Leigh MacConnell Grand Lecturer glect@grandlodgens.org 2005-12-30

The 'Stupid Atheist' The first of the Old Charges, “Concerning God and Religion” begins: “A Mason is obliged by his tenure to obey the moral law; and, if he rightly understands the art, will never be a stupid atheist." That all petitioners for the degrees of Freemasonry express a belief in Deity is a fundamental requirement. That all elected candidates who receive the Entered Apprentice’s degree publicly express a belief in Deity is a fundamental requirement. No Atheist can be made a Mason and the reason usually assigned is that, lacking a belief in Deity, no obligation can be binding. No Atheist can be made a Mason because an atheist can never be a Mason “in his heart”. Our whole symbolism is founded on the erection of a Temple to the Most High, that “Building Not Made With Hands”. Our unalterable and fundamental teachings are of the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and further life to come. A disbeliever in all these could not be happy or contented in our organization. From Freemasonry’s standpoint an atheist is a man who does not believe in Deity, which immediately brings the perplexing question: “What is this Deity in which a man must believe?” Man’s idea of God differs with the man, his education, and his early religious training. To some, the mental picture of God is that of a commanding, venerable figure with flowing white hair and beard. Others conceive of Deity as a Bright Spirit, who moves through the universe with the speed of light, who is “without form” and without body, yet who is all love, intelligence, mercy and understanding. Others refer to Deity as “All That Is”. The Deity of a scientist, a mathematician, a student of the cosmos via the telescope may be neither anthropomorphic, nor Bright Spirit but a universally pervading power which some call Nature; others, Great First Cause; others, Cosmic Urge; still others, Prime Force. To the geologist, the very handwriting of God is in the rocks and earth. To the fundamentalist, the only handwriting of God is in the Bible. In as much as the geologist does not believe in the chronology in the life of the earth as set forth in the Bible, the fundamentalist may call the geologist an atheist. And oppositely, the geologist, certain that God has written the story in the rocks of the earth, not in the Book, may call the fundamentalist an atheist because he denies the plain testimony of science. One is as right, and each is as wrong, as the other! Neither one is an atheist, -because each believes in the God which satisfies him. You shall search Freemasonry from Regius Poem, our oldest document, to the most recent pronouncement of the youngest Grand Lodge; you shall read every decision, every law, and every edict, of every Grand Master who ever occupied the Exalted East and nowhere find a ruling that any brother must believe in the God of some other man. The agnostic frankly says, “I do not know in what God I believe, or how God may be formed or exist, I only know that I believe in something.” Freemasonry does not ask him or anyone to describe his “something”. If it is to him that which may be named God, no matter how utterly different from the God of the man who hands him the petition, Freemasonry asks nothing more. He must believe in a "Supreme Being'. How he names God, how he defines or limits God, what powers he gives God – Freemasonry cares not. What a Mason thinks about the glorious Architect, by what name he calls her/him, how he defines or conceives of her/him, so far as Freemasonry is concerned may be a secret between Deity and brother, kept forever “in his heart”. (This article taken [and revised] from a modified version of a Masonic Digest originally issued by the Masonic Service Association in 1947.)