Demoralization and the "Cosmic Authority Problem"

Thomas Nagel, an American philosopher, once wrote a candid admission about both the nature and the source of his atheism: “It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God. It is that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God, I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition.” He’s right about the “cosmic authority problem”—it’s not a rare condition. Nor is it a new condition. Since the very beginning (see Gen. 3:17), we humans have tended to rebel against the very idea of any “cosmic authority” to which (or, better said, to whom) we might be answerable for the choices we make in our lives. We don’t tend to like someone telling us what we should or shouldn’t do. We want to be our own ultimate authority; we want to be our own god, rather than admitting that there is a God to whom we are all accountable (see Rom. 14:10–12).

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