Review

Atheism

Belief

Culture

27 April 2023

7 min read

David Baddiel's wrestle with the God desire

David Baddiel’s short book is important, writes Krish Kandiah, as it represents an internal wrestling match that many can relate to.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A painting depicts two wrestlers on the ring mat, watched by eager fans.

Wrestlers by Abraham Bogdanove.

Abraham Bogdanove, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

I have been a David Baddiel admirer ever since he penned the anthem Three Lions with his friend Frank Skinner. The song has provided a hymn of hope to every England fan since 1996. “Football’s coming home”, I sing to my friends, family and TV screen every time England plays. Fans declare it out over the pitch, as though the louder they sing, the more likely it is their prophecy will come true.

As the author of a song that has sought to inspire faith in the England team it is perhaps ironic that David Baddiel’s new book “The God Desire” is all about why he cannot bring himself to have faith in God.

I really enjoyed reading the book and the subsequent back and forth I had on Twitter with Baddiel. He comes across like the kind of guy it would be great to sit in a pub with and talk about life, faith and football until closing time. I hope I get the chance.
The book, for me, offers three significant strengths and one major topic of contention.

A new tone for the new atheists

Baddiel offers what might be called a ‘New New Atheist’ approach. He differentiates himself from the now old New Atheists like Professor Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchings by challenging their machismo:

“Some atheists divine [sic] – correctly – that what religion provides for human beings is comfort, and then, in a way that can feel a bit adolescent, they feel impelled to say, essentially, ‘Comfort? That’s for babies.’ “

Baddiel refuses to ridicule the consolation of faith and indeed seems instead to long for it. He is kinder, warmer, more polite than old New Atheists, taking a far less dismissive tone. Perhaps part of this comes from his deep and sincere friendship with Frank Skinner who is a devout Catholic Christian. Their friendship is reflected in Baddiel’s robust yet gracious approach to controversial topics. It is an approach that can act as a model for a lot of our discussions in increasingly polarised times.

Baddiel’s critique of New Atheism also has an epistemological angle. He observes that in an age of social media our relationship to the concept of truth has changed. He reflects that in previous eras truths were handed down from authority figures but now there is a democratisation of truth - through social media everyone can share their own truth.

This is one of Baddiel’s most interesting observations:

“In a moral universe dictated by social media, punching up and punching down are the new markers of good and evil, and if religion is no longer considered a vastly powerful and high-status force, but rather a series of fragile and individual identity-based beliefs that only the unkind would mock, then atheists become pariahs.”

I think Baddiel might be on to something important here. For some atheists, religion is still a huge and influential behemoth that needs to be taken down. We can see that in the aggressive antireligious tweeting of Professor Alice Roberts or the theologically ill-informed op eds of Matthew Parris. They “punch up” against the authority of religion. Others “punch down”: from their morally superior position they are prepared to issue something akin to imperialistic judgmentalism against anyone who dares to identify as religious.

But punching up or punching down says nothing about the truth or otherwise of the position. Instead, it speaks to relative social position. Like Baddiel I believe both in the right to freedom of expression, and in the concept of objective truth.

An honest recognition of the desire for God

This new tone permits Baddiel to admit that he recognises in himself the existential longing for the things that faith can provide. He writes:

“My argument, on the other hand, is, in a general sense, psychological. It requires an admission, which frankly most atheists, I’ve noticed, aren’t prepared to make. Which is: I love God.”

Baddiel’s coming out with this brave admission reminds me of these words of Canadian artist and novelist Douglas Coupland as he draws to a close his book “Life After God”:

“My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”

Some might read too much into Baddiel’s confession. A whole book explaining why he doesn’t believe in God may seem then pointless, as though he “doth protest too much.” But for me Baddiel’s short book still feels important – it represents an internal wrestling match that many people can relate to – wanting to believe in God on one hand but struggling to find the evidence on the other.

A helpful evaluation of the benefits of faith

Baddiel explores three reasons why he would love to believe in God: story, parenthood and immortality.

Firstly, he recognises a longing for meaning in life. He believes that belief in God can provide the possibility of life having an external story, offering not only direction and significance but a source for moral evaluation:

“God also offers story. Humans have a need to organise, to structure, the chaos of existence. They need to feel that life has narrative. Narrative requires satisfactory checks and balances, such as good being rewarded, and evil being punished. God provides all this. He storifies life… With story comes another God benefit: meaning. A sense, on an individual level, that your own narrative has significance: that it matters, in some way. This can only be the case if Someone or Something is taking account of it.”

Second, Baddiel notes that God provides an answer to the longing for there to be a benevolent force guiding us through the universe. Baddiel frames that in the need for a parent-figure:

“God is this: an archetype, a super-projection, of a parent who can be both blissful and terrifying.”

This could be seen as a recycling of the Freudian critique of belief in God as an immaturity, a babyishness as Baddiel might call it. But instead, it reads as longing.

Thirdly, and for Baddiel most significantly, God offers immortality. Baddiel puts it clearly:

“At heart, though, God is all about death. The other issues are spin-offs.”

Belief in God can help us confront the biggest fear that human beings face: the prospect of our own death.

A point of contention

As a Christian, there is much to agree with in the above points. However, my main point of contention is very neatly identified by Baddiel himself:

“The God Desire should not have to lead to the God Delusion.”

Baddiel seems to argue that the very fact that he wants God to exist must mean that he can’t possibly exist, that he must simply be a projection of his own desire. This is the exact opposite conclusion to that reached by CS Lewis following a not dissimilar journey to Baddiel’s:

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water… If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world…”

Baddiel concedes this line of reasoning but reflects that desire in those cases are met by tangible, visible things - food and water in this case. He summarises that “desire + invisibility = God.” God, for Baddiel, seems to be so utterly transcendent, that he cannot be evidenced, discovered, known. If he cannot be evidenced, then he cannot exist.

But what if God, truly and utterly transcendent, has chosen to make himself known? And what if that revelation is right under our noses in the person of Jesus Christ? This is the central and astonishing thesis of Christianity, grounded in the evidence of Jesus’ birth, his miracles, his teaching, and, ultimately, his resurrection from the dead. This evidence cannot be discovered merely by psychological reflection, as Baddiel has discovered. There are further historical, theological, spiritual, moral and scientific theories that need engaging with.

I hope that Baddiel writes a sequel. In it he would explain why his desire + invisibility equation does not stop him standing up for universal human rights, for example. He would investigate the historical evidence for Jesus and the concrete experiences of millions in their connection with God. He would look further at the explanatory power that the Christian faith gives to life and see why compassion and justice matter. He would admit that his sense of the divine, was evidence of God’s existence. He would discover that his love for God had been met by God’s love of him.

I am hoping one day there’s a warm fire, a cold beer and long night available to amicably talk these things through. In the meantime, I commend his book to you and encourage you, with Baddiel, to continue wrestling with the big questions of life.

Explainer

Attention

Care

Culture

Psychology

7 November 2025

5 min read

How to help someone with ADHD to live well

Overstimulation, inner critics, and the quiet power that restores balance

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

An emoji-style brain divided in two with active emojis one side and calm ones the other.

Nick Jones/Midjourney.ai.

This week’s headlines about ADHD in the UK paint a troubling picture. NHS England commissioned an ADHD Taskforce which has warned that waiting lists for assessment and support are “unacceptably long”, with services buckling under the pressure of rising demand. In some areas, including Coventry and Warwickshire, NHS boards have even paused new adult referrals to prioritise children. Charities are already preparing legal challenges.

Among the Taskforce’s key recommendations is a call for general practitioners to take on a bigger role. Rather than referring every suspected case to specialist services, GPs are to receive training to recognise and manage ADHD within primary care – a shift intended to relieve the enormous strain on the system. But this raises a human question as well as a policy one: while people wait (often for months or even years) what can families and friends do to help? And might some of these strategies reduce the need for crisis-level specialist support in the first place?

Around five per cent of the population is thought to have ADHD, though the true figure may be higher. Rising diagnosis rates have prompted some scepticism: are we simply getting better at recognising the condition, or is something new happening in our overstimulated modern world?

Psychiatrists Edward Hallowell and John Ratey suggest that many of us now live in an attention environment that mimics ADHD. They call this phenomenon VAST: Variable Attention Stimulus Trait. VAST is not a disorder, and it is not “ADHD lite”; rather, it’s a product of neuroplasticity, i.e., the brain’s capacity to adapt to its environment. ADHD, by contrast, is neurodevelopmental – it is part of how a person’s brain is wired from the start. ADHD can’t be “undone” – nor would many want it to be. ADHD is a way of being that entails many strengths as well as struggles, as I have written about before. But where there are struggles, both ADHD and VAST respond to similar strategies for living well.

Hallowell and Ratey describe the brain as operating through a set of overlapping neural networks. Two of these, the Task Positive Network and the Default Mode Network, play a key role in attention and focus. The Task Positive Network switches on when we’re engaged in a clear, structured activity: writing an email, cooking dinner, solving a problem. When it’s active, we’re absorbed and unselfconscious. The Default Mode Network, by contrast, takes over when we’re not focused on a specific task. It’s the realm of daydreaming, reflection, and big-picture thinking – reviewing what we’ve done, imagining what comes next.

For most people, the brain glides between these two states smoothly. But in today’s hyperconnected, screen-saturated culture, many of us – especially those with VAST – flicker between them too quickly, never giving our Default Mode Network enough time to process what has just happened. The result is stress, restlessness, and mental exhaustion.

In ADHD, though, the problem is different and deeper. Brain scans suggest that both networks may be running simultaneously, and the Default Mode Network in particular has a knack for interrupting. Imagine trying to finish a task while a running commentary in your head constantly questions its worth, urgency, or achievability. That’s the ADHD experience: the Default Mode’s chatter makes tasks hard both to start and to finish.

But the Default Mode Network isn’t all bad. It can be a source of creativity, moral reflection, and meaning. It’s the voice that tells you a task matters, that something is worth your effort. Hallowell and Ratey liken it to the classic “angel and devil” on your shoulders – but the devil often shouts louder. That’s partly because the human brain is wired to prioritise threat. We remember criticism more vividly than praise, and replay social embarrassments more easily than successes. For people with ADHD, this negativity bias can be overwhelming. As Hallowell and Ratey put it:

“People who have ADHD or VAST are particularly prone to head towards gloom and doom in their minds because they have stored up in their memory banks a lifetime of failure, disappointment, shame, and frustration. Life has taught them to expect the worst.”

This relentless inner critic drives many ADHDers to self-soothe – ideally through human connection, but too often through less healthy means: food, alcohol, drugs, or risky behaviours. Statistically, people with ADHD are ten times more likely to develop an addiction, and their average lifespan is at least 13 years shorter than that of the general population.

So how can friends and family help? Is there a way to interrupt the drive to self-medicate in self-destructive ways? The answer, remarkably, is so ancient and simple as to almost seem facile: it is love.

When the Default Mode Network first hits upon a negative self-judgement, its instinct is to reach outward – to seek comfort and belonging. If connection is unavailable, the “devil voice” finds substitutes in addictive or numbing behaviours. But when real, safe relationships are present, they act as a protective buffer. Studies show that people with ADHD who experience strong, consistent love from partners, friends and family have lower addiction rates, better health, and longer lives.

Of course, loving someone with ADHD can sometimes demand extra patience. Your ADHD friend or family member is likely to be the most creative, empathetic, and generous person you know, yet also the one who forgets your birthday, arrives late, or leaves your message unanswered. None of this is intentional neglect; it is the Default Mode’s interference – the whisper that says, “They probably don’t like me that much anyway.” Understanding this dynamic transforms frustration into compassion. It helps us see that behind the missed text is someone fighting an invisible cognitive tug-of-war – a loved one who needs reassurance, not reprimand.

Even for those without ADHD, our era of constant notifications and information overload is training our brains toward VAST-like patterns. We’re pulled between self-judgment and self-justification, between doing and ruminating, with little space for rest. Learning to quiet the inner critic and nurture connection is good for all of us.

When we tune into the gentler side of our Default Mode Network – the voice that says “You are valuable to the people around you” – mistakes lose their sting, and perfection ceases to be the price of self-worth.

The NHS may take years to fully resolve its ADHD backlog. But in the meantime, there is meaningful work that families, friends, and communities can do. We can offer the connection that helps quiet the inner storm by being the person who reaches out, forgives the lateness, and replies with warmth even when the other couldn’t.

This may not shorten the waiting list, but it could lengthen lives. For the millions with ADHD, and the millions more living with VAST, love is not a sentimental afterthought – it is the neurological antidote to despair.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

pledge now