Thursday, December 8, 2011

"I don't believe in God, but I miss him"

 Nothing to be frightened of
by Julian Barnes. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
 
A late arrival on the scene of English writers pondering and arguing the existence or nonexistence of God. Barnes inclines toward the golden mean: "I don't believe in God," he writes, "but I miss Him." He was once more inclined to the atheism of Hitchens, Dawkins et al., but now, 62 years on, he admits to less certainty and "more awareness of ignorance," to say nothing of a growing understanding that the good times on this side of the grass are finite. Gentle and lucid—a welcome change from the polemical tone of so many books on the matter (or antimatter, if you like) of the big guy upstairs.

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