Charles Krauthammer Ruminates on God, Israel, and the Accident that Left him Paralyzed

Mark Ellis : Nov 22, 2013
God Reports

"Of all the theologies or anti-theologies, I think atheism is the least plausible of them all. It's not only the irrationality, but it's the coldness, the soullessness of atheism that strikes me.

He is the independent-minded neo-conservative commentator with an authoritative manner that may appear brusque to lesser mortals. His trenchant analysis of America's place in the world has won him numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize.

A tragic diving accident as a first year medical student left him with an injury that altered the course of Krauthammer's life, but never impeded his accomplishments.

"I had a diving accident actually in a swimming pool right on the grounds of Harvard Medical School, off the diving board, my third dive of the day and hit the bottom with my head," he told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt in a wide-ranging interview conducted November 19th probing the depths of all-things Krauthammer.

"And my head wasn't hurt at all. I didn't even have a scratch. But it severed my spinal cord, and I was hospitalized for 14 months," he recounted.

Krauthammer refused to give in to a depressed outlook after the accident.

"You can be hopeless and despairing, or you can live your life. And to me, there was basically no option," he told Hewitt.

Shortly after the accident, the dean of the medical school came to his beside, and said he would be happy to give him a leave of absence for a year or two.

"If I take a leave of absence, I'm never coming back. And I will be lost," he told the dean. "This will turn disaster to ruin. So give me a shot. I want to stay with my class."

Administrators acceded to his request and let him study at night for 14 months while he convalesced. He took his exams orally, "because it took me a couple of years to relearn how to write."

His religious views

Krauthammer has Jewish roots, went through a bar mitzvah as a young man, but maintains a mostly secular outlook that caused him to critique intelligent design theory as "tarted-up creationism."

"I'm not the first to say it. I don't believe in God, but I fear Him greatly," he says. At the same time he admitted to Hewitt a "complicated view of deity."

When it comes to theology, Krauthammer's unlikely muse is Einstein. "And not to in any way compare myself to Him, but if I had to, I'd have to say to compare to whose theology do I have the most affinity? I would say probably Einstein," he noted.

"Einstein had this sense of this fantastic mystery lying behind ordering and creating beauty in nature. I mean, he was so struck by the elegance of nature, his ability to put the ultimate mysteries of science into a single line, E=MC2, indicates a kind of harmony in the cosmos which cannot be accidental, or cannot be sort of unwilled in some sense."

Then does the critic of intelligent design allow room for the ultimate designer? "He (Einstein) said things, for example, in his rejection of quantum mechanics, he said God does not play dice with the universe, meaning he refuses to accept the physics that depends on probability. That's not how God works. And he had this sort of reverence and awe," Krauthammer observed.

"The other analogy I would use is what Newton used to describe the capacity of the human mind," he continued. "He said our ability to understand is about akin to that of a snail on the shore of an ocean trying to work out the tides through physics. And that, to me, is our position vis-à-vis understanding the workings of the universe, and the wonderful mysteries, awesome, I mean, literally awesome mysteries…that lie behind it."

Krauthammer finds it difficult to embrace traditional religion. "I have enormous respect for it, and in some sense, I'm not a terribly religious Jew, but I follow some of the rituals, and I do attend on the important days. But when it comes to the relationship to what is out there, to me, it is rather complicated and mysterious," he noted.

A worldview with no God leaves Krauthammer cold. "Of all the theologies or anti-theologies, I think atheism is the least plausible of them all. It's not only the irrationality, but it's the coldness, the soullessness of atheism that strikes me. But as to what lies on the other side, I'm the snail on the side of the ocean. I don't even presume to even be able to begin to understand it. All I know is that it's far beyond me, and it deserves reverence and awe."

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