Adams Versus God

Phillip Adams says he stopped believing in God at the age of six. At forty-six he has gathered the best of his essays on God and godlessness into this bible-banging, irreverent but not irrelevant book. The scriptures according to Phillip range from creationism, calvinism and communism, to apocalypticism, from politics to prostitution, from the deep north of Queensland to the deep south of the USA, from Shiites to Jehovah's Witnesses, Adams pulls no punches as he pummels the faithful. For Adams, 'God is a word given to absence... of information, of comprehension, of answers. The idea of God grows in the way a balloon grows, a membrane inflated by ignorance.' Religion, says Adams, is an issue of the 1980's: he exposes the dangerous links betwwen politics and religion, the role of religion in the nuclear arms race, and the dogmatism of ideologies as a cause of conflict in the world. ADAMS VERSUS GOD may bring down the wrath of, er, someone, on young Phillip's head. It is guaranteed to bring on a flood of letters from angry Christians. But before you write in, however, Phillip Admas says: 'Let's not let a little thing like God come between us.'