Who’s more of an atheist?

Against all false gods

The more absolute the atheism, the more does it approach likeness or even identity to absolute theism. The atheist who merely disbelieves in a particular God — say, the Christian God — but still believes in the right of each person to choose what is most valuable in his life (the “meaning” of his life), is really hardly an atheist at all. Though he denies one God, he affirms all gods and all religions and the religious liberties of peoples. Each may choose what he believes. A kind of relativistic liberalism attempts to be universally affirmative of all religions while pretending to be atheistic in itself. Compared to such an atheism, I can only say that I am even more an atheist. I do not affirm the rights of all peoples to choose their own gods or determine the meanings of their own lives. I deny all such gods, all such meanings, all such religious liberties. Therefore, I am even more of an atheist than that atheist, for I disbelieve in all the gods among whom one may freely pick and choose. And if the “Christian God” were merely one among those gods, I disbelieve in him too: such a god is merely an chimera, a projection. I am an “absolute atheist.”

Of course, I call myself an absolute atheist only to protect and preserve the absolutism of my theism. The God in whom I believe is not a god whom one has any right to choose or deny, one among many options from which one may freely pick. On the contrary, he is a God who absolutely upsets, overturns, and evades all my choice in the matter of who he is. The moment I attempt to attach any name to him or pin any identity upon him, he disappears. Conversely, everything identifiable that I could ever pick to be my God will always fail me and disappoint me. To worship the true God, one must renounce this dizzying and interminable game of jumping from one god to the next; one must renounce choice, renounce will, and sink into deep non-willing (i.e. detachment). This absolute renunciation, this act of perfect detachment, is the same as that by which I rejected all the gods who are allowed and affirmed by the average atheist, making me more atheist than they. The very same act serves to guard the theist against idolatry, keeping his theism pure and absolute.