New York Times columnist Stanley Fish reviewed three popular atheist manifestos recently, and in doing so he got pretty prolix. Still, he inspired hundreds of comments, including mine. And both the books and the review and the comments dwelt at length on the question of the social benefits of religion, or lack thereof. This was my response:
So many words. Look, folks: suppose all religions were really swell, and every believer were equally swell. And suppose all atheists were irredeemably evil, and all nonreligious organizations such as the Communist party were all evil too.
Or assume the exact reverse. It doesn't make a bit of difference to the question "Is there a God" whether believing makes you swell or fell.
Even atheists get trapped in the endless noodling of literate Ptolomies like Fish. Because the only rational answer to the question "Is there a God" is "Huh? What was that last word?"
All definitions of God and arguments to support those definitions are tautologies. The word "God" is completely meaningless from any scientific/rational context. You can't deny the existence of something whose existence can't be meaningfully described. So it's impossible to be an atheist, really. The term "atheist" was invented by religious people to describe "those who deny the existence of God." It's a propaganda term like "miscegenation." You can't deny the existence of things that aren't definable/describable. Nothing to deny.
Hope clouds observation. We're born. We live. We die. Deal with it. Life can still be deeply meaningful once you realize that it's up to us to create meaning. Stop looking for it and start doing it.
Q. "What does the dyslexic agnostic insomniace do?"
A. "He lies awake all night wondering if there's a Dog."
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