Alternating Current by Octavio Paz

Author:Octavio Paz
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2012-02-08T15:51:00+00:00

Forms of Atheism

It is almost impossible to write about the death of God. It is not a suitable subject for a dissertation, even though for more than a half century it has occasioned hymns of rejoicing and hallelujahs. This vast and sometimes unreadable literature does not exhaust the subject: everything we say and do today bears the mark of this event. Whether implicit or explicit, atheism is universal. But we must make a distinction between various brands of atheists: those who believe they believe in a living God and who really think and live as though he had never existed: these are the real atheists and most of our fellow citizens are of this persuasion; the pseudoatheists, for whom God has not died because he never existed, though they nonetheless believe in one or another of his successors (reason, progress, history); and finally those who accept his death and try to live their lives within this unprecedented perspective. These latter are a minority that can be divided in turn into two groups: those who do not resign themselves, and like Nietzsche's Madman, intone their Requiem aeternam deo in empty churches; and those for whom atheism is an act of faith. Both groups live the death of God religiously, lightheartedly, and gravely. Lightheartedly, because they live as though a great weight had been removed from their shoulders; gravely, because with the disappearance of the divine power, the support of all creation, the very ground beneath their feet is shaky. Without God the world has become lighter and man heavier.

The death of God is a chapter in the history of the world's religions, like the death of the Great Pan or the sudden disappearance of Quetzalcoatl. It is also a phase of the modern consciousness. This phase is a religious one. It is religious in a very special way, however, and living through this particular moment calls for a frame of mind that is a combination, in varying proportions, of rigorous thought and passionate faith. Like any other moment, it is transitory; like every religious moment, it is crucial. Bathed in the light of the divine, the religious moment shines brightly and says: forever. It is human time suspended from eternity by a thread, the thread of supernatural presence; if this thread breaks, man falls. The moment that the atheist lives is crucial for the opposite reason: his horizon is the total absence of supernatural presence. As in the religious moment, in the moment of the atheist, too, human time is accepted as fragility and contingency in the face of an extratemporal dimension: the absence of God, like His presence, is eternal. The positive religious moment is the end of profane time and the beginning of sacred time: this end is a resurrection. The negative religious moment is the end of eternity and the beginning of profane time: this beginning is a fall. There is no resurrection because the beginning is an end: the atheist falls into an eternity of successive time in which each minute repeats some other minute.

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