The Black Madonna

One of the things you notice when you're a blogger or a blog-watcher is the prevalance of atheists in our midst here in the blogosphere. Someone should do a study on it, because I've read far more professions of atheism from bloggers than I have from people I've met in Real Life. Ironically, most if not many of those I've read tend conservative, refuting the lie that the next presidential administration rests on the back of the Religious Right.

I personally don't find the conservative tendancy of atheist bloggers suprising. Atheists tend to be rooted in some scientific method, and in both domestic policy and the War on Terror, Democrats preach the very definition of insanity: keep doing what doesn't work in the hope the next time things will change, despite all evidence to the contrary. But I do wince whenever I hear my blogger friends profess their atheism, because I've always found evidence to the contrary quite convincing.

In today's Taste page at OpinionJournal.com, Andrew Klavan does an excellent job defending his renounciation of atheism and describing this evidence.

The presumption of atheism seems to me to be at the heart of all scientific reasoning about religion. And as I'm someone who loves and believes in science, it was a major stumbling block for me most of my life. After all, why would anyone believe without proof in that for which there is no evidence in the first place?

It was in my re-reading of the Romantic poets William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that I felt this stumbling block dissolve. What finally occurred to me--what tipped the scales in favor of baptism--was that the presumption of atheism proceeds without respect for the human experience of God's presence. Thinkers like Prof. Flew dismiss this experience because they make the mistake of applying the scientific method of analysis, of taking things apart, to an inner life that can only be known as a whole.

Of course, the human mind can be deceived. But there are some matters in which internal human experience can neither be usefully dissected nor practically gainsaid. One may refuse to accept that there is a meaningful concept of God as one may refuse to accept that there is a meaningful concept of beauty or love. But what is such a refusal in balance with the kiss of your soul mate, or the playing of a Bach cantata, or the overwhelming awareness of God's guidance and care?

As Klavan goes on to say, "The burden of proof is all on atheism." So it is that I'll spend tonight singing from the church loft, welcoming my Lord back to his Incarnation. And as the sound of my own voice echoes back at me, while I marvel at the gifts He has given me and which I don't deserve, I'll still be waiting for my atheist friends to offer their evidence to the contrary.