You are, I’m sure, familiar with the expression “there are no atheists in foxholes”, but it’s a statement dripping with irony, because while the implication is that deep down everybody is really a believer, the actual meaning is that in moments of terror people will say or do ANYTHING to save themselves, regardless of how it fits with their normal worldview. In other words, what it really demonstrates is the hypocrisy of espousing a religious viewpoint in a moment of mortal weakness, not the “underlying inevitability” of religious belief. You know, sort of how like torture will make people say anything to make it stop…a sort of Spanish Inquisition, if you will. (insert obligatory Monty Python clip here)
To wit, the story of this New Hampshire fellow, a World War II veteran named (amusingly enough) Milton Christian, who was recently awarded the Bronze Star for his military service — an award that was held up for decades due to red tape. His heroism earned him a chest-full of other military decorations, too, but as he reminisced about the horror of being in combat, he explained that it was the very experience of being trapped in a foxhole that made him come to the conclusion that there is no god:
“Some things you forget; other things stay with you and you replay them over and over again in your mind, like it was yesterday,” he said, closing his eyes.
“The very first time I heard artillery fire, I’ll never forget the sound, the whistling that filled the air. You dive in a hole, smoke rising all around you. There were six or seven of us together that day, and as soon as it’s over, you look around to make sure everyone is still alive. That time, we all made it,” Christian said. “That is your baptism.”
“They say there are no atheists in foxholes. But as we sat in those holes, praying that God would save us, I thought about the fact that the other side was doing the same thing. And then I wondered if God is just playing some kind of game with us. Pretty much I decided at that point there was no God,” Christian said.
“For the rest of my life, I’ve tried to do the right thing. I raised a beautiful bunch of kids — and they truly are my greatest accomplishment. So I’m not worried about what’s next. If there is a God, I think he’ll know that I just did the best I could. That’s all a man can do.”
I am reminded of another aphorism, too:
