The skeptics get away with fixing the odds against the believer, mostly by
pointing to phenomena which are only explainable -- you see? -- by the belief
that there was a cause for them, always deducible. But how can one deduce the
cause of Hamlet? Or of St. Matthew's Passion? What is the cause of
inspiration?
This I believe: that it is intellectually easier to credit a divine
intelligence than to submit dumbly to felicitous congeries about nature. As a
child, I was struck by the short story. It told of a man at a bar who boasted of
his rootlessness, derisively dismissing the jingoistic patrons to his left and
to his right. But later in the evening, one man speaks an animadversion on a
little principality in the Balkans and is met with the clenched fist of the man
without a country, who would not endure this insult to the place where he was
born.
So I believe that it is as likely that there should be a man without a
country, as a world without a creator.
Smart, thoughtful, and maybe enough to give even the most devout athiest pause ... for a second, at least. Rest in peace, Mr. Buckley.
