The reason new atheism has lost its mojo is that it has no answers to the lack of meaning and purpose that our post-Christian societies are suffering from. What will fill that void? Religious people have their answer. Do the rest of us?
— Konstantin Kisin, “The Atheism Delusion”
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Recognizing the hollowness of the Enlightenment quest for some absolute and perspectiveless objectivity, the pragmatist is content to make do with all that is left — which, of course, was all there ever was from the very start — which is that ‘we think of our sense of community as having no foundation except shared hope and the trust created by such sharing.’
— Johnny Lyons, The Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin
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As for the meaning of life, I do not believe that it has any: I do not at all ask what it is, for I suspect it has none, and this is a source of great comfort to me – we make of it what we can, and that is all there is about it. Those who seek for some deep, cosmic, all-embracing, teleologically arguable libretto or god are, believe me, pathetically mistaken.
— Isaiah Berlin, letter to Irving Singer, In Search of Isaiah Berlin: A Literary Adventure