Dr Tina Beattie responds

I sent Dr Tina Beattie my letter by email, only edited slightly to replace "huge black fleshy mass on my testicle" with "huge lump on my privates" (yes, I know it's bowdlerising but I didn't want her just to dismiss it in disgust at my crudeness). I got a very good-humoured response:

Dear Joss,

Thank you so much for your e-mail. I admit to being very moved by your situation, and quite humbled to know that you were so comforted by the programme.

Of course, miracles do happen and we must never give up hope, but I think truthfulness is an essential factor in all human relationships, don't you agree?

With that in mind, I have to say that things don't sound good for you. If I were your wife, I would take full advantage of your swollen privates while she can, because I fear that you might soon be joining your dear dead grandma and her starving dogs.

By the way, if your wife needs to comfort herself after you've gone, she might find it helpful to take a look at page 63 of my recent book, The New Atheists. I understand that there are now some top of the range devices available for this problem. (You can find my book on amazon.co.uk and there is also an interesting blog about it on Richard Dawkins' website).

With all best wishes, and thank you again for taking the time to contact me.

Tina Beattie.

I haven't looked at page 63 of her book yet but fully expect it to be either some pap about consolation, or an admonishment that atheists are always resorting to ridicule because they lack adequate arguments. Still, I appreciate her effort to respond in a good-natured way.

Naturally, I wasn't trying to claim that Tina was actually arguing that the feeling of absence proves god. It is more a statement of exasperation that not experiencing god has no affect on a believer's faith and is dismissed with such a piece of sophistry. It's like the church leaders and theologians are saying, "You can't see god or touch god, but you can experience him in your heart and that is very real. Oh, and if you don't experience him in your heart, that's actually just another 'way' of experiencing him."

I don't think we can ever win over people as deeply indoctrinated as the sweet but batty and deluded Dr Tina, this sort of thing proves just how futile it is. We must work on the young, and at the fringes.

Presence = absence

Well that's it. I might as well pack up my bags, and move into a seminary. The arguments for god are now all wrapped up, thanks to Dr Tina Beattie of Roehampton University. In a feat of sophistry so unbelievably fatuous and astounding, gormless and yet somehow sweetly innocent, she informed the listeners of Sunday Worship on Radio 4 yesterday that God existed precisely because he wasn't there:

Sometimes God's presence is most intensely experienced as a form of absence and yearning.

Well, what can you say to that, eh? I have drafted the following letter to Dr Beattie, I wonder if I should send it?

Dear Dr Beattie,

I very much enjoyed your discussion of Mother Teresa on Sunday Worship on Radio 4, and was taken aback by many of your insights. One thought struck me as particularly profound, when you said, "Sometimes God's presence is most intensely experienced as a form of absence and yearning."

This came as a great comfort to me. You see, my dear grandmother passed away recently; I mean, I thought she had, there was a body, a funeral, a cremation and everything. But I yearned so much for her to be with me again, and applying your reasoning, I now realise that she isn't in fact dead - she's just not talking to me any more. All I need to do now is try to understand why she won't answer the phone when I call. Still, it's a great weight off my mind, especially because now I don't have to have her dogs put down, and I duly dropped them back off at her house the other day (she was out, but I presume she's got her reasons for avoiding me).

I was wondering - does it work the other way round? If I yearn hard enough can I make something that appears to be present go away? I ask because I've developed this huge black fleshy mass on my testicle, or at least that's what it feels and looks like. But perhaps if I really concentrate on my yearning it will turn out to be just a silly delusion that I'm having? I'm really interested to know because my wife is starting to get a little upset that I won't go to the doctor.

In grateful expectation of your response,

Joss Knight

I am confident that the good 'Doctor' (I can't bring myself to extract that from scare quotes since the lady is a Doctor of Theology, which scarcely counts) will be able to answer my question as she is clearly highly qualified in the field of bollocks.

Tina was talking about the recent revelations of Mother Teresa's loss of faith. In recently published letters it was revealed that for the last 50 years of her life, Mother Teresa felt no presence of God, neither in the practice of her religion nor in her heart. She wrote, "I'm told that God loves me, and yet the darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great, that nothing touches my soul."

The poor woman was brow-beaten by her indoctrination into declaring belief in something inherently unbelievable, and going through the motions and rituals of her religion even though it gave her no benefits, only despair. And Christians around the world hold her in high esteem, as the model of a good Christian. They're supposed to aspire to be like her!

Well, it's certainly an interesting state of affairs - the ultimate demonstration of Christian faith is to have managed to dispense entirely with all conviction of god's existence. I suppose it is somewhat akin to the 'machismo' of pointless and arbitrary religious doctrine, like not eating pig or shellfish, or being circumcised - if you can successfully remove all practical experience of faith, and yet go through the ecumenical motions anyway, you've won big time brownie points for endurance (and mindless obstinacy).

One cannot help but be put in mind of the quip of satirist Peter de Vries:

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

It seems a lot less like satire when an academic theologian is saying essentially the same thing with a straight face. In fact, we ought to note this important reminder: Dr Tina actually believes in what she said. She really, honestly, thought it made perfect sense that you can experience god through his absence. We can be pretty sure of that because it went out on the air and must have been reviewed dozens of times before it did. I'm not sure what conclusions we can draw, but it serves to remind us just what we're up against.