December 13, 2011

Christians Scared to Death of Death

“A detailed national survey…from 2003 claimed that fully 92 percent of Americans believe in God, 85 percent believe in heaven and 82 percent believe in miracles. But the deeper truth is that such religious belief…brings believers little solace in the face of death. The only priesthood in which people really believe is the medical profession and the purpose of their sacramental drugs and technology is to support longevity, the sole unquestioned good of contemporary Western life. Christianity, in the hands of a Paul, an Augustine or a Luther, is a way of becoming reconciled to the brevity of human life and giving up the desire for wealth, worldly goods, and temporal power…[But many Christians today] are actually leading desperate atheist lives bounded by a desire for longevity and the terror of [death].”

Simon Critchley, The Book of Dead Philosophers (Vintage, 2008)

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