Stephen Fry, in conversation with Ann Widdecombe, once famously described the ten commandments as ‘the hysterical believings of a group of desert tribes’. He went on, ‘these desert tribes have stored up more misery for mankind than any other group of people in the history of the planet, and they’re doing it to this day’. Ouch! Engaging argument to many secularists, of course, but still untrue and unfair as all two-dimensional caricatures must be and are.
Richard Dawkins, another famous British atheist and author of The God Delusion, said in his book, ‘God is… a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser , a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, phillicidal (sic), pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Ouch, engaging argument to many secularists of course, but still untrue and unfair.
And the late Christopher Hitchins, whose enthusiasm for revealing, as he saw it, the irrationality and absurdity of all faith matched both Dawkins and Fry, said the following: ‘Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of ‘the flock”. Ouch, very engaging to many secularists of course, but still untrue and unfair.
If two-dimensional caricatures go undiscussed they soon become solidified into three-dimensional truths.
Each of these writers – and I do admire them each in many ways – has settled on a very superficial and rhetorical understanding of God and of faith, because superficiality and rhetoric suit their purpose of showing up religion to be the ultimate sham that has deceived and destroyed, and which human intellect, on its journey to reason and enlightenment, must one day put down with disdain.
Very recently Esther Rantzen, someone else I admire, has argued that many people opposed to assisted dying tend to speak from the position of undeclared religious interest, implying I guess that a religious view is by definition a dogmatic and unsympathetic one and one not nuanced enough for grown up conversation. But, truthfully, many people with a faith are pro assisted dying, and whether we are for or against it, it is invariably motivated by a desire to speak for and on behalf of the weak and vulnerable – those lacking a voice – amongst us. It does not come, as is implied, from an unyielding and unsympathetic dogmatism. So, again, we have a caricature. And if two-dimensional caricatures go undiscussed they soon become solidified into three-dimensional truths.
All of these issues will be addressed more fully in later blogs. Christians talk to each other about their faith a lot but I suspect less so to non-believers. Perhaps we feel we might offend, or come across as heavy-handed evangelists, or we simply think one doesn’t talk about religion in polite company, or we won’t get a fair hearing. Those that are happy to discuss faith with those antagonistic to it are sometimes the heavy-handed evangelists. There is a middle path and one dimension of these blogs will be to challenge the argument that religion (like politics) should be avoided in public discourse. it’s often said isn’t it that you shouldn’t speak of politics, religion or money at dinner parties – but why not? I suspect it’s because it causes disagreement and that’s not what you want when you’re socialising. But if we don’t learnt to disagree well, or we are fearful of offending by disagreeing at all, we can never move forward in our ideas regardless of where we sit on the spectrum of belief on God or anything else.
We live in a culture, and I speak primarily of Great Britain now, where lots of people are rejecting religion, not necessarily in a malicious or argumentative way, but simply by arguing that the idea of ‘a man in the sky’ makes no real sense anymore. Of course it doesn’t – it never did!
It is often said that Britain is no longer a Christian country – sometimes, often maybe, that is said with a sigh of relief. It only becomes a Christian country, it feels to me, and in so far as I can tell, when those on the Right seek to use our faith as a shield against ‘incomers’. You know the lines – our ‘Christian culture’ is being swamped, some parts of Britain are ‘no go’ areas, we can’t even say Happy Christmas anymore! It’s all rubbish of course. But like a snowball of hearsay, it gains momentum.
Beyond that nonsense, and more significantly, we as a culture seem to have opted for something we call ‘spirituality’ rather than religion – by which I think is meant a free-spirited and non-prescriptive approach to the exploration of the esoteric – and why not – religion has a bad press for sure, and spirituality sounds much less dogmatic, much more endearing and, much more inclined to a live-and-let-live approach. The downside I would suggest, and its for debate, is that spirituality faces no accountability.
But there is one great by-product of this movement towards self-expression of the spirit. And I applaud it. There was a time, long, long ago, when churches were full and perhaps everyone believed in God. More recently, (maybe mid twentieth century) most people would be in a church on a Sunday, regardless of whether or not they believed, but simply because it was ‘what you did’. It was ‘respectable’ and it was ‘cultural’. These days the only people you will find in church are those who wish to be there – and that can only be a good thing.
I do not know what people believe – none of us do. We meet in what Wittgenstein called the language game (more of that later) and assume when we speak of God and faith we are all speaking of the same thing. But we are not. I suspect every single one of us believes something slightly different about God or about the lack-of-God. Does that idiosyncratic understanding not offer evidence that there is nothing supernatural out there? No, not really. Besides, people of faith do agree on some key tenets. But more of that later – for me, the fact that people have individual views on what God is or God is not, only suggests that faith is more nuanced and layered than radical atheists might allow or wish to believe, and certainly more nuanced than what conservative Christians hold to. There may be many ways of saying table, but that won’t change what a table is!
This first blog raises more questions than answers but that’s the nature of debating – when you offer wriggle-room to hear others opinions, that help our understandings to grow. After any discussion, either I will eventually see you have a point, and adjust my view accordingly, or I will better understand why you are wrong and why I hold to that which I do hold to. Either way, the journey is precious.
Many people are rejecting Christianity on the basis of a few well drawn caricatures, such as those gleefully outlined by Dawkins, some poorly taught RE lessons, (not to generalise but in state schools RE is often taught by hard-pressed teachers who have no specialisation); there are confusions over how we use words when we speak of faith (some believe for example the Trinity embodies a polytheistic idea of God), the plurality of religions, and an understandable inability to reconcile the idea of a God of Love with the suffering humanity endures. I hope to address all of those issues – caricature, poor teaching, how we ‘talk about’ religion, how many religions can and do point to the same spiritual reality, and theodicy – how one reconciles endless suffering with a benign deity. It’s a wide ranging task for sure and many will disagree with my views! Great. Let’s disagree; at least we are discussing it and knocking down some of the caricatures of faith and of secularism.
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Thank you for reading – I look forward to hearing your thoughts!