum free of , however seemingly erratic, becoming élan vital which has always subsisted and always will.
The “atheist” and deist alike presuppose an existence of time; thereby they base their views on a procession that entails cause and effect. The atheist assumes that folding back time will reveal nothing or radical chance; the deist folds back to a most perfect being directing the drama from opening to closing the curtain on existence and gives way to pure spirit but wrongly immersed in time. Both are wrong as the underlayment of the universe is without time, which is the pure meaning of eternity. Even pedestrian eternal time would entail contingencies that would ineluctably eventuate the end of time. Pure eternity entertains no such fallacy; it is, simply, is. Moses got it right when asking for God’s identity the reply was “He Who is.”
The “atheist”, in addition, is on shaky ground when he denies a god of absolute being; for this renegade himself would not have the audacity to proclaim “I am that I am,” thus responsible, as it were, for the creation of himself. Of course, in the realm of existential contingencies — dealing with chop logic of daily living — he is free, though under a pretended label, to assault the false gods, cults and idols at will but in reality he is not negating a supreme power, but rather the frills and hopes of traditional religion, and its spin-offs, that have created anthropomorphic god and gods meddling with destiny.
“Atheism,” then — implying the non-existence of a timeless subsistence — is itself non-existent. It is simply an iconoclastic assault on sanctities invented by the variable cultures in history and therefore must be limited and relegated to the pejorative that only divine contingencies of this world are false gods — and the atheist is one of them.
Copyright © 2005 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: December 10, 2005.
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