I Never Thought Sartre Would Show Up Here

 "Existentialists were honest about the implications of atheism--even though it made them "forlorn." If God does not exist, there is no ultimate morality, no transcendent standard of right or wrong. "

 

 Jean-Paul Sartre: "When we [existentialists] speak of forlornness,... we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of this. The existentialist ... thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that the Good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a plane where there are only men. Dostoyevsky said, “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.” That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can’t start making excuses for himself."