Journal Entry : Monday, 24 January 2011 07:19:23 PM
I am busy with Alistair McGrath’s book The Twilight of Atheism and am finding it very thought provoking. When I started the book I said to myself, my faith is strong and reconciled, I am reading this to get a more contemporary view of atheism as it grew out of the Enlightenment and as it stands now – don’t let its content divert or sway you!
But as I move forward in the book, having dealt with the French Revolution and the likes of Voltaire, one is now encountering a more exact and militant atheism. For instance, I am currently reading McGath’s discourse on Freud and unlike the sophistry of his predecessors, Freud comes across with a far more exact and convincing reasoning. God is an illusion says Freud, invented to satisfy an unconscious need for father like authoritarian benevolence!
Although my faith stays strong, every now and then that cold hand of doubt rests on my shoulder – what if he’s right? What if all of my faith is an illusion? It is important at these times to remind myself that my path to the truth was not based on a flimsy sub-conscious whim, but on a period of study, reflection and intellectual assent that has taken a long time in maturing. But then that is what doubt is – a flimsy sub-conscious whim based on conjecture and shallow thought!
The problem for many is that, if you can’t see or visualise something, then it cannot exist!! That assumption is spurious!
Until the next entry!
A Pilgrim's Journal 