1873. Robert Louis Stevenson, aged 22, writes to a friend:
“The thunderbolt has fallen with a vengeance now. On Friday… my father put to me one or two questions as to beliefs, which I candidly answered. I really hate all lying so much now that I could not so much as hesitate at the time; but if I had foreseen the real Hell of everything since, I think I should have lied as I have done so often before. I so far thought of my father, but I had forgotten my mother. And now! They are both ill, both silent, both as down in the mouth as if—I can find no simile. I think I could almost find it in my heart to retract; but it is too late; and again, am I to live my whole life as one falsehood?…O, Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to have just damned the happiness of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the world.”
1989. Isaiah Berlin writes to a friend:
“I wish I could claim to having similar religious feelings or experience—ever since I persuaded myself that a personal God (an old man with a beard, the Ancient of Days, or anyway some kind of individual conceivable in human terms) was unlikely to exist, I have never known the meaning of the word God. I cannot even claim to be an atheist or agnostic. I am somewhat like a tone-deaf person in relation to music—I realise that others are deeply inspired by it, and I respect that, and I have great sympathy for religious ceremonies and works and poetry: but God?”
2002. Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes her loss of faith in her memoir, Infidel:
“I read the book [The Atheist Manifesto by Herman Philipse], marveling at the clarity and naughtiness of its author. But I really didn’t have to. Just looking at it, just wanting to read it—that already meant I doubted, and I knew that. Before I’d read four pages I already knew my answer. I had left God behind years ago. I was an atheist. One night in that Greek hotel I looked in the mirror and said out loud, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ I said it slowly, enunciating it carefully, in Somali. And I felt relief. It felt right. The long process of seeing the flaws in my belief structure and carefully tiptoeing around the frayed edges as parts of it were torn out, piece by piece—that was all over. The angels, watching from my shoulders; the mental tension about having sex without marriage, and drinking alcohol—they were gone. The ever-present prospect of hellfire lifted, and my horizon seemed broader. God, Satan, angels: these were all figments of human imagination. From now on I could step firmly on the ground that was under my feet and navigate based on my own reason and self-respect. My moral compass was within myself, not in the pages of a sacred book.”
“The thunderbolt has fallen with a vengeance now. On Friday… my father put to me one or two questions as to beliefs, which I candidly answered. I really hate all lying so much now that I could not so much as hesitate at the time; but if I had foreseen the real Hell of everything since, I think I should have lied as I have done so often before. I so far thought of my father, but I had forgotten my mother. And now! They are both ill, both silent, both as down in the mouth as if—I can find no simile. I think I could almost find it in my heart to retract; but it is too late; and again, am I to live my whole life as one falsehood?…O, Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to have just damned the happiness of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the world.”
1989. Isaiah Berlin writes to a friend:
“I wish I could claim to having similar religious feelings or experience—ever since I persuaded myself that a personal God (an old man with a beard, the Ancient of Days, or anyway some kind of individual conceivable in human terms) was unlikely to exist, I have never known the meaning of the word God. I cannot even claim to be an atheist or agnostic. I am somewhat like a tone-deaf person in relation to music—I realise that others are deeply inspired by it, and I respect that, and I have great sympathy for religious ceremonies and works and poetry: but God?”
2002. Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes her loss of faith in her memoir, Infidel:
“I read the book [The Atheist Manifesto by Herman Philipse], marveling at the clarity and naughtiness of its author. But I really didn’t have to. Just looking at it, just wanting to read it—that already meant I doubted, and I knew that. Before I’d read four pages I already knew my answer. I had left God behind years ago. I was an atheist. One night in that Greek hotel I looked in the mirror and said out loud, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ I said it slowly, enunciating it carefully, in Somali. And I felt relief. It felt right. The long process of seeing the flaws in my belief structure and carefully tiptoeing around the frayed edges as parts of it were torn out, piece by piece—that was all over. The angels, watching from my shoulders; the mental tension about having sex without marriage, and drinking alcohol—they were gone. The ever-present prospect of hellfire lifted, and my horizon seemed broader. God, Satan, angels: these were all figments of human imagination. From now on I could step firmly on the ground that was under my feet and navigate based on my own reason and self-respect. My moral compass was within myself, not in the pages of a sacred book.”
