Faith & Spirit Quote by Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke’s line lands like a sly correction: the problem isn’t God’s existence, it’s our certainty about what “God” is supposed to be. By opening with a clean atheist credential - “I don’t believe in God” - he disarms the expectation that what follows will be pious, defensive, or dutiful. Then he swerves: “but I’m very interested in her.” The punch is the pronoun, a single word that turns a doctrinal argument into a cultural one. “Her” needles the default masculinity of Western theism, exposing how much of “God” is tradition and projection, not discovery. It’s a feminist feint and a science-fiction move: alternate the given assumption, watch the worldview wobble.

The intent isn’t to smuggle belief back in through the side door. It’s to reclaim curiosity as something richer than faith and more durable than disbelief. Clarke, steeped in scientific imagination and the ethics of speculation, treats “God” as a concept worth interrogating the way one might interrogate alien intelligence: not because you’re convinced it’s there, but because the idea rearranges human behavior, politics, and longing. Interest becomes a posture of intellectual humility without capitulation.

Context matters: a 20th-century writer who helped popularize the “sufficiently advanced technology” thesis is allergic to easy metaphysics and equally allergic to smug materialism. The wit is doing double duty - puncturing patriarchy, and reminding skeptics that dismissing religion doesn’t absolve you from understanding its psychological and cultural power.