And yet Podmore's book is not doleful, and has something to say about our current "God-debate," because Podmore wants to show that Kierkegaard's God, while ever-present, is also wholly, abysmally Other (a conception of "God" which is a very far cry from the childish literalism of our contemporary polemicists, both the believers and the atheists).
The programs in the orchestra's new-music chamber series, "Contact!," have shown a decided devotion to the current gods of high European modernism, such as Boulez and Magnus Lindberg, who was the orchestra's composer-in-residence from 2009 to 2012.
For no matter how hard I try, no matter the volume or the environment, the mood or the alcohol consumption, my musical sensibilities simply refuse to enjoy the current gods of cool indie music, the greatest act known to all of modern hipsterdom next to Radiohead, the band known as The Arcade Fire.
After working his way through "The French Laundry Cookbook," McGarry began studying culinary videos on YouTube and poring over food blogs, eventually replicating a six-course meal by Grant Achatz, whom he calls his "current food god" ("Except I didn't do the turtle soup — I couldn't get the meat").
His current effort, My God is Blue, explores his spiritual side.
On the other, there is the tendency to eliminate the accumulated collection of current conceptions of God and to return to the understanding of his utter transcendence.
At the beginning, he said, when men first put to sea, on rafts, they just drifted away from the mainland of Asia on the Japan Current, going where God seemed to will.
From Luis Buñuel's "Olvidados" of 1950 to the current "City of God," films about the hard lives of street kids have made up a substantial portion of the art-house market.
Both Clinton and Mother Teresa have been the subjects of brutal books by Christopher Hitchens, whose own current best seller, "God Is Not Great," lingers on the list at No. 11.
