Wednesday, May 9, 2012

If God is not, then the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good, is but the accidental and ineffective by-product of blindly swirling atoms, or of the equally unpurposeful, though more conceptually complicated, mechanisms of present-day physics. A man may well believe that this dreadful thing is true. But only the fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true. For to wish there should be no God is to wish that the things which we love and strive to realize and make permanent, should be only temporary and doomed to frustration and destruction. If life and its fulfilments are good, why should one rejoice at the news that God is dead and that there is nothing in the whole world except our frail and perishable selves that is concerned with anything that matters?

... William Pepperell Montague (1873-1953), Belief Unbound, Yale University Press, 1931, p. 66-67 (see the book; see also Job 12:7-9; Ps. 14:1; Matt. 11:16-19; Luke 16:31; Rom. 1:18-20; Eph. 2:11-13; more at Beauty, Blindness, Doom, Existence, Frustration, God, God is dead, Goodness, Impermanence)

 
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        Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day,
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Last updated: 05/10/22

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