When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue.Oh dear. It's A N Wilson again. It sees like only yesterday when he lost his faith. Now he has it back again. Writing a biography of C S Lewis made him an Atheist (reading those blasted Narnia books helped make one of me) but, a few biographies more and he is back in the arms of Mary. And now, of course Atheism is unthinkable. And Atheists are dullards. And the proofs of God's existence are so obvious: language, music and love.
So, there we have it. I expect you are wondering why you did not think of that. Possibly because it is a load of bollocks; Wilson's apologia is a confession of no more than his own inconsistency. He lost God, he found Him again. Stay tuned for more thrilling episodes of the testimony of A N Wilson. You won't believe what happens next!
8 comments:
no link? no citation even? call yourself a budding academic? just where did you get that quote? hmmm?
The quote is real. I happen to like it - a lot. It's from Wilson's new book - sorry - can't remember the name.
Sorry chaps, I left out the link It is from the New Statesman. Post now new and improved.
Well, A N Wilson certainly proves why humans have created such an interestingly nasty range of gods over the millennia,,,some even with capital letters! It's all to do with fugues & words & lurrrve.
Thanks for the link Paul. I liked his God's Funeral, a history of the loss of belief from the end of the 18thC forward showing that the Origin didn't kick it off, but simply did the coup de grace to the last best argument of the religious. Maybe he should reread his own books?
He lost me about half way down where he used his manifest and admitted ignorance about he science of language in us and the other higher primates as a reason for belief. He only needs to watch that Attenborough piece where the different species of monkeys travel through the forest together since many eyes are good for seeing predators. The remarkable thing is that they not only know their own alarm calls for 'leopard' or 'eagle' or 'snake' they know the calls of all the other species too. We humans didn't invent being polyglot, it isn't even a great ape feature. The monkeys got there first.
Yet another religious apologist who uses his own ignorance as an argument for god. Tawdry god of the gaps stuff. He has gone way down in my estimation.
I am an atheist.
I can confirm that I have been in love, being in love required belief in god, for better or worse. God was beautiful, whispered truths in my ear and was wonderful in bed.
And the proofs of God's existence are so obvious: language, music and love.Celine Dion's carreer seems to me to be proof of the existance of satan to me...
And in a rare example of Johnny Vaughn Being Amusing, he once pointed out to Kevin Smith the irony of casting Alanis Morissette as God in his film Dogma
Post a Comment