Svend Brinkmann’s new book is a stimulating discussion by an agnostic on life’s most crucial question: whether God exists or not.
Before I begin, a caveat from my end—I believe in God. However, during my student days, I read a proliferation of books by agnostics and atheists who vociferously argued against the existence of God. These books, and other personal factors, affected my outlook and pushed me into atheism for a long time.
Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything not only tries to make the case against God but also against belief itself. In elegant prose, he—wrongly, in my current view—argues that belief in God is harmful. Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion also argued in this vein. Ultimately, though, they both proved to be counterproductive. Rather than engage in the most critical question—is there a God?—they summarily dismissed it and, with it, the billions who still profess belief in a deity.
Svend Brinkmann’s book approaches the subject differently. His is a respectful, thoughtful tome seeking to question faith honestly. He freely admits that he is simultaneously sceptical on issues of faith and belief and deeply fascinated by religion. His is an interesting experiment; he chooses to spend a year “looking at what faith and religion are—and can be—in the modern world” while trying to find whether “the religious dimension to life might have relevance to someone like me, a scientist from a secular background.”
The book is organised in diary form. Every month Brinkmann looks at a different question regarding faith and religion, and each is approached with an open mind. He claims to seek to “cast off personal prejudices and give God a chance” in the hope of forging a “path somewhere between fundamentalism and outright rejection of religion.” He is not wholly alien to Christianity—he is a cultural Christian baptised and confirmed in the Lutheran Church of Denmark but never engaged in an active religious life. Nonetheless, he also rejects atheism, labelling it as “fairly unimaginative” since it gives the impression that the “materialistic interpretation of the world of the last few centuries” is the “ultimate truth.” This, in my view, is an excellent place to start.
He also offers a critique of atheist humanism, arguing that it necessarily excludes all values which do not emanate from earthly human happiness; there are “legitimate discussions to be had about our relationship to life, nature and each other that cannot be accommodated purely within a human horizon.” Brinkmann’s journey also coincides with the Covid-19 outbreak and the months-long lockdown in various European countries, not least in the author’s native Denmark. Both helped in the contemplation of religious matters and in bringing up the classical problem of religion—namely, if God is benevolent and omnipotent, why do bad things still happen?
Christianity, however, does not always conform to human logic. Indeed, Jesus chooses to spend time with tax collectors and prostitutes and allows himself to be mocked, tortured, and killed. He shows that “all people have value—not because they perform great, heroic deeds, but simply because they are human beings.” Brinkmann introduces the idea of a ‘weak God’; that faith is not simply about the “things it brings for the believer” but about “accessing a world here and now” where “trust, love, forgiveness and mercy are meaningful, regardless of whether it is beneficial to the individual to live by them.”
More presciently, Brinkmann identifies a general trend whereby people see themselves as “gods” and “creators.” Though this might seem to be a good and liberating development, it is one which burdens man with greater responsibility for the world. Whereas the shaping of norms and boundaries was previously the prerogative of religion, “secularisation” and “individualisation” place the burden on individuals. They also create a system whereby happiness and fulfilment can only by found by the individual. It creates a culture of command where one must be happy and fulfilled all the time. Therefore, a religion based on the self rather than on God emerged:
If the society around us constantly calls for ‘more!’ as an ineluctable command, it is easy to become mentally and existentially exhausted. We can always be an even better version of ourselves. We are never good enough. We always have to do even better—to quote the politicians who are seemingly unable just to say ‘good’ or ‘better’ without adding that little qualifier.
The religion of the self has sanctified happiness into a secularised form of salvation. Unfortunately, this negates the core ideals of several faiths—primarily that of life as a “gift” and a “task.” This point raised by Brinkmann is a crucial and timely reminder for persons of faith. Believers are all too often aware that the Church risks falling into the trap of addressing happiness as salvation rather than salvation on its terms.
Indeed, the cult of happiness can only be mitigated by understanding human limitations and mortality. Brinkmann argues that one of the main points of religion is that it emphasises that we cannot become God—and if science and technology develop in such a way as to extend life and happiness, “it would mean that some beings had completely lost touch with reality and considered themselves so important that they simply couldn’t bear the thought of their own demise.”
Brinkmann also looks at the Bible’s message. He argues that it can be a source of psychology and ethics; it informs the views of ourselves and how we ought to live despite our inadequacies. However, he posits that these points can be affirmed: “without a metaphysical belief in an omnipotent, celestial God or the rewards of an imagined afterlife, both of which are otherwise often considered central tenets of religion.” Moreover, he takes a dim view of the story of Abraham and Isaac, citing that it “provides a breeding ground for fundamentalism, which requires us to sacrifice our ethics—or even other people—in the name of God.”
This, in my view, is an interesting point that believers need to engage with. It is also an idea that is hard to accept. A faith that asks one to sacrifice ethics is not plausible since God, who is logos—reason—cannot, by definition, go against that very reason.
The story of Abraham and Isaac must also be seen in the context in which it was written; the events narrated in Genesis are believed to date between the fifteenth to the thirteenth century BC. Human sacrifice was prevalent in the religious milieu of the period and, therefore, not entirely unconceivable to contemporaries that a deity would request this form of homage. The biblical injunction against this, thus, becomes ground-breaking; God reveals himself as one who does not require human sacrifice. Moreover, there are literary comparisons which cannot be ignored; Abraham becomes a model for the believer, Isaac pre-figures Jesus in his offering of himself. The story cannot be seen in isolation but, rather, in the full context of what the Scriptures hope to convey. Rather than breed fundamentalism, when seen in its proper context, the Old Testament serves as the underpinning of many modern institutions we take for granted—not least the concept of covenantal relations of governance and proportional justice – of pacts between the ruler and the ruled. These are the basis of constitutional forms of governance.
But these, of course, are minor points in the ongoing—and necessary—debate between believers and non-believers or sceptics. Brinkmann ought to be congratulated for this endeavour and for undertaking the writing of this book with proper intellectual rigour and honesty. He does so in a refreshing way—not least because he engages with religion on its own terms.
The believer should read this book, for Brinkmann asks questions we should, we must, consider. Of course, we may reach different conclusions; but there is considerable common ground, and we will surely emerge enriched for having engaged with his arguments.
