All in the Mind: Farewell to God

I found this book very thought-provoking and helped me to crystalize my atheist beliefs.
The other reviewers of this book all have certain valid points but hopefully people will see this as a starting point of discussion rather than an immovable belief in something that any rational mind would want to question.

Very good and well argued (4/4 people found this helpful)

Although Ludovic Kennedy doesn't say anything new, this is still a very well written and interesting book. It is mainly composed of what others have to say about atheism and God but is still very well put together. The author does describe how he became more and more disenfranchised with the church and God and this was very interesting to read about. Being an atheist myself, there was some resonance there and it was intriguing to find my own thoughts written out on the page. The only reason I gave the book 4 rather than 5 stars is because I feel it could have been more in-depth and analytical. I would still recommend this very highly to those wishing to make a start on reading about atheism.

God bashing (9/17 people found this helpful)

Ludovic Kennedy writes a very personal account of his experiences with Christianity, charting it's birth, rise throughout history, and irrelevance towards modern society.

Although this is interesting to all of us who are sceptical when it comes to religion, Kennedy's account is a little too personal and we can feel that this book is an act of revenge for all of those boring church services he was forced to sit through as a spotty teenager.

Ultimately, Kennedy does not answer the weightier questions which we might have hoped that he would (ie, is there such thing as a God.) Instead he focuses on how historical tales have been twisted by the authors of the New Testament in order to convince millions into believing that Jesus Christ was a miracle wielding, all knowing, do gooder. Instead, we are told, Jesus was a normal every day human being. The only thing which has set him apart from the rest of us was his willingly to preach humility, recognition of sin, and good works to anyone who would listen. This, however, does not make him any different from St Francis, Cuthbert, or even Thomas Becket - all of who were also normal people who preached penitence and forgiving. I guess that Jesus is revered and given such princely status because he managed to get there first.

Unfortunately, then, "All in the Mind" eventually reverts to good old fashioned Christianity bashing, and slowly looses is credibility and argument along the way. It's not difficult to argue that Christianity has been largely responsible for war, slavery, genocide, and racism, and Kennedy does not say anything which has not been put to us before. What he does succeed in doing is putting all of this information into one easily accessible source.

Kennedy's main motivation for this book is to question the relevance of religion in today's society. He does not question the existence of God, preferring instead to leave this to the philosophers, but does ask how such a well informed and intelligent society can still believe in miracles, resurrections, and the afterlife. This book is a good read, and has given me some good ammunition to use when I am next stopped in the street by a group of well meaning church goers. Definitely worth keeping next to the door in case the Jehovah's Witnesses call.

This will shake the foundations of your belief (5/6 people found this helpful)

Ludovic investigates the birth, growth, adolesence, ageing and the slow death of christanity. Although Ludovic draws from his own personal experience, he does not present many of his own ideas. Mainly this is an orderded collaboration of ideas proposed by other people. But, Ludovic does well in pointing out how and why christianity is a human invention and is therefore void of merit.

A good exploration of an important issue. (3/11 people found this helpful)

This book is certainly a controversial account written by a man who found the dogma of the Christian religion burdensome and somewhat unfulfilling. However, it soon becomes apparent that the sub-title of his book, "A Farewell to God", is more a piece of wishful thinking than Kennedy would like to think.

Kennedy reveals that his experiences of Christianity were focused primarily on the empty regulations, dogmatic chains and rules of the 'religious framework' of fundamentalism, and therefore it comes as no surprise that he failed to find the deeper spiritual Heart of the Christian faith. In his first chapter, Kennedy reflects on the days when he was robotically forced to recite bible passages and to pray, and if he failed to do so, he was told that "bad things would happen". Unsurprisingly then, throughout the book Kennedy churns out words such as "oppression", "chains", "dogma", "guilt" and "bloodshed" when talking about Christianity, and it becomes clear that Kennedy is completely unaware that the heart of Christianity resides way deeper than the dogmatic chains of the religious framework itself.

It struck me that due to Kennedy's intentions (i.e. to undermine Christianity for the reason stated in his introduction: "All my life I have found myself at odds with the Christian religion"), he attempts to persuade the reader that all Christians are conforming to intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy, and that Christianity must essentially be approached from a fundamentalist perspective. This attitude is of course a narrow minded dogma all to itself.

One example is when Kennedy quotes the horrifically narrow minded views of Rev. Joseph Furniss, where Furniss describes his attitudes about hell: "The little child is in the red-hot oven. See how it screams to get out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. ... God was very good to this little child. Very likely God saw it would get worse and worse and never repent and so it would have been punished more severely in Hell. So God in his mercy called it out of the world in early childhood."

There will always be irrational, narrow minded Christians - just as there will always be irrational, narrow minded Atheists, Buddhists, and Muslims etc. But contrary to what Kennedy has portrayed about Christians, I feel that most Christians who know anything about spirituality happily accept that all religions are in touch with the same thing - the Word - or whatever other label we may choose to call Him. Christians (such as myself) believe that God made the ultimate divine revelation through Jesus Christ, even though many Christians do not believe that Christianity is the ONLY path to God. Rather, they believe that the WORD is the only way. (There's a difference, which doesn't contradict Jesus' message in John 14.6).

Kennedy failed to realise that the broader perspective of theism and Christian faith actually makes good sense of reality, and there are far deeper implications than the narrow minded scope of fundamentalism. In his chapter 'Darwin and After', Kennedy conveys the message that science's discovery of evolution has revealed that we live in a blindly indifferent Universe, that our existence is an 'accident', and that any appeals for 'God' are intellectually bankrupt. He concludes: "God has no place in the new equation of the history of species that Darwin was offering." However, this is indeed wishful thinking, for when viewed from the greater perspective of cosmic evolution, the epic story of an unfolding Universe and the arrival of 'mind' exhibits great depth and meaning. A mathematically ordered Universe which happened to become aware of itself, and which gave rise to friendship, love and spiritual creativity is not a good sign that the Universe is purposeless and that our existence was not intentional. The fact that something exists, rather than nothing at all, is also not a good sign that the Infinite is inherently meaningless.

Moreover, Kennedy seems unaware of the fact that the theory of natural selection (i.e. that we evolved 'accidentally') is facing MASSIVE problems when used to explain the existence of nervous systems, brains and consciousness. (Additionally - why would inanimate atoms "accidentally" experience friendship, joy, tears, and intrinsic value? Why would bundles of physical particles be 'consciously aware' of their own existence or of their own environment - all 'accidentally'? As is happens, such issues have stumped scientists, and the personal conclusions of absolute materialists like Richard Dawkins are ideological notions which are grounded in faith).

In his chapter 'Touching the Transcendent', Kennedy claims: "To say that God created this immensity out of nothing insults the imagination and adds nothing to the store of human knowledge." Kennedy doesn't seem to realise that exactly the same could be said about his 'faith'. To claim that this wonderful mathematically ordered cosmos came from 'nothing' is logically absurd, and to say that the Universe just 'is', begs too many questions. In truth, the theistic hypothesis is better than the materialistic hypothesis, because the theistic hypothesis makes the existence of a cosmos such as ours far more probable than the materialistic one.

When Kennedy refers to the story of Adam and Eve, he approaches it as if it were a scientific, literal account. He refuses to comment on the fact that the majority of Christians hold that Holy Books such as the Bible ought not be approached in the same way a scientist would approach a literal account of the make up of a plant cell, for instance. Rather, many Bible passages are approached as metaphors which contain deep, spiritual truths. Christians who are not restricted to the narrow scope and chains of fundamentalism view the story of Adam and Eve is a pictorial which contains deep insights which highlights the distinctiveness of human life and its relationship to God.

At the end of the day, it strikes me that Kennedy's belief that the Ultimate Source and the Infinite Reality of God is "all in mind" - is all in mind itself.

All in the Mind: Farewell to God

Ludovic Kennedy

Reader Reviews:

Food for thought (0/1 people found this helpful)

Very good and well argued (4/4 people found this helpful)

God bashing (9/17 people found this helpful)

This will shake the foundations of your belief (5/6 people found this helpful)

A good exploration of an important issue. (3/11 people found this helpful)

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