Khem Nefermed
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Atheism is often presented by its proponents as the “default” state of humanity: a neutral absence of belief that only later becomes complicated by religion through "metaphysics", ritual and theology. Yet, this framing obscures the fact that modern atheism is itself a historically situated worldview, carrying with it assumptions about reality, knowledge, morality and human purpose.
While "atheism" itself is only a negation of a claim, it is often paired with and directly implying worldviews like materialism, empiricism, naturalism and secular humanism, which DO make positive claims. Thus, due to making these philosophical claims, it is a worldview in itself, in the form that it is practically seen in. A worldview is judged by whether it is internally coherent, capable of justifying its own assumptions, resistant to self-refutation, and explanatory of reality as a whole.
Aside of that, the title itself is relevant, and I chose it for a very specific reason. Atheism is not a worldview that appeared as a vacuum, or, as many atheists claim, was "common sense, with these superstitious religion-ists being too dumb to see the lack of evidence for God". Atheism is a deeply christian worldview, shaped by it and carrying many of its flaws.
Historically, truly, atheism did not emerge as some primordial pre-religious common sense. Its modern form arose largely within Christian civilization itself, as a reaction to christianity. A necessary correction, I believe, but one that went into the realm of over-correction.
With Martin Luther and Jan Hus' initiating of the Reformation, certain christian tenets of Catholicism were put into question. This, many popular historian scholars argue, was the start of Higher Criticism, which put into question more fundamental things about christianity, as well as of the existence of God itself. This manifested in waves, such as the Great Awakenings in America. Theological liberalism in the form of Deism began dissolving traditional Christian metaphysics from within, by treating scripture as purely historical, miracles as impossible, and revelation as reducible to human psychology or politics. Once the supernatural was excluded beforehand, the path toward secular materialism became inevitable.
This historical origin matters, because atheism inherited much of its structure from the very religion it claimed to overthrow. It did not arise independently in some vacuum of pure reason. Rather, it emerged from the fragmentation of Christian thought: reducing the christian God into an abstract watchmaker through Deism, then reducing spirit into matter through materialism, and finally reducing meaning itself into subjective preference. The atheist narrative of “progress from superstition to reason” is, ironically, itself a secularized Christian narrative of linear history and "salvation through revelation".
One of the most common defenses of atheism, which we have addressed in the introduction, is the claim that it is “merely a lack of belief.” Yet, this rhetorical move collapses when examining practical atheist discourse. Atheism is overwhelmingly associated with positive claims: consciousness being reducible to brain activity, morality being socially constructed, matter being all that exists, nature being self-contained, religion being a purely human invention. These are affirmations about reality. A person who claims that objective spiritual realities do not exist has already entered metaphysics, by making a universal claim.
Even secular humanism, often attached to atheism, depends upon major philosophical assertions. Human rights, equality, progress and dignity are not empirical objects discoverable under a microscope or baked into material reality. They are moral abstractions inherited largely from the anthropologies of spiritual systems while simultaneously detached from their theological foundation. Atheism often attempts to enjoy the fruits of religious civilization while denying their metaphysical roots.
Empiricism, materialism and naturalism also contain deep internal weaknesses. Empiricism claims that knowledge comes through sensory observation, yet the principle “all knowledge comes from sensory observation” cannot itself be proven through sensory observation. Materialism claims that only matter exists, but matter itself is never directly encountered apart from conscious experience and interpretation, making the debunking of idealism impossible. Naturalism assumes nature is intelligible and governed by stable laws, yet it cannot explain why rational order should exist in a purposeless cosmos, nor can it prove stable laws beyond "they have been stable thus far". These systems depend upon presuppositions they cannot justify within their own methods.
The famous "skepticism" toward the spiritual was often circular from the beginning: miracles were rejected because nature was assumed to be a closed system, and nature was assumed to be a closed system because miracles were rejected. Miracles can't happen, because we've never seen miracles happen, because any purported miracle must have a scientific explanation, because miracles can't happen.
Furthermore, if human thought is entirely reducible to blind biochemical reactions selected only for survival value, then even the claim that we can reason at all becomes deeply suspect. Evolution may favor useful beliefs rather than true beliefs. We are all brainwaves, yet the atheist still expects his conclusions to be trusted as objectively rational.
At this point, some retreat into total epistemological nihilism: the idea that nobody can know anything with certainty, and that all worldviews are equally circular. Yet this is false. While every worldview possesses foundational assumptions, not all systems are equally coherent or equally capable of accounting for reality. Some frameworks are self-refuting, while others are more internally stable.
It is important to admit that the critiques made against christianity, even within many of the Great Awakening mouthpieces making moves towards a secular understanding of the world, were indeed warranted, and were often posed by veritable truth seekers and people of the Gods operating from their own perspective, such as George Washington, a Deist that Zevism sees as a great personality.
However, points can be made against the general attacks on the very concept of God, and I will make them.
Any argument at all also presupposes realities transcending raw matter. Logic, truth and meaning are not physical objects. The laws of logic are universal, abstract and immaterial. "Truth" is not a physical thing. Even the act of argumentation assumes that rational coherence matters and that minds can genuinely access reality, which are BIG claims to make in philosophy. Purely reductionist frameworks struggle to account for these conditions without quietly using non-material principles.
Atheism, I claim, is a christian heresy, because it inherits central christian assumptions. It often preserves the christian notion of universal human equality and denial of material hierarchies, it preserves purely linear historical progress with no cyclicality, universal morality, and often, a coming utopian future. Marxism, liberal progressivism and secular humanism all retain echoes of christian eschatology and soteriology: humanity is fallen into ignorance or oppression, history moves toward redemption, and salvation comes through material enlightenment, revolution or technological progress.
Likewise, atheism frequently retains christian anthropology: the belief that humans possess a uniquely sacred moral status distinct from the rest of nature. Yet within strict materialism, humanity is merely another accidental animal species. Objective dignity, human reason as a tool that offers potential of transcending the base animal, all of this becomes incredibly difficult to justify without appealing to metaphysical principles transcending matter.
From a Zevist perspective, atheism was nevertheless, as I have said, historically useful as a weapon against Christianity. Christianity’s Yehuboric exclusivism, hostility toward the Gods, suppression of ritual traditions and suspicion toward worldly excellence or human hierarchy created internal tensions that atheistic critiques could exploit. By attacking biblical literalism, miracle claims and institutional corruption, the downslide into atheism weakened the authority of Christianity in the modern world. In this sense, atheism functioned as a dissolving force against a dominant religious system that had long suppressed pre-Christian traditions.
The destruction of Christianity did not automatically restore healthier metaphysics, though. Instead, the vacuum was often filled by nihilism, consumerism and hyper-individualism. The ancient pagan world embedded humanity within a cosmic hierarchy, models in the Gods, pursuits of virtue, ideas of human destiny and sacred order. Modern atheism tends instead toward desacralization: the flattening of existence into vague utility and subjective preference.
A society built entirely upon atheistic subjectivism struggles to sustain long-term meaning. If morality is only preference, then no civilization possesses objective grounds to defend sacrifice, duty, continuity or higher ideals over immediate pleasure. Declining birth rates, atomization, cultural exhaustion and loss of transcendent purpose, all of which we do see in majority atheist societies, become natural outcomes of a worldview that reduces humanity to accidental biological organisms drifting through an indifferent Universe. Material prosperity alone cannot sustain a civilization's vitality forever.
Human beings seek meaning, hierarchy, transcendence and participation in something greater than themselves. When these impulses are denied, they often return in distorted secular forms: ideological fanaticism, political cults, celebrity worship or technological utopianism. The spiritual impulse does not disappear simply because "you defeated religion". Funnily enough, Zevism can explain this seeking as a yearning for the Divine, while naturalism struggles to explain it.
Zevism attempts to answer these problems differently. Through a proper hierarchy of the Gods, the cosmos is understood as an ordered hierarchy flowing from higher, intelligible, ultimate realities all grounded in Eternal Truth, rather than only meaningless chaos. Through meditative and ritual practice, spiritual development becomes experiential rather than dependent solely upon blind faith or institutional authority, which is where christianity failed. Through virtue ethics and self-deification, humanity is encouraged not toward passive submission, but toward disciplined ascent, excellence and alignment with divine order, both individually and societally.
In Zevism, unlike the christian/atheist dichotomy, reason and spirituality are not enemies. Scientific inquiry remains valuable as a method for studying the material world, while even benefitting from no longer being metaphysically ungrounded. Human beings are neither fallen sinners awaiting salvation nor accidental animals without purpose, but participants within a living cosmos, blessed with the capability of spiritual advancement.
Atheism is not, then, the final triumph of reason, or a destruction of superstition, but a purely transitional reaction born from the collapse of the christian system. It stands as a heresy within christianity's paradigm, that negated the old structure without successfully replacing it. Zevism negates the christian structure as well, and it would even be reductive to say it replaces it. It simply brings things back to their original state, as the Original Religion of Man.
While "atheism" itself is only a negation of a claim, it is often paired with and directly implying worldviews like materialism, empiricism, naturalism and secular humanism, which DO make positive claims. Thus, due to making these philosophical claims, it is a worldview in itself, in the form that it is practically seen in. A worldview is judged by whether it is internally coherent, capable of justifying its own assumptions, resistant to self-refutation, and explanatory of reality as a whole.
Aside of that, the title itself is relevant, and I chose it for a very specific reason. Atheism is not a worldview that appeared as a vacuum, or, as many atheists claim, was "common sense, with these superstitious religion-ists being too dumb to see the lack of evidence for God". Atheism is a deeply christian worldview, shaped by it and carrying many of its flaws.
Historically, truly, atheism did not emerge as some primordial pre-religious common sense. Its modern form arose largely within Christian civilization itself, as a reaction to christianity. A necessary correction, I believe, but one that went into the realm of over-correction.
With Martin Luther and Jan Hus' initiating of the Reformation, certain christian tenets of Catholicism were put into question. This, many popular historian scholars argue, was the start of Higher Criticism, which put into question more fundamental things about christianity, as well as of the existence of God itself. This manifested in waves, such as the Great Awakenings in America. Theological liberalism in the form of Deism began dissolving traditional Christian metaphysics from within, by treating scripture as purely historical, miracles as impossible, and revelation as reducible to human psychology or politics. Once the supernatural was excluded beforehand, the path toward secular materialism became inevitable.
This historical origin matters, because atheism inherited much of its structure from the very religion it claimed to overthrow. It did not arise independently in some vacuum of pure reason. Rather, it emerged from the fragmentation of Christian thought: reducing the christian God into an abstract watchmaker through Deism, then reducing spirit into matter through materialism, and finally reducing meaning itself into subjective preference. The atheist narrative of “progress from superstition to reason” is, ironically, itself a secularized Christian narrative of linear history and "salvation through revelation".
One of the most common defenses of atheism, which we have addressed in the introduction, is the claim that it is “merely a lack of belief.” Yet, this rhetorical move collapses when examining practical atheist discourse. Atheism is overwhelmingly associated with positive claims: consciousness being reducible to brain activity, morality being socially constructed, matter being all that exists, nature being self-contained, religion being a purely human invention. These are affirmations about reality. A person who claims that objective spiritual realities do not exist has already entered metaphysics, by making a universal claim.
Even secular humanism, often attached to atheism, depends upon major philosophical assertions. Human rights, equality, progress and dignity are not empirical objects discoverable under a microscope or baked into material reality. They are moral abstractions inherited largely from the anthropologies of spiritual systems while simultaneously detached from their theological foundation. Atheism often attempts to enjoy the fruits of religious civilization while denying their metaphysical roots.
Empiricism, materialism and naturalism also contain deep internal weaknesses. Empiricism claims that knowledge comes through sensory observation, yet the principle “all knowledge comes from sensory observation” cannot itself be proven through sensory observation. Materialism claims that only matter exists, but matter itself is never directly encountered apart from conscious experience and interpretation, making the debunking of idealism impossible. Naturalism assumes nature is intelligible and governed by stable laws, yet it cannot explain why rational order should exist in a purposeless cosmos, nor can it prove stable laws beyond "they have been stable thus far". These systems depend upon presuppositions they cannot justify within their own methods.
The famous "skepticism" toward the spiritual was often circular from the beginning: miracles were rejected because nature was assumed to be a closed system, and nature was assumed to be a closed system because miracles were rejected. Miracles can't happen, because we've never seen miracles happen, because any purported miracle must have a scientific explanation, because miracles can't happen.
Furthermore, if human thought is entirely reducible to blind biochemical reactions selected only for survival value, then even the claim that we can reason at all becomes deeply suspect. Evolution may favor useful beliefs rather than true beliefs. We are all brainwaves, yet the atheist still expects his conclusions to be trusted as objectively rational.
At this point, some retreat into total epistemological nihilism: the idea that nobody can know anything with certainty, and that all worldviews are equally circular. Yet this is false. While every worldview possesses foundational assumptions, not all systems are equally coherent or equally capable of accounting for reality. Some frameworks are self-refuting, while others are more internally stable.
It is important to admit that the critiques made against christianity, even within many of the Great Awakening mouthpieces making moves towards a secular understanding of the world, were indeed warranted, and were often posed by veritable truth seekers and people of the Gods operating from their own perspective, such as George Washington, a Deist that Zevism sees as a great personality.
However, points can be made against the general attacks on the very concept of God, and I will make them.
Any argument at all also presupposes realities transcending raw matter. Logic, truth and meaning are not physical objects. The laws of logic are universal, abstract and immaterial. "Truth" is not a physical thing. Even the act of argumentation assumes that rational coherence matters and that minds can genuinely access reality, which are BIG claims to make in philosophy. Purely reductionist frameworks struggle to account for these conditions without quietly using non-material principles.
Atheism, I claim, is a christian heresy, because it inherits central christian assumptions. It often preserves the christian notion of universal human equality and denial of material hierarchies, it preserves purely linear historical progress with no cyclicality, universal morality, and often, a coming utopian future. Marxism, liberal progressivism and secular humanism all retain echoes of christian eschatology and soteriology: humanity is fallen into ignorance or oppression, history moves toward redemption, and salvation comes through material enlightenment, revolution or technological progress.
Likewise, atheism frequently retains christian anthropology: the belief that humans possess a uniquely sacred moral status distinct from the rest of nature. Yet within strict materialism, humanity is merely another accidental animal species. Objective dignity, human reason as a tool that offers potential of transcending the base animal, all of this becomes incredibly difficult to justify without appealing to metaphysical principles transcending matter.
From a Zevist perspective, atheism was nevertheless, as I have said, historically useful as a weapon against Christianity. Christianity’s Yehuboric exclusivism, hostility toward the Gods, suppression of ritual traditions and suspicion toward worldly excellence or human hierarchy created internal tensions that atheistic critiques could exploit. By attacking biblical literalism, miracle claims and institutional corruption, the downslide into atheism weakened the authority of Christianity in the modern world. In this sense, atheism functioned as a dissolving force against a dominant religious system that had long suppressed pre-Christian traditions.
The destruction of Christianity did not automatically restore healthier metaphysics, though. Instead, the vacuum was often filled by nihilism, consumerism and hyper-individualism. The ancient pagan world embedded humanity within a cosmic hierarchy, models in the Gods, pursuits of virtue, ideas of human destiny and sacred order. Modern atheism tends instead toward desacralization: the flattening of existence into vague utility and subjective preference.
A society built entirely upon atheistic subjectivism struggles to sustain long-term meaning. If morality is only preference, then no civilization possesses objective grounds to defend sacrifice, duty, continuity or higher ideals over immediate pleasure. Declining birth rates, atomization, cultural exhaustion and loss of transcendent purpose, all of which we do see in majority atheist societies, become natural outcomes of a worldview that reduces humanity to accidental biological organisms drifting through an indifferent Universe. Material prosperity alone cannot sustain a civilization's vitality forever.
Human beings seek meaning, hierarchy, transcendence and participation in something greater than themselves. When these impulses are denied, they often return in distorted secular forms: ideological fanaticism, political cults, celebrity worship or technological utopianism. The spiritual impulse does not disappear simply because "you defeated religion". Funnily enough, Zevism can explain this seeking as a yearning for the Divine, while naturalism struggles to explain it.
Zevism attempts to answer these problems differently. Through a proper hierarchy of the Gods, the cosmos is understood as an ordered hierarchy flowing from higher, intelligible, ultimate realities all grounded in Eternal Truth, rather than only meaningless chaos. Through meditative and ritual practice, spiritual development becomes experiential rather than dependent solely upon blind faith or institutional authority, which is where christianity failed. Through virtue ethics and self-deification, humanity is encouraged not toward passive submission, but toward disciplined ascent, excellence and alignment with divine order, both individually and societally.
In Zevism, unlike the christian/atheist dichotomy, reason and spirituality are not enemies. Scientific inquiry remains valuable as a method for studying the material world, while even benefitting from no longer being metaphysically ungrounded. Human beings are neither fallen sinners awaiting salvation nor accidental animals without purpose, but participants within a living cosmos, blessed with the capability of spiritual advancement.
Atheism is not, then, the final triumph of reason, or a destruction of superstition, but a purely transitional reaction born from the collapse of the christian system. It stands as a heresy within christianity's paradigm, that negated the old structure without successfully replacing it. Zevism negates the christian structure as well, and it would even be reductive to say it replaces it. It simply brings things back to their original state, as the Original Religion of Man.
