Crumpled scraps of paper, and gigantic shadows. The entire history of contemporary anti-theism in one image.

"What if I'm wrong? What if, somewhere, in some corner of the multiverse, there's an argument so devastating that it would pulverize in one blow all of classical metaphysics, the Fifth Way, realism, and incidentally my faith? What if that argument exists, and I simply don't know it?"

There's a thought I've had. More than once. And one you've probably had too, if you're Catholic, Thomist, or simply a realist in a world that no longer is one. I know this thought well. It usually arrives at three in the morning, or on Reddit, which often amounts to the same thing.

Reddit, for that matter, let's talk about it. There are places on this platform that are veritable factories of rational panic. r/DebateAnAtheist, of course, the grand classic, where "well, who created God then?" is delivered every three hours with the quiet confidence of someone who thinks they invented the question. r/atheism, the big-box store of mass anti-theism, where American Protestant fundamentalism is systematically confused with Catholic theology, and where anyone who mentions Aristotle gets told "but science has proven that..." without the sentence ever being finished. r/philosophy, where logical positivism rises from the dead every Friday under a new username. And then there are the French-language subreddits, which deserve a special mention, because French-style atheism has a flavor all its own: it's a barroom atheism, peremptory, self-satisfied, having read neither Nietzsche nor Thomas Aquinas but knowing with certainty that "religion is for the weak-minded." r/france is a fine specimen, but the prize probably goes to r/anticulte, where every religious belief is treated as a pathology, with the intellectual nuance of a nineteenth-century pamphlet and the charity of an inquisitor, minus the irony. French atheism, more broadly, has the peculiarity of being both dominant and lazy: it reigns without ever having bothered to justify itself, which is, when you think about it, exactly the definition of a prejudice.

This is all the more regrettable because I count, among my friends, several "atheists" whom I esteem deeply. But here's the thing: given their culture, the finesse of their ideas, and the honesty with which they pursue truth, I can't decently place them in the category I'm disputing here. They are all, in my opinion, cryptotheists. A cryptotheist is someone who lives, thinks, and acts as though truth, goodness, and beauty were objective realities, who treats reason as a reliable instrument for knowing the real, who is outraged by injustice as though injustice were really bad, but who, for biographical, cultural, or simply time-related reasons, hasn't yet drawn the metaphysical conclusion of their own premises. The cryptotheist is an unwitting realist. They have the faith of the coal miner, except they haven't found the mine yet. And frankly, I prefer an honest cryptotheist to a theist who recites his catechism without having understood it.

I'd like to talk today about a phenomenon I've never seen named anywhere, but which silently ravages the minds of many believers who dare to think: the rational panic. It's the state in which an honest mind, confronted with what it believes to be a massive argument against its position, loses its footing, forgets everything it knows, and ends up conceding absurdities it would never have accepted when calm. Not because the opposing argument is good, but because the shadow of the argument is terrifying.

The argumentative shadow

Let's define the thing. An argumentative shadow is the impression that an opposing thesis possesses a massive, crushing, definitive argument in its favor, when in reality it possesses nothing of the sort. It's the ghost of an argument, its specter, its silhouette glimpsed in the fog, mistaken for a giant.

I just observed a textbook case on Reddit¹. An interlocutor, visibly theistic or at least searching, asked a perfectly reasonable question: "Why isn't the teleological argument refuted by the multiverse hypothesis?" Good question. The answer is fairly simple: because the classical teleological argument (St. Thomas's Fifth Way) is not about probabilistic fine-tuning, but about the intrinsic finality of unintelligent natural agents. The multiverse doesn't touch this question. Multiplying universes means multiplying instances of directedness, not explaining it².

So far, so good. My interlocutor understands the point. Then something happens.

He comes back with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. He's shown that this interpretation, far from helping him, makes his problem worse: in each branch of the wave function, the physical laws are deterministic, unintelligent causes act toward determined ends. He concedes the point. Then he comes back again, with a weaker version: "but there must be a universe where things seem directed but are actually random." He's asked to describe concretely what that would look like. His answer: "it would look exactly like our universe. You couldn't tell the difference."

Freeze frame.

Read that sentence again. "It would look exactly the same, but it would be different." That's a distinction without a difference. It's metaphysical gibberish. It's the philosophical equivalent of saying "the last time Thursday was purple while calling salmon"³. And yet this fellow (whom I genuinely believe to be searching for truth) clings to it like a life raft, because he is panicking. He's no longer defending a position. He's fleeing.

What happened?

Anatomy of the panic

The rational panic always follows the same pattern. Let's observe it closely, because if you're honest with yourself, you'll recognize yourself in it. I recognize myself.

First stage: legitimate doubt. You encounter an objection you can't resolve immediately. That's normal. That's healthy. St. Thomas himself always began with the objections, and the best possible ones. Methodical doubt is a tool.

Second stage: projection. Instead of looking for the answer, the mind tells itself: "if I don't have the answer, maybe there isn't one." And from there: "if the people on the other side don't believe, they probably have some enormous argument I don't know about." The absence of a personal answer transforms into proof of the opponent's strength. It's a pure sophism, but it doesn't present itself as a piece of reasoning. It presents itself as anguish.

Third stage: the flight forward. The mind panics. It begins conceding positions it doesn't understand, invoking theories it hasn't mastered (the multiverse, quantum mechanics, eliminativism), not because it judges them solid, but because they sound impressive. It fights a shadow with borrowed weapons it doesn't know how to wield.

Fourth stage: absurdity. The mind, cornered, ends up defending positions that are intrinsically incoherent. "Everything is random, but you can't distinguish it from directedness." "There is no truth, but that's true." "My reasoning proves that we can't reason." It doesn't even notice, because panic has replaced thought.

This is the moment when argumentative aikido⁴ becomes not only useful but charitable: by turning the argument against itself, you're not punishing the interlocutor, you're waking him up. You're showing him that what he defends out of fear devours itself.

The three causes of the panic

Why does this happen? Why do honest minds, sometimes brilliant ones, fall into this trap? I identify three main causes, and I confess to having suffered from all three.

1. The isolation of the theist

This is perhaps the most insidious cause. If you are Catholic, Thomist, or simply a realist in a university, a company, a circle of contemporary friends, you are alone. Not alone in the metaphysical sense (God is there, certainly, and He's an excellent traveling companion, but He has the drawback of not posting on Reddit). Alone in the social sense: around you, the consensus is materialist, relativist, or simply indifferent. And the human being is a social animal. When everyone around you thinks your convictions are medieval relics, it takes considerable strength of character not to start wondering if they're right.

This is where the most pernicious of implicit sophisms comes in: the argument from majority. "If so many intelligent people aren't theists, they must have good reasons." But no. That's not how truth works. If you live in a village of flat-earthers, the Earth doesn't become flat. If 95% of your colleagues are nominalists, universals don't vanish. Truth is not democratic. It has never voted and doesn't intend to start.

The history of philosophy is, moreover, an effective vaccine against this illusion: there have been entire eras when virtually the entire intellectual world defended positions we now know to be false, and a few stubborn loners defended the truth against all comers. This isn't an argument for paranoia; it's a reminder that numbers don't constitute proof.

2. Poor knowledge of one's own arguments

This one I live with daily. Many believers (I sometimes include myself) know the conclusion of classical metaphysics (God exists, morality is objective, the soul is immortal), but not the arguments that lead there. They know that Thomas proved the existence of God, but not how. They know that realism is true, but not why nominalism self-destructs.

And when you don't know your own arguments, every objection looks like a missile. "What about the multiverse?" Panic. "What about Boltzmann brains?" Panic. "What if chance is enough?" Panic. Whereas if you take the time, calmly, to understand that the Fifth Way concerns intrinsic finality and not probability, the multiverse ceases to be a problem and becomes an illustration.

The solution is simple, even if it demands effort: study. Read Thomas, read Aristotle, read Gilson, read Maritain. Not summaries, not tweets, not three-minute videos. The texts. Intellectual effort is an act of charity toward yourself and toward those you claim to be able to help.

3. Loss of contact with reality

This is the most serious. The rational panic leads, over time, to a subtle form of philosophical derealization. The mind begins treating metaphysical questions as abstract games, disconnected from experience. It starts taking seriously hypotheses it would never take seriously in everyday life.

Nobody, at breakfast, wonders if their coffee is "random but looks exactly like coffee." Nobody, crossing the street, thinks "the car coming might be a quantum fluctuation indistinguishable from a real car." We live, breathe, and act in a world where unintelligent causes act toward determined ends, and we know it. The acorn grows into an oak. Fire heats. The stone falls. Acid burns. This isn't one hypothesis among others. It's the ground we walk on.

When someone gets to the point of saying "everything could be random, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference," they're no longer doing philosophy. They've left the game. As Wittgenstein would say, they've stopped respecting the rules of the language game⁵. And as Aristotle would say, you'll have a more productive discussion with a houseplant⁶.

How to get out of it

If you recognize yourself in this picture (and I flatter myself that if you're reading this blog, it's because you at least have the honesty of wanting to think), here are some leads, drawn from the experience of an engineer who has himself panicked more often than he'd like to admit.

First, name the panic. The simple act of telling yourself "I'm not reasoning right now, I'm panicking" changes everything. Intellectual panic is an emotion, not an argument. It's treated as such: by breathing, by stepping back, by asking yourself "what did I believe an hour ago, and why did I change my mind in five minutes?"

Second, return to fundamentals. Before asking yourself whether the multiverse refutes the Fifth Way, make sure you understand the Fifth Way. Before panicking about Boltzmann brains, make sure you know what the principle of sufficient reason is and why its negation is self-contradictory. Foundations first. The roof later.

Third, learn argumentative aikido. The vast majority of modern objections to classical theism are self-refuting. "There is no truth" is true? "Reason can't prove anything" is a rational argument? "Everything is random" is asserted by a mind directed toward truth? Turn the argument against itself. The more violent the objection, the more powerful the reversal.

Fourth, seek community. Not for emotional comfort (though that too), but for intellectual exchange. Find other realists. Read contemporary Thomists. Join the discussions. Isolation is the breeding ground of panic. Intelligence is dialogical by nature, and Thomism has always known this: the disputatio is not a luxury, it's a tool of thought.

Fifth, pray. I know, it sounds trite. But the contemplation of Truth is also an act of the intellect, and grace sustains the intellect as it sustains the will. You don't think less well on your knees. You think less alone.

The final word

My Reddit interlocutor ended up maintaining that a universe where things are really directed toward ends and a universe where they are randomly identical to a directed universe are "exactly the same thing, you couldn't tell the difference." What he doesn't realize is that he has just conceded the entirety of the teleological argument. If there is no observable, describable, testable, conceivable difference between "directed" and "random but identical to directed in every respect," then those two words designate the same reality, and the word "random" does no work. It's a sticker slapped on a truth one refuses to look in the face.

The rational panic doesn't produce atheists. It produces people who use the language of reason to flee from reason. People who, out of fear of an imaginary objection, end up asserting that "the last time Thursday was purple while calling salmon" is a proposition as valid as "the acorn grows into an oak." People who, to avoid concluding to God, prefer to conclude to the total incoherence of the universe, including their own reasoning, including the very sentence by which they assert it.

It's sad. But it's also, in a way, a proof by contradiction. For if the only alternative to classical theism is the abolition of reason itself, then classical theism is in far better shape than people think.

Don't fight your shadows. Turn on the light.