The hard-won atheism I have in mind, the atheism that is understandable and for which I have much sympathy, is an atheism forged in suffering. Rather than an arrogance that imagines it has outgrown belief, such an atheism is an inability to believe born of an empathy for those trod underfoot by the machinations of an inexplicable menace. This is not an atheism of comfort but of agony. It is the begrudging conclusion of cosmic loneliness arising from the experience of injustice.
