Ignorance is More Blissful than Theism

In his article, Believe it or Not, David Bentley Hart eloquently points out the moral and intellectual superficiality of the New Atheism:

“[Nietzsche’s] famous fable in The Gay Science of the madman who announces God’s death is anything but a hymn of atheist triumphalism. In fact, the madman despairs of the mere atheists—those who merely do not believe—to whom he addresses his terrible proclamation. In their moral contentment, their ease of conscience, he sees an essential oafishness; they do not dread the death of God because they do not grasp that humanity’s heroic and insane act of repudiation has sponged away the horizon, torn down the heavens, left us with only the uncertain resources of our will with which to combat the infinity of meaninglessness that the universe now threatens to become.”

As different as their views are, Hart and Nietzsche agree on the simple fact that any worldview worth taking seriously is one that answers life’s greatest questions, rather than simply dismissing them or arrogantly declaring that one (safe in the suburban bubble of economic stability and a set of unquestioned cultural values) is strong enough to live without such answers.

The latter approach, for all its bluster, results only in drifting through one’s life without any clear idea what it is about.

And refusing to see the tragedy in that does nothing to make it less tragic.