A case of true contradictories. God exists; God does not exist. Where is the problem? I am quite certain that there is a God, in the sense that I am quite certain my love is not an illusion. I am quite certain there is no God, in the sense that I am quite certain nothing real resembles what I can conceive when I pronounce that name. But that which I cannot conceive is not an illusion.
There are two atheisms, one of which is a purification of the notion of God.
Perhaps everything that is evil has another aspect that is a purification in the course of progress toward good, and a third that is the higher good.
Three aspects that must be carefully distinguished, for to confuse them is a great danger for thought and for the effective conduct of life.
Between two people who have no experience of God, the one who denies him is perhaps the nearer to him.
The false God who resembles the true one in every respect, except that one does not touch him, prevents one forever from reaching the true one.
To believe in a God who resembles the true one in every respect, except that he does not exist, because one has not reached the point where God exists.
The errors of our age are Christianity without the supernatural. Secularism is the cause -- and first of all, humanism. Religion as a source of consolation is an obstacle to true faith: in this sense, atheism is a purification. I must be an atheist with the part of myself that is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves is not awakened, the atheists are right and the believers are wrong. A man whose entire family has perished under torture, who has himself been tortured at length in a concentration camp. Or an Indian of the sixteenth century who alone escaped the complete extermination of his entire people. Such men, if they had believed in the mercy of God, either believe in it no longer, or conceive of it quite differently than before. I have not undergone such things. But I know they exist: what difference does that make, then? I must strive to have a conception of divine mercy that does not fade, that does not change, whatever fate sends upon me, and that can be communicated to any human being.