Unapologetic, By Francis Spufford

 

Christopher Hirst
Friday 15 March 2013 20:00 GMT
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Rather as the Jews refer to God as JHWH, the rational for His existence is expressed throughout this non-apologia ("I'm not sorry") as HPtFtU or "the human propensity to fuck things up".

Spufford justifies his belief as "just one form of imagining, absolutely functional". Pondering "the contradiction between cruel world and loving God", Spufford's scarcely persuasive answer is: "We don't."

Forceful but unnecessarily blokeish, his arguments reduce God to a convenient mental prop, though any book that ends by scoffing at "Richard bloody Dawkins" can't be all bad.

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