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The quote here for Clive Barker is out of context; while he does not believe in the traditional patriarchal view of God, he is certainly a believer in SOMEthing supernatural that created him. He has a disdain for the interpreters of the message and organized religion but is not an unbeliever. The full quote is on his site: http://www.clivebarker.info/religion.html
Wikipedia has a statement that he countered Ann Coulter on Real Time with Bill Maher by stating he is a Christian. I have not seen the episode so I cannot verify this, but from various interviews and statements on his own website, he is neither an atheist or agnostic.
Thank you for your contribution. Could you source the quote about his creation belief? I found this:
http://www.clivebarker.info/religion.html "spirituality is the way you live your life and the way you interact with others."
This viewpoint of spirituality seems purposefully devoid of supernatural belief.
Also:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/10366.Clive_Barker "Now, I don't believe that God exists. I think that God is creation of men, by men, and for men."
This alone disqualifies him from being a theist in the common sense of the word.
- The context of the entire piece reads as 'I don't believe THAT God (that Mankind twisted and misinterpreted) exists', not 'I don't believe God exists at all'. - Lil
- Actually, the fault lies in the limitations modern Atheists place on the idea of what a Theist is, or what Religion is. The Truth is, in regards to his comment about Spirituality, that;s not even that uncommon in Christian Thought. The idea that Spirituality must be about something Supernatural making contact with you or having a Supernatural experience is more of a Caricature than a reflection of what actual Theists, or actual Christians believe in Uniformly. Many Christian Thinkers from The Desert Fathers to C. S. Lewis to Dougla Ottati all say pretty much what Barker did, and no one questions them as Christians, much less Theists.
Fr that matter, there are Christian Naturalists, like Rudven Alves or Michael Dowd who express Spirituality in terms of our Lives and how we live instead of as connection to a separate Supernatural realm. The discussion in Theology or in Churches, even amongst the Rank and File, aren't as clear cut and simplistic as one would gather from the Militant opposition “Religion” gets from contemporary Anti-Theists.
Even the idea of God as a Supernatural being is questioned by many Theologians.
For that matter, the idea that God does not exist as entity isn't even new. Its more uncommon than the idea of Spirituality being about how one leads ones life, but if you read Paul Tilich it's impossible to say all Christian Theologians see God as a Supernatural entity distinct from his Creation. Paul Tillich did not think God existed either, but he did not deny that God as. To Tillich, God did not exist, God was existence itself, and our experiences with the Greater existence we find ourselves in is our experience with God. Would that disqualify him as a Theist? Does that mean he was an Atheist ad not a Christian?
Tillich was also not obscure, he was one of the leading Liberal Theologians of he 20th Century.
So I think maybe your perspective needs to be broadened a bit. I don't know what Mr. Barkers beliefs are in detail, but I won't call him n Atheist or say he isn't a Christian on he basis of the above quotes. For all I now he's a Christian Atheist like Santayana.- S.K. Williams.
- Reading through the page I listed, his beliefs have morphed over time, but this is what he states on his site link I listed above: "I consider myself a man of faith but the conventional Christian structures of belief - which value a male and judgmental god above a more protean vision of the divine, is for me, too simple, too crude, and frankly, too suspiciously like a notion whipped up by a male priest-class obsessed with keeping itself in power. So...I critique the God of Israel at the same time as conceding His extraordinary power over our imaginations." -Lil