Richard Dawkins excerpts Marcus Brigstocke
From his lecture at UC Berkeley on March 8 2008.
Latest Activity
- Groups News
- Everything
Ali posted a videoIsolated: The Zo'é tribe (full documentary)
This series (Amazonia: Last Call) travels across Brazilian landscapes by way of one of the main links still binding the essence of humanity with the Earth: t...
Top Content
We are a worldwide social network of freethinkers, atheists, agnostics and secular humanists.
Birthdays
Birthdays Today
Temptations of a Non-Believer
Excerpt from Primo Levi's 'The Drowned and The Saved', a collection of essays depicting his time at the Concentration (extermination) camps :-
'I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day. Actually, the experience of the Lager with its frightful iniquity confirmed me in my non-belief. It has prevented me, and still prevents me, from conceiving of any form of providence or transcendant justice… I must nevertheless admit that I experienced (and again only once) the temptation to yield, to seek refuge in prayer. This happened in October 1944, in the one moment in which I lucidly perceived the imminence of death… naked and compressed among my naked companions with my personal index card in hand, I was waiting to file past the ‘commission’ that with one glance would decide whether I should go immediately into the gas chamber or was instead strong enough to go on working. For one instance I felt the need to ask for help and asylum; then, despite my anguish, equanimity prevailed: one does not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, nor when you are losing. A prayer under these conditions would have been not only absurd (what rights could I claim? and from whom?) but blasphemous, obscene, laden with the greatest impiety of which a nonbeliever is capable.
I rejected the temptation: I knew that otherwise were I to survive, I would have to be ashamed of it.'
Comment
-
Comment by Neal on March 19, 2012 at 7:52am -
I'm thinking I'm way behind on my reading.
-
Comment by Adriana on March 11, 2012 at 5:47pm -
-
Comment by Adriana on March 11, 2012 at 5:46pm
-
Primo Levi was a scientist, a chemist, a real humanist, a survivor; I have read all of his books and i highly recommend all of them. "If this is a man", his account of the year he spent at Auschwitz, is a must read in my opinion. He died in 1987, his death was ruled a suicide, he "fell", or rather, threw himself from the interior stairs of his third floor apartment in Turin. Although others are still arguing whether he actually killed himself or it was an accident.
There is a movie based on his book "La tregua", "The Truce", with John Turturro as Primo Levi, based on his book recounting his journey back to his hometown in Turin after he was liberated from Auschwitz.
He was a clear thinker, a beautiful, courageous person.
-
Comment by Michel on March 11, 2012 at 4:09am -
Very eloquent!
© 2013 Created by Atheist Universe.
Powered by
Badges | Report an Issue | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service
You need to be a member of Atheist Universe to add comments!
Join Atheist Universe