Friday 30 May 2014

When People Stop Believing in God, They Believe in Weird Things

Something from nothing? Image courtesy of Strobridge Litho. Co., Cincinnati & New York (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).


Joel Kontinen

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903 –1990) was an English author and journalist. For most of his life he was agnostic, but he became a Christian in the 1960s after having seen what disbelief in God could do.

In a radio broadcast he stated:

One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we’ve developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.”

This includes belief in the impossible, for instance, that we can get something from nothing, that non-life can somehow spontaneously turn into life for no obvious reasons at all. Or that our universe is just one among many others.

Source:

Muggeridge, Malcolm. 1966. An Eighth Deadly Sin. Woman’s Hour radio broadcast (March 23, 1966). Quoted in Malcolm Muggeridge and Christopher Ralling. 1967. Muggeridge Through the Microphone: B.B.C. Radio and Television. London: British Broadcasting Corporation.