“God, Gods, and Fairies”

Dear Friends and Family,

In addition to my post on Tom O’Loughlin, here is an absolutely brilliant and erudite piece by David Bentley Hart from First Things (June/July 2013). Hart outlines why disbelief or belief in gods and fairies (which he defines as things of this world/nature, i.e. created, if they exist) and disbelief in God.

Also, make sure you look through Father Aidan’s posts, particularly on the Church Fathers.

Yours,
David

Eclectic Orthodoxy

One of the strangest claims often made by purveyors and consumers of today’s popular atheism is that disbelief in God involves no particular positive philosophy of reality, much less any kind of religion or creed, but consists merely in neutral incredulity toward a certain kind of factual asseveration. This is not something the atheists of earlier ages would have been very likely to say, if only because they still lived in a culture whose every dimension (artistic, philosophical, ethical, social, cosmological) was shaped by a religious vision of the world. More to the point, it is an utterly nonsensical claim—so nonsensical, in fact, that it is doubtful that those who make it can truly be considered atheists in any coherent sense.

Admittedly, I suppose, it is possible to mistake the word “God” for the name of some discrete object that might or might not be found within the fold of…

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