Why Do The New Atheists Attack Philosophy?

Okay so we all know that the new atheists aren't great fans of religion. But it's curious that their colourful criticism extends to philosophy as well. Richard Dawkins thinks philosophy gives you “special training in obscurantism”, Peter Atkins has called it “a complete waste of time” and Lawrence Krauss says the field reminds him of that old Woody Allen joke, “those that can't do, teach, and those that can't teach, teach gym."¹ But hasn't philosophy been the den of atheists, at least in the modern period? Some church-folk still advise extreme caution in exploring philosophy, claiming to have heard of once faithful students letting go of Christianity through their studies. Actual names and details may not be known; it's simply one of those lingering, archetypal narratives that has so much cultural resonance that everyone “just knows” that it happens. The image of the philosopher has for a while been of hard, irreligious scepticism. But are these new, popular, unbelieving spokespersons in the process of changing this image – of making atheism appear at odds with philosophy? Well who knows but it's sure curious as to what's motivating this lash-out against what we'd got used to thinking was atheism's amicable buddy. Why the animosity here?

I have a couple hunches. For one, I think these folk have bought heavily into a crude narrative of how our civilisation has made the scientific progress that is has. This story paints philosophy with negative moral tones and orients its adherents' very sense of what is noble and courageous away from it. The story is more familiar in its anti-religious form which goes something this like; “before, we, in our hubris, used to explain the world superstitiously by appealing to spirits, ghosts and all sorts of things that had anthropocentric concerns, but now we know that the world does not revolve around us and that we need to humble ourselves by carefully studying nature, letting our observations of her inform our ways.” This story can get broadened to encompass philosophy too; “before, we, in our hubris, used to think that we could figure things out by sitting in our chairs and just thinking, but now we know that we need to actually get out into the world, observe it, and let nature teach us how things are.” Philosophy, then, gets branded as prideful (for it assumes that the world is so much like us that by using our ordinary, intuitive concepts we can simply think our way to answers), and lazy (it is unwilling to step out into the world and wrestle with it). Science, on the other hand, is contrite and courageous. The scientist has learnt, perhaps the hard way, that the world is strange and cannot be properly explained using “common sense”. She is thus humbled and thirsty to learn. She is brave too, willing to get messy through actually exploring and observing nature. Her humility carries over also into her openness to correction. Nature can show her theories wrong and the scientist must bow before the data.

For a person persuaded of this narrative, their entire sense of where we've come from (who we are, therefore), and even themselves individually as a part of this, is pitched with philosophy valenced as undignified and unworthy. Science is exalted as a higher way of being and the two are at odds; philosophy was part of the problem holding science back. It is interesting how the new atheists display such reverence for science (beyond, I think, typical respect for its achievements). It is possible, in having this sense of things, to feel deep admiration for science and awe at the world it's revealed and the technological feats it's delivered, while painting philosophy as stagnant, sad, old-world and crusty - archaic and even threatening when it continues to assert its relevance. The integrity and progress of science thus requires, according to the new atheists, the retreat of philosophy.

Secondly, it seems to me that the new atheists think that their position is blatantly, obviously true. Consider a contrast case. You can be an atheist but think that, actually, the question of whether God exists or not is a profoundly difficult one. You may have reached the conclusion of atheism, but it took you a lot of hard work and thought, and you can see how, somewhere down this difficult path, someone could veer off and go in a theistic direction. In other words, you think it's conceivable that other, equally intelligent and rational people can, without forfeiting that rationality and intelligence, disagree with you on God's existence. You may think they're wrong, “but hey”, you think, “this is an important and difficult question where intelligent people disagree.”

Well Dawkins are co and not that kind of atheist. To believe in God, in their eyes, just is to step into irrationality and delusion (watch Dawkins' current show on Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life, and see how often a “religious” view is contrasted with what he calls “the rational” view). But this sort of exasperation-come-disparagement flows most naturally when you are convinced of the plain-as-day, transparent, obviousness of your beliefs. If somebody, say, doubted that the sky is typically blue, you could only reason with them so much without them agreeing, before you start to write them off as irrational. That the sky is typically blue is just obviously true for anyone able to see it. To fail to believe it is to have something seriously wrong with you cognitively. From the language of the new atheists, it's clear that they feel similarly about the non-existence of God. God's non-existence is seen as so obvious (to a modern, scientifically educated person anyway), that to not accept it is to show that you're intellectually impaired.

It's no wonder, then, that these guys have a hard time with philosophers. With Socrates as the paradigm example, through history philosophers have been annoying people by pointing out that life is a lot more bloomin' difficult to figure out than you might think. Although I reject the view that “there are no answers in philosophy, only questions” philosophy does show you that reaching those answers can be hard, difficult work. A philosopher will slow you down and show you that, even if you're ultimately right, there's a lot more nuance and subtlety you have to consider before you can really say that you've successfully made your case. This is something you will have absolutely no appreciation for - indeed mostly frustration and incredulity with - if you think that your views are already blindingly obvious. You'll want to see people believe them and take action on them, not debate some (to you) irrelevant, besides-the-point, minor detail. You'll fear that people will miss or avoid the obvious bigger picture and you'll get angry when they appear to be doing so. If your views are clearly correct then it's just obfuscating, obscurantist sophistry to try and undermine them with some clever-sounding logic-chopping. Dawkins wants to steam-roll ahead with his cause, not be told that the central argument of his book confuses two senses of the word “simplicity”. Here, then, is another source of new atheist contempt for philosophy.

1Richard Dawkins is actually directing this insult at philosopher Anthony Kenny but it's clear that he's using the fact that Kenny is a philosopher as the insult itself. At any rate, the full post is available here. Peter Atkins' comment comes from his debate last year with William Lane Craig in the Q&A (full debate here). Laurence Krauss gave that comment in an interview here.

Is it Right for Science to Motivate Someone's Reading of the Bible?

I would have mentioned in the Relay update entries I did over a year ago that I spent some time on that programme reading around origins. That is, reading about the debate surrounding evolution, the age of the earth, and how to read Genesis (amongst other parts of the Bible). I'm sure I promised some sort of report of my findings. Yeah, well... anyway... here's some thoughts on just one related issue.

You can roughly divide Christians into two camps: those who think that there is a contradiction between what the Bible teaches and some important theory of modern science, and those who think the Bible is basically harmonious with mainstream modern science. I say roughly because there are all sorts of subdivisions to be found. There are Christians who think that the Bible can't accommodate evolution but can accommodate an old earth. There are Christians who agree that the Bible is compatible with both, but disagree on how exactly to interpret the text. But for the sake of avoiding endless qualifications, let's stick with the rough sorting-out and call one camp the Concord group and the other camp the Discord group. Obviously enough, the Discord group thinks Biblical teaching clashes with some orthodox scientific theory whereas the Concord group thinks they are really in agreement. 

I'm not, in this post, going to make a case for which group ultimately has it right. It's not my interest here to make a case for whether or not the Bible is compatible with evolutionary/old earth science (E/OES from here on). I am, however, going to criticise a particular argument/attitude put forward by some in the Discord camp. I could make criticisms of some Concord habits too but, as it happens, it's the Discord folk I want to interact with today.

Some Discord-ers are a bit suspicious of how Concord-ers approach the Bible. They observe that Concord-ers are interested in seeing the Bible as compatible with E/OES and it's thought that this “interest” makes for a spiritually or rationally dubious agenda. They think their pro-E/OES motivation, regardless of the conclusion reached, is dubious in principle. It's thought that it disrespects the Bible's integrity or authority, that it fails to treat it as Christian ought to. Describing Concord-ers, you might hear some Discord-ers say things like, “they do not start from the Bible alone, instead they take man's ideas and try to squeeze Scripture around it.” This critical attitude does, I think, have a proper target. But that target is often missed.

If you believe in something like inerrancy – that the Bible does not err but is wholly truthful in its teachings – then it's important to remember that, even if the Bible is always right, it doesn't mean that our understanding of it is. In other words, we can make a distinction between what the Bible in fact teaches, and our beliefs about what it teaches. Sometimes our beliefs about what the Bible teaches are right. Sometimes they're wrong. So while the Bible might be “infallible”, our interpretations of it have no such guarantee, even if on the whole they're broadly reasonable.

Bear that in mind and imagine a person – Rufus we'll call him – who's in the following scenario. Rufus is an honest-to-goodness, Bible-believing Christian. He's been doing some reading and thinking recently about science and how it relates to his faith and he's come to a tricky impasse. Rufus has always believed that the Bible teaches a young earth, mostly because that's what his church has taught him. But he's come to believe there's really compelling, perhaps unavoidable evidence that the earth is old. He really does trust that the Bible teaches truth though. In fact, after having what he thought were contradictions in the Bible satisfyingly ironed out a few months earlier, he's more convinced of inerrancy than ever.

He's in a bind. Unless he wants to embrace flat-out contradiction, his beliefs need some modifying. Recognising the distinction between his belief in the truth of the Bible's content and his belief about what that content is helps us to see that there are three beliefs he's juggling between and they can't all stay. He can't believe 1) that the earth is actually old, 2) that the Bible teaches it's young, and 3) that the Bible teaches truth. For if the earth is old and the Bible teaches truth, then the Bible can't teach that the earth is young. And if the Bible teaches a young earth and the Bible teaches truth, then the earth can't be old. And if the earth is old and the Bible teaches it's young, then the Bible can't always teach truth. You can accept two of the three beliefs together but not all of them. Each combo of two of ends up logically excluding the third. Rufus must give up one of those beliefs.

Naturally, it makes sense to keep the two beliefs one has strongest evidence, grounds, or assurance for. You keep the strongest two and, on their basis, conclude that the third, weaker belief is probably false. Say that in our scenario - and the details that were given make this sound likely - Rufus is very convinced of both the old age of the earth and the inerrancy of the Bible but less convinced that the Bible teaches a young earth (he trusts the teaching of his home-church overall but he's had differences with them before). If this is the case, then he is perfectly entitled to hold onto his belief that the Bible teaches truth and that the earth is old, and to conclude from both of these that the Bible does not teach a young earth. In fact, that would just be good practise for keeping his beliefs in some sensible condition.

In other words, it would be perfectly legitimate for Rufus to seek an alternate reading of the Bible's teaching – one that doesn't entail a young earth – out of the joint motivation of his belief in inerrancy and his belief in the old age of the earth. There is nothing arbitrary, unrighteous or otherwise improper about Rufus' practise here. He is perfectly entitled to try and find an interpretation of the Bible which accommodates the scientific theories he's convinced of.

Of course Rufus might have a friend – we'll call her Molly – who is a Discord-er observing his journey. And she might find the new readings of key passages, say Genesis chapter one, that Rufus brings to the table thoroughly unconvincing. Molly might think that Rufus is, frankly, butchering the text and clearly going against the grain of its intended meaning. She might find his interpretations strained and clumsy, and tell him so. Fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Rufus may have done the best he could have faced with three mutually incompatible beliefs but that doesn't guarantee that he chose to abandon the one that actually was false. Rufus might, through further study, find the evidence for a young-earth reading of the Bible stronger than he thought, warranting a re-examination of which beliefs he held on to. Though he was rationally motivated to read the Bible differently, that doesn't necessarily mean he'll find an E/OES interpretation that fits, and perhaps Concord-ers do run into trouble there.

The point being, it is okay to think, if you are that way convinced, that Concord readings of the Bible are awkward. That they do not do justice to the text. That they quite obviously fail to allow harmony between the Bible and E/OES. You can legitimately target that and point out where you find the interpretations weak. But do not think that in seeking a harmonious reading, the Concord-er is being irrational, or poorly motivated. As I have hopefully demonstrated, it is perfectly proper, in some circumstances – those that Rufus found himself in for instance - to allow your scientific beliefs to motivate a change in your reading of Scripture.

Can We Do Without Gender Identities?

Here's a quick one. Can we do without gender identities? Could our biological sex be irrelevant to our self-understanding? Could my sense of who I am not take my sex into account? I don't think so and below are some Taylor-inspired thoughts as to why.

Taylor argues that our identity is in large part our sense of where we fall in relation to matters of human significance. It is about where we locate ourselves in moral/evaluative space. Here's how he puts it in The Ethics of Authenticity;

"When we understand what it is to define ourselves ... we see that we have to take as background some sense of what is significant. Defining myself means finding what is significant in my difference from others. I may be the only person with exactly 3,732 hairs on my head, or be exactly the same height as some tree on the Siberian plain, but so what? If I begin to say that I define myself by my ability to articulate important truths, or play the Hammerklavier like no one else, or revive the tradition of my ancestors, then we are in the domain of recognizable self-definitions.

The difference is plain. We understand right way that the latter properties have human significance, or can easily be seen by people to have this, whereas the former do not..." [Emphasis added]¹

So then, it is understandable that peoples' identities include things like being good at football, or being a conservative, or knowing a lot about the Bible, or being born in a city famous for its musical culture, or whatever. These relate to things of human significance. But how about gender identities? Do these relate to things of human significance?

Being a woman or a man is clearly not just a mere physical fact that one should get over. It's not comparable to, say, just having a strong big toe, or having a mole on your back. These are trivial things. But being a man or being a woman is hugely relevant to important human endeavours, namely the whole package of mating; the attraction, the sex, and (at some point) childbirth and child-rearing. It is humanly important that there are men and there are women – that there isn't just one sort of human. The kind of beings that we are makes this important.

By applying Taylor's insight we can see that gender identities exist (at least partly) because of the significance that is found in biological sex. So as child grows up, he or she learns that social space consists of men and women. As the child's self-awareness grows he/she gradually become more conscious of which part of social space he/she is in. The child learns, “I am a girl” or “I am a boy”. More than that, he/she learns that it is significant which he/she is. That it's not a throw-away fact about them. It is a fundamental part of their identity – of who they are.

Gender identities will be around as long as biological sex carries human significance. And you should be careful about forecasting the demise of that any time soon. We can rightfully challenge the kinds of gender identities our culture has developed but it's unlikely that we can do without them.

1Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Harvard, 1991, pg35-36.

Apologizing for Christianity

Activity here has been a little slow lately. I assure you I'm working on some things but hey, why not use this quiet period to check out something new?

My good friend Rolo from the states (you may remember him from his guest series) has started his own blog on Christian thought and apologetics. Definitely keep your eyes on it. He has some truly worthwhile and unique thoughts to share, plus the blog will be a decent spot for discussion on questions within Biblical scholarship (did the Biblical events really happen? Has the text been changed? Who wrote the Bible? What does it mean? etc) which I tend to leave aside given my more philosophical focus. Rolo's pretty handy on that stuff so go see what he has to say.

http://apologizingforchristianity.blogspot.co.uk/

The Philosophy of e-Reading

E-Readers are the newest devices to be welcomed into an ensemble of familiar portable friends: the mobile, laptop, mp3-player. It is no longer novel to spy one in the hands of the commuter a few seats forward. But just what are we to think of them? Will they revolutionise the way we read? And if so, for good or bad? Technology is an important enough aspect of our lives to warrant philosophical reflection. Below are some of my thoughts/experiences and much is inspired (or simply taken) from discussion with fellow book-lovers on just how this technology is shaping our lives - what excites us about it and what's more worrying. I got my Kindle (there are other e-readers but Amazon's has “lead the way”) last Christmas so I've had a few months to observe how it's shaped my experience as a reader. I'll start first of all with the loss; what valuable goods does ordinary reading have that e-reading does not?

A friend of mine brought this point out for me and I think they're on to something big. E-reading surrenders some of the physicality of engaging with a book. When you read To Kill A Mockingbird in the traditional way, you have the feel of paper on your fingertips. This is different to the feel of a button (or touch screen) not just in the trivial way in which they are different surfaces. It's different in that this paper just is my copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. The story is “embodied” in real concrete material. By contrast, the Kindle's screen and features are no particular story but all stories, or anything at all that happens to be loaded on to it. When you hold the Kindle you are not holding To Kill A Mockingbird in the same way even if that story appears. The experience is much less concrete.

Physicality is important to us as bodily beings. Something feels more real if we can touch it. Consider an animal that you've only read about or seen on TV. When you go to the zoo the animal seems more real to you now that you've seen it in the flesh. But it becomes even more real when you touch it, feel its fur on your skin. The digital age is an abstract age and our reading too is abstracted when it enters that realm. The sense of concrete realness though, is important for our ability to make the fullest meaningful attachments. The pages of a real book have creases, bends, marks where they've come into contact with our living. “Oh that little tear happened when I was travelling to visit Soph for the first time.” Our particular, individual book gets linked with these sorts of significances. An e-book, however, is “perfect”, identical to everyone else's. It can bear no particular mark of meaning.

A point more simply put is that it is harder to love an abstraction than something concretely “there”. It is harder to “love” To Kill A Mockingbird when one has no concrete object to direct the love. I have felt the same about music's march into the digital. Mp3s satisfy me if I'm a casual fan of the artist, but if I love an album, I must physically own it. Having the CD or vinyl along with the artwork tangibly in your hands cannot be rivalled by a digital booklet. The sense of loss can probably be felt more strongly with reading given that a book is constantly held, whereas vinyl or a CD is only touched briefly before being put it into the player.

I am tempted to say that this loss is more a concern for the avid reader of fiction, where emotional connection tends to be strongest. Most of my own reading is much more geared toward the pillaging of information in non-fictional, sometimes dry, academic sources. The line of course is sometimes blurred. There are those few books of, say, philosophy, which manage to get so close to the heart of my lived experience that they are cherished, not just intellectually admired. I would not be satisfied with solely having a digital copy for those. Generally though, music is a more emotionally connective experience for me and I have been more embracing of digital reading than listening. 

There is another loss I've felt with music that I haven't with reading. I hope a resistance to this loss is widespread. Mp3 players and programs like iTunes and Spotify enable you to quickly switch between songs, whereas a CD player (a bog-standard one anyway) or a vinyl player essentially committed you to the one record you put on. These older forms of listening to music encouraged attention to an entire album. You were trained to digest it as a whole and have patience with songs that you didn't immediately like but which you often grew to. Newer ways of listening to music enable you to flit between tracks at a whim. There is talk of the “death of the album” and a music industry that will grow to be more and more focussed on short releases, perhaps single songs at a time. E-readers also have this potential to enable “flitting”. You only have room for one or two physical books in your bag when you travel. On the journey you are committed to those and you may progress through them even if they're not always thrilling. You must hold your attention even if you're not very stimulated. With a Kindle, you can have hundreds of books on you at a time. If you're bored of one you can effortlessly switch to another. There's no pain barrier you need to put up with and you need never learn (or you may eventually unlearn) the habit to persevere with a difficult (but worthwhile) read.

Losing such valuable habits would be a great loss. I am thankful that I haven't noticed such an effect on myself from using a Kindle. Perhaps it's too soon to tell. Even though I am a passionate defender of “the album”, I can now see that newer ways of listening to music have decreased even my patience. Maybe, though, books just don't lend themselves to flitting so easily. Albums were always able to be understood as a whole consisting of smaller individual parts: songs. The album is able to be sensibly divided, chopped down. It's not so easy with books. Sure you have chapters, but chapters can't stand alone like songs can. You can flit between the opening tracks of Lungs and Origin Of Symmetry but you can't just flit between the opening chapters of Moby Dick and Oliver Twist. Again though, the future is too uncertain at this stage. Perhaps the influence of the technology will force the shape of books to change in order to accommodate the new breed of reader, as Nicholar Carr nervously predicts in The Shallows.

It is an open question as to where the developing industry and culture will take us, but as things stand I believe e-reading can bring great goods if well and wisely incorporated into our existing literary lives. Aside from the obvious advantage of e-readers in the realm of simple convenience (mass storage of books in a tiny space), they bring great goods for “informational” kinds of reading in particular. E-books are cheaper than (new) physical books and while they probably should be a lot cheaper than they are, these savings quickly mount up and make it more affordable for independent researchers to get hold of important works. It is also a relief to be able to upload academic papers to the device. Even though the digitising of journal articles and their release on the internet increased their accessibility, the actual experience of reading them digitally wasn't always pleasant. Back-lit computer screens don't easily permit long periods of concentrating on text and even laptops, despite being mobile, don't always make it easy to read when “on the go”. Now academic papers can be “easy on the eyes” and thoroughly mobile. Having a Kindle has allowed me to incorporate more papers into my regular reading. The ability to highlight text and easily makes notes in it also increases the academic worth of the technology. E-readers could be valuable for intellectual gains. There are also environmental benefits in dispensing with so much paper.

Overall, I think e-readers are excellent complements to our existing personal libraries. My immediate experience has left me feeling positive. One should be aware of their ability to de-humanise certain experiences, but this shouldn't overshadow the gains in informational reading and, yes, convenience. I've learnt though, that technology is no submissive play-thing, and we need to keep critical eyes on how these devices change our culture and ourselves in the years to come.

Those are my thoughts anyway. What's your experience with e-readers? What promise or threat do you see in them for our future?

A Reading On "What Does It Mean To Say We Live In A Secular Age?"

For something slightly different, I decided to record a reading of the introduction to Charles Taylor's wonderful book, A Secular Age. It is a challenging read, yes, but it soars above the dry, academic voice too often consulted to deliver intellect sans life. I hope you'll be able to enjoy its richness, once you forgive me for any mispronunciations of exotic and foreign words. It's the kind of book you could write hundreds more about, filling in each insight that hums the intuitive notes you long to see transcribed into explicit symphony. 

Hosted by kiwi6.com file hosting. Download mp3 - Free File Hosting.

What Can Suffering Do For Belief In God? (3)

In part 1 and 2 I tried to show that when a life-narrative built around immanent goods collapses, a Grand-Story or an Anti-Story can appear compelling, even obviously true. I think that there are some important implications that a Christian can draw from this.

Firstly, we need to complicate the picture a bit. Up until now I've pretty much equated belief in God with belief in a Grand-Story, but actually you can believe in God and not believe in a Grand-Story. Belief in God is compatible with a story focussed on immanent goods, or even an Anti-Story. You might think, for instance, that although God exists he is in fact concerned with providing you with immanent goods. God, so conceived, yearns mostly to provide you with a spouse, getting you a good career, maybe even making you wealthy. On such a view, God is concerned with making you happy – giving you a fulfilling life in the here and now. This is not a Grand-Story. A Grand-Story claims that life is about matters higher than immanent goods, but this view of God forms a narrative whereby immanent goods are still the focus. As for an Anti-Story, you might think that God exists but that he is unconcerned with the world, aloof, distant. Or if not with the world as a whole, then with you. You might see yourself as damned, exiled, removed from God's favour and care.

From a Christian point of view, an Anti-Story which maintains God's existence can be destructive but it at least leaves one open to an experience of grace. You might think that God has cast you aside only to then experience forgiveness before the cross of Christ. But I want to concentrate on God-belief which maintains a focus on immanent goods. This is because I think this kind of narrative is both quite popular and also spiritually dangerous.

The danger lies in the fact that such a story can look, to the person who believes it, to be a Grand-Story even though it isn't. After all if you believe in God it sure seems like you're believing in something higher, something transcendent and“beyond”. It certainly seems like you believe in some grand purpose and meaning. After all, you believe in God for pity's sake! Here, then, is the risk. You believe that God ultimately wants you, say, to be happily married. But it doesn't happen. You never marry. Or you do marry but it ends in divorce, or your spouse dies all too young. Or you remain married but miserable. Your life-narrative is shattered. You thought your life was all about finding romance. You thought everything was heading in that glorious direction. But it hasn't been. Where do you go now? What narrative do you adopt? Do you go to a Grand-Story and read your life as having had some deeper sense behind it, or do you go to an Anti-Story and find yourself not believing in meaning at all? Well, if you think a Grand-Story is what you had been believing all along, then it will seem obvious to you, when this collapses, that the only way to go is an Anti-Story. It will seem to you that you've tried believing in God, you've tried putting your faith in some ultimate purpose, and it's come up empty. It will seem obvious to you that God doesn't exist. Even though your faith was never in a Grand-Story, the illusion that it was set you up for atheism.

The lesson is obvious. Christians need to be very careful regarding what sort of God-narrative they preach. One that proclaims a God concerned first of all with providing us immanent goods will set people up for disillusion and unbelief. Our message cannot be that God is concerned just with making ourselves happy in the here and now. Such a message actually shuts people off from the chance to experience a deeper narrative to their lives when immanent goods are taken from them. A story of loss can become a story about hearing the call of God. Disappointment can become the chance to find some more worthy calling. A mature Christianity allows people to experience their lives as rich in meaning even when life takes away treasured goods. The ability for Christianity to provide such a higher narrative is one of the reasons why it can resonate so strongly with deep human longings. To reduce it to immanent concerns trivialises it and robs it of this power.

Evangelistically, taking heed of the existential side of suffering can open up dialogue with those pained over why God would allow bad things. An existential approach allows us to read the question in a different way. On the received diagnosis of the problem of suffering outlined in part 1, you can only really converse with someone about suffering if you're dealing purely with the intellectual problem; you then have an argument to look at and you can challenge its premises or what's inferred from them. But you can't really say anything to the person struggling with the emotional issue. What can you say to a bunch of irrational feelings? You are perhaps better off saying nothing at all. Offer a hug if it's appropriate. But if we recognise that the “emotional” problem is often an existential one, we once more have the power to speak to the person.

“Why does God allow suffering?” need not be read as a blind outcry of pain but instead as the question “what sense can I make of the suffering in my life? What story can run through it preserved?” We have the possibility of articulating an alternative to the Anti-Story – the possibility of providing a better reading of their situation. Of course this isn't straight forward to do. It's not a matter of just picking premises and going after them. And there will still be times where silence and a hug are the right moves. But even if difficult, even if requiring spades of wisdom and sympathy, there is the hope that over time a person might come to see their life-narrative within the wider narrative of the gospel.