by Nathan Smith

Would you rather your leader be an atheist who acted as if god existed, or a believer who acted as if god didn’t exist? The way I see it, they are the same thing.

You might think this is sophistry, since a believer, by definition, always acts as if god exists, and since an atheist, by definition, does not believe any god exists, how could he act as if one did? But in my experience, consistency of action with belief is not as we like to think.

To have perfect consistency between action and belief would require a human to overrule their natural instincts on a second-by-second basis and never be distracted by peer pressure, chemical reactions in their brain or laziness. Thankfully, people who can do this are so rare that they might as well not exist. Some people have gotten close, but everyone pulls back from the edge of true belief.

Last week, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to honestly engage with the consequences of ideas, to discuss the problem of consistency of belief with action.

“History proves that, unfortunately and unhappily, Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good,” Netanyahu said.

There’s a lot going on in those two sentences. Believers and atheists alike reacted rather negatively to those words, calling Netanyahu immoral and dangerously close to advocating for “might makes right.” They said this was conjuring up memories of The Worst Tyrants In History^TM, and civilised folk don’t say things like that. There are rules. There are ethics. There are constraints. You can’t just do whatever you want!

But we should thank Netanyahu because he revealed one of the secret truths of the universe.

I don’t know what’s in Netanyahu’s mind. Some say he is an atheist, others say he believes in a god. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is the story he tells himself about why he can or can’t do whatever he wants. Everyone picks a story. Let’s assume that Netanyahu picked Judaism as his story.

Brevity requires me to be somewhat cartoonish here, but the word “Israel” means “we who wrestle with god.” In Judaism, god created a set of laws for humans to follow. But since god is not around to enforce those laws, and those laws aren’t perfectly clear, Jews “wrestle” with these laws to find loopholes for action. For example, Jews are not allowed to perform labour on the Sabbath. That’s god’s law. But look at all the ingenious loopholes they have invented to avoid following god’s law against working on the Sabbath. It’s hilarious stuff. But at least they’re trying to be consistent.

In fact, the entire reason Israel exists is because of the Balfour Declaration. This British mandate was the result of decades of lobbying by wealthy and influential Jews in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, hoping to find a way for diaspora Jews to return to their “Holy Land.” Ever since the Jews were kicked out by the Romans, the Jews have been trying to get back. Why? Because that’s what their bible prophesised would happen. But since god wasn’t around to enact this prophecy, they had to do it themselves. So, they did. This is consistency of action with belief.

Just because a belief is crazy does not mean it is ineffective. Say what you want about Israel, but its beliefs mean it can get things done. Israel gives the nod to things like international law and norms, but if they are to be consistent with their beliefs as Jews, then the only thing worth worrying about is god’s law. Consider that Jews believe there are real steps they can take to trigger the emergence of their Messiah, and that this Messiah will cause all nations to bow to Israel. With this belief, surely any amount of pain today would be insignificant compared to god’s victory for all time.

One of those steps involves building the Third Temple. The problem is that the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest buildings, already sits on the designated site. Some Jews say they want to be consistent and destroy this mosque to trigger the Messiah. But most Netanyahu isn’t comfortable with the consequences of doing that. By refusing to do what god says, he is being consistent, just not with Judaism. Instead of following god’s law, he chooses other stories to follow, like “morality” or the concern about what would happen if he demolished Al-Aqsa. Netanyahu might say he believes in god, but he is acting as if god did not exist because he fears what such consistency would mean.

Would it be better if Netanyahu were an atheist, or would the results be the same?

To an atheist, all humans are born into this universe for no reason whatsoever. As each person grows up, they are introduced to many stories created to answer the malformed question: why are we here? Over millions of years, these stories have evolved along both axes, becoming simultaneously wider and deeper. It is easy to believe these stories and assume you know why you were born. But no one knows. And it is not even clear if there is a discoverable truth about why life exists in the first place.

All each human knows is that he is made of the same stuff as the decaying leaf litter on the forest floor. That leaf litter will be eaten by worms, which will be consumed by pigs, which will, eventually, end up on the human’s plate as food. This food will be absorbed as nutrients, turning what was once leaf litter and worms into muscles and hair follicles. At some point, these nutrients fall away again, back into the leaf litter to start over. Every object in the vast universe is made up of the same recycled stuff called atoms.

The bits of what were once you, and bits of what will eventually be you, are floating across this earth governed by physical forces beyond control. There is no you, and no me. Some people don’t like this, so they invented a story about the “soul,” which is what makes you, you, and me, me. This soul continues to exist no matter how many bits of you are replaced with new bits, like the ship of Theseus. Yet the soul is just another story to make us feel okay about being alive. There is no soul between the atoms.

It’s all atoms bumping into atoms. Forever. And no one knows why. No one even knows if it is possible for those atoms to know why they are bumping into each other. A human wakes up every day as a bunch of atoms, with no understanding why they woke up, what waking up means, whether they will wake up again or what it is, exactly, that is doing the “waking up.” From the atheist’s perspective, this is true for everyone. No matter what a person says they believe about god or purpose, those are all just stories invented so we can feel more comfortable with the horror of waking up each day.

And you might think this comprehension would be depressing. After all, without meaning, what’s the point of living? But if it is true that you are a bunch of atoms bumping into other atoms, then you are perfectly free in the deepest, cosmic sense.

No one is watching. No one is keeping any records. No one is judging you. The universe is both empty and full at the same time. Full of atoms, but empty of accountability. No one knows why life exists or what it is doing here. All each of us can possibly know is that a bunch of atoms called “you” appears to exist. This “you” wakes up each day, perfectly free to do whatever “you” want. To quote Netanyahu, “if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough,” nothing can stop you from doing whatever you want, aside from physics. God does not exist. You are free.

But here is the secret truth of the universe that every honest atheist knows: You are free to do whatever you want, but you don’t because you are a coward. You are free, but freedom is terrifying. It is so terrifying that humans have created these things called “morals” so they can pretend they are being good by not doing whatever they want, when the truth is that we are just afraid. Don’t worry, everyone does this.

Netanyahu correctly pointed out that a consistent atheist, who could somehow overcome their fear, would be like Genghis Khan, a man with no fear acting in a world without god. Such a man would have no need for the excuse of morality because he knows that nothing can judge him. Nothing exists except physics. A truly consistent, honest, fearless atheist would shock even Friedrich Nietzsche. Thankfully, such a man does not exist, has never existed, and I suspect will never exist.

Netanyahu may not believe in god, I don’t know his mind. But what I do know is that no human possesses the kind of power necessary to fully and finally overcome the specific fear that they are being watched, somehow. Or is that just another story we tell ourselves as an excuse not to be consistent with our beliefs?

Thank god our leaders are all frightened liars.

Originally published on The Good Oil.