Customer Reviews

In God We Doubt: Confessions of a Failed Athiest

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This is not a Dawkins or Hitchens kind of book that believers can fairly attack as one written by a "Militant Atheist", though the people who use that description have not explained whether they meant it to be used to disapprove of militant atheists as they would religious extremists or whether they are saying it's all right to be a religious extremist but not a militant atheist. Humphrys just asks questions. Intelligent questions that believers and non-believers alike would and should be asking. He takes the neutral ground of an agnostic; he can't prove that there is no god, but he wants religious people to explain and prove what the god it is that they are worshipping. His chapter on interviews with a rabbi,a an Anglican Archbishop, and a Muslim academic is worth reading carefully. The reader must judge for himself whether the answers given by these three learned men clarify the religious stand. I suspect that most neutral people will be left skeptical about a personal God that micromanages human lives. If there isn't a micromanager god, then is there any use in prayer? If there is then shouldn't he take responsibility for all the ills of the world? These questions are worth pondering over.

"In God We Doubt", a born again atheist friend told me, is "a wishy-washy fence-sitting book". I got about half-way through when he asked for my opinion, which was "yes, it IS a wishy-washy fence-sitting book".

It's a quick and easy read, and now that I've finished it, I'm wondering if John Humphrys (or "the guy off of Mastermind" to me) got splinters up his bum from sitting on that fence. If it was a book about a fictional character who struggled to come to terms with his God-doubting, you'd expect him to reach some sort of conclusion in the end - he'll make his mind up, somehow, that there either is a god, or there isn't. This never happens. It ends, just as it begins and has been all the way through, with a "well, there might be, or there might not be - who knows?" And where's the fun in that?

I'm not really sure why this book was written, to be honest, because it's not going to make atheists find religion, nor is it going to make a religious person become an atheist. It just sits there, being mostly harmless, saying both sides sort of have a point but both go about it wrong. If the point is to hold the hand of agnostics and say it's okay to be on the fence, sure, job done.

For someone like myself, who is somewhere nicely in the middle, "In God We Doubt" is completely redundant, simply because there's no point to it. It's preaching to the crowd already, and I don't need a book to tell me what I already know. It's an okay book. Might provoke a few thoughts in those who are unsure of what to believe, or it might not. Either way, you're probably not going to be bowled over.

3 out of 5 potential deities.

This is a great book.....and I say that having spent the last year reading all of them (well, almost). From the militant athiests to the fundamentalist hard core I have taken the time to really explore the varying views and opinions on the nature of christinatity and belief. It has been a labor of love.

full disclosure: I entered this excercise a militant athiest myself......and coming out the other end I am still an athiest - but no longer militant.

Humphrys is largely responsible for my transformation (I am leaving out the details - this is not about me). He is a good writer and can tell a good story - and the story he has to tell here is compelling and ultimately persuasive - although that is not his intent here.

One of my other findings from my own research is that you believe what you believe and few are going to let facts or logic get in the way. Michael shermer's new book on "the beieving brain" explains in great detail the phenomenon that happens when we think what we are doing is following logic to arrive at our beliefs/conclusions. We are not. We are looking for evidence to support what we have already decided to believe.

Humphrys gets this and tells a tale here about his own journey and, more importantly, about those he encountered in the course of and after doing his broadcasts with religious leaders from the three monotheistic's.

If you are at all interested in the subject - you must get this book and read it - and think about what this author has to say and what it really means. Good stuff!

John Humphrys is a journalist who regularly co-presents the Today show on BBC's Radio 4. On that show he gives the impression that he is looking for a headline rather than in seeking out the truth.

In this book he makes several unsubstantiated allegations: "Nineteen Muslims, with the name of God on their lips murdered three thousand Americans" (p15), "Islam has been spectacularly successful" (p104), "Children have no free will" (p157), "Darwin was one of the greatest scientists the world has ever known" (p254), "Conscience acts as a brake to stop us doing bad things" (p261).

He also declares that the apostle Paul never met Jesus.

2 Corinthians 12:2-3 states: "I know someone in Christ who, fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows), was caught up to the third heaven. And I know that this person (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows)"

It could be argued that Paul met the mystic Jesus.

The book features interviews with a Jewish rabbi, a Christian archbishop and "the leading Muslim academic", Tariq Ramadan. It would have been more balanced if he had interviewed a Darwinist also, as Darwinism is a matter of faith, not science. Also, it would have been helpful if Humphrys had bothered to investigate whether Darwinism and Christianity are mutually compatible, as after all, Darwin believed in God and was a godfather to Thomas Huxley's son.

I found the book boring. Humphrys comes across as lazy journalist on the radio, and here he doesn't bother with things like references or a bibliography. He repeatedly refers to author Sam Harris as Sam Smith. The interviews are all a bit brief, dull and predictable.

Overall, a waste of time.