Atheism and a lottery ticket have something in common. A lottery ticket can make you dream of millions, while atheism reminds you of what you will lose.
Many of us live like atheists, even when we believe in God. God doesn’t have much to do with our lives, and it’s not for want of trying. Everyone has prayed for something and not gotten what they wanted.
The demands of our hectic lives keep increasing; atheism is that perfect fit. Who has time for thinking about what comes after death when living this life occupies every waking moment? We think of the meaning and purpose of our lives only in odd moments, like when our friends share what they believe in around a campfire or at a quiet, unexpected time.
If we wonder why we are alive and what purpose living serves, it is because we make plans and set goals. This is something we learned to do when we were children. We learned to live this way from our parents, who also had plans and dreams for their lives. Until recently, before the advent of mass population-wide acceptance of atheism, religion played a central role, assuring us of an ultimate happy ending to our lives if we believed in what religion taught us.
These days, many of us have been heavily influenced by atheism, so when life opposes us or thwarts our designs, every step toward our goals is an individual effort without much support. We are alone with that nagging question: What point is there to living when being alive can be so hard? Sometimes, we feel almost mocked by our childlike faith in our future: At the end of it all, we win, right? We cross the finish line of life as winners, aglow with victory. Satisfied. Happy forever.
Let’s look at the broader picture that atheism paints for us. When we die, everything we worked for starts to go away. Others might build on our achievements, but eventually, we will not be remembered. Eons of time passing ensures this. Our civilization will decay and fall. And, of course, we are dead forever.
If we evolved in this random ecosystem and are doomed to die, we should be adapted to living meaningless lives. Why do we set goals when everything goes away? Why do we care what happens to us when life has run its course?
Why these things matter is simple. God created us. God exists forever in eternity, and that is where we are headed. We may have evolved in some sense in this environment, but the spark, the will to live, comes from God. So, the atheist needs to explain why people do not believe that their lives are pointless. Atheism needs to explain why we struggle against death when we should embrace it.
If you want to believe that life ends at death, you are in plenty of company. There are the true atheists who lie awake at night dreaming of new arguments to prove the futility of religion, the practical atheists who hardly think of God in their day-to-day life, and the religious atheists whose lives are untouched by a religion’s teachings and who believe that an hour a week in a strange looking building suffices as a kind of religious insurance policy.
God exists, and what is more, we all live as if God exists. The proof of this is in our purposeful lives, even though death robs us of everything. Let’s go back to that lottery ticket I wrote about.
I’m a Roman Catholic. I don’t like lotteries because they encourage people to believe they can become rich through luck when hard work is usually needed to succeed. But that is beside the point. I compared atheism to losing in a lottery.
What I don’t get when I talk to people is how easily they accept atheism in either of its three varieties. If I offered you a chance to win a million dollars, would you turn it down? No, seriously. Here is a ticket. Take it for free. Would you throw it away?
But this is what people routinely do when religion is discussed.
What if atheists die and Roman Catholics have a chance to live a perfect life with God forever? Don’t we get what we hope for? Atheists have no real hope beyond the grave. This life is everything for them. This life is all that they will get.
If you have read this far, you are one of the lucky few who have a chance to live forever with God. Don’t waste this opportunity. Listen to that spark in you, that part of you that refuses to believe that you will cease to exist. Read more in this blog. Investigate Roman Catholicism. Ask questions. I look forward to hearing from you.