Word: atheism
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Cioran believes that Western civilization is today at a stage of helpless paralysis. Modern man, he writes, is aware that every action eventually negates itself, every profound idea will give rise to another refuting it, and that every revolution leads to inevitable counterrevolution. Even nihilism and atheism are false options, since they too involve a commitment that will eventually crumble. "At our limits a God appears, or something that serves his turn," says Cioran, who is at once an unbeliever and a profoundly religious man. "I fall back on God, if only out of a desire to trample my doubts...
...dying child; a love-haunted, plague-struck woman who is offered dirisxian aid but spurns the comfort of heaven to sigh for her lost lover. The stretches between such moments are bare and boring. Moreover, Bunuei's anticlerical polemics add up to nothing more than creaky village atheism dressed in sombrero and serape...
Never one to go gently into a good fight, Britain's Bertrand Russell came caustically to the defense of atheism in countering rumors that he had got religion at the age of 96. "There is a lie factory at work on behalf of the afterlife," wrote Lord Russell to a U.S. housewife who queried him on his alleged conversion. "My views on religion remain those which I acquired at the age of 16. I consider all forms of religion not only false but harmful...
Rubenstein believes that religion still has a worthwhile social value in an age of atheism. He is convinced that it can help men live with "the cold, indifferent cosmos" by providing a form of fellowship and hope, primarily through spiritually satisfying liturgy and ritual. "The primary role of religion is priestly," Rubenstein argues. "It offers men a ritual and mythic structure in which the abiding realities of life and death can be shared...
...responsibility toward the world's poor in countless sermons and pastoral letters. Léger was also an advocate of church renewal at the recent Synod of Bishops in Rome, where he made his final decision to quit his archdiocese. "It was during the discussions on faith and atheism," he explained, "that my future became a question of conscience for me. It became clear that Our Lord was asking me for deed as well as words." On the final day of the Synod, Pope Paul reluctantly approved Léger's request for a transfer...