Atheism, self-taught

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 Atheism, self-taught 

from m ball's philosopher balloon collection:
F. W. Nietzsche

“The problem with your atheist friends,” Uncle Albert was saying – and I have no idea which friends he could have been talking about: “Their problem is that they take religion too seriously. It isn’t unbelief, disbelief, pompous Übermenschlichkeit that enables us to see through our illusions to ‘a more vital existence’ – or whatever they’re claiming. It is silliness, prayer and laughter.”

     We were sitting at breakfast. I had two slices of confused toast and one addled cup of coffee in front of me. In front of him Uncle Albert had a Book of Common Prayer he had filched from somewhere. “Listen,” he said. “You don’t mind do you?” I shook my head. “Here is the collect of the day.” And he read it, aloud, in Gothic type:

O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

"Amen," I said.
     “Here,” he said, pointing to the page: “‘because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you’ – meaning on our own (‘without the help of grace’). Left to our own devices, we are hopeless or, if we are still hopeful, we are as deluded as the constipated man that relies not even on prunes but on his own will power for his deliverance – like Nietzsche.”

After breakfast, we went for a ride – past the college and out to the park to watch the geese waddle about among their own feces. “Not a constipated species,” Uncle Albert said. He likes to watch the geese, an even greater nuisance than deer, he says.

02.09.17