re: NY Times ... ‘happiest of all’ American wives are ‘religious conservatives.’

Replacing your faith in God for secular leftist politicians masquerading as agents of social justice and morality is a slow, hollow and meaningless means to an end of existence.

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Atheism is fundamentally nihilistic. People with no purpose, no meaning, and no hope tend to fall into despair.

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I can't believe people are actually ignorant enough to believe this tripe.

Religious people find purpose, meaning, and hope in a million places other than their religion and so do I - their job, their family, their children, their community, civic engagement, politics, education, art...

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Atheism is fundamentally nihilistic. People with no purpose, no meaning, and no hope tend to fall into despair.

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Because life is despair, for the most part. Religion is like a bandaid in that regard.

It all ends one day. Nobody's going to meet a higher maker. Nobody is getting to see their loved ones in an afterlife. It just ends. I think.

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There is a direct cause and effect relationship with death of religion in developed countries the rise of mental illness and depression.

Religion gives people a sense of community, belonging, and hope.

Atheism is fundamentally nihilistic. People with no purpose, no meaning, and no hope tend to fall into despair.

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Spot friggin’ on!! (And I will be plagiarizing this statement... it’s too good not to use in future conversations.)

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There is a direct cause and effect relationship with death of religion in developed countries the rise of mental illness and depression.

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Friedrich Nietzsche, The Parable of the Madman (1882)

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled and laughed.


The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"