This thought has reoccurred to me a number of times. It is kind of simple and definitely in need of refinement. It is essentially related to the problem of evil. When you ask nonbelievers why they don’t believe in God, especially those who once did, you frequently get an interesting response. “If there is a God look at all the pain he’s caused, all the evil he allows. How could anyone believe in him?” They blame the God who doesn’t exist for the problems in the world. But there is a disconnect. Without God being responsible for evil we are left with two possible conclusions as to evil’s existence. There is no evil, or evil is humanity’s fault.
In the first category you have Nietzsche and Richard Rorty. Evil is merely a definition that varies according to person or the powerful. This is, so far as I can tell, the most logical outcome of true atheistic ethics. However, if you don’t subscribe to that outcome of atheism you are left drawing the same conclusion as the Christian. We’re responsible.
This is where exitential guilt comes in. Every time I lie, every time I take an action that in some way injures someone else, it is my responsibility. I can blame no one else. This guilt seems to be little felt in the West, where the consequences for something as simple as buying a cup of coffee or pair of sneakers are so far removed from us we don’t see them. But we’re contributing to the mess of the third world by our mere existence. Forget pollution, try and imagine everyone on earth producing as much physical trash as we do, there isn’t the landfill space for it.
Christianity, and Judaism before it, had and has a word for this problem: sin. We are responsible for the problems of the world, merely by existing. The atheist doesn’t agree with us on the terminology. But if they believe that evil exists in the world then we are on the same page.
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