BOOK REVIEW
In God We Doubt, by John Humphrys, 356 pp, 2008 Hodder paperback, Available at Asia Books and leading book stores, 350 baht
BERNARD TRINK
Raised a freethinker in the Big Apple, religion played no part in my upbringing. There was no church on Sundays, no food restrictions (WW II rationing took care of that). My parents didn't own a Bible. Playing stickball, marbles, going to the zoo, the kids in the neighbourhood talked about many things. But not God, the universe, the meaning of life. They were of different faiths, which we accepted as a matter of course. What's to discuss?
In my teens I felt no spiritual emptiness, no need of divine guidance. I was raised to believe in the Golden Rule and I've been following it to the best of my ability. The question of whether there's a God was tossed around in university, heated debates, no decision. I had mixed feelings. On the positive side, Somebody created the universe. Negatively, how could he (she, it) allow tens of millions to die of starvation, wars, plagues?
On my travels, somewhat curious about religion but not enough to peruse their respective Good Books, I visited cathedrals and mosques and temples. Most of the sermons and services I couldn't understand, some more colourful than others. My overall impression was that the test of a religion is not the singing and chanting and kneeling and prostrating, but how the devout behaved - kindness, sympathy, generosity, tolerance - in their daily lives.
In God We Doubt was written by John Humphrys, BBC news broadcaster and presenter of Radio 4's Today programme. Describing himself as a card-carrying religious doubter, he takes 356 pages to tell us why he left the Church of England, then returned to it. In each of its 20 chapters he fires broadsides at the militant atheists (biologist Richard Dawkins his primary target) and the fundamentalists (no end of them to aim at).
There are interviews with C of E, Muslim and Jewish leaders, quotes from the Old and New Testaments and Koran, Roman Catholic theologians through the ages, Reformation and Enlightenment figures, Darwin, Bertrand Russell, scientologists. In every instance, Humphrys finds fault with them. Allowing that there has been carnage in the name of religion for millennia, he asks the reader to reflect that most Islamists today aren't suicide bombers.
To the argument that faith can't be scientifically verified, the author asserts that it needn't be as neither can love or conscience or knowing the difference between good and evil. Then again religion comforts the soul, giving people hope in the hereafter. About himself after conversion: "I do not accept the divinity of Jesus. I do not believe that his mother was made pregnant by the Holy Ghost, that he was resurrected after his death on the cross, or that he physically ascended to heaven."
Still even if God is a profound mystery, the world is a better place with religion.
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