Why atheism today?

God “the Father” has been thoroughly refuted;
and so has “the Judge”
and “the Reward-giver.”
The same for God’s “free will”:

he doesn’t listen,
– and even if he did, he wouldn’t know how to help anyway.

The worst part of it is: he seems unable to communicate
in an intelligible manner: is he unclear?

– After hearing, questioning, discussing many things,
these are the causes I have found
for the decline of European theism.

It seems to me that the religious instinct
is indeed growing vigorously
– but
that it rejects any specifically theistic gratification
with profound distrust.

Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Judith Butler, aphorism 53

He doesn’t listen…

That’s no argument, no attempt to persuade by principled reason. If anything this conclusion has more impact, greater weight than any appeal to reason. It’s an observation!

He doesn’t listen. And even if he did, – he wouldn’t know how to help anyway.

These words indicate much about the speaker, a spokesperson for a community, for those of us who lived in the late industrial age of mass-production-manufacturing, of middle-class material well being. Why should we care, that as far as we can tell, God is disinterested in us?

Our material abundance is offset by existential anomie.  Anomie is a social condition defined by an uprooting or breakdown of any moral values, standards or guidance for individuals to follow. (wikipedia) A sense of rootlessness, our ties to place, to persons is diffused by the effects of mobility, by over-subscription, by our surplus of disposable stuff.  A subtle carrier wave of the disconnect is widespread…

There has been, and remains still, no clue whatsoever, that God listens… Meanwhile Time flows. The industrial age has become post-industrial. Presently we live in an age of cybernetics, large scale integration and miniaturization coincident to the development of sophisticated algorithm controlled supply chains, and light speed global communication. Artificial Intelligence is the latest developing wave. The consequences of our knowledge are unknown, until we glimpse into a rear-view mirror.

I cannot help thinking to myself: evil is nothing other than a human effect, a deleterious, anti-life consequence of the scrum, to produce more, sell more, even to be more. No cosmic attaboy is ever heard. I mean to say, your and my insatiable hunger for acclaim, to absorb the roar of our fellows, to hear endlessly, you are number one, you are a winner.

Hypothetically, – even if God were to listen, could anything at all be done anyway?