“I don’t believe in God, but I fear Him greatly.”

KRAUTHAMMER: He asked, “Are you religious?” I said, “I don’t believe in God, but I fear Him greatly.”

So, the point I was trying to make is I’m not, I’m not a sort of traditional theist. I can’t say I believe in even the God of Judaism, or Christianity, Islam, sort of the – I’m not sure I can believe in a God of history, who is really interested in our little lives, and who listens to us.

But I’m not – I mean, the one theology that I reject more than any other – I’d be willing to accept a lot of others – is atheism. Especially the village atheist who is so sure there is nothing that he wants to proselytise, humiliate, and unfaith people of faith. That I find appalling.

For two reasons, intellectually, I think it’s sort of the most illogical of all because there’s so much in the real world, in the physical world that we cannot explain, and can never explain, and we simply have to confess that the human beings they are inexplicable. I’m willing to call them transcendent, I have no idea what they are, but I fear it, in other words.

People who say the universe has always existed. What does that mean? It violates every principle of our own logic causation. You look at the atoms of the table, the seats we’re sitting on right now, well predate all of history, they go back to the big bang, so you’re going to tell me that this sort of spontaneously happens?

And they say, “Well, it’s the laws of quantum mechanics, they imply that this has to happen.” Well, where do these laws – You always go back to the origin question? Where do the laws come from? The idea – So the feeling I have is I think it was Newton who once described himself as, I feel like a snail on the shores of an ocean, being charged with figuring out the tides.

A snail is not going to be able to figure it out. We clearly are not capable, no matter what we say or do, and how much wordplay we engage in can penetrate the mysteries. Einstein, of course, was the sort of, the great propagator if you want, or the great philosopher of this view of the deity, or of transcendence, or metaphysics. You know he said when he rejected quantum mechanics, he said, “God does not play dice with the universe.”

What he meant, he didn’t mean it was the God with the beard, who hands out commandments, he meant there’s a beauty, there’s an inherent logic, and a simplicity which is what always impressed him which sort of made him tremble to the universe, that is so impressive, and that tells you that there, I don’t know if it’s a being, it doesn’t have to be a being.

But simply to say this is where our logic stops, and where you have to have respect for what’s beyond it, so that’s, I mean that’s a long way of saying, “I don’t know.” It’s sort of a complicated agnosticism.

But the other thing that goes with it is a deep respect for people of faith. My father was, and perhaps it’s because of filial devotion that I’ve just retained that. It’s not an act of will, I just always respected the way he lived his life, and the beauty of it.

Now, it turns out to me that faith is a gift, and I don’t have it. And I don’t think you can will it.

I’d sort of like to will it, it would make things a little more clear for me, but you can’t will it, it either comes to you or it doesn’t. So I don’t have it, but it doesn’t mean, and the other humbling thing is that some of the greatest minds in history, I think overwhelmingly were theists of one kind or another.

Who am I to say that Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, and Newton who was a believer were fools, like atheists do? So I have respect for them, in a sense I feel a certain absence in my life by not having it.

But I do find it hard to believe in a God of history, or a God who takes a personal interest in one. I respect people who do, and I’m waiting for the call. My line is always open, or maybe I’m thinking of it the wrong way. I should call Him? But I get a busy, I don’t know what to –

He’s busy.

http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/charles-krauthammer-transcript/