Letters to the Editor | 17 September 2005

Pro-God, anti-religion

Theo Hobson makes some interesting points in his article about ‘literary atheism’ (‘Writing God off’, 10 September) but his case is fatally flawed by his repeated tendency to assume that ‘religion’, ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ are somehow synonymous. They are not. It is, in fact, perfectly possible to reject religion without rejecting God; one can be anti-religion without being an atheist. In many minds, especially today, ‘religion’ has come to mean the kind of established and organised institutions, be they Christian, Jewish or Muslim, noted more for their intolerance of dissent — or much, much worse — than for anything positive.

Condemning Martin Amis for being influenced by Mick Jagger is a bit, well, adolescent. Ian McEwan’s comments on religious belief post-9/11 are no more than a pale echo of the much more famous argument concerning the validity of belief in God after Auschwitz, not to mention Dostoevsky’s profound and illuminating approach to the issue in the legend of the Grand Inquisitor.