Do Skeptics Subconsciously feel Pursued?

Let us look at why skeptics apparently find the thought of an almighty God so unsettling. For example, check out how Dr. Alexander Rosenberg answers these fifteen life-related questions:

         Is there a God? “No.”

        What is the nature of reality? “What physics says it is.”

        What is the purpose of the universe? “There is none.”

         What is the meaning of life? “Ditto.”

        Why am I here? “Just dumb luck.”

         Does prayer work? “Of course not.”

         Is there a soul? Is it immortal? “Are you kidding?”

         Is there free will? “Not a chance!”

         What happens when we die? “Everything pretty much goes on as before, except us.”

         What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? “There is no moral difference between them.”

        Why should I be moral? “Because it makes you feel better than being immoral.”

          Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? “Anything goes.”

         What is love and how can I find it? “Love is the solution to a strategic interaction problem. Don’t look for it; it will find you when you need it.”

          Does history have any meaning or purpose?  “It’s full of sound and fury but signifies nothing.”

         Does the human past have any lessons for our future? “Fewer and fewer, if it ever had any to begin with.”

Do you feel the contempt? What do you think a professional judge would think if he asked these questions in court and got these responses? Do the answers sound like he carefully thought them through and drew a conclusion based on sound evidence, or do they seem more like the wishful thinking of a self-absorbed individual?

Rosenberg goes on to say:

“If this summary sounds depressing, scientism has good news. There is an ever-increasing pharmacopoeia of drugs, medicines, treatments, prosthetic devices, and regimes that will avoid, minimize, or reduce these unwanted conditions. Take them. And if you feel guilty for seeking surcease from the thousand natural shocks that flesh and especially gray matter are subject to, well there’s probably a drug that reduces such guilt feelings, too…. What we know about physical and biological science makes the existence of God less probable than the existence of Santa Claus…. the parts of science that rule out theism are firmly fixed.”

Does he not sound irritated at the fact that some people believe in God? If it is not irritating that some people believe in Santa Claus, why would it be irritating that some people believe in God? For myself, I get worked up like that when I am trying to avoid something that I know may well be true.

Could the underlying reason why skeptics put so much effort into disproving God’s existence, when they couldn’t care less about people believing in Santa Claus, be that God is actively pursuing them?

Malcolm Muggeridge, a socialist and philosophical author, wrote, “I had a notion that somehow, besides questing, I was being pursued.”

C. S. Lewis stated, “Whenever my mind lifted, even for a second, from my work; I felt the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.”

The majestic poem, Hound of Heaven, by Francis Thompson, shares a similar account:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him; down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes, I sped and shot precipitated,
Adown titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase, and unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
“All things betray thee who betrayest me.” ….

Now of that long pursuit
Comes at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
“And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing,
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught” (He said),
“And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited—
Of all man’s clotted clay, the dingiest clot?
Alack! Thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee, I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come.”

Halts by me that Footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
“Ah, Fondest, Blindest, Weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.”
—Francis Thompson