Sárospataki Füzetek 14. (2010)
2010 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Byl, John: Világnézetek háborúja: a keresztyénség és kihívói.
Byl, John Atheistic existentialism.. .states that if God does not exist.. .then man is only what he conceives himself to be. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself... The existentialist thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him. Dostoevsky said, ’If God didn’t exist, everything would be permissible’. Hence, man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to.24 The cost of eliminating God is immense. It entails spiritual, moral and philosophical bankruptcy. The death of God entails the death of values, which, in turn, entails the death of humans as humans. Man seems to be driven by an innate thirst for genuine truth, beauty and meaning. Man’s inability to find these, on his own, is a source of great frustration. Even Nietzsche could not forget the God he had so vigorously rejected. In his last set of poems, Dionysus Dithyrambs, Nietzsche sadly acknowledges the weariness and loneliness of life without God: No! Come back, With all your torments! All the streams of my tears Run their course to you! And the last flame of my heart— It burns up to you! Oh, come back, My unknown God! My pain! My last.. .happiness!25 Likewise, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who resolutely rejected God, nevertheless confessed in his autobiography: The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain—a curious wild pain—a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite.26 This is a remarkable confession. Russell was a full-blooded naturalist who insisted that there is nothing beyond this material world. Nevertheless, he is troubled by a great desire for something more. Where does this desire come from? It could hardly have come via naturalist evolution, since a frustrated desire has little survival value. Nor does it seem plausible that material properties can give rise to transcendental quests. A transcendental desire points to a transcendental Being. The Christian answer is that God, Who created man in His image, created him with the need for divine fellowship. Man has within his soul a God-shaped void that can be filled only by God Himself. This echoes the earnest words of the psalmist, 24 Sartre, Jean-Paul: Existentialism and Human Emotions. Secaucus, NJ, The Citadel Press, 1957. 22. 25 Nietzsche, Friedrich: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. RJ. Hollingdale, New York, Penguin, 1961. 261. 26 Russel, Bertrand: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russel. Vol.2. Boston, Litde Brown & Co., 1968. 95-96. 40 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK
