This and that and the other Author:Hilaire Belloc Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in ON ATHEISM The Atheist is he that has forgotten God. He that denies God may do so in many innocent ways, and is an Atheist in form, but is not con- demn... more »able as such. Thus one man will reason by contradiction that there can be no God. If there were a God (says he), how could such things be? This man has not read or does not know sufficient to his purpose, or is not wide enough. His purpose is Truth, so he is not to be condemned. Another will say, " There is no God," meaning, " There is none that I have heard called God ": as, the figure of an old man; some vengeful spirit; an absurdity taught him by fools; and so forth. Another also will say, " There is no God," as he would say, " Thus do I solve this riddle!" He has played a game, coming to a conclusion of logic, and supposes himself right by the rules of the game. Nor is he more to be condemned than one who shall prove, not that God is not, but that God is, by similar ways. For though this last man proves truth, and that first man falsehood, yet each is only concerned with proving, and not with making good or standing up for the Truth, so that it shall be established. Neither would found in the mind something unshakeable, but each would rather bring a process to its conclusion for neatness. We call that man Atheist who, thinking or unthinking, waking or sleeping, knows not God; and when it is brought to him that either God is not or is, would act as though the question mattered nothing. Such an Atheist makes nothing of God's judgments nor of his commands. He does not despise them but will have them absent, as he will have God absent also. Nor is he a rebel but rather an absconder. Of Atheism you may see that it is proper to a society and not to a man, so that Atheists are proper to an Atheist Commonwealth, andthis ...« less