If I Were An Atheist

If I Were An Atheist

I had proposed that we exchange our views
and that I would describe how I would see the world
if I no longer believed in God.
Can I truly play this artificial role
of a man bereft of faith? How can I
risk plunging into that soul's black night
that I once knew when I sensed
that God had left me? When leaden skies
turned back my prayers and they fell
unanswered to the ground; when it seemed
that I had played with questions in my mind
which had placed me outside of Eden. Had God
rejected me because I had dared to ask
for truth about the state of man? But even then
God gave meaning to my darkened state. It was not
as though he was no more;
but that my soul no longer felt the comfort
of his presence. My pain had meaning in
the absence of his peace.

But to truly know that God does not exist
how would I then view life, and where
would I find my identity? The thread of faith
that weaves a sense of meaning through the events of life
is broken. And these events lie scattered on the ground
like the leaves of past autumns. I now face life
naked and alone - the armour of God is no longer there.
No belt of truth; out of a smorgasbord of opinion
I now seek to build my worth. No shield of faith,
to keep the demons of my sleepless nights at bay.
Gone is the breastplate of God's righteousness; I must fashion
my own sense of right and wrong.No helmet of salvation
for there is nothing to be saved for and no one to save.
No sword of the Spirit of a living God flashes in my hand
to pierce the souls of man with God's own truth. It lies
ragged in the dust to which it has been consigned
by this world's critics.

Damn you Voltaire! Damn you Hume! Damn you, you bright
lights of a hope now dead. What enlightenment still remains
in words that only deceived? Words that are dusted off
for boring classes in literature, penned by men long since
as deadas the souls they killed. But even the anger in my breast
is useless now because there is no hell to which
the murderers of my soul's hope can now be sent. All men
now meet the same ignoble fate. The kind and the mean alike
become a meal for hungry worms who also do not know
the reason for their being.

But must I take this dim and narrow view
of man's place upon this globe? Can't I pretend
that man is reaching ever upward? Progress
is the watchword of the day as it feeds
the comfort of the rich. One thing I do know:
my fate rests in my own imaginings. I, too, can
grasp the freedom of a being
who dismisses every seeming wrong
and the disquiet of guilt in my breast
by defining every action `good'. Am I not
the God of my own good? Can I not
forgive myself endlessly? No need for
repentence now. What reason now
to abate my hunger for the good
that this world has to offer to those
who can afford its comforts? And you,
you fool who reads these words
and thinks man noble, kind and wise.
Who has once more caught you
in a new web of pretence? Once
having smashed the demands
of a God now dead, why do you
submit to some new system
of belief wrought by another's fancy?
Once more you resign from freedom;the freedom
of being your own God.Can't we stand
the nakednessof being truly alone and supreme
in the face of an endless nothingness?
"There is no God!" proud voices cried.
This sound now echoes back: "There is no man!"
Only man's imagining gives stature
to a creature raised from the mire
by a billion years of randomness
to which he must return, his efforts spent
in vanity. Who will remember us when
we have passed to eternal silence?

If anyone thinks less of me because
of the path I choose for myself
let him know that it is of no consequence.
I owe nothing to mankind which proudly claims
it is here by chance. I will let no `cause'
make claims on me. The thoughtless
find meaning in the web of significance
they weave about themselves. I laugh
at such pretence.

I would not have dared to let
my mind go through this valley
of the shadow of the living dead
had I not known that He went with me
and that His rod and staff
would still my comfort be.

P.S. Shortly after writing the above I ran acrossa comment about an essay by Oscar Wilde in which he expressed the idea that man does not live nakedly with nature as do the animals; that man makes a protective nest for himself through myths and stories which make life possible in an otherwise cold environment. I know that my faith in a personal God shields me against what I recognize as a hostile nature (as per the above) but I also believe that this faith is based on a greater reality than that provided by nature.