No wise man, and no great artist, leaves God out

I can perfectly well understand why someone should be an agnostic. But to be an atheist — to deny flatly and without qualification the existence of God — is to me wholly unsympathetic. The depth of folly, indeed, and not without malice to us all. It makes little sense in reason. For if it is difficult, even strictly speaking impossible, to ‘prove’ the existence of God, in the sense in which we prove a theorem in geometry or the second law of thermodynamics, it is much more difficult to prove that he does not exist. More seriously, atheism necessarily demeans humanity. The point was powerfully made by Francis Bacon: ‘They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts, by his body; and, if he be not kin to God, by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.’ To be an atheist is to take a low view of human life.