C K Stead > Quotes

“It's the traditional religions which have removed the mystery by claiming to explain the inexplicable. Who made us? God. What happens when we die? We go somewhere else. How can we do that? Because of a part of us, called the soul, which is invisible, is also immortal. Only when a frown of doubt crossed the Christian forehead did the ancient fathers of the church begin to talk about the mystery. Having removed the mystery, they pretended to put it back ahead. What they called the mystery was the bits left over, the ragged edges of doubt, where the traditional explanations left the hearer dissatisfied. God works in mysterious ways, they said. But that was the mystery which God had been invented to remove. (...)
It's a trap to say you have to be either theist, atheist, or agnostic, because each of these positions lends a certain respectability to the word God. The theist believes in God. The agnostic isn't sure. The atheist doesn't believe in God. But which God? Each of these positions implies the meaning of the word God is intelligible - even though the believers may be murdering one another over how God should be properly described and worshipped.”
― C K Stead, Death of the Body