All in the Mind: Farewell to God

Ludo's book is written with style and eloquence - it was a joy to read.I hope people of all religions read it ( how many are there ? ..and as Richard Dawkins writes.. "..they can't all be right " ) And non-religious folk like myself can enjoy reading thoughts and opinions which we ourselves have had, but were a bit hesitant to express.

A must-read Bible for Atheists! (0/0 people found this helpful)

A detailed analysis of the Christian Bible and its failings and inconsistences. Kennedy argues convincingly that the gospels are the flawed works of Man not God and that the idea of God repeated across many parts of the world is merely a reflection of our own hopes and fears. He dismisses the possibility of Resurrection and miracles and takes great pains to outline the great woes visited on mankind by a rampant Christianity (eg intolerance, wars, and the Inquisition). He ends with a chapter entitled 'Transcendance' in which he tries to express his faith in an emotional sense of the transcendant world, triggered and accessed by beauty and art. A fascinating read, and one I would recommend to anyone able to be open-minded about religion and Christianity in particular.

I found it well written and fascinating, and indeed having just finished it have started again from the beginning!

[Personally, as a spriritualist, Ludo has not sought out or recognised proofs of life after death, which are recorded in many cultures and which are provided by many mediums worldwide (notably Colin Fry in the UK). And this despite meeting and being healed by the celebrated spiritualist medium Harry Edwards. Indeed he does not even mention spiritualism. The book leaves me therefore slightly astonished that a man who is so clearly intelligent and learned and inquisitive should have not discovered this in his eighty years.]

Mindless (2/9 people found this helpful)

In "The Pilgrim's Progress" John Bunyan tells the story of the Muckraker who was so concentrated on looking for wealth in the muck beneath his feet that he failed to see the crown of glory above his head. That tale encapsulates Kennedy's personal, egotistical would not be too strong a word, account of his lifelong attachment to atheism.

Kennedy writes as if he has discovered some new truth or unravelled some long standing beliefs rather than regurgitating the same old sterile anti-Christian ideas. His problem is that of all atheists who attack Christianity - the belief that the institution which called itself the Christian Church bore any meaningful relationship to the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Ironically he touches on the subject but lacks the insight to understand it. He considers the decline of Christian teaching in schools to be symptomatic of the end of Christianity when, in fact, it simply reflects the increasing secular nature of the State. This lack of perception is exacerbated by Kennedy's desire to present debates over the existence of God as being debates on the moral value of Christianity versus Humanism as a way of life claiming that Christian values are simply human values when, as Rousseau pointed out, they are not.

Kennedy attributes the existence, or otherwise, of a Deity to ignorance and fear. That was hardly the experience of the Apostle Paul. Failing to develop any new arguments Kennedy repeats the specious claim that it was Paul's work which formed the basis of Christian theology rather than the teaching of Jesus himself.

Unlike some atheists Kennedy acknowledges the reality of the Roman persecution of Christians (ironically on the grounds they were atheists i.e. they did not believe in the Roman gods) but it is clear he does not understand the significance of Constantine's "conversion". It was this event which made Christianity respectable in the eyes of Roman society but broke the link between belief and practice. Henceforth, particularly after the Council of Nicea in 325, the Church was the institution not the faith.

It was the institution, as a political and military arm of the State, which produced the killing fields to which Kennedy refers, not the Christian faith itself. The Church had become a political institution rather than a spiritual one. It was populated by politicians not necessarily by believers. It was, in essence, this kind of Church, albeit of different denomination, in which Kennedy grew up, an institution lacking faith and vitality but adhered to for social reasons.

That extended in recent years to the Church of England where John Robinson, David Jenkins et.al. held on to their Bishoprics while denying the existence of God. The human quality of self interest and greed never fails to work its magic(if you'll pardon the pun).

Kennedy seems to believe that quoting Thomas Paine, David Hume, Shelley, Darwin and Russell as fellow non believers, proves his case when all it does is to show that The Church of the Agnostics and that of Atheists have similar emotional and doctrinal commitments. Indeed, Russell was so frequently on wrong on those measurable things of which he was certain it's surprising that anyone would wish to quote him as an authority on anything metaphysical.

Kennedy appears ignorant of the fact the heliocentric view of the universe was widely held before Copernicus and that the latter was invited to discuss his work with Bishops, all of whom found it stimulating. He deliberately overlooks the political dimension behind Galileo's imprisonment.

In referring to the Killing Fields of Christianity Kennedy provides the example of the Chevalier de la Barre in 1766 but makes no reference to the extermination of between 100,000 and 500,000 believers from the Vendee thirty years later by the atheistic French Regime. To compound his error Kennedy misrepresents the facts of the de la Barre case which he could easily have established by looking at any half decent reference book.

Kennedy concludes that religion has been replaced by football and television, although he doesn't explain the decline in each of those pastimes. He suggests that Christians should change their message to accommodate the modern world. Yet, at the end, he admits the existence of life is a mystery. Hardly a ringing endorsement that it is all in the mind.

The book is easy to read but should be read with skepticism (Kennedy doesn't like to examine history in detail, especially where it doesn't fit his theory). It's probably best looked at while watching football on the television.

God Was Created by Man (5/5 people found this helpful)

The notion explored in this often fascinating book by the famous broadcaster, Ludovic Kennedy, is that rather than the religious notion that man was created by god, rather it is god that was created by man. I must say - at the outset - that this is a view that I share and consequently I found much to agree with in Kennedy's - necessarily brief - romp through the history of human religious `thought' from early mythologies and through the history of the Christian religion in the west.

I suppose one of the few faults I find in the book is the concentration on the Christian religion at the expense of other religions, but then it is Christianity that has helped shaped western thought to a far, far, greater extent than any of the other current religions.

However, the period of the church's greatest influence was also a period of almost stagnation in the intellectual life of the west - a period which later became known as the Dark Ages. It was only when the church's power and influence was challenged, questioned and finally broken from the Reformation on through the Enlightenment and the rise of science, humanism and rationality that mankind was then able to take the great strides it has done over the following centuries.

Probably the best part of the book for me is the last third where Kennedy sketches the rise of atheism from Sozzini, d'Hobach, through Hume and Paine and on to Darwin and evolution. Then - post-Darwin - the rapid growth in atheism from that point on to the present day where religions - despite their increasingly frantic rearguard actions continue their inexorable decline into irrelevance as mankind leaves behind its superstitious childhood at last.

Kennedy concludes that he finds spirituality, the numinous and al those other consolations that religion is supposed to find in nature and in art. Here, in addition, I would come down on the side of Kennedy, but also adding Richard Dawkins contention that science does far more to aid our understanding of the universe and our appreciation of its beauty to a far greater extent than religion ever could. All in all, then, All In The Mind is an excellent book, one that I highly recommend.

Food for thought (1/3 people found this helpful)

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.

All in the Mind: Farewell to God

Ludovic Kennedy

Reader Reviews:

.......And be free ! (0/1 people found this helpful)

A must-read Bible for Atheists! (0/0 people found this helpful)

Mindless (2/9 people found this helpful)

God Was Created by Man (5/5 people found this helpful)

Food for thought (1/3 people found this helpful)

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