Death and Foxholes and Atheists, Oh My!

By David Gleeson

August 21, 2006

“There are no atheists in foxholes.”

For the first 35 of my 40 years of life, I had never once heard this saying. I must have been living on Mars. Now I can't seem to go a week without hearing some arrogant talk-show host or holier-than-thou preacher glibly using it in an attempt to ridicule and demean rational thinkers. I must admit that when I first heard it, I was perplexed. I guess I don’t have an ear for fundamentalist double-speak. I later learned that it’s basically a cute way of saying, “You may not believe in God today, but someday you will. Oh, and (wink, wink) by then it will be too late.” Apart from the implicit threat of Hell and eternal damnation that’s present in many of these fundamentalist credos, this one contains a strange and obvious admission of one of theism’s most glaring sources of embarrassment: the direct correlation between faith and fear, between the promise of a comforting afterlife and the harsh reality of this life, between belief in God and ignorance of the natural world.

Here is a perfectly acceptable translation of this ridiculous little homily: “You can’t be an atheist forever. One day, at a moment of extreme personal anguish or loss of self-control, when you are stressed or scared, cowering in fear of the unknown or of impending death, then you will turn to God. You will seek out His comfort, you will use Him as a crutch to get you through. His loving mercy will be like a warm blanket wrapped around your shivering body.” Well, well … humans seek comfort in stressful situations. There’s a shocker. Atheists, I think, have a better-than-average understanding of this type of human fallibility. It is, in fact, one of the primary reasons we reject human inventions, particularly those that seek to assuage the fear of death or the unknown. It is therefore quite perplexing to me when one of the primary arguments against the existence of God is turned around and used, unwittingly, by a devout theist in an attempt to ridicule atheism. But this is exactly what these poor misguided fools are doing. It’s as clear as if they’d rented a loud speaker and pulpit and plopped down in the middle of Central Park shouting, “Religion is for the stressed and weak-minded! God is real only to those who are cowering in fear!” Somehow, I doubt this is the message they want to be sending, and yet they send it over and over and over again.

So the popularity of this little saying among the devoutly religious strikes me as a bit curious. And let's be honest: even if all atheists renounced their atheism upon their deathbeds or at the deathbeds of loved ones (ludicrous, of course, but let’s go with the flow for a moment), what does that prove other than the obvious point that these people were human? Faced with unimaginable anguish or adversity, a human being sought comfort in a fairy tale. Understandable? Of course. Healthy? Perhaps. Proof of God’s existence? Um, no. As a matter of fact, it goes a long way to proving exactly the opposite: God exists only in the minds of frightened and fallible human beings. So whenever anyone, with an air of glib superiority, makes absurd generalizations about the unwillingness of free-thinkers to take up residence in man-made dirt ditches, I politely tell them, first, that they are just plain wrong; and second, even if they believe they are right, the analogy is so thoroughly counterproductive to their cause that it might behoove them to pick a better one. I’m pretty sure the devoutly religious have better things to do than lay bare, for all the world to see, one of the most convincing arguments for atheism.

[I’ve heard the expression about atheists and foxholes more than once and this article is the best rebuttal to it I’ve seen so far. As it points out, Christians seem to be saying that even rational people will turn to God – when they are in fear of their very lives! In other words that faith – or at least conversion to the faith - is based on naked fear. What a great basis for a religion. I have even heard it said that some people need to be humbled before they come to God – in other words something really bad needs to happen to you before you give up your convictions and turn in hope to something you previously thought to be a fantasy. Is this really what Christians want to get across to us unbelieving lot? Do they honestly think that arguments like this cut any ice with us – I mean any ice at all? Fear is the mind-killer and it seems that the religious amongst us want to encourage just that attribute in other to fill their congregations. It speaks volumes.]