We're Far Too Lazy And Unimaginitive To Have Invented Such A Thing

Mark Shea:

I also enjoyed Hahn's retort to the tired, "God did not exist, we would have had to invent him" canard. Hahn's reply: God does exist, so we invented atheism. Too true. Lewis remarked years ago on how silly it is to suppose that anybody would be pleased--and nothing but pleased--at the God Christianity reveals to us. The doctrine of God as Wish Fulfillment Fantasy is contradicted by universal experience. The reality is that the human person, apart from revelation, tends neither toward Christianity (which nobody could have invented) nor toward atheism. It tends toward a vague pagan pantheism, what an atheist acquaintance referred to as "religious methadone treatment" when it's in the context of a post-Christian culture. People want vague reassurances that Michael Landon likes them and that their life is not without meaning. They intuit that there is a spiritual realm. They have a grasp of the natural law. They experience longing for the transcendent. They experience the reality of holy fear from time to time. They recognize that both justice and grace happen. And from these elementary experiences of being human, they construct the baffling variety of philosophies and mysteries and assorted paganisms of the world. They do not construct the Christian faith, only things with a flashing and transitory glimpse of the Christian revelation.