Malcolm Guite: You Don’t Understand Modern Culture’s Evil Philosophy

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Summary The guest argues that atheism is intellectually old and unsatisfying, noting that when he read Aquinas as an atheist he found the Summa’s ten reasons against God’s existence more compelling than his own five, which was “totally disarming.” He contends everyone believes something a priori (even that logic works), so the real question is whether Christianity makes more sense of lived experience (choice, responsibility, beauty, personhood) than atheist alternatives that reduce the self to “the unwinding of an enzyme.” His central claim is that modern people have been “dismembered” by trashy inherited philosophies and a culture of constant obsolescence, and that recovery comes through “re-membering” older, deeper stories, which is why the most traditional liturgies (Book of Common Prayer, Latin choral evensong, no cheesy talks) are now the most popular. Top 5 Key Topics Aquinas disarms the modern atheist: The guest recounts that reading the Summa Theologica as an atheist, he found Aquinas’s arguments against God’s existence stronger than his own, having thought of only five of them. This destroyed the modern narrative that “Christianity is for dummies,” since faith, in Aquinas and Anselm (“faith seeking understanding”) and Augustine (“I believe in order to understand”), is the foundation of knowledge rather than a gap-filler. Everyone believes something a priori: He argues belief is unavoidable because you must trust that logic works before you can use analytic reason, and even believing other people exist beyond your interior monologue is an act of faith against solipsism. The question is therefore not whether to believe but what to believe and on what grounds, and ...