In Defense of the Faith

Confronting Lenin’s Dilemma

Question: Obviously, the whole idea of faith in God was invented by religious leaders in order to deceive and enslave their followers. That’s one thing all religions have in common: an elite class of clergy who get the people to believe in some mythical God and then pretend to be the go-betweens to this God to hold the people in their power—and charge them plenty for it!

Response: That was Lenin’s theory. He was also a materialist. Nothing existed for Lenin except the physical world, and the only way to know about that world was to come in contact with it. In agreement with Freud, Lenin believed that man was a stimulus-response mechanism without spirit or soul, just a lump of protein molecules wired with nerves. Man’s behavior was learned from experience and could therefore be reprogrammed through “behavior modification,” a polite word for “brainwashing,” which the Communists developed to a fine art—except that it only worked by destroying the person.

Of course, there was no room for God in such a theory, and that was precisely what created problems for Lenin when he dared to think about it. Man can only know about that which exists in the physical realm. Animals don’t have Gods, so why should man, in the evolutionary process, have ever developed such a fantasy?

Since man is a stimulus-response mechanism, according to this theory, he can only know of that which stimulates him. He touches something hot or cold and learns of “hot” and “cold.” He touches something hard or he is hit by something hard and he learns about “hard.” All he can know of anything is what he has experienced: the stimulus from the physical world and his instinctive response inherited through millions of years of evolution and then modified and reprogrammed by his own experience. Even science has no other source of knowledge.

Man can’t even think or fantasize about something that doesn’t exist in the physical world, according to this theory. Of course, with the help of a little alcohol, he can have visions of pink elephants, but pink exists and so do elephants. He could dream of “paradise” or “heaven,” but it would always conform to his experience: the “happy hunting ground” of the American Indian or a land of luxury for Pharaohs, evidenced by the bows and arrows or robes and jewelry buried with the dead.

What “Stimulus” Caused the Response, “God,” in Human Minds?

The theory seemed consistent and could be demonstrated by challenging doubters to visualize a new prime color for the rainbow. No one could. Obviously, then, nothing exists by the material world, and no one can even conceive of anything that doesn’t exist and that he hasn’t experienced. There was only one flaw: Foolish people have this fantasy about God. Where did that come from?

Those despicable clergy must have invented “God” and have ever since been filling the minds of the common people with this delusion in order to keep them in bondage. Communism would set them free from this opiate of the people! Yes, but where did clergy get this idea, if no one can think of anything that doesn’t exist? What was the “stimulus” that caused this “God-response”? There’s the rub. By Lenin’s own theory, God had to exist or no one would have ever dreamed up the idea.

Isn’t it interesting that in contrast to the philosophers who have been trying to develop proofs for the existence of God for centuries, the Bible doesn’t waste its time in that manner? The Bible is the one Book where one would certainly expect to see many complex arguments presented for God’s existence, yet not one is given!

Surely, that very fact says something important about the Bible and about God: He has already made contact with every person in his or her own conscience. Everyone knows that God exists, and that includes you. So the Bible doesn’t even argue about the issue, because the very fact that all of mankind has this concept says that He exists.