Atheism, Hitchens, Orwell & Michelle Visage

Over at The What & The Why, I'm talking about the Paris attacks and making broad points about the whole troubled mess. I accept it won't be to everybody's taste but that was deliberately so. My views are atheist, sceptical, but also, I hope, humanist. Despite being cynical about most things, I'm no nihilist. I do believe in goodness, virtues, and human beings. We can do great things only we too often attribute those great things to God or gods when we should attribute them to ourselves. I expected a little flak and there was some criticism but nothing that convinces me that a sceptical approach to life isn't the best.

I suppose I should also have read some Christopher Hitchens before trying my hand at a full-on atheist argument. However, I didn't. Time to get Arguably down off the shelf. Not sure what it's doing up there. It's another of the books which usually sit in the only tidy part of my desk by the side of my monitor. I miss Hitchens terribly, especially at times like these when his clarity and anger meant so much. He was good TV because he was bad TV, in the sense that he was not anodyne or always kind but intellectually fierce and independent. He cut through the bullshit and made me wince at the things he would say. We do too little wincing these days. Or, at least, the wrong kind of wincing.

I have been reading a lot of Orwell recently. I hadn't read his essays in a while, though his collected best are always sitting in that favored spot on my desk. However, my old edition was falling to pieces, with half the pages having come loose. I was recently bought a new copy as a gift, which I'm cherishing and using as a little motivational reading before I start hammering the keyboard every morning. Last week I reread 'The Lion and the Unicorn' and thought it remarkable how little England had changed to the one he described back in 1940. I cannot stop going back to this passage. Something about it has been niggling away at me for days.

It follows that British democracy is less of a fraud than it sometimes appears. A foreign observer sees only the huge inequality of wealth, the unfair electoral system, the governing-class control over the press, the radio and education, and concludes that democracy is simply a polite name for dictatorship. But this ignores the considerable agreement that does unfortunately exist between the leaders and the led.

I've been wanting to write about something that happened when I visited Waterstones in Liverpool the other day; the strange experience of walking in to see a book signing by some American TV starlet called Michelle Visage and then seeing the prices of the newest Penguin books. It keeps reminding me of Orwell, perhaps some secret agreement high up in our culture that ensures that the crass is abundant and cheap and anything quality kept exorbitantly high. I suppose I shouldn't be too critical. Michelle Visage has over 200,000 followers on Twitter. I can't be bothered to break past 200. She is what humanity craves and, I guess, given a choice between following Visage or some supernatural god, I would have reluctantly choose to follow Visage. Damn! Never let it be said that atheists choose the easy route.

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.

The Practising Atheist At Christmas

When I'm asked, I often tell people that I'm a practising atheist, though I rarely get to explain what it means. Just an hour ago, I was standing at the Tesco checkout. A chubby elf with a slow drawl was serving me. She said something like 'Ooooh, I love it when it's busy like this...'

'I'm not feeling much fun,' I replied with a grimace as I packed away two large bottles of Apple Tango. All around me, people were bulk buying crates of booze. As a non-drinking, non-consumerist atheist, I felt very out of place...

'Oh, you don't enjoy Christmas?' asked the elf. She sounded surprised.

'I'm a practising atheist,' I replied. I hoped she'd ask what I meant. She didn't.

'I'm Christian,' she said, almost like a slow moving challenge. 'I like Christmas.'

I felt like a heel.

I didn't begrudge the elf her Christmas but the majority of people, I think, are atheist in spirit. Yet, as soon as I write that, I realise that's not entirely what I mean. A small percentage of people (only 12% in the UK in 2012) regularly attend church. I'm not sure what percentage of people would identify themselves as being 'atheists' or, as The Daily Mail would probably like to call us, 'aggressive atheists'. However, I'd be surprised if it was a figure larger than 12%.

It's why I prefer the phrase 'practising atheist'. It's not just a denial of something. It implies a conscious choice and an interest in the subject of atheism. Many of the people who claim to be atheists are, I would suggest, something other than true atheists. Their belief has yet to be properly defined in the same way that a child who hasn't been taught anything about The Holocaust cannot be termed a 'Holocaust denier'. The majority of 'atheists' are probably 'consumerists' and 'consumerism' is their Church. It's a church where the laity can (and do) distract themselves from the bigger questions of existence by playing Candy Crush or getting paralytically drunk every weekend.

Not believing in God is different to actively thinking about God's non-existence. I've never been much inclined to the former. I've always been fascinated by religion. I've probably studied more religious texts than most Christians and even if my non-belief wasn't particularly hard won, I hope it is a little more profound than casual acceptance.

Although I was baptised in the Church of England, I was never bought up to be a church goer. My family were on the periphery of such things; going only when duties to the broader family (aunts, uncles) required us to go. That said, I quite liked the church at Christmas but for pretty secular reasons. What child wouldn't get a thrill from playing with fire in the form of candles stuck in an orange? I also got to attend church with my uncle (not an uncle but better than any uncle I really had) who was a genuinely good, funny, and utterly wonderful man.

The only atheist I knew was my father but that was probably the reason I was never really an atheist in my early years. I probably rebelled a little, which was made easier because I found nearly everything about the church intriguing. I remember being a very young child and fascinated by biblical paintings. I would wonder what all that darkness and suffering meant. I enjoyed bible stories and Hollywood epics such as Ben Hur. Despite my mild Protestant upbringing, Catholicism was particularly interesting because my favourite writers, artists, and film makers were all catholic. I understood the sensibility as though it were my own. Questions of sin and damnation were so complex and appealing.

Yet, I never once believed and I've never enjoyed a single supernatural experience. I've always loved science and science has been the only thing that has ever made any sense. The more I've read, the firmer I've become in my atheism to the point that I now find myself actively preaching it as my gospel. I read atheist books and listen to atheist, humanist, and rationalist lectures. Like many atheists, I find the benefits of religion (of which there are obviously many) vastly outweighed by the problems of religion. It's easy to think that religion is generally benign when it's your local Church of England bring-and-buy sale, raising money for a hospice. It's also hard to be critical of well meaning people trying to do what they believe is good. When believers knock do on the front door, I find myself being overly kind with them. Yet I also know that you can't accept one religion without accepting all religions. Stupidity is indivisible. For every nice little lady who lives down the street and believes in God there is a right wing fundamentalist hate preacher or misguided zealot about to blow him or herself up to please their god.

It's for this reason that Christmas always troubles me. I get in a particularly ratty mood during December and it's not unusual for me to break down sobbing sometime around the end of the month because I'm so relieved that the bloody thing is over. I despise Christmas with every atom of my being. I spend the entire month having to grit my teeth and trying to keep quiet. It's the one time of the year I'm not allowed to practice my religion of choice. It's the time of the year when I become a victim of religious intolerance because, no matter how many times I tell relatives that I'm happy without a present or a card, they will still expect a present and a card. No matter how many times I ask people to save their money and buy themselves something nice, they feel obliged to buy me something. It's a battle of wills and usually my will breaks, as it did again today on Christmas Eve, and I find myself standing at a checkout, buying wrapping paper and Christmas cards and hoping the Christian on the tills will prod me hard enough for me to give her the full-on atheist treatment.

I want to tell her that I see Christmas as either the glitzy marketing for state-sponsored genocide or a psychological trick played on us by the multinational purveyors of plastic bric-a-brac. If you believe in the Christian Christmas, then you have no right to condemn people who believe in equally far-fetched beliefs that ultimately end with somebody sticking an RPG through the side of a school. If you believe in the consumerist Christmas, then subscribing to an artificial period of price inflation in order to celebrate something that you tacitly accept is a complete sham.

Of course, the common defence of Christmas is that it really has nothing to do with Christianity or religion or even consumerism. That's the excuse I hear too often. 'Oh, you have to put the effort in for the children' is something I regularly hear. Those close to me have alternative ways of saying it. 'Nobody likes Christmas but you just have to go through the motions to please people'. In other words: David, shut the hell up and stop being so bloody miserable.

Yet I'm not miserable. I don't dislike every part of Christmas. There are parts of Christmas I actually enjoy and some parts which even make a little sense.

For example, I might be a committed atheist but I quite enjoy watching the late night church service on Christmas Eve. I like listening to intelligent sermons, though I know they're founded upon utter nonsense. It's like enjoying the tales of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, whilst knowing that Middle Earth never existed. Christmas is also about enjoying being close to my loved ones, though I don't need Christmas in order to tell them how important they are to me. I don't hate buying people gifts but I do dislike advertisers telling me to do it when demand is high and prices even higher. I also don't like waiting for Christmas in order to buy a gift for somebody. I don't dislike the decorations. In fact, when people start to take down their decorations in January, I encourage people to keep them up. It seems an utterly rational thing to do when we're in the dark cold months of winter. A little festive lighting cheers everywhere up. Would any god be really so vengeful to begrudge you a little decoration when the weather's so cold? So, when everybody is back to being a miserable sod in February, I'm keeping the Christmas spirit going with a little bit of tinsel around my monitor.

So much about Christmas makes sense and improves our lives but the rest of it is so abhorrent that it makes it hard defend even the good bits. It's the irrational Christmas zeitgeist summed up in commandments that begin 'You have to...' and 'You must...' and end with 'because it's Christmas'.

If there's any lesson to be learned at Christmas, it's that you shouldn't leave it until Christmas  before you're kind to people. That deeply Christian relative you don't see all the year is not much of a Christian if they only choose to ring or visit you on Christmas Eve. Forced bonhomie is no bonhomie at all. The company who allow you to finish at lunchtime on Christmas Eve is not much of a company if they also expect you to travel in to work on Christmas Eve just for three hours of desk tidying. Their generosity is nothing more than a reminder that your life is a gift they can grant back to you.

Christmas shouldn't even a time to wish people well. It should be a reminder to wish people well every day of the year. Ultimately, that's the best argument I have about being a practising atheist. I don't need gods or advertisers to remind me to be a better person. If you're a thinking, feeling rational human being, you should know that already.