Great Construction
ON ATHEISM
Generally, they regard it as a matter of course that in writing about atheism, the argument is developed from a religious perspective, but I will try to write on this topic, putting myself in an atheist position, without any mention of religion at all. To begin with: a human baby no sooner is born with a cry than a blessing of liquid, milk, flows on and on, happily from the body of its birth mother, well enough for the baby to grow. Thanks to the mother's milk, the child keeps growing well, and around the time of teething, the parents will bring food for the infant to chew and eat. In this way, the child grows up gradually and finally becomes an adult human being, which goes without saying, but I mention, especially as to food, important above all, each food has its own taste and the tongue has taste nerves, so that humans can get enough calories just by eating their food with pleasure. But, no matter what people say, the greatest pleasure for humans will be the eating. Thus, the human body grows gradually and the brain develops through school education or the like, and eventually he or she grows up to be able to work as an adult human. Once the human being has come to this stage, various kinds of desires rise up from the inside. They are desires for superior knowledge, a sense of superiority, victory in competition, and the desire to be more progressive than others, and at the same time, desires for hedonistic pleasure, including love, spring up from physical aspects of desire. Thus, reason and emotion mingle with each other, joys and sorrows come in turns, which qualify him or her as a higher creature, and then this creature makes its way through the world. So far, I have written roughly about what process a human being follows from birth to coming of age, and then, let me look at Nature.
Between heaven and earth, we find, needless to say, the sun, the moon, and the stars, and not only both visible and invisible natural phenomena such as heat and cold in climate, rain and wind, etc., but also animals, plants, minerals, etc. which connect closely with the human lives, and they are all generated and grown by virtue of Nature. This is how the world is as it is, and if you see all of these with a clean slate in a coolly-detached manner, you will be struck by a feeling of wonder and have no words to express them unless you are an insensitive person. Indeed, anything and everything comes down to a phrase "unfathomable and miraculous." If so, nobody could help asking these questions: By whom was this wondrous world created at all? Why and for what purpose? And when you look up at the sky, everlasting and infinite, you have no idea how large it is or how far it extends. What is the center of the earth like? What is the maximum temperature of the sun? How cold is the moon? How many stars are there? What is the weight of the earth? What is the total amount of seawater, etcetera? The list goes on and on. The more we think of it, the more mystic, miraculous and indescribable we find it to be. Besides, the very systematic movements of the heavenly bodies, the distinction between days and nights, the changes of the seasons, a numeral 365 in 365days a year, evolution of all things and unlimited advancement of civilization, etc.; of course these are all the objects of wonder as well as of question, but this is not the end of the story. When did this whole world come into being? Till when will it continue to exist? Is it eternal and infinite or not? What is the limit of the increase of the world population? How is the future of the earth? And so on and so forth: anything and everything is mystery and we have absolutely no idea.
So, everything is constantly, and silently, changing on the regular basis without even one millimeter difference or a moment's delay. But now, leaving aside such aspects for a moment, we have the other aspects of questions. "What was I born for and what must I do at all?" "How long can I live? Will I be totally non-existent when I am dead? Or, will I go to the unknown world which is called spiritual world and live there in peace?" Concerning these questions as well, the more we think about, the less we come to know about; none of them is within the reach of our understanding. As Buddhists say, the reality is empty, and the emptiness is real. The boundless expanse of heaven and earth, eternal and infinite being, we cannot find otherwise suitable words to describe. In order to bring these mysteries to light, human beings invented the tools, especially the science, and have been absorbed in search but have known only a fraction of truth so far; mysteries are still mysteries as ever. Then, it follows that the human knowledge concerning Nature hardly amounts to even a drop in the ocean. This fact also indicates, what a Buddhist would say, everything in the world is vanity of vanities. However, human beings are so full of conceit that they claim to be able to conquer the nature, which shows nothing but their overreaching vanity and being total idiots. Therefore, the wisest way of thinking for them is, above all, to know what human beings are in essence, follow in the wake of Nature and share in Her benefits.
Indeed, the world is full of riddles as explained above, but just one thing is very clear and plain. Let me explain what it is. I ask you who it is that created such an amazing world, controls and makes use of it at will. Just imagine who it is, and you will soon get it that just as a master in the family, a king or a president in the country, so there must be a central figure in the greatest world. And this central figure is none other than X who is called by the name of God. You can find nothing but this conclusion as the answer, can you?
In this perspective, if God did not exist, all things would not exist either, nor would atheists themselves. Nothing will be plainer than this. A person who cannot follow this logic would be no more than an animal. This is because animals do not have thoughts, intentions or intelligence, and we cannot but say such a person is a human-shaped animal. Here is good evidence to show this, that is to say, criminals who have committed crimes because of their atheism. What I mean will be intelligible when you see that their behaviors and psychologies are mostly brutal. This is the very reason why my mission is to remove the animalism from such brutal people and upgrade them radically to be true human beings, of which the fundamental condition is breaking down of atheism; in brief, to undertake the transformation of human beings.
Eikoh, No.242, January 6, 1954 (the 29th year of Showa)
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This essay has previously appeared in translation twice. The citations are given below for reference.“Atheism,” Foundation of Paradise, 1984, page 40.
“Atheism,” A Hundred Teachings of Meishusama, no date, page 23.