Francis Spufford, former atheist, defends his faith in a new book

October 21, 2014 • 9:29 am

Since this site began I’ve written a few posts about Francis Spufford, a Christian writer who can’t stop attacking New Atheists, and in the most insupportable and mean-spirited ways.

Spufford has just issued his recent book (which came out in March in the UK) in the US; it’s called Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense.  Although I’m burnt out on reading apologetics (Spufford aspires, I think, to be the modern C. S. Lewis), I did read this week-old interview with Spufford on book Tumblr. The interviewer is Luis Rivas from the Spanish Catholic weekly Vida Nueva, so of course the interview is sympathetic. As we’re leaving this morning for parts unknown, I can only reproduce and comment on a bit of the interview.

Here is the Amazon blurb for the U.S. edition issued on October 15:

Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic is a wonderfully pugnacious defense of Christianity. Refuting critics such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the “new atheist” crowd, Spufford, a former atheist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, argues that Christianity is recognizable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe in it by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the grown-up dignity of Christian experience.

Fans of C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright, Marilynne Robinson, Mary Karr, Diana Butler Bass, Rob Bell, and James Martin will appreciate Spufford’s crisp, lively, and abashedly defiant thesis.

Unapologetic is a book for believers who are fed up with being patronized, for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century, and for anyone who feels there is something indefinably wrong, literalistic, anti-imaginative and intolerant about the way the atheist case is now being made.

I wasn’t aware that many believers felt they were being “patronized” by New Atheists, although of course we’re all aware of the accusations that we take religious belief literally—that we make the mistake of thinking religious people actually believe to be true what they say they believed.  Here are five select questions from the interview and Spufford’s answers (all indented). My own remarks are flush left.

Does faith prevent Christians from being intellectuals?

That music you hear in the distance?  It’s St Augustine, St Teresa, Teilhard de Chardin, Pascal, Kierkegaard and Simone Weil all singing together, and what they are singing is that, as Christ commanded, we are supposed to love God with our minds, as well as with our hearts and our souls and our strength.  It is an illusion to think that there is any necessary conflict between a Christian commitment and free, adventurous thinking.  No-one ever does their thinking on a blank sheet of paper. Every intellectual of every kind is in a conversation with some set of ideas, doctrines, ways of seeing the world, and that’s what makes their own thinking serious.  The Christian conversation with Christian ideas, and with every other kind of idea, need not be defensive or imprisoning.  Why is there a stereotype that says you have to choose between faith and thought?  Two reasons, I think.  One, that people think belief means entering a kingdom of fixed answers — when, in my experience, it really means living with more and more questions.  Two, that people imagine religion must shrink as science grows bigger.  But they don’t do the same thing, or occupy the same space.  There is plenty of thinking room for both.  The great contemporary American novelist Marilynne Robinson says there is nothing like a subscription to Scientific American to fill you with wonder at Creation.

It is an illusion to think that you can reconcile rational thinking with a bunch of myths for which there is no evidence. When you hear the term “conversation with ideas,” you should run (just as you should with the word “nuance”), for what that “conversation” denotes is a contorted process to convince you to accept what your intellect tells you is unacceptable.

And really, if Spufford thinks that most of the faithful don’t think that religion provides “fixed answers,” he’s wrong. Sophisticated he may be, but if religion provides “purpose and meaning” for people, how can it do that without answers?

The history of science tells us that as science expands, religion shrinks, and we have numerous examples of that: evolution, free will, consciousness, the origin of the universe, and so on. And many of the faithful still make statements that there are scientific facts that can be explained only by God. (Example: “the Moral Law”—our “innate sense of right and wrong.” That, says National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, can be explained only by God.)  My new book has a large section of one chapter on (and a refutation of) this “new natural theology.”

. . . Does it make sense to go on being a Christian in the 21st century?

Yes!  And, what is more, the same kind of sense it has always made.  No matter where history takes us, we will still be sinners in need of redemption, prodigal daughters and sons hoping that God is running towards us on the long road, with His arms open wide.

Well, if by “sinners in need of redemption,” Spufford means, “nobody’s perfect,” he’s pretty much right. But somehow I think he means more than that. For there’s no evidence of any God running towards us with open arms. This is the kind of doublespeak believers use to conflate a perfectly aceptable statement into some kind of reason for belief in God.

Isn’t there a paradox here?  Impenitente is directed towards atheists and agnostics…

… and yet it is finding an audience among believers.  I think this is because I decided that the best way to try to explain us to atheists and agnostics was to lay out the emotional phases and qualities of faith, which can be recognised even by people who are very resistant to the ideas.  And so I tried to paint a kind of portrait of the Christian heart, using my own chaotic and imperfect heart, which I know best, as the model.  I meant to make us recognisable to others, but by accident I seem to have given some Christian readers the pleasure of recognising themselves.  Flatteringly, they seem to see their portrait in my portrait, their doubts and dilemmas in my doubts and dilemmas.  It’s an accident, but one I am very pleased by.

This is absolutely predictable. Spufford’s arguments against atheism, like all such arguments, are unconvincing, and his are particularly unconvincing because they’re (or have been) motivated completely by what he finds emotionally congenial. Of course such appeals will find their natural home with believers, not atheists.

Why did atheism disappoint you?

It turned out not to contain what my soul needed for nourishment in bad times.  It was not any kind of philosophical process that led me out from disbelief.  I had made a mess of things in my life, and I needed mercy, and to my astonishment, mercy was there.  An experience of mercy, rather than an idea of it.  And the rest followed from there.  I felt my way back to Christianity, discovering through many surprises that the religion I remembered from my childhood looked different if you came to it as an adult with adult needs: not pretty, not small, not ridiculous, but tough and gigantic and marvellous.

This is quite revealing. Atheism disappointed Spufford for, despite being the only credible intellectual response to a lack of evidence, it didn’t satisfy him emotionally. He had a rough time, and religion brought him the solace he needs. That’s fine, but it doesn’t mean that there’s a God, or that the tenets of Christianity are true. Some find solace in the bottle or the joint, others in God.  The difference is that alcohol and marijuana actually exist.

. . . How can we reconcile the idea of a good God with the world’s suffering?

I can’t.  Can you?  All of the theological justifications have something valuable in them, but in the end, none of them seem complete.  But luckily we have something beside theological ideas: we have Christ crucified, joining with us in the sufferings of the world.  Like most Christians, I am not comforted by abstract ideas about God, but by Christ’s own presence, in the gospels and in bread and wine.  As I say in the book: we don’t have a justification, but we have a story.  A true story, of God redeeming the world.

I’ve always said that theodicy—the ineffectual religious rationalization of evil, particularly “natural evils” like childhood cancers or natural disasters—constitutes one of the best arguments against the existence of an omnipotent and loving God. This is nothing new, although the faithful continue to confect new explanations about why God would let kids get leukemia, or kill thousands in tsunamis.  Their explanations remain ludicrous and convincing only to those who want to believe. The existence of a crucified Christ who also suffered (and how does Spufford know that that happened?) doesn’t make matters any better.  Does a crucified Christ palliate the sufferings of children with cancer, or the grief of those who have lost friends or relatives in natural disasters?

The words “we don’t have a justification, but we have a story” should be the very motto of all theologians. If they can make something up, they’re satisfied. As for it being the “true” story that Spufford thinks, one involving God redeeming the world, well, how does he know that? Only because his emotions make him think it is true.

It’s no surprise that atheists would find such a book unconvincing, but believers would be drawn to it like flies.

 

112 thoughts on “Francis Spufford, former atheist, defends his faith in a new book”

  3. “Deep and deeply ordinary”? “Abashedly defiant”?

    One almost suspects the blurb of being a deliberate parody.

      1. Yep. This is the last refuge of a bad argument. “I NEED to believe this.”

        Of course, they usually confuse this with a proof of God. Or, rather, a proof that they don’t need proof, which morphs into the idea that nobody needs proof, which just goes to show how great God really is.

      2. Yep. This is the last refuge of a bad argument. “I NEED to believe this.”

        Of course, they usually confuse this with a proof of God. Or, rather, a proof that they don’t need proof, which morphs into the idea that nobody needs proof, which just goes to show how much believing in God is like being in love, that we believe anyway.

      3. Yep. This is the last refuge of a bad argument. “I NEED to believe this.”

        Of course, they usually confuse this with a proof of God. Or, rather, a proof that they don’t need proof, which morphs into the idea that nobody needs proof, which just goes to show how much believing in God is like being in love, that we believe anyway.

        “I can’t handle this truth … but I can handle THIS one. And it has a long history of being capitalized as Truth, so I am excused.” You see, it works for him.

        It’s not a justification, it’s an excuse — an apologetic which amounts to an actual apology. Only smug.

    3. Yes, “abashedly defiant” threw me for a loop as well. While “unabashedly defiant” is simply redundant, /”abashedly defiant”/ is an altogether more exotic creature. Surely a typo?

      1. “Deeply ordinary” stood out to me as an oxymoron.

        I suppose it could be used effectively in the right poetic context.

        It reminds me of the joke tempo marking in music: molto moderato.

    5. I kinda agree. That blurb sounds to me like the reviewer found the book terrible, but is forced by job description to write something positive and sale-promoting about it.

  4. I’ve found many people who find emotional solace in Islam, music, or drugs. Is that really the metric? This kind of an argument appeals only to the choir and says to me that this guy has not one thing to say to me.

    1. “Why did atheism disappoint you?
      It turned out not to contain what my soul needed for nourishment in bad times.”

      IOW, Wishful thinking.

      1. It sounds melodramitic but this is why i say the bravest man oe woman is the atheist and agnostic who braves it alone rather than give in to wishful fairy tales.

    2. “We all have some emptiness in our lives, an emptiness that some fill with art, some with God, some with learning. I have always filled the emptiness with drugs.” — Involution Ocean, Bruce Sterling

      /@

  6. I am getting so tired of hearing about Pascal. (and Kierkegaard, for that matter – who could not write a single sentence worth parsing).

    Pascal was a brilliant prodigy, making incredible advances by postulating a mechanical universe. But then he spent his short life tortured by guilt caused by his religious upbringing, trying to square a circle that wasn’t there.

    He, like Newton & Decartes, would’ve fared so much better without the insanity of supernaturalism. That the Christers keep holding these people up as prime examples of the good that religion brings never fails to trigger a gag reflex.

    2. In Descartes’ case, one can argue that what he is most famous for writing (the Meditations) is an ass-saving for those sorts of reasons. His _Le Monde_ is deistic and materialist, for crying out loud. Some have even pointed out that his work on optics (on the rainbow) may be specifically targeting “Noah’s mircle”. He was certainly no Christian, that’s for sure. (See the recent biography.)

      It is harder to figure out what Newton would have done without his brain warped.

  7. Spufford thought processing capability is self absorbed. He is obsessed with making his particular version of a myth work for him and outlines nothing that is generally true for anyone but himself.

    Again, theologians who try to support the foundations of their surreptitious religious beliefs are providing direct evidence of their own selfish designs for what makes this life profound.

  8. I don’t intend to read the book, I don’t think he will offer any new insights worth having a talk on especially because his motives seem to me to be all emotional.

  9. There’s a certain aspect of Christianity that seems dependent on emotional masochism–look at Christians who love talking about how sinful and in need of redemption they are (they do so almost with pride!), and how Jesus suffering on a cross makes everything better (presumably because their imaginary best friend suffers as much as them). It’s all very sickly (and sickening) and suggests that religion is a psychological parasite that feeds off neurosis.

    1. A lot of theodicies sound like Stockholm Syndrome to me — praise Him for his great mercies because he could have been and often is much, much worse.

      Or like a battered spouse or child: He only hits me for my own good, I was getting uppity and thinking of myself too much. And it felt like a kiss …

      1. Yes, and faced with the reality of suffering in the world, the mind strives for an explanation…anything is better than nothing. We humans seem to need a story, a narrative, to keep life seemingly structured and predictable.

  10. Interesting question, which of christianity, alcohol and marijuana provide the best solace with the fewest side effects? Could we get a grant to run a properly designed clinical trial on this?

      1. Also, Byron:

        There’s nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
        As rum and true religion

    2. Better that my critical thinking skills remain intact while my liver fails, than the other way around.

    3. Could we get a grant to run a properly designed clinical trial on this?

      It shouldn’t be too difficult to find people naïve to alcohol or dope. But in western society at least, finding a cohort who are thoroughly naïve to christianity is going to be troublesome.

    1. I’ve also never understood the sentiment. What kind of fix is that, God? You just added one more suffering prick to the pile.

      The Catholic priests I knew would teach that God is, in fact, completely powerless to affect anything in reality. Dying child? God is “with” the child, crying right along with everybody. But he sent a scapegoat 2000 years ago who died an even worse death, the worst death ever died, so it’s OK.

      1. Not only that, but Jesus’ sufferings, however horrific, are nothing compared to those suffered by people every day. There are people who are tormented for months, years, by natural disaster, their fellow humans, plagues, hunger… Three days? With a promise to sit on a heavenly throne for all eternity? Pfffft. Amateur! You call THAT suffering?

        1. No kidding. Prometheus spent YEARS getting his liver eaten every day, and I’m supposed to be impressed by Jesus’s bad weekend?

      2. he sent a scapegoat 2000 years ago who died an even worse death, the worst death ever died,

        Considering the realtively large numbers of Filipinos (IIRC, and mostly ; there are others) who voluntarily get crucified each Easter, and that the Filipino police, not to mention their less-disorganised criminals have a reputation for being less than subtle about questioning people, I think that there is a reasonable chance of being able to test whether crucifixion really is the worst death in the world. Or at least, the worst torture-approaching-death known to man.
        Considering that professional torturers tend to use less complex methods – beating the feet, crushing of digits and sex organs, burning (including electrocution, which wasn’t available to the Romans), sleep deprivation, and good old blunt-force trauma – as attested by torture-survivors from all over the world, I strongly suspect that crucifixion simply isn’t going to appear on any list of effective methods of torture.
        So, can we add “incompetent torturer” to the charge sheet against the infallibility of god?

        1. Oops, I forgot to remind people that Sithrak is still oiling the spit.
          And then I realise just how ineffective a spit would be against the FSM (praise and tomato sauce be upon his noodly appendages!). Sithrak will be (more) enraged.

          1. You’d like your torturer to be competent. You’d prefer him (her? always a possibility) to be non-existent, but in this world, that’s probably being a lot optimistic.

    2. My god enlightens me and has given me reasons why there is suffering in the world…oh wait I don’t have a god. Sorry no epiphanies here.

    3. Such word salad, it seems to me, can often be perceived a bit like a Rorschach test. See what you’re inclined to see. What you want to see.

  12. This is perhaps an aside and, at the risk of “no true scotsman”, but was this guy ever really an atheist? Or, is it the case that he’d never really given religion much thought, and having accepted it later in life, retrospectively viewed his younger self as atheistic (when in reality he was simply incurious and undecided)?

    I say this because, having come to atheism through skepticism and critical thinking (and lack of indoctrination as a child) I can’t imagine the path back to a religious view.

    Moreover, if a person goes from being an atheist to a believer, which god would they choose, and what criteria would they use? It’s telling that this guy picked the (I’m guessing parochial) Christian God as opposed to “Jub Jub Who Lives Under the Ocean”.

    1. Exactly my thoughts. Is he for real? Or a real fake. Sounds to me like the later. A charlatan positioning himself to sell books to the uninformed and uninformable. A wide and shallow niche market for hucksters.

    2. Probably yes. It doesn’t mean much, though, since atheism is basically of a class of positions which say “does-not-believe-in-X-idea”. That leaves a lot of freedom elsewhere. It says nothing, for instance, about one’s stance towards religion in general.

      He was probably of the faitheist stock, anyway.

    3. I felt my way back to Christianity, discovering through many surprises that the religion I remembered from my childhood looked different if you came to it as an adult with adult needs: not pretty, not small, not ridiculous, but tough and gigantic and marvellous.

      He was raised Christian, and under pressure he “felt” his way back to what he believed as a child and is “surprised” to find that adults are capable of interpreting it in ways which make it sound better.

      Those who become atheists for bad reasons become believers for bad reasons. From what I’ve seen the most common “bad reason” is usually either “religion is emotionally unfulfilling” or “religion is judgmental.” It’s too easy to “fix” those yourself and discover that you misunderstood God.

  13. In the same interview:
    “I think people who have a convinced sense of God’s absence should be respected, just like people who have a convinced sense of His presence. They often have excellent reasons in their lives for feeling the way they do.”
    Eh? So I had some traumatism in my childhood? I was sooo deeply wounded that Spufford can understand why I’m not a believer.
    But no, Francis. I had an happy, smooth, christian childhood, no problems with my parents in my teens, and nevertheless I realized that christianism (and every religion) was neither relevant nor necessary.

  14. It’s amusing to watch the contortions of Xtians trying to avoid the “existence of evil” problem inherent in their belief system: Spew-forth evades the issue by evoking the, “Who can know the mind of God?” argument, then immediately changes the subject by noting how nice it is that we have Christ to save us (by the way, how is the crucifixion of Christ for our redemption something “other” than a “theological idea”?).

    The “WCKTMOG” argument is ridiculous since the Babble itself gives us much information on what God’s attitudes and motivations are, including Isaiah 45:7 in which God says, directly, that He “creates disaster” (“evil”, in some translations)- in Job, He tells Job basically that, as God, He can do whatever the Hell it is He wants to do; that’s how He rolls!

    The “WCKTMOG” argument also has a perverted “appeal to faith”, as it calls upon believers to “prove” and to even, “exercise and strengthen” their faith by accepting an idea which has no basis in logic. Logic is stood on its head with the conclusion that, “We don’t understand why God does seemingly contradictory, illogical things- therefore, it’s direct evidence of just how superior God’s thinking is to ours!” I’m reminded of the Monty Python “Search for the Holy Grail” movie, where the peasant says, “She turned me into a newt!” Seeing everyone looking at him and noting that he is NOT a newt, he says, “Well- I got better”; whereupon another lout shouts, “Praise God!”

    I’ve suspected for a long time that there is a certain kind of person (I think it may be genetic) who is simply not satisfied by any belief system unless it contains an element of “mystery”- something forever unknowable. I see this same kind of thinking in conspiracy theorists; those who believe in “Ancient Aliens”; those who claim the Mars rover is spotting all kinds of alien artifacts, skulls, etc.; cryptozoologists, “Forbidden Archaeology” enthusiasts, etc. They don’t want, and never WILL want, anything to be really figured out.

    1. “They don’t want, and never WILL want, anything to be really figured out.”

      The sad thing (or one of the sad things anyway) is that this is such a great reason to be a scientist (citizen scientist or a professional). To paraphrase Feynman, it’s like an onion, and there’s always more layers to investigate.

      But no, better (or rather, easier) to believe in bigfoot.

    2. No, I don’t think it’s the element of “mystery” — after all, it’s usually science which forces us to claim ignorance and impotence. There is no guarantee that we will find out what we want to find out. The universe owes us nothing.

      Their appeals to “mystery” are actually veiled appeals to a universe which works in a special, magical way — a way which always, like a book, gives a great plot and an exciting role for the main character. Things have to be fair, things have to be beautiful, things have to end up in a way which pleases us. That’s the opposite of “mystery.”

    3. Isaiah 45:7 is my favourite passage in the bible. After some fundies advertised creationism *in the physics dept.* in the college (CEGEP) I was studying at, two friends and I of like mind crashed their meeting. Live and let live, except if someone is science-clueless. Anyway, what was even more embarassing to them than the passage was actually that some of them had “fundamentalist bibles” where *the passage was gone*. Watching their reaction as they realized weren’t even reading the same texts was priceless!

  15. Uninteresting. The blurb stumbles into its beginning by suggesting that one refutes philosophical arguments against the truth of Christianity by pointing out that Christian stories recognizably relate to human experience. That’s like using the “TV Tropes” website as a proof of God. Jung’s collective unconscience and his archetypes also speak to a great deal of shared human experience, as do the works of William Shakespeare – but no one suggests that we all are an honest-to-goodness hivemind, or that Romeo and Juliet is a documentary. A person would rightly be considered mad if they did.

    I don’t really want to knock the value of emotional ties to a worldview, though. This guy openly admits that his conversion back to Christianity (because it’s clearly the surreptitious starting point) was not philosophical but a matter of what made him feel happy. I respect the honesty. A religion, with all its self-help mumbo jumbo and charming (whitewashed) heritage can certainly give you the warm-fuzzies. It’s just that that’s not a means of discovering its truth.

    I’m awed by the grandeur and the complexity of our universe, and I take extreme emotional satisfaction in making headway towards understanding the universe through science and philosophy – it’s definitely emotionally fulfilling being able to engage with something so vast and mysterious, to crack it open and glimpse even a tiny bit of how it all comes together. But it also comes equipped with a truth-detecting methodology, which means not only do I have the satisfaction of understanding, but also the additional emotional security of being able to explain, demonstrate, and share my understanding with others. So faith can’t claim to have emotional fulfillment uniquely in its favor any more than it can claim that emotional fulfillment is an indicator of truth.

    1. I don’t really want to knock the value of emotional ties to a worldview, though.

      I do. Firstly, it says more about the mental state of the believer than it does about the beliefs they hold. Secondly, it’s basically emotional blackmail: the underlying threat is “Believe/Respect my views or I’ll cripple myself!” Considering this is on par with emotional bullying tactics intended to silence and intimidate, it actually makes me far less sympathetic towards believers. Just because they’re honest about their motives, doesn’t make the motives themselves honest.

      1. Yes. They’re trying to shut down debate by holding a metaphorical gun to their head. “I used to be so unhappy and now I find comfort and meaning in my faith: your turn.”

  16. Jerry, I agree with you. Spufford is a feather-lightweight pretending to be a freight train. His appeal to emotions is as insulting as it is blatantly fallacious, but with such a meagre position to defend, of course he’s going to make a virtue out of his vices. Thus, through doublespeak, force of emotion becomes force of argument.

    Revealingly, it’s about as close as he gets to a reason why he went from atheism to Christianity: “because atheism didn’t make me feel better in hard times!” As if there were no such things as counselling, psychology, and – you know – basic human relationships for that. You just have to subscribe to braindead rot first.

    Religious apologetics are an embarrassment to any serious rational inquiry.

  17. The book has been around a while in the UK; in fact I’ve seen remaindered stock in The Works (a discount book store) for months.

    It’s a shame he’s gone back to religion: Red Plenty is a brilliant exploration of a dangerous utopian ideology, as well as a meditation on cybernetics, cancer and history .

  18. Incidentally, marketing this as a ‘riposte’ to the New Atheists at a time when Christians are actually being crucified by ISIL shows how out of wack the publishers priorities are, but I guess if Dawkins pointed that out the baboons would be accusing him of another ‘Dear Muslima’ moment.

    There is genuine persecution of Christians in the world and it ain’t in the West.

  19. I read this kind of interview with a smile because I am so happy to have escaped the poisonous and constricting embrace of Christianity. Thanks Spufford for reminding me how great it is to be free of your childish and absurd worldview.

  20. If social media has taught me one thing, it’s that intellectual dishonesty is an incredibly effective arguing technique.
    “The Christian conversation with Christian ideas” is word vomit. Sorry to be so blunt, but it is an accurate assessment. Meaningless prattle which only sounds profound if you think “Chicken Soup for the Soul” is great literature.

  21. I read Spufford’s “I needed mercy” as “I needed money”. I immediately said to myself “No, he couldn’t be that honest!” so I had to go back and reread the sentence.

    I also note that he uses words like “Creation” in a manner that can be accepted by widely diverse Christian sects.

    I think “money” was probably the right interpretation after all.

  22. I got the feeling that Spufford was one of those Christian apologists that you can just imagine “examining their own ‘Heart'” so intensely that they just disappear into their own navel.

  23. argues that Christianity is recognizable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe in it by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the grown-up dignity of Christian experience.

    Not one word in that description makes the book appealing to me. Recognizable? Satisfying? Offers an account of the dignity of the experience?

    How about: shows how the belief is rational?
    How about: provides evidence the claims are true?

    But luckily we have something beside theological ideas: we have Christ crucified…

    IOW, chuck your brain, no ideas needed here!

    As I say in the book: we don’t have a justification, but we have a story.

    Disney has many stories, frankly some of them more theologically appealing than yours.

  24. Glad that the title of his book is “Emotional Sense” as opposed to, erm, “Sense”.

    The “Why did atheism disappoint you?” section is a massive giveaway.

    Reality doesn’t care what one thinks of it.

  25. That book has been on Audible in the UK for ages. I downloaded and tried it a long time ago, but found it so boring I returned it. The only good point he makes which is a sort of a double-edged sword is the point that new Atheists don’t see that some people like severely disabled people lead much harder lives than normal people, so that is why God could exist, a sort of re-balancing mechanism to compensate those who have had a harder life because of circumstances beyond their control. Never mind the fact that there is no evidence that there is an afterlife to compensate us who have maybe drawn a shorter straw. I don’t know what’s worse, being disabled but being deluded with the certainty that there is definitely an afterlife where everything will be wonderful, or being disabled and guessing that it might not be so and this is the only chance one gets, so there will be much as of yet that one will never be able to experience, especially for those of us who are disabled and live in developing countries where facilities and social security are not great. Having come from a Christian background where I was totally sure of an afterlife, I can assure you the come-down is quite jarring (although it is also nice knowing that there might also not be the evil of an eternal hell), but it is also sometimes difficult and depressing waking up in the morning thinking that this is all there could be. That is why I really hope we find other life before I die, because that’s one puzzle I’d really like to be solved because if I’m not going to exist afterwards that’s at least the one thing I’d really like an answer to. At least still its better being disabled now than those poor guys having to cope with it even 50 or 100 years ago.

    1. The only good point he makes which is a sort of a double-edged sword is the point that new Atheists don’t see that some people like severely disabled people lead much harder lives than normal people, so that is why God could exist, a sort of re-balancing mechanism to compensate those who have had a harder life because of circumstances beyond their control.

      That’s not a good point. An omni- god would fix the injustice, not make up for it later.

      And exactly how does Christian theology even make up for it? If you’re a disabled Christian you don’t get any bigger reward than other Christians after death. And if you’re a disabled non-Christian you’re going to suffer the same penalties as non-disabled non-Christians. In neither case does the person suffering through disablement on earth get any bonus or benefit for it in the afterlife.

      That is why I really hope we find other life before I die, because that’s one puzzle I’d really like to be solved because if I’m not going to exist afterwards that’s at least the one thing I’d really like an answer to.

      Completely OT, but if we really want to see the universe populated with life, we should forget sterilizing our probes and just dump microorganisms on mars, titan, etc… You want to know whether life continues after this blue ball has ceased to support it? Well, we can look for it elsewhere – or we can make it so.

    2. Oh yes, but it wasn’t even done a nice way in his book, the way he was writing I got the impression he was saying something like: think of a poor disabled kid in a wheelchair, the only thing he has to sustain him in his hard life is the hope in Christianity, and think of these sort of rich Atheists who have no problems, or not tough problems like this kid, but yet the Atheists are trying to take the little hope that the kid has away from him. No! If there isn’t an afterlife I’d rather know thanks Francis! I do not want to live my whole life in a delusion! And anyway, if so many disabled people didn’t believe so much in the joy of an afterlife they could mobilise easier and struggle more for their rights here on earth (I’m talking about developing countries here where disability movements are not strong, and many would rather spend their time in the church or mosque trying to get God’s mercy for the afterlife instead of actually living, and I’m not exaggerating, I’ve seen and experienced it all the time.)

      1. Great points Eric! The other two things I forgot, is that Francis forgets to mention that in Leviticus somewhere God didn’t want disabled priests (I suppose the people who wrote the Bible thought us disabled somehow much less worthy to dare appear before gods), and then there’s that weird verse in John where it is said that someone was born disabled to show God’s glory. Its also a good point you make about disability and rewards. When I was a Christian I used to always think it was so unfair that I had to wait till I die to lead a life having equal capabilities and opportunities as my non-disabled peers. But I still see Christians and Muslims everyday who are disabled who try go to televangelist charlatans and still ask themselves why they’re not being healed when these charlatans say its so easy and they must just have enough faith etc, and I have heard a blind Muslim state that he won’t mind being blind in this life if God would only give him a lot of mercy in the next. Honestly the whole thing is ghastly! And that is why I love blogs like this, because it was only through reading and thinking that I managed to see that I did not have to live the way I was, wondering why, fearing hell, wondering why healing doesn’t happen, being dragged to all sorts of charismatic nonsense with terrible televangelists screaming about how many healings they supposedly did (but could never replicate at the places they were actually preaching at that night) etc.

      2. Oh yes, but it wasn’t even done a nice way in his book, the way he was writing I got the impression he was saying something like: think of a poor disabled kid in a wheelchair, the only thing he has to sustain him in his hard life is the hope in Christianity, and think of these sort of rich Atheists who have no problems, or not tough problems like this kid, but yet the Atheists are trying to take the little hope that the kid has away from him.

        It wouldn’t surprise me. A reliable way of tarring your opponents is to invoke populism: “I’m with you poor folk, I’m on your side, I sympathize, but those guys over there? They live in a different world. They’re privileged, and they’re wealthier than you. They’re materialistic. They have no morals. They don’t have a clue what you’re going through, and they want to tell you what to do? Don’t that make you feel raged? Don’t that make you wanna hit ’em in the face?”

        The hypocrisy comes in when you notice that the religious right and conservatives are the ones who favour covert plutocracy – I mean, the invisible hand of unregulated free markets. This is without factoring in the televangelist con men and the wealth-mongering of the Catholic Church.

      3. he was saying something like: think of a poor disabled kid in a wheelchair, the only thing he has to sustain him in his hard life is the hope in Christianity, and think of these sort of rich Atheists who have no problems, or not tough problems like this kid, but yet the Atheists are trying to take the little hope that the kid has away from him.

        Its not like we walk up to other people’s disabled kids and just abruptly say “you know there’s no heaven, right?” Yeah, the information is out there, and kids could easily read what atheists think, but the idea of some door to door atheist trying to “take hope” from people is a complete strawman. You generall have to talk to an atheist, visit an atheist website, or otherwise invite yourself into the conversation before you’re going to get the atheist opinion on the afterlife.

        And many many atheists would probably point out that the kid’s parents have done him/her a disservice if they’ve taught him that the only hope is Christianity. Science and medicine have cured many ‘untreatable’ conditions of the past, and continues to advance. And while we don’t want to give little kids false hope of cures for conditions we can’t currently cure, even in those cases science can give them hope to lead a far better life with their disability than they would’ve been able to in the past.
        Religious hope is sort of analogous to telling someone that their only hope for getting out of poverty is to win the lottery. No, you can hope and work towards a better job. Educational opportunities. Fair recognition of your value by your current employer. None of these hopes may be quite as wonderful or miraculous as winning the lottery, but they probably serve you far better in the long run. So too with hope for a religious miracle/afterlife vs. hope in science.

    3. One of the reasons for the popularity of the Little People Argument is that sometimes it’s valid. There are people who are so fragile, so weak, so needy or so hurt that we pretty much give them a personal pass for anything which gets them through. Religion, the paranormal, conspiracy theories, bizarre politics — let it drop. They’re being helped. It’s working.

      It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.

      This isn’t respect, it’s forbearance. And if your main argument is the same one that justifies letting poor Uncle Joe spout on about how the Illuminati controls all the money and is shooting off chemtrails then there is — does this really need to be said (why, yes, it apparently does) — then there is something wrong with your argument.

      And presenting it to atheists with a flourish is just sad.

      1. The first thing to notice about the argument is that it requires circumstances to be pretty darn desperate. It can equally be applied to the poor sod who believes that Middle Earth is real and is having such a hard life that imagining a stay in Hobbiton sounds like a picnic by comparison. This ironically makes it more a ringing criticism of the circumstances involved; how bad is the problem that such delusional nonsense has to be dragged in to solve the problem?

        The second thing to notice is that it hopes to sneak in faith by dressing it up as hope. Any practical solution to the problems themselves would technically count as hope, so inventing solutions and delusions is, if anything, counter-productive in the long term. At least the other solutions can actually exist.

        1. * sneak in faith by dressing it up as hope * We’re just catching up with _The Following_.

          *** spoilers ***

          Ryan admits he’s an atheist like Joe (the serial killer), and Joe’s wife says, “I believe in God. God is hope.”

          /@

      2. One of the reasons for the popularity of the Little People Argument is that sometimes it’s valid. There are people who are so fragile, so weak, so needy or so hurt that we pretty much give them a personal pass for anything which gets them through.

        Giving someone a pass is not really the same as supporting their rationale as legitimate. If the person in front of me at the checkout counter is buying some homeopathic product, I am unlikely say anything. My forbearance does not mean I recognize their belief as valid. It just means I’m not going to pick a fight over every single case of invalid reasoning I see.

  26. As I say in the book: we don’t have a justification, but we have a story. A true story, of God redeeming the world.

    And here lies one of the most fundamental errors in human reasoning. And I really mean “fundamental”, since it is baked into the kluge of our brain structure.

    As human beings are social animals, we default to stories and narratives that please us; especially in difficult times. We especially do it when we’re not even thinking. Here’s a thought experiment I always do as a sort of parlor trick to point out people’s biases:

    “Imagine a beautiful woman in a bar. She’s sipping her drink, talking to the bartender. A handsome man walks in and whispers in her ear. She laughs”

    So what did your beautiful woman look like? What was she wearing? What race was she? How was she sitting? What about the bartender? Was it a male bartender or a female one? What about the handsome man, what did he look like/what was he wearing? What kind of establishment did you imagine this happening in: A classy upscale place? A neighborhood dive bar? The restaurant you had lunch in earlier today?

    You answered every one of those questions before they were asked. You imagined a coherent scene for that entire imaginary scenario without even thinking about it. You took a bit of disparate information and made a story out of it.

    This is also how things like Tarot cards and other cold reading work. The setup already primes you to make a coherent story out of seemingly unrelated material. Your intuition does the rest and makes a seemingly “true”, “logically” connected story out of the information presented. Indeed, the feeling of familiarity is not easily distinguishable from the feeling of truth… this is why stories don’t even have to be true to be effective if they’re already familiar.

    We also temporarily adopt the morality of people they read in stories; stories can otherwise be used to inject your beliefs into someone by getting them to feel the emotions you want them to feel. Stories, in effect, take advantage of our empathy — our theory of mind — and runs through the story as though the people in it were real. And this process is immediate and automatic.

    So one should be especially skeptical of stories. Stories are “naturally” selected due to their virulence, not due to their truth.

    1. Well put. I’m reminded of Julia Sweeney being temporarily content with her priest telling her that the stories in the Bible are “psychologically true.”

      Oh, of course! How silly of me to think they had to be literally true. They’re psychologically true! That’s better. It’s wise.

      And then she thought. “Wait a minute. The Little Engine That Could is also psychologically true.”

    2. Your thought experiment intrigues me. I tend to think about stories in abstracts, so much so that I had difficulty answering half the questions even after consciously considering them. Perhaps this is the reason why my religious upbringing never stuck.

  27. So Spufford’s “defense” of Christianity is to show that every New Atheist criticism of faith-heads fits like a glove?

    Well done.

    That interview is a master-class in how to speak but never say anything concrete or specific. It was tough enough to wade through; an entire book of intellectual jello
    of this sort is mortifying. Pass.

  28. I think this is because I decided that the best way to try to explain us to atheists and agnostics was to lay out the emotional phases and qualities of faith, which can be recognised even by people who are very resistant to the ideas.

    Why yes, because atheists didn’t realize before that people find religion fulfilling. Now that we know, we will of course let you keep using what works for you. And we’ll be really impressed with how nice you can dress it up.

    As Vaal points out, this is a criticism. “Religion is adopted not because it’s true, but because it’s emotionally appealing” is one of our talking points. It doesn’t suddenly turn against us if it’s said in a real sweet voice.

    There are real problems with defenses of faith which are no more than defenses of faith. It’s epistemic mush which would justify anything — and it demonizes nonbelievers, who we discover fail to respond to God’s appeal to our emotions because we aren’t sensitive and humble enough.

    It’s like people who believe in the Loch Ness Monster hammering on about the importance of protecting endangered species, the beauty of Scotland, how much they cried when their dog died, and how exciting it now feels when they watch the sunset on the Loch, before there was something missing and suddenly it all makes sense to them. They’re expecting a hug. We’re supposed to embrace the common ground they trotted out.

  29. Let me get this straight… He was suffering, and claims to have found mercy in God. Then he admits we cannot reconcile a good God with all the suffering going on. Ummm….

  30. Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Nazism Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense.

    Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, colonialism Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense.

    Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, the Inquisition Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense.

  31. I get that staring into the abyss can make one despair, and wonder what the point is of it all. But if we must have a snuggie story to get us through the night, can’t we think of a better one than the holy haploid zombie with the genocidal father who tells us what to do when naked?

  32. ‘The words “we don’t have a justification, but we have a story” . . . .”

    I’m reminded of, “That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.”

  33. “Fans of C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright, Marilynne Robinson, Mary Karr, Diana Butler Bass, Rob Bell, and James Martin…”

    Don’t know when I last saw so many red flags in one place. Eek.

  34. Apologies if someone has mentioned this already, I’m a little late to the discussion. The New Humanist published a letter from this idiot called “Dear Atheists”. It was chock full of fallacies misrepresentations and contained the trademark irrelevant swipe at Richard Dawkins. The response from the faithless in the following edition was as devastating as you might expect.

    1. Do you have a link, or dates for that letter?
      I don’t subscribe to TNH but would be interested in looking at it.

        1. Good loard that letter was terrible.
          Rambling, precious, condescending and at every turn fallacious.

          From his letter:

          “The basis for it would be simple: that on both sides, we hold to positions for which by definition there cannot be any evidence.”

          Wha? Has he not read the bible? It’s all about a God who can and who does continually provide evidence. In fact, Christianity virtually “by definition” arose from purported EVIDENCE of one person’s divinity (dying, resurrection etc).

          How do you have an honest conversation with people who just brazenly ignore facts?

          Biblical literalist YEC fundies “defend” their beliefs by ignoring scientific facts.

          Wishy-washy liberal Christian defend their beliefs by ignoring facts about their own damned (religious) beliefs!

  36. “For those who believe,
    no proof is necessary.
    For those who don’t believe,
    no proof is possible.”
    –Stuart Chase

    1. Self-serving anti-humanist nonsense in a nutshell. Gnu atheists would never insist that “no proof is possible,” as if belief on this matter all comes down — and should come down to — a loving, open disposition. Notice too how the pithy little summing-up subtly assumes the truth of the ‘belief.’ Nonbelievers are perverse, and believers ‘just know.’ They’re receptive.

      I hate that quote — though I find it useful. It encapsulates the problems with appeals to faith.

      1. It should be corrected:
        “For those who believe,
        no proof is necessary.
        For those who don’t believe,
        no proof has been presented.”

        1. Yes — but “proof” is for math and whiskey, not empirical matters. The words “adequate evidence” is probably closer to correct. It ruins the poetry, though.

  38. It is worth mentioning that off the topic of Christianity Francis Spufford is well worth reading. Don’t let this book put you off his other works.

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