Agnosticism and Atheism:
Logical and Honest?
by George Hudgins, Denton, Texas
Real Agnosticism concerning the All-Sovereign God is logically impossible. To declare
even the possibility of His non-existence is to have already made an absolute assumption: that
you yourself are an ultimately independent, self-sustaining entity, capable of making authoritative deliberations and otherwise getting along quite will without such a God. Further, you presume to preserve your own ultimate independence because you deny both the dire necessity of
learning ultimate truth and even the possibility of doing so.
You have thereby placed yourself in a sovereign, God-like position, as having created
your own meaning and destiny and sustaining your own existence. This decisively denies any
place for the All-Sovereign God. You can’t have it both ways. Either you ultimately sustain
your own ability to think, as well as everything else you have to do with your universe, or He
does. Having decided, through your practical assumptions, that you do is having decided that He
doesn’t exist---not as the All-Sovereign God and “Ground of your being.”
The agnostic says he doesn’t know, and can’t know, if any such God exists, while his
assumptions show that he has definitely decided that He does not exist. Is this logical and
honest? No. Neutrality here is impossible.
Then what about the atheists, who flatly state that God doesn’t exist? It should be seen
that they also are assuming, for all practical purposes, what amounts to their own deity. For one
thing, atheists believe that all human, animal and plant life has occurred as a product of meaningless chance from a primordial slime, which itself was a product of meaningless chance. They
believe themselves to be, then, not the “offspring of God” (the Bible, Acts 17:28-29), but the
offspring of meaningless slime. (Even the possibility of God bringing forth a part of His creative
purposes through processes extending for millions or billions of years is ruled out by their
doctrine.) The conclusion cannot be escaped that their lives and destinies are as meaningless and
infinitely empty as that slime from which they say they are descended! Since, of course, they
cannot live with that ultimate insanity, they have stepped in to fill the void with their own selfassertion. They presume, as do agnostics, to have God-like options.
Using their self-appointed divine options, atheists may imagine themselves fulfilling
some grand meaning or purpose, such as the “common good,” as in various ideologies. Or, they
could as easily (and perhaps more honestly) merely see themselves as intelligent---or, at least,
cunning---animals who, before they die, may or may not be eaten by other animals, who in turn
may be eaten by others. In either case, they have no use for such a statement as this: “The
creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was
subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in
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hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the
glorious freedom of the children of God.”1
For another thing, atheists must finally be totally individualistic and isolated, because
they can neither bow down to others and their creations nor draw ultimate meaning or destiny
from them. The others also, according to the doctrine, are descended from meaningless slime.
What final ground is there for trusting anyone?
Ultimately, there is room for only one “God” in your universe. If it’s another slime
descendent, you’re dishonest. If it’s yourself, a confessed slime descendent, you’re dishonest.
Why? What’s wrong with believing in your own deity---that is, in having your own
ultimately self-sustaining, independent existence, creating your own meaning and destiny, and
trusting in your own thought processes as independently absolute? Only that it is an absolutely
dishonest handling of the observational evidence from your world and universe: 1) You did not
create it all, nor any significant part of it, nor even yourself. 2) You are not the ultimately
sustaining source or center of anything, not even of your own life. 3) Nothing else in all creation
has such God-like options either. To ignore this evidence is an ultimate dishonesty. Must it go
one to indicate the bent and fate of your soul?
The situation with each of us is this: I am here. I exist in some kind of way. I am
engaged in living in a certain place and context. The same is true of other living creatures. I also
have a will---or, I am a will. That also is true of other higher, intelligent, living creatures (chimpanzees, horses, dogs, etc.) I, however, am also obliged to confront spiritual issues, starting with
integrity---truth.
Confronting truth with integrity leads me to a profound dilemma: From my innermost
being I must have a---or, rather, the---true FOUNDATION for my life, will, thinking and understanding, just as I must have a ground or floor to walk on. I have concluded that I do not have it,
simply out of myself, to walk on thin air. Neither do I have, simply out of myself, the FOUNDATION for living, willing, relating to other people (and everything else), thinking and understanding, with truth and integrity---despite the swelling outcries of my ego to the contrary. Real
truth and integrity require that I continue to confront this dilemma until I discover its true
resolution.
I must press on through the barrage of voices: “You yourself are your own foundation.”
“You never will find such absolute or ultimate or certain truth, because it doesn’t exist. Everything is relative.” “The world is full of religions and philosophies that contradict each other.
How will you know which is right, if any?” “How do you know there is a real God or foundation? Can you prove it?” “You’ll go crazy taking this so seriously. Just go with the flow. If
it feels good, stay with it.” “Look, you have inherited your own particular culture, upbringing,
religion or philosophies. Just shut up and keep the rules.” But spiritual “roulette” is not truth
and integrity.
From my innermost being, I have two and only two alternatives: 1) Discover, stand
on and progressively and resolutely live on THE TRUE FOUNDATION, or 2) Stand and live on
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a LIE (while clothing myself with philosophical fig leaves, declaring that there is no such thing
as real truth, or right or wrong answers, etc., or some other such evasion).
Something over 1,950 years ago in Athens, Greece, the Apostle Paul put it this way:
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not
live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as though he needed
anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man
he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the
times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would
seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We
are his offspring.’ Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine
being is like gold or silver or stone---an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God
overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has
set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given
proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”2
One surely doesn’t have to be an official agnostic or atheist to harbor their assumptions without realizing it. The awful truth is that many of us “religious folk” (including many of
us “down home Christian” types), in practical terms, live by these same assumptions! Thus, in a
horrifying sense, many of us can often be found to be even less honest and logical than the professed atheist!!
For a great many of us, the cry from deep within the soul for real, ultimate meaning, truth
and destiny is drowned out by a subtle worship of our own creations, intellect, philosophies or
religious works or those of others that we admire. This situation is hugely strengthened by the
fact that most of us are secretly fearful of “losing face,” or losing our perceived sense of identity.
God, therefore, is often not found and presumed missing. But the basic impulse of
our touch of reality in relation to God is biased by our humility or our arrogance, our first love of
truth or our first love of ourselves, our glorification of what is created (such as ourselves) or our
glorification, with thanksgiving, of the Creator.3
The bold (or subtle and hypocritical) assumption of SELF as the ultimate point of
reference only expresses the power and pride of the GREAT LIE.4 None of our self-reliant
striving for final satisfaction will ever release its chains. Only God Himself can bring us into
His Truth and Joy. And it is mostly from the broken depths of our ultimate need that we are able
to perceive and receive His Redeeming Grace, Truth and Joy! At that point, our highest work is
to respond as little children---to believe and accept Him in the truth He reveals to us.
Has any ultimate truth been revealed? A great multitude testifies not only to the truth
of “natural revelation”5 but also to the truth proclaimed by the Bible and by many godly men and
women through the centuries: “…grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”6
3
NIV = Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, Copyright  1973, 1978,
1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
1
Romans 8:19-21 (NIV)
Acts 17:24-31 (NIV)
3
See Romans 1:21-25
4
See Genesis 3:4,5
5
See, for example, Romans 1:18-22; Psalm 19:1
6
St. John 1:17 (NIV)
2
4