My book review and summary of: “The God Desire” by David Baddiel:
David Baddiel, author of Jews Don’t Count, has come up with this book: The God Desire. In its witty form, David has puzzled together a brilliant book which composes a lot of different ideas that some would bat away without hearing the argument. Now on my YouTube channel and in my blogs, I like to say how I welcome different ideas because that’s how (as humans) we can communicate in a way to where we can build a community with all ideas being welcomed & to be shared and/or listened to. (So make sure to like and subscribe to my blogs!)
But also In a world where if someone says something we dislike, it’s suddenly criticised or in the exaggeration of today’s world, cancelled. Which hints at the question of “where does that leave people’s views on anything?” Anyway, David Baddiel likes to cover such topics of which I am intrigued.
So… Let’s jump straight into it.
David begins to talk about whether being atheist or not, you will of had this desire or thought around the ideologies about a little door that passes through to another place, which most would associate with heaven. He then reasons with the idea around humans being the only living thing that basically has a conscience. So if we feel guilt, then it’s more likely that our empathetic side will look for forgiveness in what we’ve done so that we don’t feel as bad! A very good point.
David in the second chapter sums up why it is we feel meaning and how we look for it. He mentions how parents are the ones who give us this meaning. He explains how we are allowed to tell stories about ourselves which leads to us believing we are a “somebody”. We are literally made from their image through DNA and how some parents (like David’s did) tell us how death isn’t all that bad. And we sometimes fear our parents too. So he gives this comparison of how we could get this belief of God from mum and dad.
David breaks down how our imaginations run wild and turn things into different things than that of what they truly are. His argument then, of which I also believe, is that it’s not God we fear, but actually it’s death that we’re scared of. So we as humans have invented this image of “God” to make us feel better.
This reminds me of the Ricky Gervais film, “The Invention of Lying” where his fictional mother is on her death bed where she is absolutely terrified about becoming nothingness, so in the spare of the moment, Ricky’s character comes up with a brilliant lie to ease his mother’s worries. He invents the idea of God. This then plays out in the film as something that got way bigger as the story line went on, but it was at this point of which it reminded me.
David then sums up how the idea of someone who in their last moments look to God on their deathbed is looking for comfort, so it’s not the idea of God they believe in, but their own ideas of the fear of what happens when we cross over to death.
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We will ideas into existence.
David’s equation is desire + invisibility = God
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In the following chapter, David talks about how the wave of technology has opened up ideas of people looking for attention, so they shut down real scientific evidence and also favour own beliefs which have been proven to be untrue like flat earther theories. They don’t hold the same weight, but online it can sometimes be treated like it is.
I wouldn’t call that comparing apples to apples though, as you’re comparing belief against fact. How some people see that as okay is beyond comprehension sometimes. But in the sense of religion, I think that you CAN believe whatever you like and this isn’t something to disregard as its someone’s belief which helps them through life. But when it comes to genuine science of, say, how earth is round in shape, then you have to have leeway on what’s true and what isn’t. That’s all I’m saying here.
David says that God used to let us know certain information in the Bible like why crops aren’t growing, but now science has taken over to give answers that the bible couldn’t fulfil like explaining dark matter.
He goes on to say that wonder gives us gratitude. Wonder gives us a sense of speculation. We question when we feel wonder. We turn up the sense of wonder because the alternative is too depressing when we see everything as just atoms.
I don’t think atoms give us the same sense of gratitude that wonder does when we see things. We need to feel like we’re in a relationship with something, which is wonder. (Like the human eye. People always say how its such a magnificent creation and that it must be man-made to create vision. But then, we can mimic that ideas of vision by using a camera that can capture what you see through a lens, which is something to ponder on.) But we can save that for another blog!
An interesting thought David touches on is when you go walking through a grave yard… How many people actually believed in an afterlife as they lay 8 feet under the ground. The sense of someone having the nature of hope tied to their last thoughts yet this is an uncertainty but the power of belief carried them to a better place instead of thinking of death.
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A quote from the book I’d like to mention at this point is:
“We can only imagine death from life. And life just seems much better.”
– David Baddiel
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He says atheists could be seen as spoilsports. But when you keep a sense of wonder, you can leave any depressing thought behind. He goes on to say about how he would go to great lengths to tell his kids that Santa Clause was real and how he told a fake Santa (like the ones you see in shopping malls) about David’s kids likes and dislikes which gave the kids the sense of wonder about their belief in Santa when they met him and if that exact Santa was real. (which I thought was quite sweet)
Without evil, there’s no good. Without villains, there are no heroes.
In order for a character to become a hero in script writing, you have to give them a story line where the audience will empathise with them. And this has worked well in the story of Jesus, David goes on to say. God couldn’t be the lower status, so Jesus was a great crossbreed of God and man which generates empathy when he’s on the cross. Which is a very good point!
David ends the book with how we should laugh more and love more knowing that God doesn’t exist and we will all become worm food!! But he suggests that how else can you say it… Which I think is true! Life happens and we have to accept it for what it is. But he also says his friend Frank Skinner bought some clothes allegedly worn by Elvis Presley, and how he was putting faith before evidence which could be a good outlook for life too.
He sums it up with this sentence: “The God Desire is never satisfied.”
I’ve never really read a book like this before! It opens the perspectives on what our idea of God could actually be. It brushes up on a subject that many people in today’s world don’t really think about. The Church has lost a lot of following through its faith and forever changing ideas around God, which tells people that it’s not as set in stone as it once was. But when we explore the book, David makes some very good points on how believing in something is very attractive. Especially in a tough time or a rough patch that life shows us.
In certain situations, I think we DO need a belief in something to help us through. But if you’re not one for believing in yourself, then the idea of God is attractive. It lets go of the nothingness (like the film Invention of lying”.) It’s also an idea for parents of small children, to help this idea of God as “God can be seen as a free babysitter” – I believe it was Ricky Gervais who once said that.
Without hardcore evidence of this, its wrong to assume that God would exist, and how we are the ones responsible for what we do, and how we make our own life happen. We pick what we do, and what happens from here. That’s what I want to highlight, is that WE are in charge of our own destiny (as cliche as it sounds.)
It’s an interesting book, and very thought provoking. It gave me some ideas that I’ve taken away. I will be pondering them myself for a long time ahead. So for that reason, I give this book a 4 out of 5 stars. Simple to get through, and the audio-book is also great to listen to. The writing is easy to understand and broken into sections to help you get through it easily.
Thanks for reading. You can also catch my ideas of this in the video version of the book review coming very soon to my YouTube channel (linked near the top), so be sure to go and subscribe to that as well!
Cheers
Just Dean 