Beyond Believers and Unbelievers

In Reflections on the Existence of God, Richard E. Simmons insists on a binary vision of reality: you either believe in God through the Judeo-Christian tradition, or you reject God altogether, joining the ranks of atheists in the mold of Freud or the New Atheists. A committed Christian, Simmons even agrees with atheist Sam Harris that “atheism and Christianity compete on the same playing field.” In this framing, the contest is nothing less than a duel for human souls, with consequences both temporal and eternal. As Simmons puts it: “The question of God’s existence, in my opinion, is the most significant issue in all of life.”

Drawing on Armand Nicholi’s The Question of God, which stages a philosophical match between C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, Simmons argues that if Lewis is wrong, then Freud must be right: the universe is empty, silent, and loveless. In that case, we are forced to embrace this “harsh reality,” stripping away “false hopes and unrealistic expectations.”

But Simmons’ stark either/or feels more like caricature than clarity. Not all who reject Christianity are Freud’s disciples. Many non-Christian seekers believe in benevolent spiritual forces larger than themselves. Phil Stutz in The Tools and Steven Pressfield in The War of Art both describe transcendent realities—love, creativity, solace—that hardly resemble Freud’s existential bleakness.

Even within Christianity, belief is hardly monolithic. The theology of a Calvinist and that of a Universalist are galaxies apart. To affirm substitutionary atonement is to worship a very different God than the believer who rejects it. The label “believer” is too blunt to capture these divergences. Hyam Maccoby, the Jewish scholar who wrote The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, is a believer in God, yet he spends his book dismantling Paul, another believer. Sometimes believers are harsher with each other than with atheists.

Framing the world as a cosmic battlefield of believers versus unbelievers oversimplifies both camps. Reality is more complex, and spiritual life cannot be reduced to an either/or ultimatum.