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Article: God: After a lengthy career, the Almighty recently passed into history. Or did he?(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- December 25, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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WHEN your friends start looking for proofs of your existence, you're heading for trouble. That was God's situation as the millennium got into its stride.
Few ordinary folk, though they had different names for him, doubted the reality of God. He was up there somewhere (up, not down; in his long career, no one ever located him on the seabed), always had been, always would be. Yet not quite so far up, in the churches and monasteries of Europe, many of its cleverest men would soon be racking their brains for ways of proving it.
Anselm, for instance, and others centuries later, such as Descartes, reckoned if you could think of God, then there must be a God ...