Quote from "Bonfire of the Vanities"

Here’s a wonderfully sardonic -- (and instructive) quote from novelist Tom Wolfe’s book, “Bonfire of the Vanities”:

"Daddy?" "Yes, sweetheart?" -- "Daddy, what if there isn't any God?" Sherman was startled, bowled over. Campbell was looking up at, him with a perfectly ordinary expression, as if she had just asked what those yellow flowers were called. "Who said there isn't any God?" "But what if there isn't?" "What makes you think—did somebody tell you there wasn't any God?" What insidious little troublemaker in her class had been spreading this poison? So far as Sherman knew, Campbell still believed in Santa Claus, and here she was, beginning to question the existence of God! And yet . . . it was a precocious question for a six-year-old, wasn't it? No two ways about that. To think that such a speculation— "But what if there isn't!" She was annoyed. Asking her about the history of the question was no answer. "But there is a God, sweetie. So I can't tell you about if there isn't.' "Sherman tried never to lie to her. But this time he felt it the prudent course. He had hoped he would never have to discuss religion with her. They had begun sending her to Sunday school at St. James' Episcopal Church, at Madison and Seventy-first. That was the way you took care of religion. You enrolled them at St. James', and you avoided talking or thinking about religion again.