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Contra Atheism
What the New Atheists Don’t See
Theodore Dalrymple To regret religion is to regret Western civilization. The British parliament’s first avowedly atheist member, Charles Bradlaugh, would stride into public meetings in the 1880s, take out his pocket watch, and challenge God to strike him dead in 60 seconds. God bided his time, but got Bradlaugh in the end. A slightly later atheist, Bertrand Russell, was once asked what he would do if it proved that he was mistaken and if he met his maker in the hereafter. He would demand to know, Russell replied with all the high-pitched fervor of his pedantry, why God had not made the evidence of his existence plainer and more irrefutable. And Jean-Paul Sartre* came up with a memorable line: “God doesn’t exist—the bastard!” Sartre’s wonderful outburst of disappointed rage suggests that it is not as easy as one might suppose to rid oneself of the notion of God. (Perhaps this is the time to declare that I am not myself a believer.) At the very least, Sartre’s line implies that God’s existence would solve some kind of problem—actually, a profound one: the transcendent purpose of human existence. Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signifies nothing. However much philosophers tell us that it is illogical to fear death, and that at worst it is only the process of dying that we should fear, people still fear death as much as ever. In like fashion, however many times philosophers say that it is up to us ourselves, and to no one else, to find the meaning of life, we continue to long for a transcendent purpose immanent in existence itself, independent of our own wills. To tell us that we should not feel this longing is a bit like telling someone in the first flush of love that the object of his affections is not worthy of them. The heart hath its reasons that reason knows not of. Rest here: http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be.html
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1977 300d 70k--sold 08 1985 300TD 185k+ 1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03 1985 409d 65k--sold 06 1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car 1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11 1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper 1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4 1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13 |
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I like that kind of essay: Well-written and thoughtful.
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Yes. While I rarely agree with his conclusions, I can count on Dalrymple to write a good essay.
In my opinion, the fact that he found no easy way around the ontological argument accounts for his lack of criticism of religion. He has intellectual space for idealism. The neo-atheists tend to dismiss that argument out of hand.
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1977 300d 70k--sold 08 1985 300TD 185k+ 1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03 1985 409d 65k--sold 06 1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car 1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11 1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper 1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4 1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13 |
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