Luther Blackmon
Berea, Ohio
Not having the moral strength to meet the demands of his Creator, an atheist tries to convince himself that there is no such Creator. This is like breaking the barometer to avoid the storm or shooting the diagnostician to cure the disease. Some have become atheists because they want to wave the flag of the intelligentsia (having been informed that most of the intelligentsia are in the camp of atheism) whether they qualify or not. So they read a few books on how man developed from the tiny, one-cell or two-cell amoeba up to the Edisons and Einsteins and decide that the theory of evolution must be true. It doesnt seem to bother them at all that this select group can offer no reasonable or sensible explanation as to how the one cell thing came to be, or, how it came to have life. Life comes from antecedent life. However, such trivial questions as the (a) origin of matter (b) origin of life (c) order in the universe (d) laws of nature (the atheist talks about the laws of nature, but denies that there was an intelligent law-maker) do not seem to bother him. All these obstacles the atheist brushes aside or ignores. He evidently thinks that if he will hold his head high enough, and try to look as smart as he thinks he is, and talk loud enough about the gullibility and credulity of these simple-minded Bible dreamers, that people will not notice the impotency, absurdity and inconsistencies of his theory.
Fruits of Atheism
What does one have to believe to be an atheist? Nothing. His system is built on disbelief. What does one have to be, to be an atheist? Nothing. One can be the lowest down moral leper in all society, a thief or murderer, and it will not affect his standing as an atheist. I am not saying that all atheists are evil in these respects. I am simply saying that atheism has no moral standing. One does not have to believe anything, be anything or do anything to be an atheist. His platform is negation.
I wrote an article that was printed in one of the Houston, Texas papers several years ago, in which I said that no one college or hospital or eleemosynary institution in existence, was built by atheism. There was an answer in the paper by an irate atheist, informing me that Stephen Girard College in Philadelphia was built by an atheist. That is some record. But I still say that even that one was not built by atheism. An atheist built it, but the spirit that motivated him in building it was not the spirit of atheism. Let someone name one single thing that is peculiar to atheism, which makes any community a better place to live. Let him name one thing, peculiar to atheism, which makes life in this world more pleasant. Let him name the time when a broken heart was healed, or a broken home salvaged, or hope brought to the hearts of despairing men and women by the theories of atheism. I am sure that atheists do have feelings of charity and kindness towards their fellow-men, but these feelings were not generated by anything they learned or received from atheism. These feelings are but expressions of the nature placed in man by the God whom atheism denies. He has these feelings in spite of his atheism and not because of it. If a man wants to believe that he is no better than the fly that he swats and sweeps into the trash-can, this is a free country. And he was created with the inalienable right to deny the God who made him, if he wants to do so. But when he looks with contempt upon those who believe in the God he denies, I claim my right to remind him that every right he enjoys in this free land, or anywhere else in the world, was made possible by the people who believe in God.
