The dust has settled on neo-atheism, and the world in the 2020s is the same as always: complex, to the point of being inexplicable.

Billions of believers, their God and their convictions remain. The miracle remains.

Kaisa and Christoffer Leka’s cartoon monologue is neither an attack nor a defence, neither an explanation of one’s views or ideas, nor a presentation of one’s own lifestyle, but a polite reminder that the universe really is more than the sum of its molecules.

The abilities of natural science are extraordinary. Science’s services to life are invaluable. This the Lekas are happy to admit, as any sane person would.​​​​ But science does not follow us into the darkness nor where the divine glory exceeds the limits of our senses. Science keeps in the realm of phenomena that can be empirically explained through mathematical logic – ultimately, it’s a limited scope. Science has not even been able to describe our own consciousness in a way that would convince us. The fact that we can comprehend things is incomprehensible to us!

​The world is not an intellectual puzzle or challenge that can be solved with patience and good reason. It is an ethical, emotional, existential and cosmic quandary – in other words, a spiritual one. There is no correct answer to it. There are innumerable variations of the one infinite truth that many say is God.

Gloves Come Off is a fearless and philosophically uncompromising account of a topic whose urgency and topicality will perhaps only grow in these confused times. Christoffer and Kaisa Leka take their readers far beyond clichés and conventions to where reflection and dialogue can begin.

Antti Nylén
Author