> isn’t a bit too much to claim that only two people are to ‘blaim’ for our godless and permissive society?

I know it may sound unbelievable now but the two were huge celebrities who worked at popularizing just that. Even if they did not come up with all the ideas themselves (ie. the roots trace back to Nietzsche’s works etc), they were certainly the ones who made it popular and chic, and rubbed it into you that you must be boring, conventional and bourgeois if you did not follow their lead.

It’s like when you now mention the name “Hermann Hesse” and most people born after 1980 would just go “huh?” (Hermann Hesse was big name during the hippie movement.)

I have removed the link to the Daily Mail now. For information, please go to the library or a well-stocked bookstore.

I never said atheism is a bad thing. Please note again that there were two points to what I what I wanted to mention:
“1) S&B legitimized to a large extent the Godless and permissive society we now live.
2) S began to be drawn to the idea of God before his death, and B was appalled because it would mean that their life’s work would be undone.”
The issue was not whether *I* personally think God exists or not, but whether *Sartre* thinks God exists or not, and how a critical reader would interpret his works in light of his attitude to God before his death.

I am not sure where your whole speech about desires and true selves came from. All I said in the post is that love can be expressed in non-doing, and love stories can be characterized by what never happened. I also gave the context that the Japanese films and the manga Ooku were examples of this idea expressed. The “true self” (whatever that is) can be expressed by what one refrains from doing too.

BTW, devastating events on the scale of WWI & II have happened before (think the fall of the Roman Empire, the Black Death etc). One could equally argue that disasters make people turn to religion more than before.

I think I see your point. Noted with thanks.

I agree that S&B wouldn’t be happy if they thought themselves belittled.

Refinement might be the wrong word, sensitivity is more like it. Sensitivity out of which benevolence and empathy are born, say.

There’s a criticism of religion in terms of rationalism that leads many to deism, but as many religious people have argued, once you strip the deity of personality you’re but one step away from atheism (eg Spinoza with his “God, or Nature”).

But this is the intellectual criticism. What I was talking about is the criticism that any common person can make of religion: “the holy books state that the deity was angry and he ordered such and such nations to be annihilated. Whoa! I am far more sensitive and moral than that. Therefore this god can’t be god.” or “The existence of hell is immoral, because no sin is worth eternal punishment”. Therefore, the gods are not to be trusted, they don’t exist But again, if the gods don’t exist, then who’s to say which morality is correct. There’s no absolute standard, therefore everything is permitted etc.

Hopefully the comment isn’t too long!! Interesting topic, to be sure..

On the “boorish” thing, I know many people who make fun of traditional deities as precisely that. “Uncouth” is another word that comes to mind. What’s interesting is that they condemn god/s based on the moral standard that their own religious upbringing gave them!

> Ultimately, though, I would say it is the development of culture that’s “at fault”.

For a celebrity couple who has gone out of the way so much to champion their cause as S&B have, I think they would be very much disappointed that “culture” at large was credited for the outcome instead of their individual efforts.

> The 18th and 19th centuries reached such a point of refinement and sensitivity, that the traditional deities seemed boorish by comparison.

I think the great question back then evolved around rationality and its implications for free will and existence of God. “Refinement” is an individual accomplishment and “sensitivity” is an individual disposition. I think the issue was not whether the “traditional deities” were “boorish” (have they ever been “stylish,” which I take to be the opposite of “boorish” before?). I think I can see the point you try to make though you used those words loosely. Please correct me if I assumed wrongly and I apologize in advance if the above sounded harsh.

> As Nietzsche says, one can condemn most gods by virtue of the very moralities that they supposedly have revealed… But if these gods don’t make sense, then morality itself has no absolute ground on which to stand on, therefore nothing is forbidden anymore etc..

I think I can see that you are only trying to explain where their idea came from (and that it is not your intent to advocate such things).

For the record, I never agreed with Nietzsche either.

Ultimately, though, I would say it is the development of culture that’s “at fault”. The 18th and 19th centuries reached such a point of refinement and sensitivity, that the traditional deities seemed boorish by comparison. As Nietzsche says, one can condemn most gods by virtue of the very moralities that they supposedly have revealed… But if these gods don’t make sense, then morality itself has no absolute ground on which to stand on, therefore nothing is forbidden anymore etc..

No problem. Noted with thanks.

No need to apologize! It’s the article I had a problem with, not your post or your linking to it. I disagree with the points that it makes, but reading the article was interesting enough.