An Atheist Trying To Think About God

Radical Rodent left a great comment last night and I found myself writing a response this morning which began with a couple of lines and then ran to a page and a half. If you're not interested in vague theological rambling, then I've also drawn a slightly less profound cartoon for today which you can see below. If you enjoy theological rambling, then excuse what follows for being heavy on the rambling and light on the learning. Though I largely agreed with what she'd said, I didn't know how much I agreed. I've never really tried to consciously write about my atheism, God or my sense of theology in a coherent way. This is probably my first attempt to do just that. The result is that I think I agreed with what Radical Rodent said about God but that's dependent on what we think of when we talk about God.

First of all, I think we'd probably agree that there's a difference between religion and theology. Religion is the localised interpretations of the big questions. There are various religions, each with a claim to being the 'one true religion' based on its age and number of followers. There are other religions which are unpopular, crazy or even parody. What this should tell us is that the human mind has a great capacity for creating myths. In a sense, it's what we're very good at. It's extremely easy for the brain to create something that quickly becomes too complex for our understanding. For example, we need only thing of an extremely large number. It's impossible to exactly comprehend what 3,383,382,383,942 different clowns would look like if they were sitting on each other's shoulders. Even if that were possible, you only have to keep multiplying that number by another big number and the clown could would eventually get too big. Religion is a bit like that. We create something of such logical and lexical complexity that we then spend centuries arguing about the detail when never actually addressing whether the 3,383,382,383,942 different clowns exist.

So, I'm not going to do that because there's nothing I can do to refute all that. It will always come down to an a priori statement that I believe in something that I can't prove. However, I'd qualify that by saying that I certainly don't believe in a God that's a God as presented to use through the human imagination. Here I think I'm agreeing with you. However, I think Stephen Fry might also agree with you. You attack him because you think he hates God because of guilt. I really think that's a small reason for hating God and, besides, I think Fry doesn't hate God. That would presume belief. His question was a hypothetical one and his answer, through small and (perhaps) 'shallow', was merely an on-the-spot answer which we shouldn't turn into something more significant.

All of which comes back down to the question: what God do I believe in? Well, 'God' is a problematic word if we mean a self-conscious entity who lives somehow above/within/around us, observing us and capable of intervening in our business. That 'God' I don't believe exists. However, just because I don't believe in that kind of God, doesn't mean that I don't think that we're without a transcendental authority. Dostoevsky was pithy but he was also wrong when he wrote that 'if God does not exist, everything is permitted'. It's why I'm not convinced by the argument that 'without God there is no sin'. God didn't create sin. Man created sin or, rather, sin was made in us. Sin is part of our psychological makeup in the form of taboos that have existed in our cultures since our earliest ancestors. All cultures have taboos and you don't need a holy text to tell us what we should or should not do.

I believe that the universe is guided by simple laws of nature which, when combined in their multiple millions, produce something that is extremely complex. So complex, indeed, that it begins to resemble what we think of as God. If God is that manyfold expression of simple rules, then I would accept the existence of a 'God'. But that God is not self-conscious or in any way in our image. It is simply the very form of the universe itself which is forever beyond our comprehension. We are simply in awe of its majesty and that, I think, is the only true religious position to take.

It also, I would add, provides a framework by which we can assert a kind of morality. If I understood it more than I do, I'd probably be a fan of some kind of logicism of in which everything from maths to morality is reduced to simple logic. What I tend to believe is that time moves forward and matter has a tendency towards entropy. If the Big Bang was an act of creation and the heat death of the universe one of destruction, then nature has in itself a kind of moral code. Things which tend towards disassembling the universe are bad. Things that maintain or create structure are good. That's pretty much how I view the world around me.

We should be encouraged to create, to retain history, and to be positive towards our fellow human beings. Wars are always bad but sometimes necessary if they save us from greater ruin. Anything that restricts our freedom is bad but, at the same time, certain types of freedom can do us greater harm and we should guard ourselves against them. Compassion is also good because it produces civil society and holds back the forces that would threaten to tear us apart. In all, I think it's not that different to a religious morality but without all the hokum about loaves and fishes and voices in the clouds.

As for the comparison with 'dark matter', I think it's a poor analogy. Dark matter is a hypothesis reached by following a rational process of inquiry. If that rational process should disprove the existence of dark matter or should no evidence be found, the theory dark matter will be thrown away. The existence of God, in the many forms forwarded by the many religions, has been reached through no rational process and no rational process will ever dissuade believers from believing.

That, I guess, is my uneducated and rambling thought about God. It's deep enough for me and anything deeper becomes the subject of elbow gazing: pointless, self-defeating, and, ultimately, a waste of our God-given time.

 

When God Met Stephen Fry

The response to Stephen Fry's rant against God has been telling. What Fry said about God wasn't exactly profound. It was no more than I'd hope any articulate atheist, agnostic, or even believer would ask when faced by their maker. What he said was a pretty standard attack on the cruelty of God and has been expressed so many times before to make this latest example seem pretty trivial. The reason it isn't trivial, however, is that it was expressed by Stephen Fry and some people's response seems to be one that would prefer if we phrase the question a different way. What would God say to Stephen Fry? Would God ask: what was it like working on The Hobbit? How did you get so many Twitter followers? Are you really as all knowing as you seem on QI or do you have the answers piped into your ear?

It's perhaps a symptom of the terminal decline of intellect in our postmodern hyper-celebrity-adoring age that even a mediocre attack on religion should receive such coverage. When a philosopher makes a sustained attack on God, their words are rarely reported and, certainly, never reported at such length. Richard Dawkins is quite possibly the most outspoken, well known, and 'followed' atheist of the moment and yet even his outbursts never receive such prominence, even in the broadsheets.

Again, it would appear that we are less interested in what somebody says and more concerned with the person saying it. It's a psychological response to how we view our fellow men and women. I know it myself because I'm not immune to doing the same thing. How I think about, for example, Ralph Steadman is very different to how I think about some anonymous cartoonist whose work I find on the web and whose style I particularly like. Steadman has an authority which the other cartoonist lacks and there has to be a process of familiarisation before another cartoonist becomes, in my eyes, quite so canonical.

The same is true of writers. I might read something by Will Self and enjoy it but it means something different to an article which doesn't have such a high profile name attached. There's something in 'celebrity' or, at least, 'being known' that carries an air of authority. Stephen Fry's rant about God was an authoritative  pronouncement that is far more significant than any learned paper written by a respected but little known professor of theology. It was significant because we know everything about Fry and this latest pronouncement fits into that known background. His is a life narrative being written in the public space. This latest event is a twist in that tale.

The reasons for this are probably layered into the collective psychology our society. It has something to do with the explosion of communication that happened over the past half a century. There is simply too much communication and no single person can ever hope to hear it all. Celebrity is the function that filters out the noise. Yet lost in the noise is the articulate and sane, the wise and the learned. All we hear are the trivial but loud. And that's where the problem lies. Stephen Fry's words, whilst neither dumb nor particularly profound, were loud. They were loud simply because he is Stephen Fry. His voice booms louder than any other. Louder too, it seems, than the voice of God.

If I met God, I think my first question would be: why did you create Stephen Fry? But, then, I suspect God might be thinking the same thing.

Yet if there is a God, then perhaps it was God who brought mugging victim Alan Barnes to the public's attention. God moves in mysterious ways and, in this instance, the mysterious way was beautician Katie Cutler who set up the appeal to help the sixty seven year old after he was knocked to the ground by a mugger resulting in a broken collar bone. The fund was aiming to raise £500 but currently stands at £322,899 with 24,322 raising that money in only 5 days.

Yet God didn't work quite so mysteriously in the case of Paul Kohler who was 'savagely' beaten by four burglars. He was in the papers this last week after four Polish immigrants were jailed for the assault which left the university lecturer with a fractured eye socket, jawbone, nose and his facial bruising was so bad that he was unrecognisable.

There are, of course, stark differences between the two cases and a clear reason why Mr Barnes' story touched the nation's heart as well as its purse strings. Yet is it right to ask what kind of God would make Mr Barnes suffer a life with his disabilities but wrong to ask why the media highlighted one case over all the other sad stories that routinely pass for reality?

Nobody asks that because none of it ultimately means anything. Even the loudest bray of stupidity ends like the utterance of the wisest thinker. It's all meaningless noise and life is just one hellish lottery played by a blindfolded gambler with the odds stacked very much against him.

A Fryday Doodle

Drew this one days ago when it was more relevant. Was about to post it when the Charlie Hebdo story broke.

The Cadbury Creme Beckham

Where has all the treacle toffee gone?

It’s the end of October and the fifth of next month looms large in this house yet still I’ve not found treacle toffee in the shops. Our tradition is to eat treacle toffee on bonfire night but buying treacle toffee this year is almost as difficult as finding the traditional Jimmy Savile mannequin to burn.

The problem we face is that we live in a brand culture and there is no brand ‘treacle’. Supermarkets rarely stock something as old and established as ‘treacle toffee’. Instead, they want to stock familiar modern favourites repackaged for the month. They want to sell me Cadbury Scream Eggs for Halloween…

You might say it is clever marketing but it is also the dreadful bastardisation of multiple traditions. Remember when Easter eggs were just for Easter and would be sold off cheap the Monday after Easter Sunday? Now they’re all year around. Perhaps it made sense to accountants that Cadbury Creme Eggs needed to have 365 day stock levels to justify the costs of the machinery. However, I suspect it’s probably marketing people who knew that brand identification is far more potent than mere tradition. They adapt their products in order to make them suitable for the occasion. You can eat Easter Eggs at Halloween, Christmas, the height of summer and some whiz with a catchphrase gun will put his knee on the back of your neck and fire a catchy slugline into your brain. Suddenly Easter eggs at Halloween make sense. No doubt they’ll soon be available for Black Friday, a consumer holiday which has wormed its way over here from America. Indeed, have you noticed that we seem to have more ‘Days’ than in the past? It’s as if the marketing geeks had realised there were too many large gaps in the year when we weren’t being ordered to buy their crap. Since when did Valentines Day, Father’s Day or Mother’s Day have the same significance as Christmas and Easter?

Yet it’s not just Creme Eggs that have taken over or traditional festivals. Brand recognition is everywhere as if to prove that people are effectively too lazy to think for their selves. You like Mars Bars so Mars sells you the confectionery in every format: large and small, fingers and toffees, ice cream and cake bars. You can wear Mars Bar clothing and carry your lunch in the Mars Bar lunch box inside the Mars Bar rucksack on your back. One Brand to Rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

Novelty and individuality are outmoded in this crass consumer culture. Product lines are converging everywhere. Will Smith not only acts in a film but writes it, sings the theme song, produces the monstrosity, and then franchises out his seed in the form of his largely talentless offspring. Movies are become dominated by the same staple of figures from comic books. Soon Batman will meet Superman. The Avengers brought together difference franchises which will be spun and varied until the Church of Stan Lee stops converting every new born freckle into a DC neophyte. New films can’t get funding but franchises are rebooted at every opportunity. No sooner does Christopher Nolan finish a definitive Batman series than Warner Brothers want to start again.

‘New’ is disappearing from our lexicon or it now simply means ‘more of the same’. The ‘new’ iPad is pretty much like the old ‘iPad’. New chocolate is simply old chocolate given new wrappings. Nobody wants to invest the effort to make new products. Why can’t Cadbury make Creme Skulls for Halloween? Zombie heads might have been more appropriate or even Cadbury Creme Pumpkins. Does it take so little imagination that I can come up with these ideas in the span of writing a sentence? Of course not but that would require retooling of an entire production line. So we have eggs instead, despite their having no significance to the ancient festival of All Hallows Eve. It’s utterly postmodern, utterly calculated and utterly dehumanising.

How easy must it have been to make creme eggs with a slightly different coloured fondant rather than create a new product that people might enjoy? We see it everywhere we look with crossovers. Comparethemeerkat produce the Meerkat toys and books. Don’t invest in a writer you’ve never heard about because you can buy a book written by Jordan whose breasts you’ve previously admired…

Yet it’s not just banal celebrity slime who have their own product ranges. Guillermo del Toro has written and directed some sublimely good films but when he hands a 12 page outline for a novel to a writer with whom he then shares credit, you have to wonder about artistic credibility.

Not that artistic credibility matters. We’ve passed the point where consumers can vote with their feet, wallets or purses. The markets are too large for companies to care. What is one lone voice of dissent when Tesco make pre-tax profits in the first half of 2013 of £1.39bn? I complain about their bike stands and they do nothing because I’m insignificant as you are insignificant unless, of course, you are also a brand. Stephen Fry is a brand. He could change things because he is more recognisable than Tesco. He has real power. Almost as much power as the brand Beckham, though Fry, to his credit, puts it to more sensible use.

Beckham, of course, will apparently sell anything, however tangential it might be to his footballing career. He is refashioning himself as the male modern Britannia, a symbol of Britishness. And Beckham is certainly the perfect fit for this modern Britain. He embodies our culture because he is the ultimate vessel: good looking but empty, devoid of much significance but capable of being filled with any corporate message. He is so boring and bland he can advertise anything that doesn’t require him to open his mouth. Indeed, his horrible nasal whine is to his benefit because it means that he can spend his time brooding in ads with his white teeth and rank ugly tattoos, the golden boy of a gelded generation. He is the Cadbury Creme Egg of celebrities; just an empty impotent shell of sugary milk chocolate. One size fits all. Just slip a nozzle up his arse and fill him with whatever different coloured fondant meaning we want this week.

It's A Sparks Show: Episode 7

Sparks have filled my morning. First of all, I see that my original Sparks Show cartoon strip has been published (right) and can be found in French music magazine New Noise along with an interview with Ron and Russell Mael.

Less good news comes with the news that Sparks won’t be playing Manchester on their next tour. The UK dates have been announced and they’re limiting themselves to Glasgow, Bristol, and a few nights in London, meaning that despite my best efforts, Manchester won’t see them and, more importantly, I won’t see them. So bitterly disappointed...

Despite the absolute silence and zero feedback about my current work-in-progress (surely it’s not that bad or perhaps it is!), I’m posting the last of my Sparks strips. I didn’t post this before because I didn’t think it quite worked. Now I know that Sparks aren’t coming to Manchester, I realise that none of my strips worked how I intended so I might as well post this last one today… Naturally, click the image to view it full size.

The Stephen Fry Retweet Cartoon