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.

Article

Culture

Digital

Film & TV

Work

24 June 2025

7 min read

What my film about the prodigal son really means

Our relentless focus on productivity devalues the things that make us human

Emily Downe

Emily is designer and animator at the Theos think tank.

In Sync with the Sun.

Theos.

Watch now

In his 2021 book 4,000 weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman observes that an obsession with productivity doesn’t give us more control over our lives, ‘instead, life accelerates, and everyone grows more impatient. It’s somehow vastly more aggravating to wait two minutes for the microwave than two hours for the oven - or ten seconds for a slow-loading web page versus three days to receive the same information by post.’

With technologies like artificial intelligence rapidly accelerating our lives, this constant demand to squeeze more into our time is not only limited to the mundane tasks that we have to do and wish we didn’t. It seeps into what we want to do and indeed must do in order to flourish: creating art, spending time in community, and caring for others. The problem is that these things cannot be measured in productivity metrics because they inherently do not function in that way. How do you measure how ‘productive’ a conversation is? Or a work of art? Artists such as Vincent Van Gogh or Emily Dickinson didn’t see their influence in their own lifetime.

The more we measure our lives in productivity metrics, the more we devalue the things that make us human, ultimately making our lives and the world around us increasingly artificial. This is the basis of my recent film, In Sync with the Sun, which is a short animation about the rhythms of activity and rest that are written into our world, and what happens when an obsession with productivity takes over.

I wrote the initial script for the film after a period of burnout. I was fully in the “make the most of every second” mindset, which left me feeling exhausted and confused about where my value resides. In response, I began researching the sleep-cycles of various animals and I was liberated by surprising details such as the fact that lions, which we see as mighty and majestic animals, sleep for around 21 hours a day. Even creatures like jellyfish, which don’t even have brains as far as we know, still have cycles of rest. Every living thing thrives in these rhythms of activity and rest, even down to plants and minuscule organisms. Our whole world is built on this pattern, in sync with the sun. Yet for us humans, our rhythms have been broken by technology, leaving us confused about our limitations and what we should do with our short lives.

The film begins in nature, deep in the jungle where some leopards are sleeping. But the tranquility is abruptly interrupted by the voice-over declaring, “the war against sleep began when artificial broke into the night.” Brilliant white light breaks up the deep blues and purples on screen, until the screen is filled with blinding white. I wanted it to feel like that moment you peer at your phone in the middle of the night - the pain of your pupils trying to adjust. If you think about it, for 99.9 per cent of human history, our eyes would have never had to do that - until now.

Artificial light wasn’t powerful enough to change that. Instead, it’s given us an unquenchable guilt about how we use our time.

With his invention of the light bulb, Thomas Edison was determined to banish the night, and the limitations it enforced on us. Edison was known for being fiercely obsessed with productivity and, as a result, was an anti-sleep warrior who believed,

“There is really no reason why men should go to bed at all.”

As someone living a century on, I find it baffling to imagine that humans should eradicate sleep entirely. Perhaps because just 100 years later we are seeing the results that sleep-loss and over-working can have on our physical health and wellbeing. Maybe we cannot supersede nature after all, since we are an embedded part of it. It seems that “Sabbath" rest is written into our world and into our humanity. Artificial light wasn’t powerful enough to change that. Instead, it’s given us an unquenchable guilt about how we use our time. Now we decide when the day ends, so whoever can rest the least wins.

The battle is still raging; incandescent bulbs only set aflame that root desire to be increasingly productive. The hamster wheel is spinning uncontrollably, and we must keep up. So, what do we do? The attempt to remove the limitations outside of us has revealed that they are in fact inside of us too. Therefore, the only way to keep up is to remove the human from the hamster wheel altogether. The failure of artificial light leads to the birth of artificial minds.

As a creative, this is what frustrates me most about artificial intelligence; that it is mostly being driven by this quest to bring everything under the reign of productivity. It goes without saying that this is greatly needed in some areas of society. Just like artificial light, it can and will do a lot of good in the world. However, when the obsession with productivity is prioritised over human flourishing, that’s when we know there is a big problem with how we view our lives.

Thinking back to the examples of Van Gogh and Emily Dickinson; what is lost when we don’t allow space for artists, carers, mothers, or any skilled role that requires an element of patience? For me personally, I can’t force creative inspiration, instead it comes at me, often at times when I’m not looking for it. Similarly, sometimes that inspiration leads directly to an instant idea, but most often it’s a vague idea I jot down to which later life experiences and opportunities then build onto, forming it into something bigger and more in-depth. This could be compared to a role or situation that requires relationship building. Sometimes there are moments of instant bonding and “productive” progress in relationships, but it’s often more complex where external experiences or changes, which are outside of our control, may unexpectedly deepen understanding between people after long periods of frustration.

In my animation, I used the metaphor of a butterfly to illustrate this sentiment. After the character realises he is not made for a life of relentless productivity, he steps out of the black and white skyscraper into the lush wilderness. A butterfly lands on his productivity badge and the voice over says, “You’re not a machine.” I imagine the Creator saying this to the loved creation. Creatures like butterflies seem completely unproductive to our human standards. They take weeks to form in the chrysalis and exist in the world for less time than that. Yet they are a source of wonder and beauty for anyone who has the privilege of seeing one up close. A reminder that nature is not in a rush. Where AI is concerned, however, speed and profit are the focus of desire. But looking at the world around us - that we are a part of - it’s clear that not everything can or should be valued by these limiting metrics alone.

The overarching narrative of In Sync with the Sun is loosely inspired by the biblical story of the prodigal son. The main character has travelled far away from his home in pursuit of success, and he eventually realises that this master does not love him. At the end he comes home again, finding connection in community and in the good rhythm of productivity and rest that he came from. I wanted the film to address the issues that an unhealthy obsession with productivity can cause, and instead evoke a desire to accept and live more in sync with the boundaries and rhythms that are embedded in the natural world we are a part of.

The film ends with the line, “The only thing that can stay awake is not awake at all.” In the midst of the changing world of AI, humans might be tempted to measure our productivity levels in comparison to these machines. However, technologies always raise the productivity bar higher and higher, and one day we need to accept that we simply aren’t going to be able to reach it. We don’t sit apart from nature like technology does, so let’s stop resenting that, and instead celebrate it. To quote Oliver Burkeman again,

“the more you confront the facts of finitude instead - and work with them, rather than against them - the more productive, meaningful and joyful life becomes.”

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