When Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman died the week before last, everyone got reminded about how he was a big-time atheist.
 

In his 1988 autobiography The Magic Lantern, Bergman wrote, “You were born without purpose, you live without meaning, living is its own meaning. When you die, you are extinguished. From being you will be transformed to non-being. A god does not necessarily dwell among our capricious atoms.”

 
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I surprised some friends just the other day when I informed them that by my understanding Lance Armstrong is also an atheist. At least he’s listed as such on the website Celebatheists.com.

He’s quoted from a U. K. publication saying, “I think we all have obligations to be good, honest, hard-working, caring and compassionate. You have to try and it won't always be easy but you try your best. I do not believe that because you are not prepared to submit yourself to a god or a higher being, that when you get to the end of the road, you will be sent down. I'm not prepared to believe that."

In his 2000 book, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life, detailing his battle with testicular cancer, Armstrong writes, “Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough.

“At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, ‘But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.’ If so, I was going to reply, ‘You know what? You're right. Fine.’ ”

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According to the Apostle Paul, being an atheist is simply the natural product and natural projection of being alienated from God. He writes to the Colossians, “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled.”

Jordan explains, “That’s saying they’re not just separated from God but hating God extremely. An enemy. Lost people are not just passive about whether there’s a God or not. They have a determined attitude that He’s not there and He’s the enemy. Now how smart is that? If He’s not there, what are you worrying about?!

“See there’s that innate knowledge Romans 1 says God puts in every person of two things: One, you know His eternal power and godhead—every person knows there’s a God—and, two, you know you’re going to face Him in judgment. ‘After death the judgment.’ Everybody knows that. That’s a part of knowledge in a person. God put that in you when He created you.

“When God breathed into Adam the breath of life, and God’s breath became Adam’s breath, and created a soul in Him, there was a knowledge of where it came from innately, put within man.

“What men do is they rebel against that knowledge. They don’t want that knowledge and so they try to cover it up—professing themselves to be wise they become fools, and they get all these excuses and all these things. Proverbs 18 says they ‘intermeddle with knowledge and seek wisdom’ Not to try to prove there is a God but to get rid of Him, because they want the alienation and they’re enemies. They’re determined foes.

“When Paul says, ‘Enemies in your mind,’ that’s an interesting thing to me. The hostility is inside. The inward intent, the purpose, the understanding, the affection. Actively using their mind against God. You know, a passage like the one in Hebrews 4, says it: ‘For the word of God is quick, and powerful . . . and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.’

“The passage goes on to say ‘all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.’

“When you go out and try to talk to people out in world. . . I don’t need to take a poll, do a Census, see what it is you’re interested in. I think one of the silliest things you’ll see is these (lists) they do about marriage. They say there are six things men are interested in and six things women are interested in.

“You know, in married life the Apostle Paul says there’s one thing a husband wants and needs, not six or eight. I don’t care what the polls say and you know the polls don’t even have (the Bible’s) things in their Top 5.

“People focus everywhere but where the truth is. ‘Enemies in your mind,’ using your thinking process against God. And there’s hostility down in the heart.

“Paul says in Romans 1 that the Gentiles ‘did not like to retain God in their knowledge’ so He ‘gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient.’

“That’s saying that the hostile purposes of their heart found natural expression in evil deeds. A useless, valueless reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient.

“The passage goes on to say, ‘Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
[30] Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
[31] Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
[32] Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.’

“Whoah! Sounds like the world, doesn’t it?! Sounds like the newspaper this morning. Paul writes, ‘Who knowing the judgment of God.’ Don’t you know the judgment of God in your mind and in your thinking?!

“He goes on, ‘Not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.’ That’s the depths of sin. It’s, ‘Not only do I know and thumb my nose in the face of God, and I know that those that do those (evil) things are worthy of death, but I take in pleasure, not just in the things, but in other people doing them with me.’ ”