How long was it after you started college that you heard that first attack on your faith? Unless you attend a religiously-oriented school, it probably didn't take long.

Maybe it happened in your Freshman English Lit class, where the professor--so careful to respect the beliefs of every other student (including the one who thinks he's Elvis reincarnated)--made a point of ridiculing belief in the Christian God.

Or maybe it happened in Biology 101, where the professor contemptuously dismissed anyone stupid enough to believe a bunch of creationist myths.

If you took a class in Women's Studies, you likely heard that Christianity is a patriarchal religion designed to oppress any woman fool enough to join it.

Of course, not all attacks on faith come from professors. You might have tried to witness to your new roommate--only to have him dismiss your faith as a "crutch" for the weak. Or you may have opened the school newspaper, only to see a letter viciously attacking the school for allowing a theologian to speak on campus.

If you think these attacks appear to be more common on campus than off, you're right. Atheists do tend to congregate there. And the reason they reject the Judeo-Christian God with such passion is the subject of a fascinating new book by Paul Vitz.

Vitz is a psychologist, and until he was in his late thirties, he was an atheist himself (He's now a Roman Catholic). In his book, Faith of the Fatherless (Spence, 1999) Vitz says he began to wonder why America--a country that was essentially an atheist-free zone until the late nineteenth century--has become one in which "the presumption of atheism" defines public life. "The rejection of God in our schools is just one small example of the triumph of atheism," Vitz notes. Atheists have been wildly successful in promoting the assumption "that belief in God is based on all kinds of irrational, immature needs and wishes, whereas atheism or skepticism flows from a rational, grown-up, no-nonsense view of things as they really are."

Even though well over 90 percent of us tell the pollsters we believe in God, "references to God in public discourse have become extremely uncommon; we have become a nation of public and practical atheists," Vitz says. "This social condition has been well described by Richard John Neuhaus as the 'naked public square.'"

Well, if the public square is naked, then the average college campus is a veritable nudist colony. Serious references to God in scholarly writing is considered "taboo," Vitz says. In fact, he adds, bringing God up in any way "would bring the legitimacy of one's scholarship into question."

How did this state of affairs come about? Until just a few decades ago, America's public square was on the best-dressed list, religiously speaking. As Vitz observes, no other culture in history has manifested such a widespread public rejection of the divine--while at the same time boasting a citizenry that stubbornly persists in clinging to private belief in the Almightly.

"That such a rejection of God should have triumphed is quite remarkable--even bizarre" in a country that is seriously religious," Vitz says. How did atheists become so good at controlling publicly "acceptable" views about God--especially on college campuses? That's what Vitz wanted to know. He began his study in the same place atheists began: by examining the psychology of belief.

Atheists, of course, have long considered belief in God nothing more than infantile wish fulfillment. They disdain religion as an illusion we poor schmucks made up to satisfy unconscious needs.

But, Vitz wondered, what if the shoe's on the other foot? Suppose it's the atheists who are engaging in unconscious wish fulfillment?

To find the answer, Vitz began scanning the last four centuries for patterns--patterns that distinguish the lives of atheists from the lives of comparable theists.

What he found is nothing less than astonishing. After studying the lives of more than a dozen of the world's most influential atheists, Vitz discovered that they all had one thing in common: Defective relationships with their fathers. By defective, Vitz means the fathers were dead, abusive, weak, or abandoned their children.

For example, Freidrich Nietzsche, a philosopher whose writings influenced everyone from Adolph Hitler to the Columbine killers, lost his father when he was not quite five years old. Nietzsche had been extremely close to his dad, a Lutheran pastor who died of a brain disease. "Nietzsche often spoke positively of his father and of his death as a great loss which he never forgot," Vitz explains. But "he also saw him as weak and sickly." It is not hard, Vitz says, "to view Nietzsche's rejection of God and Christianity as a rejection of the weakness of his father."

Bertrand Russell was famous for his rejection of Christianity; he lost his father when he was a young child, and was raised by a rigidly puritanical grandmother. Russell's daughter says that his grandmother's joyless faith was "the only form of Christianity my father knew well," a faith that taught that "the life of this world was no more than a gloomy testing ground for future bliss. . . My father threw this morbid belief out the window."

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre also fits the defective father theory: His father died when Jean-Paul was a baby. "Jean-Paul was obsessed with fatherhood all his life," Vitz says. "His father's absence was such a painful reality that Jean-Paul spent a lifetime trying to deny the loss and build a philosophy in which the absence of a father and of God is the very starting place for the 'good' or 'authentic' life."

Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher and political theorist, was the son of an Anglican vicar, a man Vitz describes as ignorant and bad-tempered. This father abandoned the family when Hobbes was a boy. Hobbes in turn abandoned belief in God. "It can be fairly said that Hobbes was a major historical enemy of the personal God of Christianity," Vitz writes.

A certain French Enlightenment philosopher disliked his father so much that he changed his name from Arouet to Voltaire. The two fought constantly: At one point Voltaire's father was so angry with him for refusing to take up a career in law that "he authorized having his son sent to prison or into exile in the West Indies," Vitz writes. Voltaire's "criticism of religion was . . . frequent, intense, and radical."

Perhaps the most interesting background of an atheist is that of Sigmund Freud. Freud despised his Jewish father, a weak man who was unable to support his family--and a man Freud later called a sexual pervert. It is not unreasonable to assume, Vitz writes, that Freud's Oedipus Complex, which placed hatred of the father at the center of his psychology, expressed "his strong unconscious hostility to and rejection of his own father."

Of course, not all atheists become philosophers or psychiatrists. Some of them become politicians. Among the most infamous are Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, who share, not only a reputation for efficient butchery, but also demonic fathers. Hitler's father was a violent man who unmercifully beat Adolf, his mother, and even the family dog; he died when Adolf was 14. Stalin's father also administered brutal beatings to his son. "It is not difficult to understand," Vitz writes, "why communism, with its explicit rejection of God and all other higher authorities . . . had great appeal for him."

And the father of Mao Zedong? He was a family tyrant. Mao "clearly hated his father and learned his first appreciation of revolution and rebellion in his own family setting," Vitz says.

But wait a second. What if the kind of behavior WE view as bad fathering (dying, abandoning and abusing kids) was just typical fathering in those days?

Vitz decided to compare the family circumstances of influential atheists to those of influential theists from the same era. What he discovered backs up his theory. It seems that every theist enjoyed a strong, loving relationship with his father--or, if the father was dead, with a father substitute. These theists made their reputations in part through their battles against atheism.

For example, the British statesman Edmund Burke, whom many view as the founder of modern conservative political thought, was partly raised by his grandfather and three affectionate uncles. Of his Uncle Garret, Burke writes that he was "one of the very best men, I believe, that ever lived, of the clearest integrity, the most genuine principles of religion and virtue . . . I really think he is the person I should wish myself . . . the inmost to resemble."

Burke was an outspoken critic of the French Revolution, in part because of its hostility to religion, Vitz notes. " Atheism Burke wrote, "is against not only our reason, but our instincts."

William Wilberforce, the English parliamentarian and abolitionist, suffered the loss of his father when he was nine years old. Sent to live with his uncle and aunt, Wilberforce became extremely close to both his uncle and to a regular visitor to the home: John Newton, the former slave trader. One biographer writes that as a child, Wilberforce reverenced Newton "as a parent."

John Henry Newman, the Catholic cardinal, came from a happy family and was very close to his father. The Christian apologist and mystery writer G.K. Chesterton was extremely close to his father, a kind man who spent much time with his young son. A biographer writes that Chesterton's father was "the most important person in Gilbert's childhood." Chesterton himself writes, "My father is the very best man I ever knew of that generation . . ."

Walker Percy, author of such classic novels as Lost in the Cosmos and The Thanatos Syndrome, suffered the early loss of both his father and grandfather. Following their deaths, Percy's Uncle Will invited Percy's mother and her three sons to live with him. This man was, Vitz writes, "a caring and a careful guardian." When his uncle died, Percy, then 26, was devastated, and dedicated his first novel to him.

The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer was the much-loved son of a psychiatrist who was, Vitz writes, "a major presence in the lives of all his children." Bonhoffer's sister recalls that their father "showed his respect for warm-hearted, unselfish and disciplined actions and relied on us to stand by the weak."

Faith of the Fatherless is a fascinating study, and provides strong evidence, as Vitz concludes, that "For every [atheist] strongly swayed by rational argument, there are countless others more affected by nonrational, psychological factors."

In other words, many atheists believe there is no God because that's what they WANT to believe. In effect, they've converted their atheism into an idol, and they bow down to worship it. As Vitz reminds us, idolatry can mean not only worshiping objects made by our hands, but by our mind--"internal psychological objects constructed from our psychological needs."

A constant temptation for ALL human beings, Vitz warns, is the desire to interpret God in our own terms. If we're not careful, we end up, as C.S. Lewis put it, "worshipping an imaginary God." It appears this is just as true for atheists as it is for Christians.

And that brings us back to our original question: Why can't the average college student walk across the campus without someone dissing his or her faith? According to Vitz, it's because intense atheists "tend, to a remarkable degree, to be found in a narrow range of social and economic strata: in the university and intellectual world and in certain professions."

Vitz does not speculate on why this is, but I will: It appears that these angry atheists want to position themselves in such a way that they will have every opportunity to "evangelize" as many people out of their faith as possible.

And they don't stop there. Vitz says atheists also "make up a significant part of the governing class." These folks seem intent on ruling religion out of bounds in any and all public settings, from the public schools, where vicious battles are regularly waged over whether 6-year-olds may whisper a prayer over their peanut butter sandwiches, to the town square, where fights erupt every Christmas over whether city fathers may erect creches on public property. (It should be noted here that Madalyn Murray O'Hair — the spiritual mother, so to speak, of all these skirmishes, loathed her father; her son William writes that she once tried to kill his grandfather with a butcher knife).

Faith of the Fatherless helps us understand why atheists behave the way they do. If we want to reach these unhappy people for Christ, Vitz warns, then we must take into account the fact that "most serious unbelievers are likely to have painful memories underlying their rationalization of atheism."

Yes, we ought to fight the efforts of atheists to turn the college campus and public square into a religion-free zone. But we must also compassionately consider a tragic circumstances that may be contributing to their hatred of their Heavenly father: The loss of a loving earthly dad.