Julian Barnes on god, the universe and chicken killing machines

Jun 11 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

Author Julian Barnes _200

Excerpt from Nothing to be Frightened of

MISSING God is for me rather like Being English: a feeling roused mainly by attack. When my country is abused, a dormant, not to say narcoleptic, patriotism stirs. And when it comes to God, I find myself provoked more by atheistic absolutism than by, say, the often bland tentative hopefulness of the Church of England.

The other month, I found myself at dinner with neighbours. A dozen of us around a kitchen table long enough to seat Christ and his disciples. Several conversations were proceeding simultaneously, when an argument suddenly spiked a few places away and a young man (the son of the house) shouted sarcastically, “But why should God do that for His son and not for the rest of us?”

The exchange spread; my host C., an old friend and notorious rationalist, backed up his son: “There’s a book about how people survived Crucifixion, how sometimes they weren’t dead when they were taken down. The centurions could be bribed.” Me: “What’s that got to do with it?” He (exasperatedly rationalist): “The point is, it couldn’t have happened.”

Me (rationally exasperated with rationality): “But that’s the whole point – that it couldn’t have happened. The point is, that if you’re a Christian, it did.”