Atheists in Foxholes
You Don't Get it, Do You?

by Lloyd Harrison Whitling

We atheists cannot be the intellectual elite we stake claim to, whatever advances for humanity we can point our fingers at with pride. While we may be erudite and deep, we fail to grasp the simplest facts about the world around us.

One of those facts is that ¹Xianists very seldom mean whatever their words say in their apologia, nor in their dogma. They talk in a kind of code that presents something entirely unrelated to their speech. In doing so, they provide decoys with which they assail the world around them. Their opponents will argue against the decoys, and never often suspect the mirth they generate within the Xianist’s being by doing so.

Xianists have made an art of such speech, and have gained power and prominence by the use of it. Their schools educate them with it. They capture new converts with it and add to their numbers. It is art because it makes its own sense seem like the real world, but it is only words painted into mind images that seem vivid and firm, that assemble into a landscape that seems to exist on its own, even though not much of it can be found any tangible where. Examples abound of such art, but we will settle for just one example in this essay.

The "no atheists in foxholes" pabulum has found fond expression by pagans and Muslims as well as Xianists, and has become so common as to be a point of concern to atheists, who love to gather data to prove otherwise and present it to our tormentors. Data means nothing, because it has no relevancy to the statement's real meaning. Seldom is the real meaning realized, and so never does that get set straight. A fact like that must delight the evilest Xianist to the point of delirium, and serves only to give him a sense of potency that drives him onward to adopt greater forms of condemnation and intolerance.

Learning to ferret out the real meaning so blatantly hidden in Xianist diatribes would enable atheists to portray unbelief as a step upward toward righteous thought, and avoid the appearance of foolish nerdalism we have displayed too many times in too many places.

I believe a truly intellectually elite person would have the smarts with which to see the sense in this, and to realize the truth of it so they can act accordingly. Those of us who cannot get beyond the negative sentiments presented here will respond with emotion-driven opinions that only serve to demonstrate the first half of my first sentence as correct.

Xianists do not care whether atheists have ever occupied foxholes, nor about the data and records that show their statement to be a lie. A Wall of Atheist Glory could be erected upon which the names of all the atheists who have lived through the hell of war or died while in a foxhole could be erected to no effect. It could stretch all the way from Annapolis to Washington, and still be meaningless to the Xianist argument. "It proves nothing," the Xianists will say.

Why?

If you have been digesting what I wrote above, you will now know that "no atheists in foxholes" is not about what it says at all. It is, instead, about whether or not atheists are as equally chickenshit in their minds and spirits as the Xianists. It is a claim that, in the midst of bombs, mortar rounds and flying shrapnel, we each would bend down and start praying to their god for mercy and protection, and escape. "Every atheist who died in a foxhole," they are claiming, "gave in to the same cowardly impulses that drive us to proclaim our own godly beliefs. At the moment of need, no one in any foxhole remained an atheist, but proved themselves to be the same kind of milksop wimps as are we."

Most of them know stories that illustrate that notion as anecdotal fact, and so remain convinced of its truth in spite of such stories being unfounded fairytales. The inclination of atheists to demand factual information gets thwarted, in this case, by the natural result of dead men telling no tales, while those who survived their stint at front-line fighting get looked at as liars when they tell their stories. "When worse became worst," the Xianists will proclaim, "you knelt down and prayed as loudly as anyone, only to deny God’s mercy when it was over."

Can you prove otherwise, if you could in fact tell such a tale? No, they are coming at you with the same demand to prove a negative they use when defending the existence of their god. "I was wondering where everybody went, whenever I poked my head up and started firing. I thought they had all been killed, and that I was left there all alone to carry on, and so I did. I wondered why, if their god is real, he had abandoned them. I was never so glad as when they finally got done with all their praying, and began taking the kinds of action needed to get us out of there."

How to deal with it:

With their slogans the Xianists show themselves to live with the fearful absence of courage of which they accuse us. Can we claim the high ground here?

Most likely not, however much data we can present in our own behalf. Per capita, atheists most likely have as many brave and as many cowards in our ranks as any other group. To deal with that (Have we not learned?) is to deal with the decoy, and not the real message. What is proclaimed is that we will bow down to something in which we do not believe, in which we have no faith, and which we regard as an emanation of insanity. Think of it in different circumstances, with the tables reversed, with a Satanist proclaiming, "There are no Xianists in foxholes."

As atheists, we know that is more likely to be the truth: When the bombs are falling, the mortar rounds are exploding, bullets and shrapnel are taking their toll, and the animal nature has taken over, there will be no Xianists in foxholes if they are of any account at all. They will be firing their weapons, killing or being killed, cursing aloud as they do, taking their toll on an enemy while insanity takes a back seat for a while.

In many cases, when attempting to figure out the Xianists' word games, think of them as occupying the place they want to put you in their accusations. In the above, you could inquire as to whether the speaker has ever actually been in a foxhole. He will more than likely claim that he has— or his father was— or, an uncle. Ask him, did he pray while he occupied that space? Did he not get better results from finally doing his job, rather than hiding his quavering head between his knees? Did he not learn, while there, the truth about the axiom of action being better than words? Did he not discover that when he finally joined his atheist comrades in their mission? Did he act with such inconsideration, once the mission was accomplished, as to give his god the credit and never once mention his comrades' efforts in his prayer of thanks?

Notes:              

1. Xianists [krist-yun-ists]: Those pushy, intolerant, vocally aggressive folk who work to force their Xian beliefs into positions of power at all costs, to browbeat all who disagree with them, and who make it apparent their religion supersedes all else in their minds, including honest truthfulness, its actual content, or their own wellbeing. Taken from the mythical name X (Cristos) during the Catholic recreation of previous religions and pagan beliefs around the time of Constantine.    [RETURN]

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"To deny a right to the experience of pleasure is immoral unless that denial can be justified by a valid presentation of how pain will result from that experience in an amount that would render the expected pleasure regrettable; or, if it can be shown that pain will be induced in others innocent of any involvement. The role of science in moral issues should be to test that, predict that, and find harmless ways to demonstrate that."

— L. H. Whitling in the eBook, Secular Morality —