With all the centuries of thought on philosophy behind us, someone should have been able to prove or disprove the existence of God by now. That it hasn’t happened is a testament both to the complexity of the problem, and to its vagueness.
In Confessions of a Dying Mind: The Blind Faith of Atheism, Haulianlal Guite sets out to chart the territory of this debate, at least for the Christian conception of the sentient, all-powerful God. The mechanism he uses to frame this debate is a discussion between a man, Dyer, in a near-death experience, and an angel, Walker (or is it an apparition generated by Dyer’s brain in the post-surgery trauma state?).
Dyer is a staunch atheist, taking this as the logical choice for any thinking man, and the angel will persuade him that atheism is as much based on inner faith as believing in God.
Given that the book is essentially just two people talking, Guite uses all sorts of devices to liven up the flow. From a science fiction device straight out of Theodore Sturgeon, to virtual tours of the trials of Galileo and important moments from Dyer’s past, to diagrams that liken religion to the earth’s crust, we have it all.
Alas, this doesn’t quite make up for a rather tedious and plodding book. Guite makes the cardinal mistake of supposing that an interesting idea can replace competent writing. The latter is a craft that takes skill and practice to master; ideas on the other hand come to everyone. So we have a virtual manual of beginning writers’ mistakes in this book.
Take, for example, the usage of English. Guite has a real problem with homophones, probably from not paying attention to the spellings of words in his reading. So nearly all occurrences of “quiet” are written as “quite”, and we have such gems as “the scalps fell off his eyes.” A single good round of copy edits by a professional would have taken care of these errors.
Then there is the aversion to using “said”. Instead of using this simple verb to denote dialogue, we have “judged”, “dared”, “sashayed along”, and more. Not content with that, we then have adverbs on top of those, “jubilantly reasoned”, “dismally remarked”, and then further modifying clauses, “Dyers agreed, waiving (sic) his hand”, “stung Walker, adding insult to the man’s injury”.
And finally, and more insidiously, there is the narrator’s voice supplying explanations for what the characters just said. To my mind, this is the worst of all. If the entire structure of the book is for the two characters to explain their logical arguments to each other, what need for a third voice to add to the discussion?
What’s expected—no, required—is for the characters to explain the concept fully and lucidly.
In various interviews, Guite has explained this book as an outpouring of his thoughts and concerns. As an amateur exercise in unburdening the author’s mind, it may be a success. As a novel intended to be read and discussed, it falls short.