Sunday, July 1, 2018

Philip Roth, American Atheist

Here's a quote from Philip Roth that I don't recall reading in the last month's crop of obituaries and memorial essays:

"When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it will be a great place."

Roth said this in a 2010 interview on CBS Sunday Morning:

Here and elsewhere, Roth also remarks that he doesn't have a religious bone in his body.

Note the self-evident, matter-of-fact quality of Roth's atheism. He's neither an angry, embattled atheist raging against gods nor a backwards preacher sermonizing the deity's nonexistence. He comes across as someone for whom religion does not matter. He is secular and personally indifferent to it. He has matured out of it and put away its childish things and wishes the rest of the world would do likewise. I find this position wholly admirable.

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