Thinking to Believe

For part 1 of this two-part series, go here.

From a psychological perspective, Spiegel argues that broken/absent father relationships can be a contributing factor in a persons’ rejection of God’s existence.  He bases this, in part, from Sigmund Freud’s own psychological analysis that belief in God is a projection of one’s desire for a cosmic version of their earthly father, and, in part, from the research of ex-atheist Paul C. Vitz published in Faith of the Fatherless.  Spiegel argues that just as a good relationship with one’s father may contribute to belief in a Cosmic Father, likewise, the lack of a relationship, or a bad relationship with one’s father may contribute to one’s disbelief in a Cosmic Father.  Spiegel cites David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus as examples of atheists who experienced the death of their father at a young age.  He also cites Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Ludwig Feuerback, Samuel Butler, Sigmund Freud, H. G. Wells, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and Albert Ellis as examples of atheist who had a weak or abusive father (abandonment, neglect, bitter relationship).  Contrast these individuals to well-known theists who had good relationships with their father: Blaise Pascal, George Berkeley, Joseph Butler, Thomas Reid, Edmund Burke, William Paley, William Wilberforce, Friedrich Schleiermacher, John Henry Newman, Alexis de Tocqueville, Soren Kierkegaard, G. K. Chesterton, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Buber, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Abraham Heschel.

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If you ask the typical atheist why s/he does not believe in God, you are likely to be provided with a list of intellectual objections to theism: the presence of evil is incompatible with a loving and powerful God, science demonstrates the irrelevancy of God, etc.  Others will cite a lack of evidence for God’s existence.  In either case, atheism is presented as, and perceived to be a purely intellectual conclusion.

James Spiegel begs to differ with this assessment and perception of atheism.  In his book, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief, Spiegel argues that the root cause of atheism is immorality, not intellectual skepticism; disobedience, not evidence.  While atheists offer intellectual arguments in support of their position, Spiegel claims that such arguments are not the cause of their unbelief, but mere symptoms of their moral rebellion—the real cause of atheism.  As Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “People try to persuade us that the objections against Christianity spring from doubt.  The objections against Christianity spring from insubordination, the dislike of obedience, rebellion against all authority.  As a result people have hitherto been beating the air in the struggle against objections, because they have fought intellectually with doubt instead of fighting morally with rebellion.”[1]

Spiegel does not expect for atheists to agree with his assessment, but he is not attempting to persuade atheists; he is simply attempting develop a Christian account of atheism.  The Biblical data is his starting point, but he offers other supporting data as well.  In support of Spiegel’s contention that unbelief is caused by disobedience and moral rebellion, consider the following Scriptures:

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