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Because it’s true that a world with no God, with no spirituality, with nothing, is enough to make anyone freak out completely. Because to believe in God, quite simply, as our ancestors did, to be embraced in the bosom of the Holy Mother Church affords certain advantages, though it does not afford only advantages. I know you don’t really like Péguy, but, even so: “May they come and fall asleep in your outstretched arms.” Or what about the man everyone always approves of (and rightly so), Baudelaire:

It is the famous inn set down in the book,

Where one may eat, and sleep, and sit a while.*

The only thing is, the only problem is, I still don’t believe in God.

You, apparently, do. And I should have known, because you’ve already said as much, though less explicitly in books, but I just pretended I hadn’t read them, which is nothing new for me when I have to deal with a believer: for as long as I can, I turn a deaf ear, because I have difficulty confronting the subject head-on; I feel somehow dazed (skeptical not only of God but of belief itself). This explains why, the next time we meet, I will probably look at you a little strangely. It is the look I use on such occasions; it’s not malicious, though it has seemed so sometimes. Nor is it envious (for one can only really envy in others something one believes one might have someday). It is a look of unease, of surprise. Because even if we are both rather contemptible individuals, as I said when we began writing to each other, this is something that separates us. You have, in some undeserved way, received some sort of grace; right now I can’t think of any other word. Something that allows you to take seriously these stories of ruah, of God’s breath, whereas all I can do in such circumstances is nod my head.

So, the philosophical questions you raise? If I am fundamentally atheist, that does not mean I am materialist, and here, too, it was Pascal who brought me down to earth, fragment 70, which is explicitly directed against Descartes (but which also reduces the ideas of Democritus or Epicurus to nothing):

“In general terms one must say ‘That is the result of figure and motion,’ because it is true, but to name them and assemble the machine is quite ridiculous. It is pointless, uncertain, and arduous. Even if it were true we do not think that the whole of philosophy would be worth an hour’s effort.”

Once this idea is firmly fixed in your mind, once you truly accept its radical premise, you realize that to explain the world is simply to describe it. To give the most precise, the most broad description. Define its entities without ever losing sight of the brilliant principle set out several centuries earlier by William of Ockham: “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Define the relationships between these entities—usually, but not always, mathematical. Combine these mathematical relationships to create new relationships by direct proof. Test each of them, unfailingly, through experiment. Where experiment contradicts theory, one must resign oneself to changing the paradigm, to constructing new entities.

But never does one try to “assemble the machine”; one never questions what is behind the physical entities one has defined, that one can measure; whether it is matter or spirit or some other mental mishmash that man, on a whim, might dream up. In short, we dismiss, permanently, all metaphysical questions.

Positivist from henceforth, we contemplate with a smile (a slightly disdainful smile, I grant) the various metaphysicists, materialists, and spiritualists who make up the belief market.

This attitude of disdain is, at heart, a modest position, a position of submission to the only, not exactly brilliant, principles that have never failed man in his search for truth: experiment and proof. Dull principles, which will never incite a revolution or an emotional attachment. For my sins, they are mine. “The truth is, perhaps, sad”; I think Monod is quoting Renan* in his most famous, equally sad, book,