What is the Joker? Well, he is the embodiment and embrace of knowing full well that he is the product of blind, impersonal, purposeless, meaningless, immaterial forces. He keeps no veneer over his life to prevent him from living consistently with that belief. Money has as much worth as paper, human life has as much worth as dust. Rules and laws are farces of nature, and the only real law in the universe seems almost contradictory: being is no different than non-being. The Joker wouldn't say it this way, but his "purpose" is to live consistently with reality. His only frustration in life is that people don't, and so he chips away at the veneer people have thinly laid over the meaninglessness of existence, that veneer and delusion which all men and women cling to: I am me, I have a purpose, I have a meaning, and what I do matters. Lies people tell themselves, of course, laughable lies that are as sad as they are crooked, which explains The Joker's name and smile. We can see that The Joker is actually the most clear-thinking atheist there is. He isn't insane, he's the only sane one. It’s not that he’s the unstoppable force, he just lives what it means.
What is the Batman? He is the ultimate expression of total
delusion. As all heroes do, he believes that lives are worth protecting because
lives are worth living. For Batman, justice isn’t only about what people do in
broad daylight, but what they plot even when no one is looking. There is
accountability even if eyes are blind to see it. Relationships with friends,
family, father and mother, these motivate, empower, lend purpose to, drive his
existence. People aren’t just bags of chemicals, electric impulses, and
make-up, but what they say matter, and what they do to each other must be held
into account. This he believes fanatically, fundamentally, and dare I say,
religiously. Unfortunately for Bats, nobility, honor, sacrifice, love,
innocence, justice, fear, good, evil… these are all piles of delusions man has
heaped up on himself through the years to curtain and hedge our meaningless
lives from the awful truth. Whether Batman formed these ideals from his own
analyses, learned them from his parents, read them in some literature, or all
of the above, what he did not do was draw any logical conclusion from blind,
impersonal, purposeless, meaningless, immaterial forces to the worldview he
wholeheartedly embraces. In other words, he is totally and completely deluded
to reality. The reality is that his parents died as a matter of
cause-and-effect begun billions of years ago, and even if there were some other
multiverse where his parents lived (if you accept that theory), -his- parents died. And frankly, not only
was it unavoidable in a near infinite amount of other multiverses, really, it doesn’t matter that they did. So we cheer for Batman
because we want him to shield us from the same reality. But Batman isn’t an immovable
object, he’s just too stubborn to accept The Joker is right, that he is The
Joker, with just a little more worldview make-up.
According to the atheist worldview, we are all deluded. We
all participate in the active cloaking of our minds from the harsh reality of
existence/non-existence equality. If anything, we seem to idolize those who
delude themselves best, and demonize those who apply it most. Isn’t it true
that the happiest in the world are those who least trouble themselves with
these thoughts? But who is the hero and who is the villain in our stories? Who
is the most deluded and who sees the most clearly? In a strange and ironic way,
the atheist tells us to live like the Batman, but believe like The Joker. In an
even stranger twist, the atheist then proceeds to berate those who believe like
the Batman and those who live like The Joker, all with a stench of mental and
moral superiority.
Atheist, stop feeling obligated not only to demand that we
accept your worldview, but also to strip us of our delusion, all the while
clinging to whatever delusion you harbor. Even in your own self-constructed
worldview, what entitles you to tell the other patients in the asylum that
their delusion is unsustainable and ill-suited? That’s a peculiar sort of haughtiness
and hubris which I think even The Joker would laugh at.
