Do Atheists Just Want to Sin?

Don’t we all?

Michelangelo, public domain courtesy Wikipedia Commons

Atheists don’t believe in God because they want to sin without consequences. We’re all familiar with this assessment. And that saying this is a sure way to make an atheist mad. 

But let’s be fair. Doesn’t everyone want to sin with impunity? Of course, when you say “sin,” we often think of hedonism or harm done to others. These are the results of greater sins, however. 

Besides, atheists don’t really believe in sin. Yes, you can do something that harms or offends someone. But sin goes against God’s love. If there is no God, however, then there’s no divine love to alienate yourself from. You can only transgress human laws and mores. 

Harming others, in this view, is wrong only because it damages your relationships with them and perhaps reduces social harmony. But what if you don’t really care about that person or don’t think society’s norms are in your self-interest?

More to the point, which competing standard of morality a society adopts is about power because without God there is no absolute “right” standard. In contrast, acknowledging God’s perfect moral standards, which society imperfectly strives toward, means that which laws and social mores a society adopts is a continual process of discernment. 

Courtesy @seb on Pexels.com

Still, the number one atheist argument against God is that God could stop extreme suffering but doesn’t. Why? 

Atheists I’ve known are genuinely concerned about human suffering, which isn’t always the result of human actions, as when a child is born with severe disabilities. And even if we are responsible for our actions, why do innocent people have to suffer the effects, like Jews in the Nazi Holocaust? If God allows His chosen people to be treated that way, can we really say that God is love? 

Why good people suffer is the central question in the book of Job. And God says, in effect, that He has a plan, He has His reasons, but it is not for us to know right now. We weren’t there when He laid the foundations of the earth, so we must have faith and trust in Him. 

But atheists, in my experience, want certainty. Atheists say no, the evidence of unnecessary suffering doesn’t support faith in God. I’ll decide right and wrong for myself, thank you very much. And I’ll make my own meaning. 

That’s the apple in the garden of Eden. That’s Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler’s utopian schemes.

The Berlin Wall, courtesy Ank Kumar on Wikipedia Commons

In 2005 and 2006, three of my four grandparents died. My boss suggested that I take advantage of the employee assistance program, which provided three grief therapy sessions. This was 16 years before my reconversion, and the counselor happened to be a Baptist minister by day. In our first session, he asked what I do in my spare time. I said I was reading The Brothers Karamazov. 

“The Brothers K is one of my favorite novels!” he replied. Then he asked, “Who’s your favorite character?”

“Alyosha.” I said. 

“Oh, really?” He chuckled, “The atheist likes the devout brother, not Ivan!” 

He was probably wondering how God could shout in my ear with a megaphone, yet I still wouldn’t listen. 

Fyodor Dostoevsky, public domain courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky has atheist Ivan Karamazov declare that without God, all is permissible. I’ve never heard an atheist actually say that, but it is the logical conclusion of the relativity of deciding right and wrong for yourself. After all, the Hitlers of the world can assert the same prerogative. 

This is usually the point where atheists will object that the would-be Hitler is wrong, full stop. But this raises some questions. If some people can think they’re right when actually they’re wrong, then how do you know if you’re right? More importantly, where does this objective morality come from?

In Romans 1:18-19, St. Paul writes that we know God is real because He has made it plain to us, but in our wickedness we suppress the truth. No doubt, atheists will dispute this. The desire for certainty demands something more.

But what would they accept, really? My previous article about reverting to the Catholic faith after a quarter century of atheism focused on my thought process. Maybe some readers wondered, “Is there more to it than that?”

Courtesy Creations By Rod on Cathopic

A few years before I returned to the Church, I had two very vivid dreams—the kind you don’t have to struggle to remember. But still, I didn’t return to the Church right away. I explained the dreams away as brain static. 

In the first dream, I was in a house. I went down to the basement, then the sub-basement, then the sub-sub-basement. This third basement, deep underground, had a hard packed dirt floor. A demon was buried in the floor, and he wanted me to take a shovel and dig him up. I was very afraid. I knew he was a murderer (though he denied it). He told me he was harmless. I was scared and ran for the exit.

Later, I dreamt I was in an industrial park with several warehouses. Christ walked by carrying His Cross. He was grotesque. Half His face had been ripped away—I could see His skull and teeth. He looked me intently in the eye—looked right into me—with a mixture of sadness and anger. He said nothing. But I knew that the question was, “Why did you turn away from Me?” Two Roman soldiers began whipping Him to move along.

Even when I decided to take these dreams seriously, I couldn’t figure out why I was in an industrial park when I encountered Christ carrying His Cross. But then I thought, what do you do with warehouses? You store stuff. And eventually you will need to do an inventory, an accounting. Point being, what am I storing up on earth? Where do I go with that?

Yes, the reality of God is obvious. But I actively resisted it because I wanted to be the captain of my own ship. You wouldn’t be wrong if you said that I wanted to sin with impunity. And here I’m talking about pride, the mother of all sins.