Page 58 - Inspired by Something

THE SUNSET LIMITED

In the movie/play, The Sunset Limited, by Cormac McCarthy, premiered May 18, 2006, a

spiritual man prevents a depressed, suicidal, pessimistic atheist from committing suicide.

Back at the apartment of the spiritual man the two have a discussion about life. The

following is dialogue from the final scene and last words of the atheist. It stimulated such

deep thought in me that I decided to share it here.

Atheist - The world is basically a forced labor camp; from which the workers, perfectly

innocent, are led forth, by lottery, a few each day, to be executed.

Atheist - I don't regard my state of mind as some pessimistic view of the world. I regard

it as the world itself. Evolution can not avoid bringing intelligent life ultimately to an

awareness of one thing and one thing above all else and that one thing is futility

(Lack of importance or purpose, having no useful result;, lacking substance or worth)

If people could see the world for what it truly is, seeing their lives for what they truly are,

without dreams or illusions, I don't believe they could offer the first reason why they

should not elect to die soon as possible. I don't believe in God! Can you understand that?

Look around you man, can't you see that the clamor and din of those in torment has to be

the sound most pleasing to His ear. And I loathe these discussions. The argument of the

village atheist whose single passion is to revile endlessly that which he denies the existence

of in the first place.

Your fellowship is a fellowship of pain, and nothing more. And if that pain were collective

instead of simply reiterative then the sheer weight of it would drag the world from the walls

of the universe and send it crashing and burning down through whatever night it might yet be

capable of engendering until it was not even ash! And justice? Brotherhood? Eternal life? Good