Confessions of a Madman

For many “intellectuals” now-a-days, the idea of believing in a god is simply irrational. In the academic circles atheism is the prevalent belief system. “Any other belief is simply foolishness,” they would argue.

Well I would like to propose…the same kind of thinking when considering the worldview of atheism. When broken down, a-theism simply means negative god or no god. This claim of atheism is not stating that “there might not be a god” or “you think there is no god”, this belief is not even stating that you believe there is no god, it is stating, by definition, that there absolutely is no god.

However, negative universals are very hard to prove philosophically.

Saying there is absolutely no god is like me saying, “there is absolutely no white rocks with black stripes anywhere in the many galaxies of this universe”. The only way for me to make this claim with absolute certainty is if I had unlimited knowledge of this universe. So in essence what a atheist is claiming is they have infinite knowledge that there is no being with infinite knowledge.

Do atheist really believe that they are being the logical ones?

Also if atheism is true then there is no such thing as an ultimate moral law. Morals are just simply based off of subjective observations. In an atheist view of morality perception is what is true. Basically, in order to be a consistent atheist you must believe whatever the culture or society says is moral is what is moral. 

But consider this, during the Nuremberg trials, where Nazi officer’s were being persecuted for war crimes, one Nazi officer’s defense is that he was simply following the rule of their land. When this claim was made many people remained silent, until one man in the back who was not a prosecutor stood up and said, “Yes, we understand you were following orders but isn’t there a higher moral law all men are bound to?” Everybody agreed and under this pretense the Nazi’s actions were condemned. 

However, if there is no moral law above the simply rules of the land, like atheist claim, then weren’t the German soldiers justified in following the law of their own land during Holocaust, because who is to say it is wrong? And if you do say it is wrong under what authority do you know it is wrong?

When examined closely, in essence, all Hitler was trying to do was take the writings of Frederick Nietzsche, which he is said to have delivered personally to Benito Mussilini, (For more information of the effect of Frederick Nietzsche writings on Adolf Hitler please look to my earlier article “Was Hitler Crazy?”) and take the ideas from those writings and act them out politically. If Hitler were to have just merely written about the things he was thinking instead of actually doing them, he would of been hailed as a genius, much like Nietzsche is today. 

In addition to Nietzsche’s affect on social Darwinism he also provides early account of the future of atheism, which comes from his famous story  called “The story of a madman”. In this story a madman runs into a small town hysterically asking “Where is God?” The people in the town scorned and mocked him for his seemingly stupid question. The madmen then stood up in front of the town and said, “I’ll tell you were God is, he is dead and we are his murderers”. 

This is the common school of thought in today’s society. God is dead and if not yet dead he is slowly dying. But I vehemently  disagree with this idea. Because based upon the testimony of the Holy Spirit that has transformed my life and is constantly working around me my conscience will not allow. I cannot with a pure heart and a pure mind believe in something as unsubstantiated as atheism.

So I would argue that Nietzsche’s madman is alive and well today but instead of claiming the death of God I believe he is proclaiming the death of his own worldview, atheism. Who is the murderer you might ask? The homicide is attributed to the inescapable dagger of logic wielded by the sovereign hand of God.

(Most of article can be attributed to Ravi Zacharias’ latest podcast episode entitled, “Why I am Not an Atheist (Part 1)”)