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On avoiding that last visit.

Article Excerpt
She was bright, yes. But there had been other bright ones--those who had absorbed, with an enviable casualness, the intricacies of symbolic logic, the twists of Platonic dialectic, the meanderings of the Ontological Argument, the frightful paradoxes of the Free-Will Problem. She had not merely brains, but a warmth and feel for humanity, and a sense of humor honed to a fine edge. Simply put, she understood what I was saying; here was one of those rare human beings who make speaking seem to be synonymous with communication. Most notable of all, she possessed a profound sense of the existential absurdity (without the preposterous existentialist metaphysics) of this whole sorry farce called life, in which we find ourselves unwitting, unwilling, and quite amateurish players. She was, and is, my friend. She was, and is, an Atheist. Not a joiner, not a marcher--but a good Atheist nonetheless, who rejects lock, stock, and barrel the Christian mythology, its perverse and demented god, and the hilarious inanities of the contemporary religious scene, How often we would swap stories and ensuing hysterical laughter over the in-class gaffes of those "nice, Christian students"--she from a student, and I from a professorial perspective. We had both noted and both deplored a virtually universal characteristic of the Christian mentality--an almost total lack of a sense of humor, a stern solemnity coupled with a sickly-sweet sanctimoniousness. And little wonder, since those Christian students imagine themselves to be participants in some deadly serious, monumental struggle between divinities and demons, angels and beasts, christs and antichrists. Such fatuous nonsense afforded us countless hours of mirth; who says religion has no value?

She married, quite recently, another bright, sensitive, young Atheist. They insisted upon certain modifications in the ceremony--the "hip" music (folk-songs and guitar), the vows of their own composing, and the truly "now" touch--the female minister! But, all else was the same: the church, the numerous prayers, the appeals to God to bless the union. Two hundred people left the church content, secure in the belief that they had witnessed another good Christian marriage--a little peculiar perhaps, but still a good Christian marriage.

Some two years before, her younger brother, in his late teens, had been tragically killed in an auto accident. She had told...