DID YOU KNOW?

Modern atheism as control fantasy and utopian fantasy by Glenn Chesnut: If one reads contemporary science fiction novels, one can see the full atheistic fantasy coming out in a number of these works. We live surrounded by electronic gadgets of every sort, with all the hard work being done by computerized robots which never break down or malfunction or refuse to come online. Modern medicine would conquer death, so that we would no longer get sick and die, but would live forever. And so forth.

Already by the time I went to university, there were psychiatrists claiming that we would soon be able to fix any problem which afflicted the human mind—any kind of disturbance or unhappiness, any sort of neurosis or psychosis or addiction—by having the patient swallow the right kind of pills. There was no longer going to be any need for God or religion, atheists proclaimed, because physics and chemistry and biology and psychology were going to become the new gods, and replace the old religious systems with completely scientific methodologies which were totally under rational human control. Modern atheism was going to bring in a brave New World in which human beings were going to be happy, healthy, free, and fulfilled. It is interesting to note that the principles (12 steps) of the twelve step program, which appeared at the end of the 1930’s, were a rebellion against this sort of atheism.  This was made clear from the very first two steps in their program: First “we admitted we were powerless…that our lives had become unmanageable.” Then we “came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” We had to quit playing God. We had to learn that this never worked. Could I as a human being ever have the power to create an entire universe, with all of its stars and planets and galaxies, out of empty space? This is a fantasy so silly that it is difficult to see how an intelligent adult could be taken in by it.

In addition to control fantasies, modern western atheism became involved in utopian fantasies as well. I remember back during the 1960s and 70s first I was a student at Oxford University where some Communists among my fellow students were proclaiming that their politico-economic system would bring happiness and prosperity to human beings all over the earth. Then I obtained a teaching position at Indiana University, where some of the behaviorist psychology professors were teaching their students that, if only the government could be persuaded to allow them to put all the children in the country in Skinner boxes for the appropriate behavioral  conditioning, they would be able to produce utopia on earth. It should be clear to anyone who looks at them carefully, that these atheistic utopian theories are just another kind of control neurosis. The reality was that neither the Communists nor the Skinnerian psychologists were actually able to produce what they promised.

Modern western atheism is built on the fantasy that we can use modern science to literally control everything: that we will learn to remove all uncertainty and chance, bend everything around us to our will, and turn ourselves into the all powerful Masters of the Universe. Their grandiosity is without bounds. Theism on the other hand points to the fact that the universe arose out of Mystery, that it will vanish back into Mystery at its end, and that this Mystery which underlies all things may bring chance and uncertainty into the universe, but also produces creativity and novelty. The x-factor which appears in our lives over and over again is the tiny Mystery that lies inside me (the miracle of free  will) interacting with the grand universal Mystery in a way which brings grace and new life. To be continued.

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