A little while back, I blogged about nineteenth century French anarchist Pierre Proudhon's view of history.  Today, I discuss his famous monograph, "God is Evil, Man is Free."  In it, Proudhon writes, "Atheism is the negation of Providence, as it results from the agreement between the inflexible laws of nature and the incessant aspirations of liberty, and as I have attempted to define it . . . God is not conceivable without man; but man is not conceivable without God; God, whom faith represents as a tender father and a prudent master, abandons us to the fatality of our incomplete conceptions; he digs the ditch under our feet; he causes us to move blindly, and then, at every fall, he punishes us as rascals."
     In many ways, Proudhon is correct.  Atheism is one response to the frustration of being a human with the capacity for choice yet who is living in world she cannot fully control. It is one way people use to make sense of a world that allows them to be free but in fact does not:  in this type of world, how can Providence (divine benevolence) therefore be possible?  God is no more than a way to escape the facts of reality.
     Moreover, as Proudhon points out, unless God, as well as man, exists, neither can conceive of the other existing in turn.  Though this seems obvious, it underscores an important point, one which perhaps Proudhon did not realize he was making:  humans can not be fully human unless they affirm the existence of God.  They are incomplete without God.  Yes, as Proudhon continues, God does indeed seem to abandon people to the "fatality" of their incomplete conceptions, yet what Proudhon may not see is that our conceptions are incomplete not because God "abandons" us, but because of our essential finitude.
     Ironically, we can only really "see" if we "see" (and affirm) God.