The God Desire: On Being a Reluctant Atheist

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In the ancient Greco-Roman world, Eros is the Greek god of sexual attraction, known as Eros to the ancient Greeks and as Cupid in Roman mythology. Eros is the god who smites the maid’s breasts with arrows that elicit blinding feelings of love and a primordial force.

Pothos was one of the erotes, or gods of love, in ancient Greek belief. This group of male gods formed the retinue of Aphrodite and did her bidding. In Theogony, Eros begins accompanying Aphrodite from the time the goddess is born from the sea foam created by the castration of the Titan Uranus. It is believed he is described as her son in later works because he is consistently mentioned as accompanying Aphrodite. At the tender age of thirteen the nation welcomed Euro ’96 and with it Baddiel and Skinner’s anthem “Three Lions on a Shirt.” I will never forget returning from a school trip to Alton Towers listening on the radio to England beating Spain 4:2 on penalties. We were parked outside the school gates, our parents waiting, but we refused to get off the coach until the game finished. At the moment of jubilation we sang the entire song, word for word in unison with my class, teachers, the bus driver and all waiting for us outside before departing. A pseudo religious experience, the hymn of our generation. It’s an interesting book, offering a candid insight into a man wrestling with life’s big questions and, whether you agree with his conclusions or not, it’s an enjoyable read. Driven by desire Growing up with typical football “fans” yet not having the sporting ability or the natural physique to truly fulfil either the position of “a player” or a “hooligan.” Baddiel was the example I could emulate. Funny, intelligent, confident and straight talking. I have admired his work ever since and in some weird way I have grown up with him. I last saw Baddiel at the Hay Festival being interviewed by Simon Schama on his book “Jews don’t count.” A masterful treatment on the antisemitism of the progressive left.Yet it troubles and surprises him that favourite authors including John Updike, whose work he “worships”, and others he considers intellectual peers such as his friend Frank Skinner, a Catholic, could be believers. He describes being astonished at Skinner’s conviction that he would burn in hellfire for living with his girlfriend after his divorce: “I had not recognised, not in any visceral way, what that meant for him. That was my own failing.” In some ways the book feels like an attempt to understand the phenomenon as much as to rebut it.

But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. There is a telling story about a car ride with his friend and comedy partner Frank Skinner, in which Skinner, a devout Catholic, worries about being unable to take communion because the Church would not recognise his divorce, and therefore viewed his new relationship as adultery.

Hesiod and Alcaeus were not the only Greek poets to detail the birth of Eros. Aristophanes, like Hesiod, writes of the creation of the universe. Aristophanes was a Greek comedic playwright who is famed for his poem, Birds. There were some groups in the ancient Greek world that made offerings to Eros before going into battle. The Sacred Band of Thebes, for instance, used Eros as their patron god. The Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite fighting force that consisted of 150 pairs of homosexual men. Eros as Aphrodite’s Son In this very short book, comedian David Baddiel damns religion with praise that is both faint and under-researched. Atheists, he laments, have a habit of denying “the ­presence in themselves of what religion is there to serve”, pretending they are “too hard and adult to require comfort and hope in the face of death”.

This in itself tells us something about God. God is a God who desires. Jesus presents us not with a distant Sovereign manipulating the universe in some cold and calculated manner but with a warm God with wants and wishes and things he wills. What God Desires After completing the many trials set by the goddess of love, with the help of her lost love Eros, Psyche was granted immortality. Psyche drank the nectar of the gods, ambrosia, and was able to live with Eros as an immortal on Mount Olympus.

A few said that he was actually Aphrodite’s grandson. As the son of Eros, he created the yearning that followed love.

Eros often meddled in the affairs of gods and mortals causing much drama for all involved. Eros carried two types of unavoidable arrows. One set of arrows was the gold-tipped love-inducing arrows, and the other was led tipped and made the receiver immune to romantic advances. Eros and Apollo As the embodiment of sexual power, Eros could sway the desires of both gods and mortals by wounding them with one of his arrows. Eros is not only known as the god of fertility but he is also regarded as the protector of male homosexual love. This blog, Revelatory Creative, is a labor of love. My goal is to spend time studying and writing about the kingdom of God so that the church—you and me—can find our place within this largely forgotten but central Bible message. Aphrodite was jealous of a beautiful mortal princess. The beauty of this mere mortal woman was said to rival that of the goddess of love. The mortal men were leaving the goddess of love and beauty’s altars barren. While artists seemingly forgot the goddess of love had been one of their favorite subjects. This is the obverse challenge of David Baddiel’s new book “The God Desire”. A wonderfully honest insight into Baddiel’s journey of psychology that attempts to rationalise the distinctly human need to make reality not entirely mute.Together the winged gods are known as the Erotes, and they represent the different forms love can take. Anteros symbolized love returned, Pothos, longing for an absent love, and Himeros, impetus love.