A friend made several comments after reading parts of Praise Emptiness; most interestingly, that I was more an intellectual nihilist than someone who’d really experienced Kierkegaard’s fear and trembling.

I could have interpreted that to mean I was more dilettante than Existentialist, but chose not to. While Ligotti is nihilistic to the core, I’d describe myself as a nihilist blessed with an optimist’s homeostasis. I fear the Nichts, face it now and then, and having faced it know it’s real, but go for days without acknowledging/appreciating it.

If I’m a dilettante I’m happy to be one.

But what is it that the religious life provides the believer to motivate and strengthen his belief? What comfort does he receive in exchange for his faith? I want to get this down as a list, and then see if anything equally comforting might be found in frank acknowledgment of the facts of life as we know them.

While we might be prepared to say that the truths of religion no longer hold true, no one would admit that the comforts of religion are false, or not worth pursuing. Ligotti would say they’re not worth pursuing because he’d rather be miserable than duped into passivity. In theory I agree with him, but in practice I’m as interested as anyone in less pain and more pleasure. So let’s see, can we establish a religion of secularism of sorts? Can we find comfort in the largeness of it all, or are we doomed to be terrified by that largeness, which causes us to turn from it whenever it pokes its head out from under the covers?