Atheism Isn't Just False, It's Immoral
Does God exist? That’s a question every human must answer.
There’s only one honest answer, and everyone knows it in his heart and mind. The only legitimate answer to the God question is, “Yes, God exists.”
Those who answer “no” or “maybe” come to that erroneous conclusion not through the intellect but through the will. Atheists and agnostics lie to themselves so they can live according to their own rules.
To repeat: Atheism is not an intellectual position. As William Taylor put it in his lecture “The Cross and Suffering,” atheism is “fundamentally a moral position.” Better yet, it is fundamentally an immoral position.
The Bible backs this up.
Psalm 14 begins, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” According to Jarl Waggoner, “the Hebrew term for ‘fool’ (נבל nabal) does not speak to a person’s intelligence but to his moral character.”
God’s existence can be proved philosophically, as St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrated in his five ways. It can be proved morally necessary, as C.S. Lewis argued in “Mere Christianity.”
But you don’t have to crack a book to know that God exists. As St. Paul writes in Romans 1:18-25, all you really have to do is look around you.
“For what can be known about God is plain to [men], because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”
Atheists, therefore, are “without excuse” and have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie.”
So the atheist is not only intellectually dishonest but morally culpable because of it. Lying — even to oneself — is immoral.
But what about Christians?
In his lecture, Taylor cited Paul Bayes, the Church of England’s former Bishop of Liverpool. In 2021, Bayes gave a keynote address to the Movement of Supporting Anglicans for an Inclusive Church.
“The world beyond the church has set the moral agenda,” Bayes said. He was not lamenting that sad truth but scolding those Christians “looking for a ditch to die in” who believe what the Bible says about homosexuality.
Taylor seized on Bayes’ moment of honesty to illustrate that many who claim to be Christian — and who hold positions of spiritual leadership, no less — are far more akin to atheists.
“The Bishop of Liverpool hates Jesus’ Word,” Taylor said. “The Bishop of Liverpool hates Jesus. The Bishop of Liverpool does not know God.”
Progressive Christians like Bayes claim that the plain teaching of Scripture is outdated and needs to be interpreted afresh as the world changes. Some religious leaders are more subtle than Bayes, but the message is the same: “We can bend God’s Word to our desires.”
Like atheism, this is a moral belief. And, like atheism, it places man, not God, squarely on the throne.
In this hellish scenario, each individual — taking cues from the prevailing moral trends of the day, of course — bears the impossible burden of deciding what is right and wrong for himself.
This necessarily leads to division and confusion. But Christianity should bring unity and clarity.
The church is to provide direction to the world, not vice versa. Anybody who claims otherwise is a friend of atheists and an enemy of Jesus.
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