Berdyaev on the Moral Source of Atheism
The cause of theism is not well-served by the caricaturing of atheists as all of the same stripe.
There are respectable forms of atheism. The atheist needn't be a rebellious punk stuck in intellectual adolescence, swamped by sensuality, and given to self-idolatry.
Nicholas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man (Harper Torchbooks, 1960, tr. Natalie Duddington, p. 24):
It is precisely the traditional theology that leads good men, inspired by moral motives, to atheism. The ordinary theological conception of freedom in no way saves the Creator from the responsibility for pain and evil. Freedom itself is created by God and penetrable by Him down to its very depths. In His omniscience, ascribed to Him by positive theology, God foresaw from all eternity the fatal consequences of freedom with which He endowed man. He foresaw the evil and suffering of the world which has been called into being by His will and is wholly in His power; He foresaw everything, down to the perdition and everlasting torments of many. And yet He consented to create man and the world under those terrible conditions. This is the profound moral source of atheism.
I read Berdyaev's The Beginning and the End in the summer of 1970. The following autumn I committed myself to philosophy as my vocation. The Russian personalist moved me deeply at the time, but then other philosophical interests and concerns took over. It is wonderful to be reading him again some 50 years later. If this existentialist is a bit on the febrile side, he at least avoids the empty intellectual gamesmanship of the analytic logic choppers whose philosophical activity bespeaks their spiritual vacuity. The task of the true philosopher is to combine rigor and Wissenschaftlichkeit with spiritual depth. Plato and Spinoza come to mind. We lesser lights are not quite up to the task, but we ought to take such luminaries as guides and tutelary spirits.
Addendum
Some of us are old enough to remember seeing Bishop Fulton J. Sheen on television. His message below is effectively answered by Berdyaev above. The cause of theism is not well-served by the caricaturing of atheists as all of the same stripe. There are saints and scamps on both sides of the theological divide.
