What if both Christians and atheists are wishful thinkers?

By Robin Schumacher, Exclusive Columnist Monday, June 15, 2026

Many years ago, a woman my wife and I both know had a sibling who committed suicide. She was naturally overwhelmed by grief, to the point of despair, and said to my wife and me, “I’m just in this Christianity thing for the endgame. I’m wishing and hoping it’s true.”

Critics of religion in general point to such events and feelings as the main driver of belief in the supernatural and see it as a psychological weakness. For example, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura once said: “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.”

In his work, The Future of an Illusion famed founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud called the hopes offered by religion: “illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind … we disregard its relation to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification” and saw religious belief as a coping mechanism that assisted people in dealing with the harsh realities of life. Physicist Stephen Hawking agreed with Freud and said that any wishes for life after death are “a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

The thing is, none of these atheists see that the wish-fulfillment sword they wield is dual-edged. Maybe they have wishes of their own where the idea of God is concerned?

Perhaps Freud wished that a deity such as the God of the Bible doesn’t exist — one who will call him to account on a future day of judgment, which is a very harsh reality to accept. Charles Darwin, an atheist partner of Freud, demonstrated this when he wrote: “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”

Thomas Nagel covers the same ground when he says: “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope that there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.”

Christopher Hitchens went so far as to declare he wasn’t an atheist but an “antitheist” because he didn’t like the idea of God: “I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist … I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true … I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true … I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque.”

And regarding Hawking, who says Christians are afraid of the dark, apologist and mathematician John Lennox answered him by saying, “Atheism is a fairy story for those afraid of the light.”

The takeaway from all this? It seems that wishful thinking is found on both sides of the God debate.

Doing the math of religion and unbelief

This leads to the question of how any of us — whether we believe in God or not — can arrive at the right conclusion about these matters. Let me offer two things for you to consider.

First, realize that just because someone wishes their position is true doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Both Christians and atheists need to remember that when discussing their different worldviews with each other and look beyond someone’s personal motivations for believing something is true.   

William Lane Craig says there is,

“A distinction between one's rational justification for one's beliefs and one's psychological motivations for holding those beliefs. And a person's beliefs are not false because of his psychological motivations. They would only be false because he's got his facts wrong; he's not rationally justified. And so, in attacking a view, one needs to be careful not to be attacking the person's psychological motivations for why he believes as he does. You need to be looking at what justification he offers for his views.”

C. S. Lewis provides insight into how we go about this when he writes:

“Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is ‘wishful thinking.’ You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time … You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong.”

This means we all need to sit down and work through the “sums” of whether our belief system is real. And this typically equates to not just knowing the facts and strengths of our own position, but the opposing team’s arguments as well.

In my own life, I’m grateful I was forced to do this by my apologetics and philosophy professor in seminary, Dr. Norman Geisler, who had a very unorthodox approach to his devotional reading: he used that time to study atheist writings. When asked why, he’d say, “Because they keep us honest.”

When I took Geisler’s contemporary philosophy class, we were given a massive binder that contained the writings of all the top contemporary atheists on the subject of God; not a single Christian writer was included. My job was to read through the entire thing and assess the strengths of their arguments.

A prerequisite of the class was to have gone through the primary Christian apologetics class, so we were well-grounded in the pro arguments for Christianity. This ensured we knew both what and why we believed and prepared us to be well-schooled on both sides.  

At the end of the philosophy course, I distinctly remember turning the last page in my large atheist writings binder and thinking to myself, “Is that really the best they have?” Given all my previous training in apologetics and logic, their arguments not only didn’t make a dent in my faith, they actually strengthened it because they acknowledged the pain of existence, admitted they had no real answers for it or life’s big questions, and all their arguments had been well refuted — sometimes by thousands of years.  

Working through the “sums” of both belief systems caused me to land with extreme confidence on the Christian worldview. The best of atheist arguments against it reminded me of what Jesus said: “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock” (Matt. 7:25).

So, what about the woman my wife and I know who lost her sibling to suicide? She wasn't wrong to hope Christianity was true. The question is whether her hope is grounded in reality.

The good news is, there’s strong evidence that shows it is, and that the Christian faith rests not on wishful thinking, but on the rock that Jesus said would stand when challenges come.