Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) spoke of a God-shaped hole in human consciousness where the sacred had always been. The desire for what we call God is intrinsic to human nature, which cannot bear the utter meaninglessness of the cosmos. We have invented a God to explain the inexplicable; it is a divinized humanity. But even if God existed, Sartre claimed, it would be necessary to reject him, since this God negates our freedom. This was not a comfortable creed. It demanded a bleak acceptance of the fact that our lives had no meaning—a heroic act that brought an apotheosis of freedom but also a
...more
