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Highlights of book: 'In God We Doubt - confessions of a failed atheist' by John Humphrys, Hodder & Stoughton 2007, ISBN 978 0 340 951 58 3

Introduction

John Humphrys is well known in the UK as one of the longest-serving hosts on the BBC Radio 4's breakfast time 'Today' programme. This book arises from a separate series of programmes, 'Humphrys in Search of God', broadcast in late 2006 .

Chapter

Page

Highlight

Intro

'The Challenge'

"Anyone with the enquiring mind of a bright child can see that the case made for God by the three great monotheistic religions ... is riddled with holes."

"... Religious fundamentalism is a pretty comfortable perch to occupy once you've settled there."

"What sort of God" is perhaps the more relevant question.

"We want to feel that there's a purpose to our lives ..."

"Belief in intelligent design is based on faith and hope, with a large dollop of wishful thinking thrown in."

For "mainstream believers in the monotheistic faiths, God ... is almighty or he is nothing".

"If it (the existence of God) could be proved, it would not be faith."

Christopher Hitchens: "Religion is violent, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive towards children".

Frederick the Great of Prussia: "Christianity is an old metaphysical fiction, stuffed with fables, contradictions and absurdities".

"If a sceptic demands proof, ... the faithful ... hide behind the door marked 'mystery'."

The enemy (for atheists) isn't "the existence of God; it is the existence of belief in God".

Especially among moderate believers, the fundamentalists are an easy target.

16-17

"Atheists ... must prove ... that mainstream religion is a malign force in the world. They cannot rely on a small minority of religious extremists to do that for them, or hark back to the brutality of earlier centuries. And they must offer an alternative to the millions who rely on their beliefs to make sense of their lives."

"Vast numbers of ordinary, thoughtful people ... want there to be something else."

Part 1

'In The Beginning'

Ch 1

Pascal: Our life is "a brief passing shadow that returns no more".

Humphrys (JH): "As for the concept of the Holy Trinity, I still don't understand it. Does anyone?" [RT: Well, I like my own version. I see it more as a time-dependent evolution of human religiosity over the last few millennia. After the monolithic but despotic Father, we had the human example of Christ (the 'Son'), who in turn passed us on to the Holy Ghost.]

"Billy Graham was patently a decent and sincere man and believed every word he spoke, but at its worst extreme and pernicious, the movement (US-style evangelism) gives us those dodgy salesmen-preachers who appear on TV in the US and become very rich from persuading the gullible and the vulnerable to hand over to their so-called churches vast amounts of money."

"Good journalists are ... sceptical. ... If we're not, we're in the wrong job. We're meant to question, to doubt, to challenge."

JH's "defining moment in answer to the question 'where was God?' came almost 40 years after Aberfan. ... It was Beslan". [RT: I suppose because Aberfan was a 'natural' disaster (although certain humans may have been culpable), but Beslan was a deliberate terrorist attack and massacre, so 'hate' was at work.]

"However empty the pews ... there are plenty of people with a sincere and passionate belief. ... There are also plenty of people who think it's all a load of nonsense."

Ch 2

The 'multiverse' theory cuts "the ground from beneath those who argue for intelligent design. Paul Davies asks if our universe has "hit the jackpot in a gigantic cosmic lottery?"

45-6

Many people "are desperately seeking something else, possibly because they would like to offload some of the responsibility elsewhere for the way we are fouling up this beautiful world of ours".

"Priests and theologians" and "cosmologists and physicists" are just as bad as each other. When it comes down to it, neither side has a credible answer.

If the world's "human inhabitants were created in God's image, why turn us into such stroppy, ungrateful, selfish, destructive, warmongering fools, who should not be entrusted with a starter Lego set, let alone a whole planet".

Ch 3

Stephen Hawking: "One could define God as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However this is not what most people would think of as God. They mean a human-like being, with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe, and how insignificant and accidental human life is, that seems most implausible".

Antony Flew: "... The conception of God as a 'hypothesized omnipotent, omniscient, incorporeal and yet personal Creator is very different from the God of Einstein and Hawking".

Part 2

'The Battle Lines'

Ch 4

"There was no disguising the theological chasm between a liberal like David Jenkins (Bishop of Durham, England) and supporters of the charismatic happy-clappy wing."

William Lane Craig thinks churches "are filled with Christians who are 'idling in intellectual neutral' ".

Most believers "believe because they believe".

Rowan Williams (pre-Abp of Canterbury): "If you want God, then you must be prepared to let go of all – absolutely all – substitute satisfactions, intellectual and emotional. You must recognize that God is so unlike whatever can be thought or pictured that, when you have got beyond the stage of self-indulgent religiosity, there will be nothing you can securely know or feel. You face a blank and any attempt to avoid that or shy away from it is a return to playing comfortable religious games . … If you genuinely desire union with the unspeakable love of God, then you must be prepared to have your ‘religious’ world shattered. If you think devotional practices, theological insights, even charitable actions give you some sort of purchase on God, you are still playing games".

"... Most of us want our beliefs to be confirmed rather than proved false, and we will disregard any inconvenient evidence."

Ch 5

"Unlike Richard Dawkins, for whom religion is not only stupid but dangerous, Lewis Wolpert believes it is not such a bad thing ... because it makes so many people feel better about life." [RT: but turns a few into bigots and suicide bombers.]

"Wolpert says the propensity to believe is in our genes. None of it has anything to do with the existence of God."

Ch 6

92-93

Comments on a few of the odder beliefs of Scientology, including their "space opera" - invaders from space 75 million years ago.

It's easy to scoff at this nonsense.

94-95

Even the Christian story, told dispassionately, isn't so different (in style) from Scientology or South Pacific cargo cults (including this one!).

"But whatever divides the followers of different religious faiths, two things unite them. One is that they believe theirs is the only true religion. The other is that they cannot prove it."

Part 3

'State of the Nation'

Ch 7

111

A poll showed that more than 50% of people in the US were creationists, and 40% thought that the Day of Judgment would come within the next 50 years.

112

The feedback from those who write in after a TV or radio programme is not a good indication of what the population as a whole thinks. So he did a YouGov survey. The questions were 1) "Which of these comes closest to your belief?" (rather than "Do you believe in God?"); 2) "How often do you pray?" and 3) "How often do you attend a place of worship?" 2,200 people took part. See below for the responses.

Question	Answers	% of respondents
1	Which of these comes closest to your belief?
	- I believe in a personal God who created the world and hears my prayers	22
	- I believe God Created everything but then left us to get on with it.	6
	- I believe in 'something' but I'm not sure what	26
	- I would like to believe and I envy those who do but cannot believe for myself	5
	- I am an agnostic. I don't think it is possible to know if there is a God or not.	9
	- I am an atheist. The whole notion of a supernatural God is nonsense.	16
	- I'm really not sure what I believe and I don't give it much thought	10
	Other	3
	Don't know	3
2	How often do you pray?
	- I pray every night	10
	- I pray fairly regularly	14
	- I hardly ever pray	31
	- I do not pray at all	43
	- Don't know	2
	JH comments: “More than half of those who say they believe in a personal God cannot be bothered to pray to him every night.”
3	How often do you attend a place of worship?
	- More than once a week	2
	- Once a week	4
	- Two or three times a month	3
	- Once a month	2
	- Less than once a month	8
	- Only for special occasions such as weddings and funerals	62
	- Never	18
	- Don't know	1

116

"So, not only are the faithful failing to pray every night, they're not bothering to go to their place of worship either."

117

42% in the survey thought religion had a harmful influence; only 17% thought it was beneficial.

118-9

"What many of us seem to be saying is that we may well be prepared to believe in God, but it will be a God of our own choosing and not necessarily the God of any ancient religion."

Ch 8

124

"The old deference has long been in the process of receiving the last rites."

127

"The Church is, by its very nature, authoritarian. God is the boss and that's that ... The Church is the embodiment of his authority ... You cannot cut a deal with God."

Part 4

'The Interviews'

Ch 9

This is just a background to the interviews. The issues of 'suffering', 'evil' and 'justice' are the paramount topics throughout.

Ch 10

140-2

Rowan Williams: God sorts it out in his own time - which may not be in 'this world'. Rather than ask "Where was God?" (in disasters like Aberfan or Beslan), maybe we should ask "Where were the people who could have helped?" [RT: what if no-one 'could have helped, e.g. a tsunami or quake?]

142-5

Tariq Ramadan said that in Islam, this life is full of suffering. We have the responsibility to do our best with what we are facing.

146-51

Jonathan Sacks wriggled out of the issue by saying "If you didn't have faith, you wouldn't ask that question ...". So faith is in the asking. [RT: he also said some things about humans' responsibility, but they got drowned out by his 'device'.

150-1

Where was God in Auschwitz? JS said God was saying something to the Germans but they didn't listen. [RT: sounds nonsense to me.]

152

JH pointed out that the doubters (not those with faith) do need to ask the question, but JS didn't seem to see this.

Rowan Williams idea of "hope of healing" didn't seem to be convincing enough either.

Ch 11

154

At a cancer sufferer's funeral, an insensitive vicar said that God allows as much freedom to cancer cells as to our own normal ones. JH made the point that cancer cells can't 'choose'.

155-6

To the question "What do you think is the essence of Christianity, Margaret Thatcher replied "Choice". [RT: Even when there's no fault of their own, some people have a lot less choice than others.]

158

RW: "I think that either you say 'that's the kind of world it is' " (i.e., that one person's freedom of action impinges on and may limit that of others) and go on reflecting about it in the light of God, OR "Do you say the whole notion of a God making a world with freedom in it just doesn't wash?" JH opts for the latter.

158-9

If you pray to God to intervene, and he does intervene, isn't he "thwarting someone's free will?"

160

RW: God isn't a separate person acting independently - he's an "AGENCY [my caps] that's at work in everything".

163

JS: "We do not live in the age of God the strategic intervener". [RT: I think JS implied he was an intervener in Old Testament times.] JH thought JS still meant that God listens to our prayers.

165

JS: "... A physical universe without collisions and destruction cannot exist ... God places us in a context ... in which there is birth and growth and decline and death ... in a physical world in which physical happenings can be at random".

166

JS: "God is a remote cause and not a proximate cause" (i.e., he doesn't intervene in everything all the time).

JS says that JH "wants to believe in a just world". [RT: but surely we know, life isn't fair!]

167

JS thinks Christianity is contaminated by Greek culture and is "a series of footnotes to Plato" [RT: that's a quote originally about philosophy, borrowed from A.N.Whitehead. But see this page by Harold Attridge of Yale Divinity School.]

168

JH thinks the response that "this is the way the world works" is defeatist. So God can't be "the embodiment of justice". [RT: Right! So what is he?]

169

JH thinks the 'free will' and 'choice' theory of religion is no good either. Although some of us have choice, many don't - for them it's a battle to survive.

170

JH's problem with JS saying "we cannot seek to understand God's justice and neither should we try, but we should strive to emulate his compassion" IS that it's then too easy to say "we can't understand so let's not make the effort", OR to ask "What compassion?"

171

"Either it (the Old Testament) is the word of God or it is not ; we can't mess around trying to put it into the context of the times." [RT: Easy - it isn't!]

"To decent people like JS, vast sections of the Old Testament must be anathema - or at the very least, deeply, profoundly embarrassing."

172

RW: "Every single random, accidental death is something that should upset a faith bound up with comfort and ready answers".

173

JS says that to wish bad things didn't happen is to wish we weren't physical beings. But the Old Testament is all about us singing God's praises - nothing about peace on earth and goodwill towards men.

174

The Bible's 2nd commandment includes the words: "I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me". JH: This is definitely not a God of justice, unless we stop taking the Old Testament literally.

Ch 12

176

Reason can't decide, so according to Pascal we should 'wager' on God's existence. [RT: nowadays many wager that he doesn't, at least in the Old Testament sense.]

177

How can one "let God in" if one doubts his existence?

178

JS responded to the question of how he would persuade JH to belief in God, by taking him first to see 'good works'.

179

JH: "For every religious Jew of my acquaintance, I know half a dozen who do not believe in God, but it doesn't stop them being concerned, compassionate, decent, cultured people". "You can't be a partner, surely, with someone you are required to worship."

179-80

TR's answer to "How would you persuade me?" was a similar cop out to JS's.

181

RW also used the "God stands at the door and knocks" metaphor.

Ch 13

185

JH: "I approached these three decent and learned men as though they were slightly dodgy politicians forced to defend the actions of an even more dodgy government that:

1) promised the earth but failed to deliver;

2) favoured one group of people (the believers) over another group;

3) claimed to base its actions on the principle of justice for all, but actually allowed the most hideous injustices to rage unchecked;

4) promised to end suffering but appeared not to give a tinker's cuss about it."

Part 5

'The Letters' - 'A', 'B', 'C' etc are used to refer anonymously to the letter writers.

Ch 14

193

Reading the Bible won't help an agnostic 'believe'.

194

The same goes for a whole lot of books on religion and philosophy.

195

JH got thousands of letters after the programmes. Most sceptics and atheists 'disdain' believers.

198

Most of the letters were sympathetic and intelligent.

199

Most older writers who had faced suffering had come "to terms with it and emerged stronger".

201

"If their faith helped them through those dark days, their grief and suffering, we have no right to mock."

Ch 15

204

'A' wrote "I am now blissfully free from speculative theological dogma ... (including) a belief in the afterlife".

'B' gave up religion when some minister said of Aberfan that it was "God's Will".

205

'C' wrote "We all have a spark of God in ourselves ... We can feel it when we love and when we are happy ... Why would you want to talk to God? Why not just feel happy?"

'D' felt that the 3 interviewees "all failed to persuade us that any of their Gods could be personal and loving, a God who is concerned and watches over us".

206

'E' "thought of religion as a form of very ancient, emotional language based on a 'wish list', which may be part of the human condition in its development ... (which) appears to convince huge numbers, but in fact became wide open to different interpretations - many of which conflict". And it gets political!

208

If told he was going to Hell, 'F' would say "Well, you seem a sulky, petty sort of God. I, a mere mortal, can conceive of a more exemplary and moral God than that".

209

'F': "I believe this is a spiritual universe, but I think religion is more often than not a distortion, invented through the centuries by priests for reasons of power over people".

210

'G' suggested a better list of questions - see below.

	Question
1	What do you understand by God?
2	Does God know everything?
3	Does God know exactly what will befall each of us?
4	If knowing that, why does God knowingly allow some to be born into such suffering?
5	Who or what created God?
6	If God is self-created or has always existed, why can the same not also be said of the universe — thereby dispensing with God?
7	How does one distinguish between a true religion and a false one?
8	Can a true religion permit/condone stoning to death, or any death penalty? The differential treatment of men and women? The promise of heavenly reward for suicide attacks? The requirement that a church stands between man and his God? That sexual abstinence is a necessary precondition for serving God in some circumstances and so on?
9	What is the fate of all those who lead exemplary lives and yet do not believe in God?
10	What is the best way to rid permanently the planet of religious extremism?

212

'H' (a retired priest): "When I get over my desire to throttle those (who believe they are doing God's work by hating and fighting), I just want to weep". He hung on by thinking "What would Jesus have done?" [RT: Incidentally Jesus's first mention!]

213

'I' (a Catholic): "No need to worry if faith never comes, because what matters is the desire for it".

'J' (a Church minister): We should just 'practice' God-like behaviour.

214

'K': "I find that God is more to be found in people all over the place, including some of my atheist friends, rather than in doctrines and philosophical arguments".

Some correspondents thought JH should have looked at Hinduism and Buddhism.

215

'L' (a Buddhist): "... If you do the practices you don't need a god".

216

'M': "We'll never find God listening to this bunch of snake-oil salesmen".

Ch 16

218

Many (including JH) are suspicious of miracle conversions and don't like hugging total strangers.

218-9

Of the 1994 'Toronto blessing', JH thought it sounded "like a pretty hefty case of self-induced mass hysteria". [RT: like a Nuremburg rally?]

219

Archbishop William Temple: "If you talk to go you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia".

222

Many credit God for their unexpected good outcomes and blame Satan for all the world's evils.

223

As to why God allows Satan so much rope, 'N' said "Why God allows this to happen is still something of a mystery".

224

'O' felt "I just know I have to trust that there is a purpose and a reason for this (my suffering) that I cannot yet see". [RT: i.e., I need to believe.]

225

After 2 cancer episodes, 'P' thought "maybe the 'heavenly Father' was an 'earthly father' who was present in the (health staff) who surrounded me with care and hope".

'Q' revived Sartre's 4 questions: 1) Why is there something rather than nothing? 2) Why is it a cosmos and not a chaos? 3) How did life arise from the inanimate? 4) Where did man get his mannishness from? [RT: I'm reminded of "Fools give you reasons, wise men never try".] 'Q' suggested the "If proof were possible, faith would not be necessary" formula. [RT: I think that's silly, unless we regard faith as a prop.]

227

'R' asked JH "What would you change (if JH was God)? Where would you stop disallowing bad things to happen?"

'S' regarded 'religion' as a club or organization of like thinkers; most such clubs "have good intentions and try to improve people ... but in the end religions have become vehicles for those seeking power and influence ... but this is nothing to do with God or true believers".

230

'T' thought JH was "seeking a being who would remove all problems ..."

231

JH thought that 'U' (who believed that God had saved him personally from flying bombs) was wrong to think God was "looking out for him".

One can't have 'free will' and 'miracles'. "Either God chooses to intervene or he does not."

Part 6

'Conscience'

Ch 17

238

What about all the rally evil, hateful acts that happen?

239

Niemöller: Most of us are too scared to speak up (or act) against injustice when we see it, especially we personally aren't being targeted.

240

A religious view is that our free will is that "We get to choose how we behave - whether we follow God or the Devil. If God turned us all into good people we would be nothing more than puppets".

240-1

For most of us, JH says, the horror of evil acts counts far more strongly than "any number of profound doctrines produced by any number of brilliant theologians".

242

Is the problem that the perpetrators have lost inhibitions (or have none), and have no conscience?

243

"For believers its (conscience's) origin is divine, and for the atheists it is the voice of reason."

244-5

Does God give us the "absolute right and wrong that imposes itself on our conscience? And without God, are we in moral limbo"? [RT: it doesn't seem like it.]

245

Religions that don't have a God don't seem to have a problem. "Most of us refrain from doing these things not because the law says we must, but because we know they are wrong. We have known that ever since we became 'civilized'." [RT: the boundaries do seem to keep changing though.]

246

[RT: to back my point] The Roman Catholic church used to justify Crusades, the Inquisition, and burning of witches. Many Moslems support Sharia law. And Christian zealots in the US threaten the lives of doctors who perform abortions.

248

And what about slavery?

249

Also there's labelling homosexuality as sin, parents forcing daughters into marriage, stopping freedom of speech (incitement to violence [RT: and hate] excepted), and calling for the death of perceived insults to one's religion.

250

Richard Dawkins (RD) claims there's a lot of self-interest in altruism; and animals too can exhibit it - even between different species.

252

RD says that much sexual lust "constitutes a misfiring" in Darwinian terms.

253

RD: "We can no more help ourselves feeling pity when we see a weeping unfortunate (who is unrelated and unable to reciprocate) than we can help ourselves feeling lust for a member of the opposite sex who may be infertile of otherwise unable to reproduce. Both are 'misfirings', Darwinian mistakes; (but) blessed, precious mistakes".

255

JH: "But a world without kindness, altruism, generosity, empathy and pity would be unimaginable. It is a world most of us would not wish to inhabit".

257

"If there is no God, why should we be good? And on this point, the atheist response is as unconvincing as that of the fundamentalist religious believer."

259

In the UK most crime has fallen in the last decade or so, but violent crime has risen.

260

Economic and social explanations are more plausible in suggesting a cause than is religion.

Ch 18

261

JH suggests that the existence of conscience is proof of something transcendent.

Regarding virtue, motive is all - an act is only virtuous if the motive is good.

262

Christopher Hitchens pointed out some less than virtuous facts about Mother Teresa.

"She was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.

And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti, whose rule she praised in return. ... Where did that money, and all the other donations, go?

The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been - she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself - and her order always refused to publish any audit.

But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?"

"Hitchens has said it was by talking to her that he discovered that she was not working to alleviate poverty but 'she was working to expand the number of Catholics'. She herself said, `I'm not a social worker. I don’t do it for the people. I do it for the Church."

263-9

Here are several better stories of selfless heroism.

270

"It is the first rule of law that the enemy be de-humanized."

273

CS Lewis claimed that the 'moral law' was a third influence on us, mediating between the 'herd instinct' to do good and the 'self-preservation instinct' to keep out of danger. [RT: but it doesn't always seem to give very clear guidance, if such a thing exists at all.]

275

JH points out that this 'moral law' hasn't been immutable. 1) we burnt heretics at the stake; 2) slavery was regarded as a perfectly acceptable way to make money; 3) children were sent up chimneys; 4) soldiers suffering from shell shock were shot at dawn; 5) fathers were hanged for stealing bread to give to their (starving) children; 6) homosexuals were imprisoned - or worse.

276

It has taken people with a lot of courage to put these right.

278

But CS Lewis still claims that many values have stayed the same.

280

"The fact is, atheists have the best arguments. What they don't have - as far as I'm concerned - is much of a grasp of whatever it is that makes human beings what we are."

281-2

Atheist books can't trump 1 Corinthians 13.4 (about the qualities of 'love').

282

The Christian view is that "the supreme example was Jesus". [RT: OK, but that doesn't say he is divine. And his example may not give enough pointers to resolve all our contemporary disagreements.]

283

JH would settle for E.O.Wilson's "transcendental experience at the heart of human nature".

Part 7

'Something ... or Nothing?'

Ch 19

287

"The greatest horrors inflicted on humanity in the last century were inspired not by religion but by Communism." [RT: or Fascism, surely? But more generally, by one lot of people thinking they had all the answers and the rest were wrong - and this justified oppressing them. Religion did have this attitude in previous centuries, though.]

288

JH singles out the 1918 Red Terror, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Hitler. [RT: if we had looked back a bit further, we could add the French Revolution, and Turkish massacres of Armenians. More recently we have had Rwanda (maybe race)]. But religion was a factor in Darfur, Bosnia, Beirut and Northern Ireland [RT: and recently in Iraq and Pakistan. Overall, I don't think JH's attempt to excuse religion will quite wash.]

289

But a lot of the cause in some of these was social, economic and political.

290

Hassan Butt (ex British Jihadi network) said that Jihadi groups did want to inflict whatever aggression it took, in the name of a single, global, Islamic revolutionary state.

292

"If enough people feel a sufficiently powerful sense of grievance [RT: or they are worked up into it by demagogues], then sooner or later the lid will blow ... Sometimes the effect will be beneficial and sometimes it will be disastrous. Sometimes religion will fill the vacuum, sometimes ideologies such as Fascism and Communism."

[RT: I think such happenings have become more likely with the widening of communications and media influence. People seem to be very easily worked up (e.g. Arab Spring, English August 2011 riots). Also, the 'lid blowing' metaphor doesn't always apply. Some revolutionaries are opportunists, not 'the oppressed'.]

293

George Orwell: "A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy".

John Gray: "Islamist terrorists are continuing a modern Western tradition of using systematic violence to transform society. The roots of contemporary terrorism are in radical Western ideology - especially Leninism - far more than religion".

294

Suicide bombings were devised by the Marxist-Leninist [RT: were they? That seemed a minor factor.] Tamil Tigers.

John Gray: "Faith is dangerous ... but fanaticism comes in many guises. We would do well to remember that it was secular faith that inspired much of the terror of the last century. The fantasy that society can be progressively transformed by violence inspired some of humanity's worst crimes, and it casts a poisonous spell today".

Ch 20

297

"But on balance it's probably a good thing that British politicians (as Alistair Campbell said) don't 'do God'."

298

In the US they do 'do God' - in a big way.

298-9

Militant atheists seem more 'certain' - even "devout, churchgoing Christians" are more likely to admit doubt.

299

JH talks about the "one the one hand ... but on the other" school of journalism.

300

Rod Liddle: "History has shown us that it's not religion so much that's the problem, but any system of thought which insists that one group of people are inviolably in the right, whereas the others are in the wrong and must somehow be punished". [RT: sounds like Leibniz's judgment on philosophers.]

301

"It's when we stop arguing that we start fighting."

Is it evil to teach children things you know to be wrong?

304

"You can't actually bully someone into believing - just into pretending to believe."

305

Many believers, like Giles Fraser (GF) [RT: a 'Thought for the Day' priest who resigned from St Paul's in London over the 'Occupy' protest there], are 'moving targets' for atheists.

306

GF: "The so-called proofs of God's existence are all rubbish". To the question "Did resurrection of Christ really happen?" - "Umm, dunno, can't prove it."

"Evangelicals have misunderstood the Bible. They turn it into some bloody IKEA manual."

308

Believers "believe because they believe" - like a security blanket?

309

"There is a profound longing for something that will stimulate and satisfy them (would-be believers) emotionally and spiritually."

311

GF: As individuals, we want some poetry, not just science.

312

Darwin did prove that God did not create the world in six days just a few thousand years ago, and dinosaurs did not roam the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.

315

The faith of two parents (whose 2 daughters were killed by a drunk driver) was "better than being eaten away by anger and bitterness for the rest of their lives".

JH asks: Is that worse than the "grief counsellors, the psychotherapists, the peddlers of pills that banish depression"?

316

People "want to believe - it brings immeasurable comfort". [RT: I would say "can bring" - it may not work for all.]

Peter Kay (UK comedian, ex Roman Catholic) "does not believe in the divinity of Christ, but does believe in a God of some kind".

317

JH, too, does "not accept the divinity of Jesus", or the resurrection or ascension. But he thinks "that belief enriches the life of many".

318

For many, belief provides structure and "some meaning to their lives". [RT: but others manage quite well without.]

319

"But we should also fear a world in which the predominant values are materialism and consumerism, and (where) the greatest aspiration of too many children is to become a 'celebrity'" - like Paris Hilton?

"The existence of religion can offer some balance in a society obsessed with image, which turns vacuity into value."

321

Muslim women playing tennis in chadors look pretty silly, but so do "fashionably dressed young people who get so drunk on Friday or Saturday nights". [RT: so, we can discourage both equally.]

JH finds Sartre's "There is no purpose to existence, only nothingness" too bleak. [RT: put this way, so do I - but why should we demand that there should be a purpose - or a cause of things, or reasons? Isn't it best if we work it out for ourselves?]

322

"We should not ... be browbeaten by militant atheists."

"Fanatics ... succeed only to the extent that we allow ourselves to be defeated by our own irrational fear."

"If we make a mess of things, we shall have ourselves to blame - not religion and not God."

Afterthought

Perhaps John Humphrys was a shade naïve in the questions he was putting to the three 'snake-oil salesmen'. I think the question "What do we mean by 'God' when we talk about God?" is surely more critical than whether we believe or not, or should believe. By concentrating on the arguments for and against belief, the book doesn't really help us moderns find a 'story' that makes a bit more sense than the 'old time religion' doctrines.

All the same, I reckon JH deserves a hearty 'well done' for tackling the subject, knowing the strength of passions it can raise.

Links

Index to more highlights of interesting books

FROLIO home page

Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.

This version updated on 24^th January 2012

If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .