Interesting to hear novelist Andrew Klavan speak about his conversion from atheism, as well as his response to Christopher Hitchen's charge that forgiveness in the sense of the transfer of ones' sins to a scapegoat is unpalatable:
"I think [Hitchens] is starting from the wrong place. He's thinking of evil deeds for which we can be forgiven. But I think if you read Genesis carefully you'll see there's a sense of shame inherent in being a human being. And that is part of what the '60s were about, we were no longer going to feel guilt, we're just going to be free and love freely and of course that doesn't work. And why doesn't it work? Because inherent in the knowledge of good and evil, inherent in consciousness and self-consciousness, is a wierd sense of shame that we are 'meat puppets', that we are these objects being moved about by nature. It's not necessarily our evil deeds that we are asking to be forgiven for, it's our humanity."Klavan also speaks about how the only truly honest atheist was Marquis de Sade, and that is when he learned where atheism leads. Which reminded me of something I read by Camille Paglia recently, who is one of the few honest feminists concerning the nature of abortion.
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