The Hubris of Atheism's High Priest

The citizens of the Australian State of Victoria may have thought that when they elected the present Labor government they had done so for the purposes of ordering the body politic. They surely did not think that they had appointed an institution to dictate to them what they should, or should not, believe, what they should, or should not, hold morally acceptable, a religious, or quasi-religious, body.

Yet this is the effect of what has fallen from the Government leader, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, recently over the election, and subsequent resignation, of Andrew Thorburn as CEO of the Essendon Football Club for daring to endorse moral issues which reflect the teachings of Jesus Christ, teachings accepted and upheld by a great number of the State’s citizenry. Andrews has revealed himself as atheism’s high priest and in doing so exposed the hatefulness of the religion to which he adheres, belief in no-God.

Catholics and Christians of different colours—those who adhere to all of Christ’s teachings, or a selection of them—do not balance their beliefs with a refusal to countenance those who do not agree with them. Their attitude is one of tolerance, if not love, for the sinner even as they hate the sin in which he indulges. But this is not the protocol which characterises atheism. Consistent with its hatred of God and His rule its adherents refuse to acknowledge any view but their own to the point of hatred of those who disagree with them.

Despite the assertions of its adherents, atheism is a belief system. Those who believe in God have some explanation—the best, or something less than the best—for their own existence as dependent and contingent beings. They acknowledge the demands of common sense, that they did not bring themselves into existence, that they do not keep themselves in existence. Atheists close their minds to these critical issues. 360 years ago Blaise Pascal put their position succinctly:

“I know not who sent me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am…. I see the terrifying immensity of the universe… and find myself limited to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am set down here rather than elsewhere, nor why the brief period appointed for my life is assigned to me at this moment rather than another in all the eternity that has gone before and will come after me… All I know is that I must soon die. But what I understand least of all is this very death which I cannot escape… From all this I conclude that I ought to spend every day of my life without seeking to know my fate. I might perhaps be able to find a solution… but I cannot be bothered to do so; I will not take one step towards its discovery. And then, despising those who concern themselves with this task… I will go without fear or foresight to try the great event, and allow myself un-protesting, to be led to my death, uncertain of my future state.”[1]

Atheism is the worst of sins because it refuses to render to God that which He is entitled to, worship if not deference, and obedience to the moral standards he has imposed on them as a condition of their being, revealed in the Commandments, and imprinted on their hearts, as St Paul has taught (Romans 2: 15). It is their embrace of moral evil as good, the normalization of deviance (to borrow a technical term coined by American sociologist Diane Vaughan), that afflicts Victoria and the Australian people generally in the aberrations of homosexuality and abortion

Victorians are six weeks away from a State election. The alternative to the Labor Party, the Liberals, do not inspire much confidence, their policies hardly differing from that of their opponents, but the attack on God and on moral principle implicit in Andrews’ pontificating on the Essendon issue ought give them pause to think about the consequences of embracing another four years of Labor Party rule.

[1] Pensées, Louis Lafuma Edition, translated by John Warrington, J M Dent & Sons (Everyman), London, 1960, § 11; my edition, 1973 Reprint; quoted material at page 6.