Bergman

The only two consistent views of the world are Christianity or existentialism. Everything else is playing pretend.

Ingmar Bergman, a partisan of the latter view, died this last week. One of the Swedish filmaker's predominant themes was the consequences of the non-existence of God. You can see it on full display in what is perhaps his greatest film, The Seventh Seal. It is a stark and frightening movie.

Unlike the new atheists Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, Bergman, along with existentialist writers like Nietzsche and Sartre, faced their atheism honestly and squarely. The new atheists try to hang on to some sort of absolute morality or meaning in the world despite the fact that the only rational grounding these beliefs can possibly have is God.

Bergman and his fellow existentialists knew that there are two alternatives available to men: a world in which God exists and there is meaning, or one in which he does not exist and everything is absurd. Take your pick.

I don't agree with the existentialists, but at least they are intellectually consistent, which is more than can be said of the new atheists.