Is everyone born an atheist?

But a man may accept that as a fact because he has heard it since he was a child, and yet be unaffected in any way by it, because he does not see that he personally is involved in it; or he may refuse to believe anything about it at all because any thought of God disturbs his complacency, or he may pose as an infidel; yet it is certain that no man was born an infidel. Many a man has argued himself into infidelity simply because he "did not like to retain God in his knowledge," as Romans 1 tells us. But whether indifferent, or infidel, or whatever else he may be, there is no man in the world to whom these words cannot be spoken, and they will come home in their life-giving, saving power to all who feel their need of them.

Now, do not let my reader charge me with an over-strong condemnation of man. What is true of one is true of all; and, although all may not have taken the ground of avowed atheism, or even of pronounced infidelity, yet there is not one of us who, by nature, either loves God or seeks after Him.

The people of the city, idle and at heart sceptical, were given up to idolatry; and, the circle of the gods being exhausted, they had dedicated an altar to the unknown God. It is said that in former times a fatal malady had reigned in the city; and that the inhabitants, having prayed in vain to all the gods to remove the plague, had consulted an oracle, who directed them to dedicate an altar to the unknown God. It is unnecessary, however, to seek for any special source of this worship. At the bottom of all idolatry there is the idea of God, corrupted, and taken possession of by Satan, so that men may worship demons; but the idea cannot be eradicated from the heart of man. Infidels seek to do so, but it always remains at the bottom of the heart, in spite of all their efforts. It is born with the birth of man, and creation bears witness too clear and too strong to allow the heart to believe that everything was made by nothing. And then conscience speaks too loud to allow it to be unhearkened to. Man does not want God and tries to forget Him; he reasons, and seeks diversions; but the thought always returns, and possibility makes itself felt. He endeavours to get rid of the thought by every means, but still it is always there; and the thought of God always makes us feel guilty.

I believe by experience or testimony, and by that only; I conclude from the nature of language and thought, which never goes into fact, because it is only the nature of thought, but supposes it, because I cannot have thought without an object thought of, a thing. When my knowledge arises from testimony, reasoning may help me as to the credibility of testimony from experience of the world and men and the like, from which I reason to the credibility; but what I believe is still the experience or the testimony. I believe that there is an innate consciousness of God - not an idea of God. Such as I have may be true or false as to many things I affirm about Him. I believe that He can make Himself known. This is experience. I believe that He has made Himself known in an external way, that is, by a revelation. But this is not a matter of inference, nor can it be, but of experience or testimony, supposing capacity to receive it. I may reason to banish the folly of false reasoning; but that appeals to facts, as all reasoning must. A conclusion must rest on premises, that is, on facts; but they are known by experience or testimony. And so even scripture speaks. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself; and he that believeth not hath made God a liar." That is experience and testimony. In conclusion, then, belief precedes logic always. If I say "gold is yellow," I affirm two things - that is, believe them or present them for belief - that gold is, and is of a certain colour; but I have drawn no conclusion at all. There is no reasoning as yet whatever, no logic. It is what is stated as believed by experience or testimony. Mill's statement is wholly and essentially wrong, and is the basis of his infidelity. And a very poor one it is, and only shews how very inaccurate and illogical a mind he has.

Page 136. 'Before man can learn to do things right, he must do things wrong. Before he can discover the right path in science, religion, and political economy, he has to flounder through a bog of blunders. The girl strums discords before she strikes harmonies; the boy scratches pothooks before he draws straight lines. The early religious beliefs of the human family are its discords and pothooks, the stages of error of which it has travelled before correct ideas can be attained. At first, then, man is conscious of no existence save his own; he is like the brute, self-centred and self-sufficient; he is his own God. He is Autotheist. His religious thought, vague and undetermined, is roused by the opposition of nature to his will.'

It is curious how false philosophy always is. How, taking man as he is, God is left out, and man is supposed to begin, i.e., to have been created with no connection with, or knowledge of, or relation to God at all. A most absurd and low idea, as if God would have left man, in making him, capable of progress towards, but wholly, absolutely, incognisant of anything but himself, to make out a God as he could! 'Men were in this state' - but how? I may go back to enquire what they would do when they had not God at all, but have no ground or right to assume it was an original state, and there is no experience of men, as such, coming to it. Some glimmerings only of a few, and these wretched, but no people. There are testimonies of dreadful descent. The Vedas have much more of one supreme God than the Mahabharata or the Puranas. Men have gone down, not up, when there was a revelation, and Buddhism is an extreme case, when the misery of men's state was thought only to be met by losing self as an existence with no God - only gods as bad as men.

The Greek is ἄθεος, lit. 'without God,' and so translated in Eph. 2:12. It is used as a description of Gentiles as such by nature, and true of all the heathen world in their ignorance of God: not, as the term is now used, namely, one who wilfully refuses to acknowledge God's existence.

The wish that there should be no God—none to exercise full authority over us, or restrain our wills, or condemn our sins, or call us into judgment; none, in short, to whom we should be thus responsible—is latent in every human bosom. Sin has produced that wish; and how easy to advance from the idea to the belief, from the wish to the word, “No God”! Yet, after all, he who should thus speak is called a “fool”; for can there be folly more self-evident than the rejection of God? Could you conceive the unfallen creature making such a denial? Impossible! It is reserved for fallen man to do so. Then, how awfully blinding must sin be!

The idea of God is distasteful to the natural mind.

Oh the heart! What a fountain-head of mischief and misery it is! Well says the Scripture, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” And hence we read that “The fool has said in his heart, ‘No God!’” (Ps. 14:1). Such a saying may not have reached the lips—may not have taken verbal form; but, in unspoken heart-language, the utterance is made, “No God!”

The knowledge of good and evil, which man acquired in the fall, has so constituted him that judgment is the only action of God’s power which he understands; naturally enough, he resists it, and blasphemes God, because his conscience tells him that he must be the object of His righteous vengeance; so that to calm his conscience he tries to persuade himself that he is not wicked, and he hides himself from God, like Adam, and in his folly seizes with avidity the smallest pretext for denying His existence. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” (Psalms 14; 53.)