 Marcel, as one would expect, does not engage in philosophy of religion in the traditional sense. He is often critical of various attempts to “prove” the existence of God in the history of philosophy, such as those to be found in Thomism. He regards such attempts as belonging to the realm of primary reflection, and as such, they leave out the personal experience of God, which is necessarily lost in the move to abstraction. Marcel notes that committed religious believers are not greatly interested in arguments for God’s existence, and may even look upon these arguments with suspicion; atheists are also usually not persuaded by such arguments (Marcel, 1951b, p. 196; Marcel, 1964, p. 179). Another reason for the lack of efficacy of formal arguments is that many in the contemporary world are not open to the religious worldview. Marcel introduces a distinction between “anti-theists” and “atheists” to make this point. Whereas an atheist is somebody who does not believe in God, an anti-theist is somebody who does not want to believe in God. It is possible, Marcel observes, to close oneself off from the experience of the religious in human life, not for rational reasons, but for reasons of self-interest, or from a desire to avoid religious morality, or to avoid submission to an outside authority. This view is prevalent, he believes, not just in modern life, but also in modern philosophy: “The history of modern philosophy seems to supply abundant illustration of the progressive replacement of atheism by…an anti-theism, whose mainspring is to will that God should not be” (Marcel 1951b, p. 176). The prevalence of this attitude makes it even more difficult to pursue a purely rational approach to God’s existence.