Why are there so many atheists?

A young lady, brought up in a Christian home, began to do things that her conscience condemned. Unwilling to admit them and confess them to God, she began to persuade herself first that God didn't care, and then that there was no God. For several years she claimed to be an atheist. But the sin in her life gradually developed into anxiety and fear.

“God” implies authority, and we all know that restraint is irksome; but, further, when “God” means holiness, and the judgment of evil, and the disallowance of that which we naturally like, then we do our utmost to banish from our minds, if possible, the existence of any such God at all.

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 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.)

But this case of human reprobation is stated now in detail. Verses 18-23. The wrath of God is directed against all human ungodliness and unrighteousness, and that on the ground of their holding the truth in unrighteousness. The high thoughts of men, bent on their own pleasure, set themselves against the truth of God. Ignorance is not the primary cause of human opposition to God. It is the instinctive force of evil desire, which leads man to gratify the nearer and more importunate lusts of the flesh and of the mind, independently of God. But to act independently of God is practically to deny Him. Atheism is involved, in principle, in the very first departure of the creature from the position of simple dependence upon God. It is the assertion of an independent will, and thus the exercise, as it were, of an independent life. But man is God's creature — his life is God's breath. Hence, to live without God — in defiance, or even in forgetfulness of God — is virtually Atheism. It is the heart-Atheism of the fool, who says in his heart, "There is no God" (Ps. 14; 53).

I think you will agree with me, beloved brother, in thinking that this fact demands our gravest consideration. It will, even though we were to proceed no further with our series of proofs, go far to prepare us for the contemplation of the present condition of things, in which we shall find superstition and infidelity playing such an appalling part. If it be true — and who will dare to deny it? — that the first man, the head of the race, the parent stem, believed the devil instead of God — hearkened to the creature rather than the Creator — need we wonder at the murky clouds of superstition that enwrap his fallen family, or at the audacious flights of infidelity in which so many of his unhappy children indulge? The heart of man — of every unrenewed man beneath the canopy of God's heaven — is formed by the lie of the serpent — yea, not only formed, but filled and governed by it. Solemn thought! Fallen human nature is based upon and characterized by a lie as to God; and hence it must be false as to everything divine and heavenly. Man's moral being is utterly false — false at its very centre — he is corrupt at his very heart's core. Thus it is he has a ready ear for everything untrue, impure, and unholy — everything against God. You will always find the human heart at the wrong side of any question concerning God and His truth. No marvel, therefore, that superstition and infidelity are rapidly gaining ground in Christendom.

But there is a worse evil than idolatry and far more guilty; which is not merely a sin inevitably resulting from fallen man's mental constitution, but which implies and necessitates a Revelation from God: that worse sin is infidelity. Revelation was not necessary to make man an idolater; it was necessary to make him an infidel. In its widest meaning as designating those who have no faith, all idolaters in whatever condition of ignorance are infidels. But if we confine the word to its common acceptation, it is evident that a Revelation must be given before it can be rejected. And as the rejection of known truth is of earlier date than idolatry, no process or lapse of time was needed for its development. Its first form was the denial of God's word; as such it sprang fully equipped from the head of the first sinner. God said "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The Serpent said "Ye shall not surely die." God's word was disbelieved, and Eve became the infidel. Pharaoh was an infidel; when the word of "I am" came to him, he said "Who is Jehovah that I should obey His voice." And Israel as having the oracles and the testimony of God were as much infidels as idolaters. As idolaters they clung to Egypt's idols, as infidels they said Egypt was a better place than Canaan. And if we compare these two grand engines of Satanic craft, in idolatry the sentiments (i.e. fear, dread, desire, awe, admiration) are most in exercise, if not solely; in infidelity the passions have but little play. It is human reason, the intellect, though even the intellect is swayed by the heart, which is enmity against God. Infidelity was usually found rather with the educated than with the ignorant; of late years even the lowest classes in the social scale, and the most uncultured, are swelling its ranks. And as education — the present panacea for all moral evil! — spreads, so infidelity increases. For if education expands the mind and strengthens its power, the increase of infidelity is inevitable. For, the mind being enmity to God, its expansion is the expansion of hatred, and the strengthening of its powers to spread its own evil. And the means of education which the wisdom of this world has adopted, and the craft of Satan has caused to be used, as to philosophy taught, is underlaid with scepticism; more subtle in some than in others, but therefore the more dangerous. The books of past ages and professors of the present age are for the most part tainted with infidelity, and some of them very deeply. It is the result of man's mind trying to measure the Revelation of God by the light of reason. Reason was never given to discuss the command of its Creator, never to decide whether obedience was due to God, or whether his Word is credible. Revelation is its own evidence, its own authority. And every one that has read a page of it has more or less, at least once in his life, felt the power and authority of it. Conscience in a measure responds to the truth; but conscience may be silenced, and the general result is that man without conscience falls into the depths of corruption or wanders in the darkness of his own reason, i.e. infidelity. The legitimate sphere of reason is earthly and temporal things. Now that it is darkened, to attempt to subject the Word of God to its authority is the greatest proof of its incapacity for the office. And further we have but to remember that the Word of God is the message of His love to find equal proof of its antagonism to God.

If this simple fact were thoroughly understood, it would settle a thousand questions and remove a thousand difficulties. It is reason that makes all the infidels. The devil whispers into man's ear, "You are endowed with reason; why not use it? It was given to be used, used in everything; you ought not to give your assent to anything which your reason cannot grasp. It is your chartered right, as a man, to submit everything to the test of your reason; it is only for a fool or an idiot to receive, in blind credulity, all that is set before him."

The entertaining of a question as to God was, as we have seen, man's ruin. He has been a questioner ever since. Having fallen from the sense of infinite goodness, he either remains simply unconscious of it, — his gods the mere deification of his lusts and passions, — or, if conscience be too strong for this, involves himself in toilsome processes of reasoning at the best, to find out as afar off the God who is so nigh. He reasons as to whether He that formed the ear can hear, or He that made the eyes can see, or He that gave man knowledge know, or, no less foolishly, whether He from whom comes the ability to conceive of justice, goodness, mercy, love, has these as His attributes or not! And still the heart deceives the head: what he wills, that he believes. For a holy God would be against his lusts, and a righteous God take vengeance on his sins and how can God be good and the world so evil, or love man and let him suffer and die? Thus man reasons, taken in the toils of him who has helped him to gain the knowledge of which he boasts, — so painful and so little availing.

But the wisdom of fallen man has ever been his folly, for it will not have the revelation God has given of Himself, but supposes itself capable of solving every question regarding the sorrowful condition in which the human race is found. The natural mind of man, being always infidel, carefully excludes God, and thus is he left in darkness, and in the bands of his powerful adversary the devil, who’s every effort is directed toward the degradation of the creature made in the image and likeness of God.