Pauline conversion narrative

There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind by Antony Flew; Harperone; Price: Rs.683; Pages: 222

One can’t entirely be sure if the late Antony Flew (1923-2010) was at any time the “world’s most notorious atheist”, as the title of this book describes him. This description could well be a clever sales gimmick. But there’s no doubt the late professor was one of the most prolific and influential of contemporary atheist philosophers.

Flew’s several books on the philosophy of atheism defined non-belief for almost half a century, until when just a few years before his death at 80, he experienced a Pauline conversion and became a believer. No one expected this from one of the most prominent champions of atheism, not least Flew himself. “It may well be that no one is as surprised as I am that my exploration of the Divine has after all these years turned from denial to discovery,” he writes.

Befitting the subject and written by a philosophy professional, There is a God is inevitably dense and abstruse. But this account of Flew’s conversion from hardened atheism to belief in God, is truly amazing. It was the outcome of a “pilgrimage of reason”, leading him from denial to acceptance of what he terms a “self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being”.

Flew wasn’t always an atheist. Indeed he began life steeped in religion as the son of an English preacher. He studied in a Christian school where he attended chapel, but prayers, he confesses were a “weary duty”. “Never did I feel the slightest desire to commune with God,” he recalls, and gradually turned into an atheist, while struggling to make sense of the horrors and evil in the world and the inability of a loving, all-powerful God to exterminate it. By the age of 15, he had rejected the thesis that the universe was created by the all-good, all-powerful God.

Flew went on to read philosophy at Oxford, and subsequently taught for many years in universities in the US, Canada, and the UK. In a career spanning many decades as a professional philosopher, he wrote numerous treatises, which earned him the dubious distinction of being one of the leading and most articulate advocates of atheism in modern times.

After over six decades of ardently propagating atheism, in surely the most fascinating part of the book, Flew recounts how he experienced a radical conversion. In 2004, he famously declared that he had become a believer (although not of any particular religion). This “need to believe” was not, he stresses, because of any personal religious experience, but the outcome of following where the evidence had led him. He was compelled to acknowledge a Supreme Being because the origin of life pointed to the activity of a Creative Intelligence, or God.

Given the enormous complexity of the universe, the existence of a Creator cannot be denied, professes the author. “I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an Infinite Intelligence. I believe this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source,” he writes, turning his back on years of obdurate atheism.

“(My) discovery of the Divine has proceeded on a purely natural level, without any reference to supernatural phenomena,” he says adding that his 360 degree conversion was “a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith”.

Following his ‘conversion’, Flew was able to critically reflect on the basic premises of atheism which he had advocated so passionately. Theodicy — the issue of why a good God permits the existence of evil — was one of the reasons that put him off religion as a young man. Now, he says, he has reconsidered his views on free will and its relationship to evil, admitting that earlier he hadn’t seriously considered the various theological responses.

However, although the author experienced a philosophical change of heart, he doesn’t acknowledge adherence to any particular religion. Therefore it would have been adequate, if this book had limited itself to simply narrating Flew’s journey from disbelief to faith.

Unfortunately, it exceeds its brief — some remarks by Flew tend to privilege one religion (Christianity) over others, and a long winding discussion in the form of an appendix with an Anglican bishop defending certain specifically Christian doctrines, seems quite out of place in light of the author’s insistence that his discovery of God had entirely to do with “the evidence of nature”, and not with theological constructs.

That, however, should not detract from the merit of this fascinating book and its ready appeal to people of all faiths and none.

Roshan Shah

European schizophrenia

Punjabi Parmesan by Pallavi Aiyar; Penguin; Price: Rs.599; Pages: 344

Indians who travel abroad or migrate internationally rarely write about the societies they intimately encounter and adopt as ‘home’. Contrastively, from the time of the colonial era, western writers have produced a copious and authoritative body of travelogues, fiction, and scholarship on the Indian subcontinent.

Punjabi Parmesan offers compelling insights into Europe’s ongoing cultural and economic crisis. Immigrant paranoia, anti-Muslim sentiments, global inequalities, and climate change feature extensively.

The book’s originality lies in continental Europe, particularly Belgium and Italy, being viewed through a comparative China-India framework. Prior to Belgium, Aiyar spent several years in China where she witnessed, first-hand, the country’s mammoth economic rise.

Her knowledge of China and India as two ‘growing economies’ versus stagnant First World economies has promoted a rigorous analysis (“from the rise of China, I now found myself with front row seats to the decline of Europe”). Some of these dissonances explored via people’s everyday working lives, are discussed and valued in a changing Europe where several generations have got so accustomed to welfare state benefits that ‘working hard’ or even ‘extra’ now amounts to ‘hardship’.

In China, work has an altogether different meaning. Young people are motivated by the opportunity to work, and rising living standards mean ‘work is worship’. In Belgium, the harder immigrants like Gujarati diamond merchants work, the more resentment and criticism they encounter. Consider then how the Jewish community in Antwerp, traditionally associated with utmost industriousness and hard work, views aspiring expatriates. In an interview with a prominent Jewish merchant, ‘work’ is made to sound like a dirty word. “The Indians work too hard. That’s all they talk about, ‘diamonds’. It’s their life and they won’t stop at anything to grab customers”.

In Italy, immigrants like Harbhajan Singh have paid a heavy price by working long hours; their docile bodies are considered the cheapest. Punjabi agricultural labour has transformed parts of the countryside in Italy. If they were to go on strike, premier cheeses like Parmesan would virtually disappear. The normalised use of cheap immigrant labour is in sharp contrast to how Europeans consider annual holidays a birthright. Aiyar asserts that these entitlements are now unsustainable.

‘The Veiled Threat’ is a must-read chapter that dwells on the lives, identities, and cultural spaces of different generations of Muslims in Europe. Many European right wing parties have built their reputations on anti-immigrant rhetoric, based largely on the politics of Muslim identity. Equally, ordinary white European citizens use the trope of “non-integration” against Muslims and other racialised immigrants, as a way to signal a lack of cultural assimilation.

But Aiyar’s ‘China framework’ helps to unveil how privileged Europeans or modern-day expatriates live their lives in migratory spaces. Expats in China clearly refrain from integrating into local cultures. In Europe, immigrants are labeled as ‘different’, while Muslims are vilified for wearing headscarves and exercising the right to pray. The stories of Manzour, Michael, and Fatima are delightfully woven to highlight the validity of European Islam, whilst driving home the point that Muslim women do not regard their identity (e.g. the veil) as oppressive.

The shift in economic power from the West to East is captured in a highly entertaining chapter ‘Chateau Chongqing’. Aiyar who accompanied Chinese tourists across Europe’s ski slopes describes some unmissable moments.

A generation of China’s youth, some as young as ten years of age, are transforming Europe’s tourism and economic landscape (“Chinese travelers have emerged as the European tourism industry’s knight in shining armour, riding to the rescue of otherwise stagnant economies”).The Chinese tend to view modern Europe as a cross between a museum and a shopping mall!

Aiyar integrates a fascinating discussion of a multilayered complex China, and a rising sense of Chinese superiority in the world order. The self-perceptions of Chinese students and citizens would be of immense interest to global Indians.

Shalini Grover  (The Book Review, April 2015)