She retrieved her last pot of nail varnish and tried to slam the drawer shut. A fat dictionary sitting upright in the drawer prevented it from closing. She tried to slam the drawer again, without success. She picked up the book, ripped out a clump of pages and replaced it. This time she was able to slam the drawer with ease.[1]
A few days later, faced with a client to whom some events have occurred that are, quite literally, completely and utterly impossible, Dirk happily remarks:
“Luckily, you have come to exactly the right place with your interesting problem, for there is no such word as ‘impossible’ in my dictionary. In fact,” he added, brandishing the abused book, “everything between ‘herring’ and ‘marmalade’ appears to be missing.”[2]
If I could remove just one word from the dictionary it wouldn’t be ‘impossible’, nor ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis’ and especially not ‘marmalade’, living as I do in Dundee.[3] No, if I could remove just one word from the dictionary, it would be the word ‘tolerance’.
Psychology is everywhere. We’re told psychology can explain everything from what we do in the bedroom to our religious preferences: psychology can explain sects as well as sex. The claim is not a new one, however: it goes back to Sigmund Freud (d. 1939), the father of psychoanalysis. Freud believed religion arises when we project our fears into the sky (especially the fear of death) and invent God to give us comfort in the face of our mortality.
In the UK, the second biggest religion is Islam, one that is frequently on the front pages of the newspapers, often for all the wrong reasons. Now some people have suggested that one way to foster peace between moderate Muslims and Christians is to acknowledge that Allah, the God of the Qur’an, and Yahweh, the God of the Bible, are the same God — that Muslims, Christians (and Jews) can be pooled together under a label like “Abrahamic Faiths”.
I’ve been working among Muslims for over 20 years and I confess when I began sharing my faith with Muslims, that was my assumption — that Muslims and Christians worshipped the same God. But during those years of talking, sharing and studying, my views have changed. Let me explain why.
Freedom is a powerful idea and probably our culture’s supreme value. People want to believe they are free to choose their ethics, beliefs, values, and more. Our culture proclaims that choice is good, the more of it the better, and anything that restricts it is bad. And that’s a problem when it comes to God—surely, the protest goes, God is anti-freedom. Don’t I have to choose between my personal autonomy and a belief in God?
Some of what follows is drawn from chapter 8 of my book, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist. If you enjoyed it, please do consider buying the full book, which is available both as a paperback and an ebook. It’s available online, or from all good bookstores.
A few years ago, I was having lunch with an old friend in a vegetarian pizza restaurant in London. Now I’m no fan of vegetarian food—I think I’m persuaded by the argument that the word “vegetarian” is derived from an old German word that means “bad hunter”. However, my friend, Garth, had just started dating a devout Buddhist, so he was not merely eating vegetarian, but vegan.
Halfway through the meal, I looked up from my lentil and sawdust pizza to see Garth surreptitiously produce a small plastic container from his pocket: he opened it and shook out the contents over his pizza.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Tuna,” he hissed in a whisper.
“Tuna?” I said.
“Shhhh!” Garth hissed. “Not every vegan takes the liberal approach that I do. Besides,” he added, “I don’t know what all the fuss is. So I eat fish. Big deal. Fish doesn’t count as meat, does it? It can’t be meat if it lives in water.”
“You claim to be a vegan and you eat fish?” I asked.
“Yes. And prawns, crab, shellfish, lobster, that kind of thing.”
“Strangest vegan I’ve ever met,” I said.
“Duck, too,” he added.
“Duck?!?”
“Well, they live in water don’t they.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said, “ you’re claiming to be a vegan—telling your girlfriend, your colleagues, and your family that you’re a vegan, subjecting your friends to vegan restaurants—all the while chowing down on anything that moves. Why not just come clean and admit you’re an omnivore like the rest of us: it’s the hypocrisy that galls me.”
“Hypocrisy?” Garth said, looking genuinely offended. “I thought you’d be more, well, progressive. And besides, who says that you get to define what the word ‘vegan’ means? Who died and pronounced you King of the Dictionary? I say ‘vegan’ to me means ‘occasionally eats meat when there is a vowel in the month’. How dare you tell me your meaning of the word trumps mine.”
At this time of year, our deck is one of my favourite places to read. I love the view of our garden and the rambling, overgrown pathway that leads into the small woods that lie at the rear. I love the sound of the wind in the trees and the patterns of sunlight cast by the leaves. And I love the feel of the warm wooden boards of the deck beneath my feet. It was sitting there in the sunshine one weekend, idly reading a newspaper, that my eye was drawn to an article on the front page: “Twenty-Seven Places to See Before You Die”. Always drawn to a potentially good travel piece, I turned to the article. There, accompanied by some stunning photography, was laid out a collection of beautiful locations—Yosemite Valley, Cape Tribulation, the jagged peaks of Torres del Paine; even the English Lake District.
