"To be an atheist in the best modern sense, . . . and so to be a truly intellectually and emotionally fulfilled naturalist in philosophy, one must genuinely succeed in not believing in God...."

"To be an atheist in the best modern sense, . . . and so to be a truly intellectually and emotionally fulfilled naturalist in philosophy, one must genuinely succeed in not believing in God, with all the logical consequences such disbelief entails."

     David Bentley Hart, The experience of God:  being, consciousness, bliss (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2013), 32.  See also "The back page:  God, gods, and fairies," First things no. 234 (June/July 2013):  71 (72-71).  "The philosophical naturalist's view of reality is not one that merely fails to find some particular object within the world that the theist imagines can be descried there; it is a very particular representation of the nature of things, entailing a vast range of purely metaphysical commitments."