Comments on: No Foolish Atheists

By: Steve Dehner

Steve Dehner — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:00:30 +0000

Hi Jeremy,

God spoke to me through your post. Good words of exhortation!

By: Peter Kirk

Peter Kirk — Sat, 09 May 2009 12:18:02 +0000

Jeremy, thanks for correcting the post, which is now excellent. It is good to note that these verses don’t apply so much to those atheists out there but to many Christians, even perhaps also ourselves, who live our daily lives as if there were no God.

By: Jeremy Myers

Jeremy Myers — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:17:49 +0000

Hi all,

When I wrote this post, I did not have access to the Hebrew, and so made a guess that the Hebrew word being used was “lo” rather than “ayin.” Anyway, when I gained access to my books, I looked it up, and found it that the word is “ayin” which, as Peter Kirk pointed out above, does not mean “No, God.” (For that, you would need “lo” as in Gen 18:15).

However, as Peter went on to point out, the meaning of the Psalm really doesn’t change too much. The “fool” is not really one who denies the existence of God, (for atheism is a relatively new belief), but is instead deciding to live without God.

Thanks! (and sorry for misleading!)

By: Peter Kirk

Peter Kirk — Sat, 09 May 2009 09:56:51 +0000

I agree with Kirk (no relation!) that it is important to learn Hebrew. Then you will understand what the quoted words in this psalm mean. They do not mean “No, God” in the sense you seem to think, an address to God communicating “no” rather than “yes”, i.e. a refusal to obey. Rather they mean “no god” in the sense that God either does not exist or is absent.

The translators supplied the words “there is” for a good reason, as they are needed to express the psalmist’s meaning in grammatical and clear English. It is not for people who don’t seem to have even looked at the Hebrew text to take out these words and then to repunctuate what is left to give a meaning which is quite alien to what the original text could possibly have meant.

But I can agree that the author was probably not thinking the fool was an atheist, rather that the fool thought God was absent and not taking any notice of what he was doing – more a deist than an atheist perhaps.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 09 May 2009 05:28:29 +0000

Great perspective.

Very good to remember, and more importantly to live out.

By: Diane

Diane — Sat, 09 May 2009 04:26:50 +0000

Jeremy, I like that. I looked, and you are right!!!
Thanks for pointing this out!!!

Diane

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sat, 09 May 2009 02:12:10 +0000

I never knew that man I should learn Hebrew