THE CITY

The City
In a witty metaphor, Guinness compares apologists who try to
win over self-deceived unbelievers by continually restating and
repackaging their arguments to tourists who think that non-English
speakers will understand them if they repeat what they said “more
slowly and loudly” (114). Rather than fool ourselves into thinking
the right method or technique will convince willful atheists, we need
to “focus on the inescapable tension and dynamic conflict inherent
in unbelief ” (93).
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Once we see, really see, that, we will realize that reason alone
cannot reach such people, for their willful disobedience and selfdeception
prevent them, despite their protestations to the contrary,
from being purely neutral or disinterested. What we as apologists
must focus on, therefore, is not perfecting apologetical knock-out
punches, but on grasping “the inherent tension between the truth
and the falseness in all unbelief ” (95). Only then will we be able to
discern the “difference between what unbelievers assert they are and
who they really are” (95).
According to Guinness, unbelievers deal with this tension in one
of two ways: by moving toward what he terms the dilemma pole or
the diversion pole. Nietzsche offers the prime example of one who
chose the dilemma pole. Unwilling to sweep the tensions caused by
unbelief under the rug, and willing to say true to the courage of his
(anti-) convictions, he pressed onward to the logical (and dark) end
of his unbelief. He even relished in taking potshots at fellow atheists
who, like those from Victorian England, cravenly chose the diversion
pole and pretended that there was meaning and purpose in the world
despite their refusal to acknowledge the only final source of such
meaning and purpose. That is to say, in the face of the survival-ofthe-fittest
determinism demanded by their atheism, they, along with
their diversionary heirs, continued to act as if morality, beauty, and
innate human dignity were real things.
Both strategies are open to the unbeliever; however, Guinness
makes it clear that far more people choose the diversion pole. For
every Sartre—whom Guinness describes as “more consistent to
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