Every sound mind believes in God. No sound mind believes in a definite God. There is some being, both real and impossible, who reigns over all things and whose person (if he has one) cannot be defined, and whose purposes (if he has any) cannot be fathomed. By calling this being God we say everything, since the word God – having no precise meaning – affirms him without saying anything. The attributes of infinite, eternal, omnipotent, all-just or all-loving that we sometimes attach to him fall off by themselves, like all unnecessary adjectives when the noun suffices. And He who, being indefinite, cannot have attributes, is for that very reason the absolute noun.

The same certainty and the same obscurity exist with respect to the soul’s survival. We all know that we die; we all feel that we won’t die. It’s not just a desire or hope that brings us this shadowy intuition that death is a misunderstanding; it’s a visceral logic that rejects .....