Doubts, Desires, and Delusions

On "The God Desire" by David Baddiel and "The Best Minds" by Jonathan Rosen.

The God Desire, David Baddiel (2023)

Here’s an old joke:

What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness and an atheist?
Someone who knocks on your door for no reason at all.

I remembered this joke while I was reading David Baddiel’s new book, The God Desire. This is the second work of non-fiction he has published through the TLS, and in the first – Jews Don’t Count – he established himself as both a very funny writer and an insightful, lucid thinker. In the newer book, he is still funny.

I once wrote about Jordan Peterson’s saying that he acts as if God exists and is terrified that he does. Like Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and its endlessly proliferating cover versions, there seems to be countless variations on this idea. My own rendition is that I act as if God exists and I am worried that he doesn’t. David Baddiel’s version is that he wishes God existed and he’s certain that he doesn’t.

It is a fact, he opines, that God doesn’t exist, and he insists he knows this as absolutely as he …