"... In front of the big problems I think a man of doubt and dialogue. of doubt, because each of my reasoning on one of the big questions almost always ends, or by exposing the range of possible answers, or placing yet another big question. of dialogue, because I do not presume to know what you do not know, and I know I put to the test continuously with those who assume they know more than me.
I've always had great respect for believers, but not a man of faith. Faith, when it is not a gift, it is a habit, when it is neither a gift nor a habit, comes from a strong will to believe. But the will begins where reason ends: I have so far arrested before. I also completely foreign to the faith in reason. I've never been tempted to replace the goddess of reason to the God of believers . For me, our reason is not a light: it is a small light . But we have nothing else to do in the darkness from which we came to the darkness to which we go. How did the universe? How will it end? What part does it man, this being that, unlike all other living things we know, not only in the world, but wonders about his place in the world, or, to use the classic term of all our tradition, its fate is essentially "blind"? Which is immersed in the evil of the universe, or at least according to what his opinion is wrong, and asks the question, since he began to reflect on the causes and purposes: "Why is there evil?" an application which has never succeeded in giving a convincing answer? I have no difficulty in admitting that there is no successful science, and here I mean by "science" all the knowledge gained through the use of our intelligence. But they fail religions? I'm talking about convincing answers, of which this same intelligence can satisfy, not answers consoling and therefore illusory, that satisfy the soul of those who want, desperately want to el'insopportabilità the enormity of the evil they face, be comforted. In contrast to the small light of reason, faith lights, but often, too light, blinds. Whence come, if not by this blindness, the perverse aspects of religion? L ' intolerance, the compulsion to believe the persecution of non-believers, the spirit of crusade ? Do not resume this old topic, without mentioning which did not include the battle of "light" so characteristic of modern thought, except that This same argument is routinely used with the same faction in order to allocate to the process of secularization all the perversions of our century, as if the age bloodiest first of two world wars had not been to the wars of religion. "
(In praise of meekness and other moral writings, Shadow Line, Milan 1994, pp. 8, 187-188).
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