After Disbelief: On Disenchantment, Disappointment, Eternity, and Joy

Eternity therefore has two meanings. One (endless time) is defined in temporal terms. The other (timelessness) is characterized by the irrelevance of all terms of this kind.

Yet America’s ideals have been compromised from the beginning by the original injustice of slavery and its stubborn legacy. They have been frustrated by constitutional flaws of various kinds. Slavery has been abolished and many of these flaws repaired. Still, the stain of racial injustice remains. Some Americans wonder whether it can ever be erased

Early on, I began to wonder why, if religion is so stupid and cruel, millions of people are taken in by it. How can so many people go so badly wrong? Must those who believe in God check their minds at the church door out of respect for the mysteries within? Is religion always the enemy of enlightenment, as my mother said?

Modern science rests on the assumption that the gap between what we know about the world and what we long to know cannot be closed in any number of lifetimes.

The longing for eternity needs to be put back at the center of the human condition, where it has always been, and still belongs today.

We need some idea of what Aristotle calls “the eternal and divine” to explain the meaning of those unattainable goals that give human life its peculiar drama, and to account for the fact that we can move closer to them without ever being able to overcome the gap completely.11

Our finite powers limit us to observing the “outward” relations among events. Their real “inner” cause remains forever inaccessible.

They acknowledge that the meaning of what they do in their lives rests on the implicit assumption that the world is relatively more lasting than they are—those parts of it, at least, to which they give their time, energy, and love.

Deep disappointment is our fate.