A REAL surprise

[NotReady]

I stumbled across the following quote from famous atheist and existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, apparently made shortly before he died.

[ QUOTE ]

I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.


[/ QUOTE ]

I can't entirely vouch for the authenticity of this statement though I understand his longtime lover, Simone de Beauvoir, called him a "turncoat" after it was made. One website also said it was recorded.

Assume he said it. I don't offer the quote as proof of anything, least of all that Sartre is in heaven. My main purpose is to just say that if I wouldn't be totally surprised to find many Christian era Jews in heaven, before I read this statement by Sartre I would have been shocked to find him there. Now it would only be a mild surprise. My purpose also is to give some indication, besides the Biblical injunction, why I don't pass judgment on individuals. Salvation involves the heart more than the head and only God truly knows the human heart.

[Evo-Creationist]

Notready, would it be impolite to ask you to join my thread and comment?
--Open question to Sklansky and his FanBoys---

[hmkpoker]

This sounds very much like Hawking and Einstein's uses of the word. While any secular atheist or philosopher will debunk religion, none can claim that the vastness and complexity of the universe falls anywhere near the parameters of the human imagination. The amount that is unknown outweighs the known by so nearly infinitely much that for all practical purposes, it is genuinely unknowable. "God" is simply the best possible term to convey something that is everywhere, everything, always, awesome, and unknowable.

Couple this with a belief in determinism (which JPS seems to be demonstrating), and it makes a lot of sense.

[NotReady]

[ QUOTE ]

This sounds very much like Hawking and Einstein's


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think so, and I know what you mean by the wrongful use of their quotes. That's why I included de Beauvoir's reaction - she didn't take the Einstein "out". And it makes a very big difference that it was Sartre, not a scientist. Sartre spent his life denying God of any sort, design of any sort, purpose of any sort - nihilistically, adamantly, absolutely. This quote totally flies in the face of all he stood for before.

[RJT]

After reading a bio of Sarte/de Beauvoir I think much of his existentialism was a ruse to f... anyone he wanted when he wanted. He really was a schmuck, albeit brilliant one. (Sorry for the brief hijack.)

[hmkpoker]

This is true. Sartre was a rabid atheist, so much so that I would even consider his atheism a belief rather than a lack of a belief. Never was a fan of his.

[NotReady]

[ QUOTE ]

I think much of his existentialism was a ruse to f... anyone he wanted when he wanted.


[/ QUOTE ]

No doubt. I saw a quote of Aldous Huxley who basically said that was his reason for being an atheist though it didn't include any reference to God. But it couldn't have been easy for either of them to make those statements.

[madnak]

Yeah, I don't really care. Sartre strikes me as a self-absorbed ass. I just wish I knew how to get laid with atheism. I seem to be having the opposite problem.