A sobering thought

From David Bentley Hart, in May's issue of First Things, responding to Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker:  "[W]e have reached a moment in Western history when, despite all appearances, no meaningful public debate over belief and unbelief is possible.  Not only do convinced secularists no longer understand what the issue is; they are incapable of even suspecting that they do not understand, or of caring whether they do. . . .Principled unbelief was once a philosophical passion and moral adventure, with which it was worthwhile to contend.  Now, perhaps, it is only so much bad intellectual journalism, which is to say, gossip, fashion, theatrics, trifling prejudice.  Perhaps this really is the way the argument ends--not with a bang but a whimper."

. . . which reminds me of this essay, in a March issue of Commonweal, by Terry Eagleton:  "An Unbelieving Age:  Nietzsche's Challenge and the Christian Response."