The Good Atheist

by Michael Manto

  He leaned forward. If I’d offended him, he didn’t show it. No doubt he’d heard much worse since becoming a believer. “That’s a lot to parse out, but first – I didn’t toss you away. I never left. Your mother left me, remember?”

  “What choice did she have?”

  “She had lots of choices, and she made one – a bad one in my estimation. But I had no control over her decisions.”

  “Why, Dad?”

  “You mean, why do I believe in fairy tales?”

  “Yes. It cost you everything. Why’d you do it?”

  “As an astronomer, the evidence I came across was so overwhelming, there was only one rational decision I felt I could make. I couldn’t ignore it.”

  “C’mon, what evidence? There’s no evidence for God,” I said. Therefore believing in God is irrational and delusional, I added silently. Everyone knew that, right? At least the reasonable, well-educated ones. Dad should know better, I felt.

  But he shook his head. “There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence for God.”

  “Like what?”

  “My research took me into the very structure of the universe itself, and it’s absolutely beautiful in its mathematical precision and harmony. Like a symphony by Beethoven or a painting by Da Vinci. But you don’t get the Mona Lisa by spilling paint accidently over a canvas. I think that was when I truly started to consider the awful possibility that there really is a God. It’s much too precise to be unguided.”

  “What structure?” I said. “When I look up into the night, I just see a lot of empty black space and scattered stars.”

  He took a sip of coffee, then looked out the windows at the night sky. “In order for the universe to be capable of life, any kind of life, there are dozens of properties that have to be set to within extremely narrow limits. Properties like the resonance of carbon, the amount of hydrogen in the universe, the ratio of the size of protons to electrons, the strength of gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism. And they all happen to be set to exactly the right values needed for life. The precision required is mind-boggling. If any one of these values were out by one part in a million, or in some cases one part in a hundred million or billion, there would be no life. No stars, or stars that are too unstable and short-lived. No planets capable of life. No people with all their hopes and dreams.

  “Astronomers have calculated the odds of all these values happening by accident, and the number they get is so vast that it defies imagination. It’s more than all the atoms of the universe.

  “For instance, if the force of gravity was the tiniest fraction out, we would not have a universe capable of stable stars. Just to paint a picture of how precise gravity has to be, imagine a ruler that stretches the length of the known universe, marked off in inches, representing the range of values that are possible for gravity. In order for there to be a universe capable of life, gravity had to be set to within a single inch marked on that ruler. If it was off by more than an inch, the universe would either not exist, or it could not sustain stars and planets. There is no reason for it to be set to that value, we just find that it is. And that’s just gravity.

  “As I kept coming across these kinds of facts about the composition of the universe, it greatly unsettled my atheism. I began to doubt there were any blind forces worth speaking of behind the universe. I had to ask myself how rational it was to continue believing it all happened by accident. The kind of luck required for it to happen without intelligent guidance is too incredible. It seemed to me much more likely that some kind of super-intelligence had been tinkering with the universe.

  “And then we have the whole issue of beginnings. Nonbelieving scientists used to assume that matter was simply eternal, that it had always been there. And then along came Einstein and the discovery of the Big Bang. Scientific proof that all space, matter, energy, and time had a very definitive beginning – just what the first chapter of Genesis says. The religious implications were so obvious that atheistic scientists at the time found the discovery greatly unsettling.

  “So the question has to be asked – what caused it? Things don’t happen without a cause, and things can’t cause themselves, any more than I can be my own father. And it’s not possible to have an infinite regression of causes that go back forever. Somewhere there has to be a first cause, and that first cause can’t be anything within or a part of the universe itself. It needs to be outside of time and creation – in other words transcendent. And that’s exactly the kind of God we find described in the Bible. So the simple fact that the universe has a beginning is a very strong clue to the existence of God.

  “And then I realized that the whole design issue is there with the explosion of the Big Bang itself, right at the beginning, because the Big Bang was a highly controlled release of energy. How is it that out of that explosion we got a highly ordered universe with mathematical precision instead of chaos? Accidents and explosions don’t bring about order and harmony. When you detonate a bomb, you don’t get an engineered structure popping out. What you get is a pile of rubble. It would be like setting off an atom bomb, and when the smoke clears, finding that the exploding debris coalesced into the Empire State building, complete with working elevators, telephone system, heat and lights.”

  “Just because we don’t know how it happened doesn’t mean it’s God,” I said. “Religious people are always trying to pull the God card when faced with mysteries and stuff Him into the gap of their ignorance.”

  Haddie smiled. “I think that would be like aliens coming to earth long after we were gone and finding the internet and all our highly complex computer networks. Some of the aliens believed in the existence of other intelligences, and some of them didn’t. The ‘believers’ would naturally point to the internet as evidence of other intelligences. What would you think of the other group – those who didn’t believe in the existence of humans – if they dismissed the evidence by claiming that it just appears designed, or that they don’t know how it got there but intelligence isn’t necessarily behind it.”

  Dad scratched his chin and thought for a moment. “You are right to a degree. Believers have sometimes been too quick to use the God card. But atheists have done the same sort of thing in their own way. They stuff multiverses into the gap of ignorance. Or they pull the chance card and stuff blind luck into the gap of ignorance.

  “However, I’m not talking about what we don’t know. I’m talking about what we do know about the origins and properties of the universe. When I look at the Mona Lisa, I can know that it was intelligently, deliberately created. It wasn’t an accident. And I can know this without knowing who Leonardo was or how he did it. That’s not stuffing Leonardo into a gap of my ignorance. It’s the same with looking at the universe. The more we discover about the universe, the more it points to a divine hand. Far from pushing religion into a corner, science is fully compatible with a theistic worldview. With the advances in science, it’s become intellectually satisfying to be a believer more so now than ever before.”

  “Some scientists think there is a multiverse,” I said. “That ours is just one of an infinite number of universes. If you get enough universes, one is likely to have all the right qualities for life, and ours is it.”

  Dad leaned back and took a sip of coffee. “The multiverse is an interesting theory for astrophysicists to play around with, but it doesn’t really solve the problem for the atheist. It just pushes the design question up a higher level. You still need a designed multiverse with all the necessary ingredients to produce life-supporting universes. But there’s no evidence for the theory. It was hatched largely as an escape valve to avoid the theistic implications of our universe.”

  I stared out the dark window at the bright towers of Manhattan. Dozens of flying cars, small pinpoints of multicolored flashing lights, moved through the air between the brilliant sky scrapers like lightning bugs buzzing around giants. “Okay, maybe some kind of super-intelligence did it all, but that doesn’t me
an it was your Christian God of the Bible. Even if we allow for some sort of supernatural origin, we are a long ways from a personal God.”

  “Sure,” Dad said. “If the creator of the universe is some kind of impersonal, distant, unconcerned deity, then we’d have no good reason to think that any of the earth’s religions might be right, because we’d have no reason to think that this god had bothered to reveal himself to humanity in any way. When it came to religion, we’d be left with just a cosmic guessing game. Except perhaps to answer a few academic questions about the origins of the universe, in practical terms we’d be in the same situation as atheism. We could carry on with our lives as if it made no difference, because a god like that would make no difference.

  “But I believe there is good reason to think the Creator is also personal. First, we have ourselves. Humans are intensely personal. We are all about relationships. Pretty much all of our art, literature, stories, music, and movies is about this one all-consuming passion that rules us – our need for deep and meaningful relationships. Now, I had to ask myself how an impersonal god or blind creative process could or would create beings like us that are so intensely personal.

  “And then we have our internal moral compass, a powerful sense of right and wrong, of justice and fair play, that is for the most part chiefly concerned with how we treat each other. This hints – very strongly – that this God who created the universe is also very concerned with how we behave and treat each other, and that’s a very strong indication that he is personal.

  “So it seemed to me that if there is a God, which the message of the universe seemed to be telling me there is, and here we are creatures that are a result of that creative process, and we find ourselves with a powerful moral compass and sense of moral obligation, then this god, whoever he is, cares about right and wrong and how we treat each other. Only a personal God would have such concern for how we treat each other.

  “Now, once we get to a personal God it’s not such a big step to conclude that one of the Earth’s religions would be the right one.”

  “How did you conclude that?” I asked.

  “Because the essence of religion is about connecting with God. And we have some powerful clues that the creator of the universe is personal, that he’s interested in relationships and cares about how we treat each other. It’s a good guess that such a personal God would reveal himself to us in some fashion to make a connection with him possible. It seemed reasonable that at least one of the planet’s religions would be the right one. So it made sense to me to start exploring the world’s religions.”

  “So how on earth did you ever settle on Christianity?” I asked.

  Haddie interrupted before he could answer. “Dear, are you forgetting the time?”

  He stretched and reached for the coffee carafe. “Yes, I am feeling tired. I think I’ll have a refill.” Haddie slapped his hand away just as he was about to grasp the carafe. “Oh, no you don’t. You’ve had enough, and you’ll never sleep if I let you have more. We need to get an early start tomorrow, which--” she looked out the window. The sky to the east was pale with the first hint of dawn. “which is today already. We’d better get to bed and try to catch a couple hours sleep.”

  Dad frowned. “Why?”

  “Have you forgotten already? We’ve got that meeting with the underground leaders from Brooklyn.”

  Dad glanced at me and back to Haddie. “Oh, right. When are they expected?”

  Haddie sighed. “I really don’t know how you managed in life before I came along. We’re not expecting them. They’re expecting us. Nabil will drive us to the meeting later this morning.”

  “Oh, right.”

  She stood up. “You’d better get some sleep,” she said. Then she looked at me. “I’ll show you to the guest room.” Without waiting for either one of us to answer, she headed towards the bedrooms.

  I followed her down the hallway, and she stopped at a door. “This is yours. It’s so wonderful to have you here,” she said. “You’re more than welcome to stay as long as you like.”

  “Thank you.”

  Then she glanced at my clothes and wrinkled her nose. “And no doubt you’ll want to get out of those…whatever it is you are wearing. I’ll try to find something from your father’s wardrobe for you. You’re both about the same size. Just leave your clothes on the floor in the hall, and I’ll wash them later today.” Then she said good night and left.

  My guest room was almost as big as the apartment I called home with Selene. It had its own bath and large windows overlooking the city. You could lose a small family in the expansive bed.

  I went to the window and looked out. The sky had turned from black to deep blue. Some of the stars were still visible, and the lights of New York spread out below for miles, but the sky towards the east was getting lighter.

  I got out of my clothes and left them on the floor outside my door. Then I had a hot shower and crawled into bed, hoping for a long, blissful sleep.

  But fate or God or whatever you want to call it had other ideas, and I didn’t sleep very well at all.

  26

  For what seemed like hours I lay awake on the huge bed, the conversations with Dad and Haddie turning over and over in my mind. I thought about Jorge, and Paige, and the things they’d said.

  Paige. Jorge. Dad. Haddie. I felt – troubled? disturbed? – that I had been unable to convince them of the rational superiority of my position. And while I did not agree with them, I could no longer claim exclusive rights to the moral and rational high ground, or retreat behind the simplistic insistence that they were simply deluded or unwilling to face up to the truth.

  I gave up trying to sleep and got out of bed. I crossed the floor to the windows and flung back the dark curtains. Early-morning sunlight flooded into the room. I stood in my underwear in front of the window overlooking the city. The window came down to the floor, and I felt like I was standing on top of the Manhattan skyline. Layers of hover-traffic flowed like rivers below my feet.

  I stood for a long time looking out at the city without really seeing it, my mind elsewhere, wrestling with the points Dad had raised. His words stuck in my heart like barbed arrows. After a while I decided that what I needed was a good walk and some fresh air. I’d been cooped up for too long and was losing my perspective, I told myself. Some fresh air to clear my head would do me good.

  I went to the door and listened. I hadn’t heard any movement or voices in over an hour. I opened the door gently, not wanting to wake anyone. My clothes were still on the floor. I gathered them up and put them back on.

  I left the penthouse quietly and took the elevator down to the ground floor. It was still early. The cool morning air felt like a reproving slap in the face. I started walking north, for no apparent reason and with no goal in mind. The sidewalk was crowded with well-dressed office workers on their way to their cubicles. The coffee shops and restaurants were bright and full, but none of these respectable places would take my cash, and I couldn’t use my chip, so I kept walking. The fresh air felt good and I started to feel as if I was finally escaping God’s vortex that I’d felt myself slipping into.

  I turned a corner, went another couple of blocks, and spotted an Atheist Temple on the other side of the street. I could see lights on inside, so I crossed the street towards it. I reached the double glass front door, read the sign over it, and was relieved to see that it was Orthodox Free-Thinking. A sign next to the door display the hours of service. I was just in time for the morning’s Secular Reflections.

  The doors slid open as I stepped up to them. A few people mingled in the marble foyer inside. I crossed the foyer and passed through another set of double doors.

  The Cosmos opened up before me – a brilliant holograph of the Milky Way galaxy filled the auditorium. Slowly and majestically, it turned with its billions and billions of bright dots of stars and nebulae. Like a fountain in a park, this spinning cloud of light formed the centerpiece of the temple. I walked around it, taking
it in. I’d never seen such a breathtaking view of our home galaxy.

  A flashing arrow at one edge of a spiral arm pointed to a small blue dot.

  The automated system must have picked up on my presence. A voice informed me that the tiny blue dot in the holograph was our own Earth, shown in its position within the galaxy. We are nothing but an insignificant speck of dust, the voice intoned, afloat in the vastness of an uncaring, pitiless universe, without meaning or purpose. The sooner you get used to that, the better off you will be, it cheerfully added.

  I moved on. Another holographic display showed our solar system close up. The beautiful blue-and-white orb of earth. The pinkish-red deserts of Mars. Gas giants and blazing comets.

  I passed through into the sanctum sanctorum. It was like a theatre, but small enough to be intimate with a vaulted arch ceiling. Rows of benches faced a stage. People were gathering and sitting down in the benches, so I decided to stay and took a seat on one of the benches. It had been a long time since Selene and I had been to Temple.

  I looked around. Timelines around the walls depicted our evolutionary progress, from simple amoeba on up through the tree of life to apes and proto-humans to humans. More holographic imagery depicted scenes from our prehistoric past.

  A statue of a woman stood in an alcove behind the stage, about twelve to fifteen feet high, wrapped in vines and leaves. Children and various creatures of the forest gathered around her feet, looking up at her expectantly. On her head was a crown of oak leaves, and in her right hand she held a globe of the earth with some stars. She solemnly stared back at me, as if ready to reprove me of my crimes against the earth. A few people knelt in front of the statue.

  Engraved on the wall next to the statue was the reminder:

  All of humanity comes from woman

  And woman from Nature