After all these years it shouldn't surprise me--but it still does.  I'm honestly still a little perplexed by the image Theists sometimes have of Atheists as mentally-anquished individuals. Often I've been asked, "How could you live without believing there was a God? What was your purpose? What got you up each morning...?" 

So, it's been on my mind to try to convey the type of mental peace that Atheism as a belief system can create for socially-concerned question-askers. These musings are excerpted directly from chapter 43 of my book, Finding an Unseen God.

(Dear Publisher, hope that's okay...)

"Personally, Atheism was somewhat of a balm for my fiercely realistic soul. Choosing to believe that there is no God actually resolves a host of spiritually problematic issues. It releases weight from the mind like a hot air balloon dropping sandbags or a ship in a storm dumping cargo overboard. In some ways Atheism makes one feel more buoyant, even liberated, at least temporarily.

If there is no God, then we do not have to question him, her, or them about why the innocent are condemned and the guilty freed--it is simply human error. If there is no God, then we do not have to struggle with why the young mother of three dies and the old molester of hundreds lives to see and abuse his grandchildren--it is simply human sickness striking the weak in different forms. If there is no God, then we do not have to be dismayed that God saw but did nothing tangible to stop genocide--it is simply human greed manifesting itself in unspeakable oppression.

This is not to say that Atheists take the easy way out. I have never met a slacker Atheist...The honest Atheist inherits a host of troubling questions and issues with only ever-elusive, universally-disagreed-upon concepts like greater good, collective consciousness, equality, and group morality as their guide.

The human condition is still overwhelming, but the worldview of Atheists can free them from the additional--and often crushing--weight of spiritual disillusionment. If there is no God, then we do not have to suffer mental paralysis contemplating God's actions or non-actions. We are absolved of Theistic spiritual disappointment.

However, my personal experience no longer affords me this luxury. Without a doubt, I now believe that God is. That knowledge leaves me in the uncomfortable position of having to experience spiritual disappointment, of having to struggle with how God could permit the innocent to be falsely accused and the helpless to be shamelessly abused.

In many ways it would be a relief to once again to chalk these atrocities up to the human condition alone; to return to a worldview that would deliver me from wondering where God was and what prayer does. But for me, and other sincere people of faith, the tension remains.

Over the years, though, I have experienced a glorious discovery: There is treasure in the tension. The struggle is a doorway. Sincerity in the quest ushers us mysteriously across the threshold, and on the other side is--not answers--but knowing.

On the other side is intimacy."