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Most Atheists are insulted by the statement, “There are no Atheists in foxholes.” What it means, of course, is that the ignorant speaker thinks Atheists will abandon their disbelief in god and call out to him when their lives are at stake. Furthermore, they invoke this silly platitude hoping it will convince their listeners of the existence of god.

“Oh yeah, you can talk bravely about disbelief now that you’re young and healthy, but wait until you need him, then you’ll see how you beg for him to save you.” This is usually said with the gloating, arrogant smugness that many of us have heard before, in this and other contexts.

Actually, this cliché reflects the cowardice of believers, who are unable to face life–and death–without leaning on the crutch of an imaginary supporter. They think that if god is begged hard enough–maybe–he will save their worthless asses in a crisis. Naturally, they conclude that everyone, including Atheists, will behave in the same childish way, and so their own pusillanimity is projected onto Atheists. The fact that they want to believe that some invisible superman can come to their rescue (or if he couldn’t make it because of a previous engagement), they would go to heaven–that life after death is possible, is proof to me that they don’t have the courage to face this life on their own two feet.

Surely, people are terrified in foxholes–and in many other life-threatening situations, in the military or civilian life. It is reasonable for those who believe in such beings to want to cry out for his help when there is little or no hope of survival. But, in the face of overwhelming evidence that it doesn’t work, you’d think they would have abandoned this practice long ago.

Does this fear-induced behavior prove the existence of the Christian God? Imagine a Christian believer faced with a Muslim terrorist who has a knife in his hands commanding him to, “Say you believe in Allah or die.” If the terrified Christian said, “I believe in Allah,” would that be proof that Allah is God?

The scurrilous foxhole canard originated with a god-fearing Catholic chaplain, Father William Thomas Cummings, during World War Two.* Father Cummings, is quoted as uttering these patently bigoted words, “There are no Atheists in the foxholes,” during a field sermon on Bataan in 1942. What he was saying, of course, is that he couldn’t face what was coming without clinging to the fantasy that he would go to heaven and it wouldn’t be a total loss. He projected that fear onto everyone else around him, including those who had no belief in god. How could he possibly know the beliefs of all the millions of men in the service?

An Atheist would have been just as terrified as the good Father was–I would have been–but I would at least die knowing that I was true to my belief rather than cravenly begging for the fulfillment of an illusion that my mind knew was impossible. Cummings was among a group of American prisoners aboard an unmarked Japanese ship that was transporting them from the Philippines to Japan on December 15, 1944. Tragically, the ship was sunk by an American submarine.

*The source for this is Carlos P. Romulo’s book, “I saw the Fall of the Philippines (1942) and may be found in “Bartlett’s Familiar quotations.”