Free: Coming of Age at the End of History

by Lea Ypi

If there was one thing that could convince us children of the irrationality of religion, of the ridiculous nature of belief in the existence of God, it was the idea that there could be a life after the one we had. In school we were taught to think about development and decay in evolutionary terms. We studied nature with the eyes of Darwin and history with the eyes of Marx. We distinguished between science and myth, reason and prejudice, healthy doubt and dogmatic superstition. We were taught to believe that the right ideas and aspirations survive as a result of all our collective efforts, but that the lives of individuals must always come to an end, like the lives of insects, birds, and other animals. To think that people deserve a different fate than the rest of nature does was to be a slave of myth and dogma at the expense of science and reason. Science and reason were all that mattered. Only with their help could we find out about nature and the world. And the more we knew, the more we could explain and control that which at first seemed mysterious.