The Joy of Belonging to a Monstrous God
A critique of Anthony Kronman’s pantheism
The new atheists are dead. Long live the old atheists!
For the second time, after positivism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the fad of scientism has passed. The lessons of the “old” atheists, or rather of the existential ones can be heard again without the red herrings thrown down by the new atheist movement.
New and classic atheists
The chief difference between the so-called “new” atheists (the ones who wrote largely in reaction to 9/11) and the previous ones is that the new ones were more science-oriented and naively rationalistic, whereas the latter were more sympathetic to philosophy and were preoccupied with universal, existential problems. From the classic atheist’s perspective, then, secular society as well as religion seems suspect.
This is why Nietzsche said the death of God was a catastrophe and a monumental challenge, rather than something to be shrugged off in Dawkins’ manner, as when his billboards said, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
Contrast that nonchalance with Nietzsche’s dire prophecy from The Gay Science:
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall…
