…what about us – that is, those who gather to worship God, in the vague hope our lives are not pointless? Dare we acknowledge that we fear – a fear we suppress through normality – our faith may be little more than a manifestation of our species’ collective narcissism, a narcissism that cannot help but create a god or gods of our liking because we assume they exist primarily to insure the significance of our existence?
The psalmist tells us that “truth shall spring up from the earth.” The “earthy” character of William James’s description of our world has the ring of truth. In the very least, we cannot help but admire James’s refusal to offer false consolations or hope in the face of nothingness.
There is something right, as well as ironic, about the diminishment of our existence in a world in which we have made our human existence more important than the existence of God. That is why it is surely the case that the only interesting atheism left is not the denial of God, but rather the denial by some of the significance of our existence as a human species.