There is a certain type of Christian who loves to quote Psalm 14:1
“The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.””
They quote it not simply to attack atheist people with an unpleasant glee, but to reassure themselves that they cannot possibly be fools because they acknowledge the existence of God.
What is often ignored in quoting this are the words “in his heart”. This implies a subconscious belief, something which is not carefully examined. Many non-believers have come from religious backgrounds. To arrive at the position that there is no God was often a long, difficult, painful process of ‘soul’-searching, research, reading, thinking and redefining one’s self. The non-believer does not say in his heart, in his unconscious, that there is no God, it is something thought through in the brain, in the conscious mind.
The other point which these bible quotin’ Christians perhaps have not considered is that the word fool, in this context, does not mean idiot but a wicked person. The implication from the writer’s point of view could be that a wicked person wishes there was not a God so they can be wicked.
The fact that atheists are not wicked simply by definition, again reflects more on the kind of religious believer that thinks atheists deliberately 
pretend not to believe so they can be naughty boys and girls. Atheists, like Christians, like all human beings, are capable of committing both good and bad acts.
The next part of the Psalm says,
“They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that does good.”
It is quite hard to think of a group of people, or even an individual, that has never done good. Even murders have shown love to their wives and children! Unless the religious person defines the notion of ‘good’ as meaning obeying their concept of God, it makes no sense.
But we can turn this around.
“The fool has said in his heart, “There is a God.””
Anyone who has not arrived at a position of belief or unbelief through conscious reasoning – who just believes because it’s what they’ve been told, or just thinks it must be true without understanding why – can indeed be called a fool, in the sense of ignorant.
Quite often those that profess religious beliefs which are not well examined, or who read the bible as the literal Word of God, are indeed “corrupt” and commit “abominable works”. From the Crusades; the torture and burning of ‘heretics’; the present day murders of doctors; the calls for state-sanctioned killing; the abuse and murder of women and children; the incitement to hatred, intolerance and murder; not to mention those acts of violence recorded in the Bible (if true); are acts which those Christians who fail to understand Christianity have committed.
This quote from the bible was quite probably written about a situation being observed at the time – perhaps a community of godless people who were acting immorally. Many atheists today think deeply about questions of morality and attempt to behave in moral ways. The phrase “Good without God” was pasted on billboards to challenge the erroneous idea that the godless are evil doers.
Are some Christians really reduced to scoring points against others with different, considered, points of view? What is the meaning of love your neighbour?
Related articles
- Religion Causing Offence (bridgingschisms.org)
- The Fool Says In His Heart (www.atheistrev.com)
The fool has said in his heart there is no God. The madmen, conmen and weed smokers that wrote the Bible have in theirs there is a God
I have met this quote on uncountable encounters and i gleefully said oh yes.Even my wife has told me that before. Then i go on to ask them , If they have ever read what the Koran says about people who do not believe that Mohammed is the true prophet of God. They respond with “that is the opinion of the moslems”….. Then i tell them the right answer should be ” that is the opinion of the Koran writer to which some humans beings believe”….and that it is the same as yours! If you think they are peddling untruth, don’t you think its time we start to reconcile such a statement with evidence?? And the evidence is that ….look around you? don’t we have Christians committing heinous crimes even pastors? So how do you leave them out and focus on people who do not believe what ever you believe even if they commit crimes or not!
The fool has said in his heart there is no God. The wise man says it aloud.
I believe that St Anselm’s argument (which starts just like that) is a little more refined. It goes like this:
1. The fool says in his heart “there is no God”
2. Thus the fool has a concept of “God”
3. God is a perfect being.
4. A perfect being is such that all of his attributes are maximally true.
5. Existence is an attribute.
6. Therefore God exists, by definition.
I am an atheist and believe this argument to be fallacious, but I will leave you the fun of finding the fallacy in it. Enjoy!
I’m so glad to have stumbled upon this page. Because, I was about to put together a design similar to “good enough for these idiots” …