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PARTISAN REVIEW
to flee to the anns of God had never read, or seriously reflected upon,
such works as Henry C. Lea's
History of the Medieval Inquisition
or Graetz's
History of the Jews
or accounts of the religious wars in
France and Germany and other wholesale massacres and mass
expulsions in European history in centuries less secular than our own.
The revival of religion to-day is not due to the discovery of new
arguments or evidence for supernaturalism or a profounder analysis
of the logic of religious belief. This is apparent in the fact that among
intellectuals it is not rational theology but mystical theology, not the
principle of objectivity but of subjectivity, not the clear,
if
defective,
arguments of Aquinas but the record of the tormented inner ex–
perience of Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard which are found most
appealing. To the extent that evidence is introduced it is drawn
from feeling, the feeling of awe and sublimity, of holiness and
humility, dogmatically interpreted as indisputable intimations of
divinity. Reason is short-circuited by the assumption that there is a
non-propositional truth about the nature of things, obscurely grasped
in every intense experience. The religious renaissance of our time is
really part of the more inclusive movement of irrationalism in
modern thought. How irrational is indicated by the feeble character
of the arguments which are offered by the new converts when they
deign to employ them against their critics.
For example, the admission that the existence of God cannot be
demonstrated is often coupled with the retort that neither can his
non-existence be demonstrated-as
if
this puts belief and disbelief on
an equally reasonable footing, as if no distinction could be made
between the credibility of purely logical possibilities, i.e., of all notions
that are not self-contradictory. It is a commonplace that only in
logic and mathematics can the non-existence of anything be "demon–
strated."
If
we are unjustified in disbelieving an assertion save only
when its contradictory is demonstrated to be impossible, we should
have to believe that the universe is populated with the wildest fan–
cies. Many things may exist for which we can give no adequate
evidence, but the burden of proof always rests upon the individual
who asserts existence.
Or if it is admitted that belief in the existence of God or Di–
vine governance rests in faith, the answer quickly comes that science,
too, rests on faith,-faith in causality or the principle of induction, or
