/lit/ - Literature

I wonder at the hardihood with which such
persons undertake to talk about God. In a treatise
addressed to infidels they begin with a chapter
proving the existence of God from the works of
Nature . . . this only gives their readers grounds
for thinking that the proofs of our religion are
very weak. . . . It is a remarkable fact that no
canonical writer has ever used Nature to prove
God.
pascal, Pensées, iv, 242, 243
Not many years ago when I was an atheist, if anyone had
asked me, ‘Why do you not believe in God?’ my reply
would have run something like this: ‘Look at the universe
we live in. By far the greatest part of it consists of empty
space, completely dark and unimaginably cold. The bodies
which move in this space are so few and so small in
comparison with the space itself that even if every one of
them were known to be crowded as full as it could hold
with perfectly happy creatures, it would still be difficult
to believe that life and happiness were more than a byproduct
to the power that made the universe. As it is,
however, the scientists think it likely that very few of the
suns of space—perhaps none of them except our own—
have any planets; and in our own system it is improbable
that any planet except the Earth sustains life. And Earth
herself existed without life for millions of years and may
exist for millions more when life has left her. And what is
it like while it lasts? It is so arranged that all the forms
of it can live only by preying upon one another. In the
lower forms this process entails only death, but in the
higher there appears a new quality called consciousness
which enables it to be attended with pain. The creatures
cause pain by being born, and live by inflicting pain, and
in pain they mostly die. In the most complex of all the
creatures, Man, yet another quality appears, which we call
reason, whereby he is enabled to foresee his own pain
which henceforth is preceded with acute mental suffering,
and to foresee his own death while keenly desiring permanence.
It also enables men by a hundred ingenious
contrivances to inflict a great deal more pain than they
otherwise could have done on one another and on the
irrational creatures. This power they have exploited to the
full. Their history is largely a record of crime, war, disease,
and terror, with just sufficient happiness interposed
to give them, while it lasts, an agonised apprehension of
losing it, and, when it is lost, the poignant misery of
remembering. Every now and then they improve their
condition a little and what we call a civilisation appears.