An Atheist’s Best Friend, or Light in the Dark of Night

At the end of The Dark Knight, the latest addition to the Batman canon, viewers were left with the image of the Joker – played brilliantly by the late Health Ledger – hanging upside down, staring a fatal tumble from the steel canopy of Gotham City in the face, while Batman – played by Christian Bale – looks on, and then leaves him hanging in the balance. It would have been too easy, perhaps, for Batman to unclench his fist and send the Joker his final punch-line, but Batman would never do such a thing.

The reality is something that Batman understood thoroughly when he left the Joker hanging in the balance – not the balance of law and order – however, the balance of good and evil. The movie is but one portrayal of the ongoing conflict between what is understood to be ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ The dilemma is that one cannot exist without the other. This is something that the Joker mentions while being interrogated by Gotham City police detectives, when he compares himself to a dog chasing cars, saying he ‘wouldn’t know what to do if he actually caught one.’

The Joker wouldn’t know what to do because he would be involuntary thrust into an argument for his own validity. To be the ‘evil’ counterbalance to Batmans’ ‘good.’

This reminds me of another argument, or conflict, between two other columns of society – the believer, and the atheist. While both argue from completely different angles, it is important to realize that Atheism is the second oldest idea in the history of Theology – the first being, belief, or faith itself.

Where the believer has the Holy Scriptures to backbone his favour for Christ, Allah, Thor, Buddha, et-cetera, the Atheist grounds his ‘faith’ in the wisdom of science and reason. Both are perfectly appropriate sources of validation. However, these two groups never admit the necessary existence one group represents to the lives of the other.

In this sense, Atheism needs the Believer, and vice-versa, as much as the Joker needs Batman. Because the Atheist argues for revolution, and the Believer for revelation, the Atheist would consider hoards of Believer’s abandoning their faith to be a revelation, and the Believer would consider the same feet, a revolution.