Faith and writing...

...Lunch with the FT: Zadie Smith

“But I’m not interested in the scientists’ approach, the Dawkins thing — that if there is no creator god, then the whole thing is not valid — because that would mean that so many people of the past must be not worth reading. Were they all idiots? To me the various faiths are a series of philosophical systems. The principle of Islam — submission — is a fundamental of human life. And as I see it, the reality of sin is another fundamental. A tenet of the mild Anglicanism most people grew up with in England, that you search for the sin inside first, is a defining factor of our moral lives. So I use these structures, and I’ve benefited from them. If you dismiss it all, you dismiss what we’re doing here. And the possibility of a creating source — I don’t say consciousness, I don’t say god — seems to me isn’t provable or disprovable one way or another. That goodness does exist, that’s my god, it’s enough."