continue to be alive rather than dead; we walk and talk and breathe; we work and rest; we rejoice and despair: but only for as long as God sustains us in existence. We cannot render ourselves immortal. Consequently, the very fact that the atheist has been born into this universe as a creature with rational capacities to observe, listen, read, and contemplate necessarily presupposes God. Moreover, each and every time the atheist utilizes these same capacities to publicly profess God’s non-existence, this ironically presupposes God as well. The atheist cannot help but rely upon God’s gifts (of essence and existence) as the means with which to claim that God does not exist. By so doing, he or she engages in what philosophers call a “performative self-contradiction.” Or what an etiquette maven would characterize as an appalling lack of gratitude, exemplifying bad manners indeed. Thus, from a theological perspective, no one—not even an atheist—can accomplish any good whatsoever without God. This is an unavoidable, inescapable facet of creaturely existence in the universe, wherever creatures happen to exist. The Catholic Christian theological perspective possesses a second significant intellectual benefit as well. It can coherently account for the natural goodness observed by the contemporary atheist philosophers, yet without the naïve optimism regarding human nature that leaves their moral systems “vulnerable to de-legitimation and [possible] breakdown.” 8 Or, to use Smith’s framing of the problem, Catholicism can successfully explain “why rational persons in an atheistic universe [might] uphold the moral norms of a culture’s social contract most of the time,” yet also “on carefully chosen occasions, strategically choose instead to break the moral norms when that has a large payoff and when there is extremely little chance of being caught.” 9 Catholic moral theology accomplishes this balance by means of its conception of the human person within the drama of salvation. I will expound upon this point only briefly: Human beings are fallen but not entirely, so they are capable of performing some good acts, some of the time. But without the supplementary assistance of grace, they are incapable of performing thoroughly good acts—acts that are both externally good, and internally motivated by love—on a regular basis. Furthermore, because grace is not a coercive power but a free gift that can be accepted or rejected, even Christian believers can fall away from practicing the fullness of life demanded by Christ in whom that they profess to believe: which is why Catholics make recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. While many believers actively endeavor to cooperate with grace throughout their lives, and eventually become saints who heroically model the Christian life to others, we also find within the world a full range of characters: including both moderately-good atheists (atheists who visibly perform many morally-good acts) and emphatically-not-good believers (believers who visibly perform morally bad acts, including some that are downright malevolent). In contrast to the naïve optimism embraced by many contemporary atheists, Catholicism can account for both goodness and badness in human nature simultaneously. The third fundamental advantage of the Catholic Christian theistic account lies in its potential ability to improve society by diminishing the number of free-riding “sensible knaves,” as Smith characterizes them, by re-forming their consciences. As Smith asserts, “certain kinds of theisms…provide rationally good reasons for constraining knavery,” most notably: (1) that trust in God’s love and providential care for us can overcome the temptation to do evil for our own advantage, and (2) that God is all-knowing and will judge and punish eternally those who choose evil rather than good. 10 To these two reasons mentioned by Smith, I would add one more: Knavery is intrinsically distasteful to well-formed, virtuous Christians.
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