All this is true, of course, only if atheism is quite serious and not an intellectual pose, snobbish caprice or thoughtless superficiality

The next section of Hans Kung's arguments comparing the consequences of which choice is made, to believe or not to believe in God would probably be considered the most controversial yet.  If I felt any hesitancy in posting it it isn't because I find it unconvincing,  I think it's true and not only true for the choice for atheism, it is true in at least a similar way for the banal pose of agnosticism.

Belief in God is ultimately justified fundamental trust 

But does it not follow from the possibility of affirming or denying God that the choice is a matter of indifference?  By no means. 

-  Denial of God implies an ultimately unjustified fundamental trust in reality.  Atheism cannot suggest any condition for the possibility of uncertain reality.  If someone denies God, he does not know why he ultimately trusts in reality.

This means that atheism is nourished, if not by a nihilistic fundamental mistrust, then at any rate by an ultimately unjustified fundamental trust.  By denying God, man decides against a primary ground, deepest support, an ultimate goal of reality.  In atheism the assent to reality turns out to be ultimately unjustified:  a free wheeling, nowhere-anchored, and therefore paradoxical fundamental trust.  In nihilism, on account of its radical fundamental mistrust, an assent to reality is completely impossible.  Atheism cannot suggest any condition for the possibility of uncertain reality.  For this reason it lacks not perhaps all rationality but certainly a radical rationality, which lack, of course, it often disguises by a rationalistic but essentially irrational trust in human reason. 

No, it is not a matter of indifference whether we affirm or deny God.  The price paid by atheism for its denial is obvious.  It is exposed by an ultimate groundlessness, unsupportedness, aimlessness, to the danger of the possible disunion, meaninglessness, worthlessness, hollowness of reality as a whole.  When he becomes aware of this, the atheist is exposed also quite personally to the danger of an ultimate abandonment, menace and decay, resulting in doubt, fear, even despair.  All this is true, of course, only if atheism is quite serious and not an intellectual pose, snobbish caprice or thoughtless superficiality. 

For the atheist, there is no answer to those ultimate and yet immediate, perennial questions of human life, which are not to be suppressed by being prohibited questions [this was written at the height of that dismissive game of logical positivism] that arise not merely in marginal situations but in the very midst of personal and social life.  To return once more to Kant's questions:  What can we know?  Why is there anything at all?   Why not nothing?  Where does man come from and where does he go to?  Why is the world as it is?  What is the ultimate ground and meaning of all reality?

What ought we to do?  Why do what we do?  Why and to whom are we ultimately responsible?  What deserves forthright contempt and what love?  What is the point of loyalty and friendship,  but also what is the point of suffering and sin?  What is really decisive for man?  

What may we hope?  Why are we on earth?  What is the meaning of the whole?  Is there something that sustains us in all the hollowness, which never permits us to despair?  Is there something stable in all change, something unconditioned in all that is conditioned?  Is there an absolute in the relativity experienced everywhere?  What is left for us:  death, which makes everything pointless at the end?  What will give us courage for life and what courage for death?

These are really questions in which we are wholly involved.  They are questions not only for the dying but for the living.  They are not only for weaklings and uniformed people but precisely for the informed and committed.  They are not excuses for avoiding action but incentives to action.  They are all questions that atheism, in the last resort, leaves unanswered.  

Now for the other thesis:

-  Affirmation of God implies an ultimately justified fundamental trust in reality.  As radial fundamental trust, belief in God can suggest the condition of the possibility of uncertain reality.  If someone affirms God, he knows why he can trust reality.

Belief in God is nourished by an ultimately justified fundamental trust.  In affirming God, I decided confidently for a primary ground, deepest support, an ultimate goal of reality.  In belief in God, my assent to reality turns out to be ultimately justified and consistent:  a fundamental trust anchored in the ultimate depth, in the cause of causes, and directed to the goal of goals.  My trust in God as genuine, radical, fundamental trust can therefore suggest the condition for the possibility of uncertain reality.  In this sense, unlike atheism, it displays a radical rationality, which, however, must not simply be confused with rationalism. 

No, there is no stalemate between belief in God and atheism..  The price received by belief in God for its assent is obvious.  Since I confidently decide for a primal ground instead of groundlessness, for a primal support instead of unsupportedness, for a primal goal instead of aimlessness, I can now with good reason perceive in all disunion a unity, in all worthlessness a value, in all meainglessness a meaning of the reality of the world and man.  And in all the uncertainty and insecurity, abandonment and exposure, menace, decay and finiteness even of my own existence, in the light of the ultimate primal source, primal meaning and primal value, I am granted -given- a radical certainty, assurance and stability.  This is not simply an abstract security, in isolation from my fellow men, but always involves a concrete reference to the human "thou."  How otherwise is the younger person in particular to learn what it means to be accepted by God, if he is not accepted by any single human being?

In this way, those ultimate and immediate questions of man receive at least a fundamental answer with which we can life:  an answer from the very last and very first reality of God.  And to measure the whole import of the answer, it would be helpful to read over again the section:  What would be different if . . . "

In this secttion, the listing of the consequences of atheism are seen all through the literature of serious atheism though not in the more mindless panglossian propaganda based in ignorance and superficiality.  Nihilism, claims of meaninglessness, the ultimate meaninglessness of morality, . . . I find it in everything from the dismal poetry of A.E. Housman to the banality of absurdist theater, the nihilism of empty (and violent) sensationalism, the self-indulgent and self-pittying abyss of anti-intellectualism and addiction the attraction to the gangster governmental systems of fascism, Nazism Marxism, the empty stupidity of anarchism and so many other features of modernism.  I find it in the mindlessness of meditation as escape and, yes, I'll go there, the nihilistic forms of Buddhism that are so popular with Western atheists - even if they have remade it in their own image instead of that of the Buddha.

As of now I may or may not give you the next section of the book, I'd like to give it but I'm guessing that this is becoming a long argument, especially as I think the demand for "proof" that motivated me to give this argument is of the kind warned of in the sentence I used as a title for this.  This argument is certainly not for someone who is content with superficiality, it's meant for someone who has the courage to make a choice consistent with their professed devotion to reality and life.  I find Kung's argument not a proof but as a series of the best reasons to make that choice as I've ever seen.  It makes things like the famous "proofs" of God seem kind of beside the point, those for atheism utterly trivial.

Now, aren't you glad you tried to stick it to me on the matter of "proof"?