I expected to be pained by Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker essay on atheism and belief, but I didn’t expect to be quite so … puzzled by his depiction of contemporary belief. Gopnik clearly has sympathy for the religious side of the argument he’s describing — or at the very least he’s straining to be sympathetic. But given the premises he’s working from, that sympathy manifests itself in a peculiar and telling misreading of what theists actually believe.
That misreading follows from the fairly stark distinction that Gopnik tries to establish between the God of popular belief — the God of miracles and commandments, signs and wonders, heaven and hell — and the God of more intellectually-minded modern believers. The former sort of almighty, he writes, is simply impossible for serious minds to believe in any more...
Read it all.
That misreading follows from the fairly stark distinction that Gopnik tries to establish between the God of popular belief — the God of miracles and commandments, signs and wonders, heaven and hell — and the God of more intellectually-minded modern believers. The former sort of almighty, he writes, is simply impossible for serious minds to believe in any more...
Read it all.
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