Category Archives: Atheism

“The New New Atheism” my Foot!

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Theo – the vacillating, ‘not quite sure whether I’m cut out to be a priest’ – Hobson wrote an article for The Spectator recently, entitled “Richard Dawkins has lost: meet the new new atheists.” He begins by asseverating that

Richard Dawkins is now seen by many, even many non-believers, as a joke figure, shaking his fist at sky fairies. He’s the Mary Whitehouse of our day.

For those of you who were not around when Mary Whitehouse was a household name in practically the whole of the English-speaking world, Mary Whitehouse was a social activist prude, railing against what she saw as an increasingly permissive society. And of course it was an increasingly permissive society. The 1960s was undoubtedly a watershed decade in Western cultural history, when it seemed, especially to those who had been brought up in the 1950s, the world was being overthrown by sex, violence and rock and roll. She was, though, a stereotypical, comic figure, trying to command the tide of change, which washed over Western societies during the sixties, to cease, and people took considerable joy in poking fun at her. Search ‘Mary Whitehouse’ on YouTube, and you will find it hard to find anything besides parody.

It is simply ridiculous to suppose that Richard Dawkins is regarded in this way. What evidence does Theo Hobson provide for his opening claim that Richard Dawkins has turned into a parody of the Mary Whitehouse variety? None at all, really. He says, with considerable aplomb, about the new atheist “movement”:

So what was that about then?

– as though the new atheism were past and finished with, and we can now see it in historical perspective – when, of course, it is as lively as ever, and producing such phenomenal results as A.C. Grayling’s soundly philosophical The God Argument. Hobson wants us to think that the new atheism was just a flash in the pan, instead of a real shot, prompted mainly by the 9/11 attack on New York and the Pentagon, and the 7/7 attacks on London, which, now that we see them as fairly limited and not all that frightening, can be dismissed with a casual wave of the hand and a reference to vicarage tea parties, as though all religion were quite anodyne and harmless.

But, quite aside from the horrific impact of those religious atrocities on the Western consciousness, let’s not forget Christopher Hitchens’ classic remark:

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse. [god is not Great, 67] 

Of course, he might have said:

But we have a right to remember how barbarically religions behave where they are strong and making an offer that people cannot refuse.

For there are, after all, many places in the world where people have no choice at all about religion. Muslims will still quote the Qur’an to the effect that there should be no compulsion in religion. But we have a right to remember where people are still imprisoned (and often murdered) for blasphemy and executed for apostasy, where any perceived insult to the “prophet” Muhammad touches off social paroxysms of frenzied crowds baying for blood. How blind, really, is Theo Hobson? Can he not see?

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A fundamental misunderstanding about “doubt” in religious contexts

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In a New York Times op-ed, T.H. Luhrmann, professor of anthropology at Stanford, and author of the book When God Talks Back, suggests that there are ample grounds for a meeting of minds between sceptics and believers (see “How Skeptics and Believers can Connect“). Since the op-ed has been up on the NYT page for a couple of days, someone must think it has something of substance to contribute to the discussion. I think it is a shallow, misleading piece of work, so it is worthwhile saying why. Most of the article is irrelevant, though it is uncertain exactly what it is she wants to say, or what her position is in saying it.

She begins by recounting her experience on a Christian radio show where the host tried to convert her to what appears to be a fundamentalist form of Christianity, from her – well, from what? That is the first question. Here’s what she says:

The in-your-face confrontation makes it that much harder to connect. The more my interviewer pressed me, the more my faith – such as it was – grew strained. I had come to live (theologically speaking) in a messy in-between. My interviewer wanted clarity. The more he put me on the spot, the more I wanted to say that I shared nothing with him and that his beliefs were flimsy dreams.

I know the feeling. I used to say quite seriously that the reason that I did not very often use the name Christian was because I did not believe what most Christians seemed to believe. I don’t know that I occupied a messy “in-between” state. I thought that Christian faith was quite adaptable, and could be used as a more generalised type of humanism with a mythical religious gloss. It wasn’t so much that I had faith, as such, or at least what my faith consisted in was a storied context in which I could live out my concern for other people.

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A Comment on Comments

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This is meant as a comment on comments to my last post. I bring it forward here, and offer it as a post, because I keep having the feeling that I am being misunderstood. Perhaps this will clarify, and if it does not, perhaps someone will be able to suggest another way of approaching the issues I address here.

I’m obviously not making myself clear, or I am being consistently misunderstood. Let’s start with “substitution.” I do not suggest that we need a substitute for religion. Indeed, humanism is not a “substitute” for religion, but a better way of dealing with some of the things that religion has dealt with. But humanism is not simply a matter of knowing facts. It is, as Grayling says so eloquently, something which includes, not only factual knowledge about the world, but also ”an outlook of great beauty and depth, premised on kindness and common sense, drawing its principles from a conversation about the good whose roots lie in the philo­sophical debates of classical antiquity, continually enriched by the insights and experience of thinkers, poets, historians and scientists ever since.” We certainly do not want to return to the blindnesses of religion which are uncommonly persistent, but that does not mean that we cannot, or that we should not, learn what we can from it. In doing so, however, we do not need to take religion au pied de la lettre. Take guilt, for instance. I said nothing at all about original sin, nor did I mean to allude to it. When I say that some guilt clings to us like a shroud, I mean that some of the things that we do seem to us simply unforgivable, and have a tendency to blight the remainder of our lives. I have seen examples of this not in any way associated with religious notions of primary guilt. That religions have sought and found ways to defuse such guilt is not a shabby lesson to learn from them. We do not at the same time need to take on board the unsatisfactory guilt-mongering upon which so much religion is based.

I have the sense that whenever I speak about religion at all, I am suspected of wanting to return things to the status quo ante, before the criticism of religion has done its work, and of course I do not want to do any such thing. So, a lot of the criticism above completely misses its mark. So when Gordon Willis says: “Religion is just a human story — that is, just a story. We need more than stories to help us grow.” Well, yes, of course we do, but that does not mean that we do not need stories, nor that stories have much to contribute to the shaping of a life. It is not necessarily all or nothing. Whatever we can mine that can contribute to human good, we should do so. That will mean taking things out of context, of course, for we do not want to retain religion. We are well rid of that. It cannot provide the transcendence that it promises — yes, this is indeed true. But that does not mean that it can provide no sense of transcendence at all, and that we cannot, as secular people, make use of such things to our own purpose. But to suppose that these things will simply happen, as some think, is probably a bit of wishful thinking. If we want to destroy religion, we will not do so without something which performs some of the functions of religion. Anderson Thompson shows so clearly how contemporary science of religion is close to understanding the sources of religion’s power over the mind, and the mechanisms by which it exercises this power. If we want to neutralise this, we will have to engage these aspects of the human. We have, for instance, in modern cosmology, a new “creation story,” as it were, and we should not be slow to adopt it as part of our narrative. We can also tell the story of our evolutionary development, along with the development of other life, and the respects in which humans differ from other forms of life on this planet. To suppose that these stories do not have the kinds of power that religious narratives do is simply to abandon our forward positions without a fight.

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In medias res …

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I have been thinking for some time about what is left when religion is simply holus-bolus denied, and the place where religion used to be is left empty. For some people, of course, this is no problem, whether because their religious indoctrination as children was not particularly deep or lasting, or because they have enough richness in their lives already, so that they don’t miss what is missing when religion simply disappears. Yet the premise underlying this, that religion is simply empty and without function is, on the face of it, very unlikely. After all, religions have, in one way or another, dominated peoples lives since the year dot; it would seem passing strange if the result of its demise did not leave some emptiness behind. Not, as is so often supposed, a “god-shaped hole,” for that is a religious apologist’s way of accounting for what is missing, but certainly a cultural void which was once filled with religious myth, belief and ritual. One of the most important things to notice is that, if religion is, as we must suppose, in some sense, an organic development of human society — and there are very few societies that have no tinge of religion at all — then it was, inevitably, performing a social and personal function for those immersed in it.

I say this, not because I have some insistent nostalgia leading me back again and again to those years (which, in truth comprise most of my life) when I was a “believer” of some sorts, and practiced religion as a priest in the church. First of all, looking back, it is hard to say when I was a person of faith, and exactly what it means that I might have been. When I ask myself what I believed for all those years I am hard put to it to state clearly what those beliefs might have been. Towards the end, of course, as I was in the process of “talking myself out of a job” — as some regarded what I was doing — I do not think I could have put my “faith”, such as it was, in clear verbal terms. And that is true, I suspect, of most so-called “believers”.  Atheists sometimes say, with a certain amount of Schadenfreude, that atheists tend to know more about the Bible and about Christian belief than many Christians do, and that, of course, is not much of a surprise. After all, Christians are living their faith, which has much more to do, as is often pointed out, with living within the interstices of a myth, than it is expressing belief in propositions.

The fact that the story, for Christians, as well as Muslims, Hindus, and so forth, is more important than specific, stateable beliefs, probably tells us much more about religious faith than nonbelievers are ready to acknowledge, since atheists have a vested interest in characterising religious faith as a matter of believing things that are not true. Certainly, in the orthodox services of the church, and, in particular, the Eucharist (Mass), statements of belief are included, much like the national anthem used to be sung before the showing of films in movie theatres, but one only begins to notice the beliefs expressed by the words when one is in the process of questioning the value of faith itself. Until then it is simply a matter of expressing one’s commitment to a way of life defined in terms of myth and story, and to the community in which that myth contributes the skeletal form of one’s own life’s narrative. Those who keep emphasising, as I often do, the propositional content of religious belief, tend to steer clear of the less determinate role that such expressions of faith play in shaping a life.

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Steubenville: Their lives are ruined! Let’s all cry crocodile tears!

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The following is a response to the crocodile tears of the CNN reporters talking about the conviction and sentencing of the Steubenville rapists. Talk about male privilege! The boys in the Steubenville rape case have been sentenced to short terms in juvenile detention, one of them, possibly, until he’s twenty-one. In their agony over the future of these promising young “star athletes,” CNN seems more concerned that these boys’ lives are ruined than that the young woman at the centre of things — yes, the one that was treated like a sex doll — will have to live with what these yahoos did to her — and with the fact that nude pictures of her have been spread around the internet by an idiot who didn’t seem to realise that he had no right to invade the girl’s privacy in this way, let alone take advantage of her when she was drunk and disoriented — that, in such circumstances, the thing to do is to help, not exploit someone’s weakness – and where none of the onlookers thought it appropriate to put a stop to things. As Ophelia says:

Why did everyone else just let it happen? Why didn’t anyone stop it? How horrible that is. Imagine you’re at a gathering with a lot of adults and one person – a woman – becomes ill, and gets so groggy and dizzy that she can’t respond properly. What happens? A couple of men proceed to pull some of her clothes off, and stick their fingers up her, and text their friends about it, and drag her around the room, while everyone else stands around and laughs?

It’s an a odd world we live in when the lives of criminals are valued over the life of sexually abused teenage girl, and where no one seemed to think that something wrong was taking place. I find it so disturbing that I am truly lost for words.

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A couple days ago, after reading Ophelia Benson’s post (linked just above) over at Butterflies and Wheels, I read a number of articles about rape and the sexual abuse of women and girls. It literally left me with a sense of despair that this kind of thing should be so prevalent, at the same time that there is no widespread sense of social crisis. So, when, a few days ago, I put up a post about the role of women in the atheist movement, the discussion went on at such length, and twisted and turned around points of interpretation that were not only picayune, but also irrelevant to the larger point about the language that is appropriate to use regarding women, and how they should be addressed, and respected (or not), that I began to feel that I had quite literally slipped through the looking glass while I was not watching and world had turned upside down and topsy-turvy. I had a sense from some of those who took part in the discussion, and those I blocked from taking part, that any kind of language at all is appropriate where women are concerned, and that free speech demanded the right to use egregiously denigrating epithets in order to delegitimise women’s participation in secular discussion.

Now, of course, I may be a old prude, or a semi-puritan, given my upbringing, but I don’t think so. When discussion of any topic is sidelined simply by the kind of language that gets used, then the time has come to consider the question of civility. But when, as in this case, reporters are emotionally overwrought because some star athletes have received their comeuppance from the courts, because they did behave in ways that criminally disregarded the status of a teenaged girl as a person, and treated her like their own sex toy that they could use and abuse in public, one has to ask where their commitment lies. What is it about star athletes that they deserve to be lamented in so unseemly a fashion — where was the famous journalistic detachment here? — when a girl was abused in such a way that, given the cases of women who have been abused in childhood that I have come across in my life, and the multiple emotional issues that so often remain unresolved, often for a lifetime, her sentence will not be over for a long time to come and may never be over.

Now, I know that a lot of the unbelieving community are of the view that none of us is really responsible for what we do, and that labelling someone as a criminal for harm they have caused others is not as compassionate as these things would be handled in a world without moral responsibility. However, I think that is simply incoherent, and given the power balance in most societies, where women invariably end up with the short end of the stick, it is clearly detrimental to the position of women and their protection from unwanted sexual harassment, demand, and compulsion, where already they are subject to rape and sexual abuse on an almost unbelievable scale, I see no alternative to aspects of the blame-game, and that the failure of society to erect such emotional barriers to the commission of crimes of serious magnitude is a recipe for even worse crimes to come. So, I am pleased to see that the ones chiefly responsible were found guilty and sentenced to spend time in detention, with all the follow-on consequences that this will have for their lives. Their lives will be ruined, we’re told, and yet they gave not a thought to the young woman who suffered so much at their hands.

My main resource, on this occasion, for the grave problem of the rape and sexual abuse of women (and to a less extent of men) – though this is something that all of us know, and simply conveniently forget most of the time — is Soraya Chemaly’s HuffPo piece entitled “Steubenville: We’re Sick and Tired of Rape Being Treated Like an Unavoidable Joke.” One of the points that she makes (which should endear her to the no-moral-responsibility crowd) is that

[the] kids in Steubenville will pay a high price. The thing is, the boys probably are basically “good.” Although I think they are clearly at fault for violating this girl’s body and human rights, I do not think it’s their fault that they were born into a culture where “nice guys” rape all the time and get away with it.

I’m not altogether sure what is meant by this, aside from saying that we live in a society where women’s bodily integrity and dignity are not really valued, and where jocks’ atheletic/scholastic careers are valued more highly than the emotional well-being of girls. The “goodness” of the boys seems to reside in the fact that they don’t always rape young women disoriented by alcohol. But my main concern, besides the more general concern of why the sexual assault of women is so common, is why, when these issues are raised, the question of women’s role in the freethought movement has caused such deep divisions, some of them apparently irresolvable. Thinking on these things, I have simply lapsed into silence over the last couple days.

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Am I Anti-Catholic? Damn Right! I am!

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Just in case you may have wondered about my attitude towards the Roman Catholic Church, I want to make it clear that I am deeply anti-Catholic. While I think Islam is perhaps the greater danger to the world, the Roman Catholic Church in my opinion runs a very close second. Both religions are reactionary religious sects, no matter how large they are. Their aim is to put a lid on the liberalisation of our laws and practices, to keep women in a secondary role in society, and to impose a frightened masculine heterosexuality on everyone without exception. Both religions are focused on achieving and holding onto power, and do not shrink from attempting to subvert democratic processes wherever such opportunities present themselves. In the United States, as I have pointed out recently, the Roman Catholic Church has challenged governments and is deliberately buying up or suborning medical real estate in order to make sure that their death-cult writ reaches more and more people, whether they are Roman Catholics or not.

This is why Simon Jenkins’ op-ed in the Guardian yesterday is perhaps the only comment so far on the election of Pope Bergoglio which has hit the nail directly on the head. The opening paragraph, in a sense, says all that needs to be said:

Papal elections are God’s Olympics. The splendour, the global publicity, the weeping crowds, the human drama, the race to the finish, all dazzle the senses and beg interpretive meaning. There is none. The conclave is showmanship. Those who believe the pope to be God’s minister on Earth must regard his choice as no more than an act of God. Those who believe otherwise see him as leader of a large but declining conservative sect, a genial figurehead but with a mostly baleful influence on the societies over which he claims authority. It is in the latter respect that his election matters.

Remember what I quoted from something that Jason Rosenhouse said yesterday about Bergoglio’s much touted humility:

Let us recall that with his new position comes the ability to speak infallibly, at least some of the time.  It is part of the job description that he is closer to God than the rest of us, and has unique authority to hold forth on the will of God.  It is the teaching of his Church that they, and they alone, are qualified to interpret scripture.  You place your eternal soul in jeopardy by rejecting their moral teachings.  I could go on.

Humble people do not accept such positions.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  It is only the most arrogant of men who speak with the Church’s level of certainty.  The new Pope may be many things, but humble definitely is not one of them.

This is something, apparently, that needs to be repeated constantly. This is not a humble man! No matter how ordinary a man he is, he is a man of power. Not only because of the claims that the church makes about the exalted position of the pope, or about the arrogance of those who speak with the church’s level of certainty. No, this is something that those who knew him in Argentina knew, quite independently of his position in the church. According to Eduardo de la Serna, a coordinator of an left-wing Argentinian group of priests who focus on the plight of the poor,

Bergoglio is a man of power and he knows how to position himself among powerful people. I still have many doubts about his role regarding the Jesuits who went missing under the dictatorship.

This is in an article by Uki Goni and Jonathan Watts in the Guardian: “Pope Francis: questions remain over his role during Argentina’s dictatorship.” A man of power such as this would know exactly how he would have to position himself to come out of the regime of the generals in a strong position and with plausible deniability.

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The Debate that was lost before it began

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Lawrence Kraus took part in a debate at University College London that he won hands down. He won it before he had said a word. The proposition to be debated was: “Islam or Atheism: Which makes more sense?” The debate, organised by the Islamic Education and Research Academy, despite assurances that the audience would not be sex segregated, was indeed sex segregated nevertheless, and by being so made clear that Islam makes no sense, and is an ideology that self-respecting women, as well as men, should avoid. Kraus himself threatened to walk out, and last minute adjustments were made, but the issue was not really resolved, and (in my view) it would have been better had he not appeared at all. That would have been a much more powerful message than any he could have delivered in words, and he could with some justice have claimed that he had won by default, the behaviour of the Muslim organisers having made his point as eloquently as it could be made in any case.

The problem, apparently, goes much deeper, for this is not the only sex segregated event that has been hosted at University College London. As Richard Dawkins made clear in a Tweet, it is an offence that University College London, the first university in England that did not have religious tests for admission, and the first university to accept women students, should allow its facilities to be used in such a way as to flout its most sacred traditions of freedom of thought and the principle of the equality of women and men. This should not have happened, and it certainly should not happen again.

To my mind, however, this poses deeper questions. Not only does it show clearly that Islam makes no sense — but no sense at all — for it simply cannot encompass the idea that humanity is composed of women and men in roughly equal numbers, and thinks it appropriate to segregate men from women in response to a supposed revelation from a god; but it shows that Islam is a danger to democratic polities and a subversive element within democracy. When the best educated Muslims consider it their duty, in the name of Islam, to contradict a fundamental premise of European culture, that men and women are equal participants in society, in governance, work, opinion setting, education, teaching, leadership, and consider it their duty to introduce sex segregation into one of the leading secular institutions of higher learning in Britain is not only an offence, it is a clear indication of the danger that Islam is to the values upon which British freedoms are based. And this applies pari passu to democracy and freedom throughout the West, as well as in nascent democracies that could be stifled at birth, if the reign of Islamic theocracy is given room to spread its illiberal ideas unhindered by the severest criticism — something that, because of terrorist threats, is already in doubt.

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Alone in the Universe: Is there no change of death in paradise?

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Commenting on AC Grayling’s new book, The God Argument (due to be published at the end of this month), Damon Linker in The Week, after saying, without a shred of evidence, that godlessness is not umabiguously good for human beings (it could of course be argued that nothing is “unambiguously” good for human beings), goes on to say this:

If atheism is true, it is far from being good news. Learning that we’re alone in the universe, that no one hears or answers our prayers, that humanity is entirely the product of random events, that we have no more intrinsic dignity than non-human and even non-animate clumps of matter, that we face certain annihilation in death, that our sufferings are ultimately pointless, that our lives and loves do not at all matter in a larger sense, that those who commit horrific evils and elude human punishment get away with their crimes scot free — all of this (and much more) is utterly tragic.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this rather comprehensive expression of alarm. It is not at all clear that the philosophical naturalism that underlies most modern atheism is committed to all the conclusions that Linker attributes to it, but, if we concentrate simply on the fact of our being “alone in the universe,” that is, without any supernatural friend, and that we will be neither rewarded nor punished in a life to come, there being no one except other people to listen to our appeals for help, or to acknowledge the meaningfulness of our lives, there seems to be no reason for his over-exaggerated angst. I do acknowledge, however, that the increasing tide of scientism (and biologism) is probably unhelpful in the short or long term in commending naturalism to those who are going through the symptoms of withdrawal from religious belief, and not altogether intelligible in either scientific or philosophical terms either.

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This Blog is really all about Elizabeth

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This is my first blog post at Free Thought Blogs, so I want, from the start, to explain my own reasons for being here, for thinking of myself as a “freethinker” (a term which still does not come easy to me), and for wishing to join a community dedicated to freedom of thought, atheism, and opposition to religious belief. I also want to make the point as clearly as I can, as I start out, how Elizabeth (my wife who died in 2007 in Zurich) is the main inspiration of all that I write, and the patron “saint,” if you like, of this Blog. Without her, I would have been a very different person indeed. I will also remark on some of my present interests and concerns.

At the masthead or banner of my blog choiceindying.com, there from the very beginning in December 2010, has been the tag line, “Arguing for the Right-to-Die and against the Religious Obstruction of that Right.” However, had it not been for Elizabeth, my wife of almost 18 years and best friend for 20, whose picture (sitting on a peak in the Lake District) is in the banner above, and who is now in my Gravatar image as well (precisely because what I am trying to say about her part in this is true), I probably would never have come to the point of disbelief, for not only was she a disbeliever long before I was, it was her struggle to die, when her MS, and the misery and pain and indignities associated with it, became so intolerable, that opened my eyes to the fact that, even for a liberal “believer” of the “Sea of Faith” sort, there were moral issues of great importance that I had simply overlooked by the general institutional support that accompanied my membership in, and action on behalf of, a specific religious institution. This stood out for me in stark relief the moment Elizabeth tried to take her own life, and failed, thus setting her on a course which would eventually take her to Zurich, where Dignitas, the assisted suicide organisation which accepts foreign applicants, helped her, with great kindness and dignity, to die, as she sought to do.

Elizabeth herself, though many years younger than I, was the formative influence in my life, far more important than schooling or religion. A woman of great integrity, energy, intellect and joy, she offered me unconditional love, and provided the basis for the freeing of my mind from the dead weight and trammels of my past. Though I do not believe in destiny, the shape my life took seemed – because I can only think of my life until the point that Elizabeth and I exchanged our love as but a propaedeutic and forerunner to the fullness of life that I would come in time to know with her – almost predestined, as though we were supposed to meet and fulfil each other’s dreams of love and commitment. This was expressed in a poem I wrote after her death, entitled “Easter Rising,” about an unexpected intimate encounter with Elizabeth very early on the first Easter morning after we had (earlier in the year) first exchanged our vows of love (and, truth be told, shortly before I would go out to celebrate another resurrection, in a more formal, liturgical way). The poem ends on this note:

One flame forever,
as in the snow,
deeply blended,
each to each,
we yielded,
as the sun began to climb,
and, as one, arose together,
that first Easter morn,
enfolded in each other,
a new creation,
of each other born.

Religion, from that point, began to play an increasingly secondary role in my life, and though I continued to function as a priest in the Anglican Church for all the years of our marriage — and was, indeed, more actively involved in the institutional life of the church on a diocesan level – it was perhaps inevitable that, with Elizabeth’s death, my active participation in that ministry should come to an end. I soon realised that “faith,” for me, had become not only very tenuous, but, indeed, an impediment to clarity of thought and fulness of life. I remember with great affection, however, the years I spent as a priest, and the people I served and learned to care for and admire during all those years, especially those years of priesthood which I shared with Elizabeth, who taught me (for the first time in my life) what it is to love and to be loved in return. It was when the beliefs of the church began to have an immediate impact on the life of the one I held most dear, that close relationship with the church, and participation in its official ministry became intolerable. It is important to recognise that the church does not truly acknowledge the right of its members to value things differently than these things are valued through the church’s institutional expression; and being an active and supporting member of the church is in fact to uphold and defend those values, even when one most strenuously disagrees.

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This blog, really, is all about Elizabeth

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This is my first blog post at Free Thought Blogs, so I want, from the start, to explain my own reasons for being here, for thinking of myself as a “freethinker” (a term which still does not come easy to me), and for wishing to join a community dedicated to freedom of thought, atheism, and opposition to religious belief. I also want to make the point as clearly as I can, as I start out, how Elizabeth (my wife who died in 2007 in Zurich) is the main inspiration of all that I write, and the patron “saint,” if you like, of this Blog. Without her, I would have been a very different person indeed. I will also remark on some of my present interests and concerns.

At the masthead or banner of my blog choiceindying.com, there from the very beginning in December 2010, has been the tag line, “Arguing for the Right-to-Die and against the Religious Obstruction of that Right.” However, had it not been for Elizabeth, my wife of almost 18 years and best friend for 20, whose picture (sitting on a peak in the Lake District) is in the banner above, and who is now in my Gravatar image as well (precisely because what I am trying to say about her part in this is true), I probably would never have come to the point of disbelief, for not only was she a disbeliever long before I was, it was her struggle to die, when her MS, and the misery and pain and indignities associated with it, became so intolerable, that opened my eyes to the fact that, even for a liberal “believer” of the “Sea of Faith” sort, there were moral issues of great importance that I had simply overlooked by the general institutional support that accompanied my membership in, and action on behalf of, a specific religious institution. This stood out for me in stark relief the moment Elizabeth tried to take her own life, and failed, thus setting her on a course which would eventually take her to Zurich, where Dignitas, the assisted suicide organisation which accepts foreign applicants, helped her, with great kindness and dignity, to die, as she sought to do.

Elizabeth herself, though many years younger than I, was the formative influence in my life, far more important than schooling or religion. A woman of great integrity, energy, intellect and joy, she offered me unconditional love, and provided the basis for the freeing of my mind from the dead weight and trammels of my past. Though I do not believe in destiny, the shape my life took seemed – because I can only think of my life until the point that Elizabeth and I exchanged our love as but a propaedeutic and forerunner to the fullness of life that I would come in time to know with her – almost predestined, as though we were supposed to meet and fulfil each other’s dreams of love and commitment. This was expressed in a poem I wrote after her death, entitled “Easter Rising,” about an unexpected intimate encounter with Elizabeth very early on the first Easter morning after we had (earlier in the year) first exchanged our vows of love (and, truth be told, shortly before I would go out to celebrate another resurrection, in a more formal, liturgical way). The poem ends on this note:

One flame forever,
as in the snow,
deeply blended,
each to each,
we yielded,
as the sun began to climb,
and, as one, arose together,
that first Easter morn,
enfolded in each other,
a new creation,
of each other born.

Religion, from that point, began to play an increasingly secondary role in my life, and though I continued to function as a priest in the Anglican Church for all the years of our marriage — and was, indeed, more actively involved in the institutional life of the church on a diocesan level – it was perhaps inevitable that, with Elizabeth’s death, my active participation in that ministry should come to an end. I soon realised that “faith,” for me, had become not only very tenuous, but, indeed, an impediment to clarity of thought and fullness of life. I remember with great affection, however, the years I spent as a priest, and the people I served and learned to care for and admire during all those years, especially those years of priesthood which I shared with Elizabeth, who taught me (for the first time in my life) what it is to love and to be loved in return. It was when the beliefs of the church began to have an immediate impact on the life of the one I held most dear, that close relationship with the church, and participation in its official ministry became intolerable. It is important to recognise that church does not truly acknowledge the right of its members to value things differently than these things are valued through the church’s institutional expression; and being an active and supporting member of the church is in fact to uphold and defend those values, even when one most strenuously disagrees.

You may continue reading this post over at Free Thought Blogs.

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*That it was largely written by Dworkin is my judgement, at any rate, basing myself purely on stylistic grounds.