Category Archives: Mystification

Let’s Keep New Atheism Strident

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Apparently, Sir David Attenborough is going to tell Kirsty Young that there is no inconsistency between evolution and belief in God. He may, perhaps, already have done so, since there is often a time lag between my picking up on the news and the events or anticipated events it records. He’s not confident enough to be an atheist, says Sir David, opening the floodgates of prediction that the shrill, strident new atheism is being replaced by a more genial, accommodating form of unbelief. But, of course, this is sheer nonsense. Those of us who are convinced, on good grounds, that there is no basis for belief in a god of any sort that would be religiously meaningful, have no intention of building atheist temples and listening to atheist sermons, even if, it seems, there are some atheists, like Alain de Botton, who think this is a good idea, and some theists, like George Pitcher, that particularly rebarbative Anglican priest, who begins his piece of Daily Mail pap with words of terrible banality:

There’s something divine in the air. Agnostics and atheists are beginning to nod respectfully in the direction of the Almighty, while still, of course, maintaining that He’s not there.

And he ends with something equally trite:

The shrill voice of Dawkins is gradually being marginalised by those of no more faith than him, but who nevertheless perceive mystery in humanity and, while not accepting the presence of God in the world, are prepared to face in the same direction as the rest of us and stand in awe and wonder.

Has Pitcher really heard Dawkins speak. Shrill?! Come! Come! As for awe and wonder, Dawkins has all along said that there is so much in the natural world to prompt awe and wonder. This he has never denied, and adding belief in a god doesn’t add to the wonder, or precipitate more awe. Just as a swallow does make a summer, a couple of accommodating agnostics do not actually serve to marginalise Dawkins, and Pitcher’s “arguments” are about as lame as ever, though this time he’s gone a bit downmarket and is writing for the Mail. Before his short stint as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s public relations officer (or equivalent), Pitcher was writing for the Telegraph, admittedly a conservative paper, but one of some quality. The Daily Mail, however, is in another class altogether, and given Pitcher’s completely scurrilous attack on Evan Harris, a well deserved demotion for this dislikeable hack. Long may it last!

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There was no First Adam, and Jesus Christ is the Second

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Denis Alexander, of the Faraday Institute, the Templeton funded “interdisciplinary research enterprise based at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge,” whose purpose is to show that Christianity and science are compatible, has a piece in the Guardian this morning (24th December), just in time for Father Christmas, entitled “Evolution, Christmas and the Atonement.” Of course, the problem that he is addressing is a real one, to solve which Alexander is prepared to throw Augustine to the ravening wolves of unbelief.

The problem, to put it simply, is this. The birth of Jesus, which Christians in the West celebrate on 25th December, and Christians in the East (even if they live in the West) celebrate on 6th of January (when Christians in the West celebrate the Epiphany) — it all gets easier after this — is thought to serve a purpose for the whole of humankind. According to the story, we are — all of us — so sunk in evil and sin that only something like the sacrifice of a god can save us. This is outlined in the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament, long thought to have been written by St. Paul, but now known to have been written by Anonymous. According to Hebrews, Jesus’ sacrifice, unlike the sacrifices of the Jews, is alone sufficient to atone for the sin and evil in which humankind is so deeply sunk. Jesus entered into the holy place (viz., before the throne of God) with his own blood (Hebrews 9.12), and thereby saved those who believe.

St. Paul put it quite simply in the 15th chapter of his first letter to the Christians at Corinth, where he sums up the faith that he had received. First, the heart of that  faith:

15:1 Now I declare to you, brothers, the Good News which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you also stand, 15:2 by which also you are saved, if you hold firmly the word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 15:3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 15:4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures …

And then its relationship to the history of humankind:

15:20 But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep. 15:21 For since death came by man, the resurrection of the dead also came by man. 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.

The whole passage, incidentally, is prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer (1549) to be read at funerals, and you can see why.

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Religion is an intellectual and emotional prison. Karl Giberson is still in it.

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I know that Jerry Coyne has dealt with this already, and I almost simply let it pass by, but then, I thought, this is much too important. Jerry says that Karl Giberson disses the evangelicals at last. I don’t think he does, and I find that worrying. What Giberson does in his HuffPo article is to take evangelicals to task for their failure to accept the conclusions of science, but he still can’t help being on their side. He just doesn’t get their being anti-science. He actually thinks that being anti-science is in conflict with their religion. He thinks American evangelicalism has taken a wrong turning, but he still thinks that evangelicalism itself is true.

Of course, Jerry has the man’s measure. He knows that Giberson hasn’t really dissed evangelicalism. As he says at the end of his post on Uncle Karl’s newest venture into the science-religion wars, Giberson needs to take one step further:

– he doesn’t seem to realize that it’s the business of religion itself to blur the boundaries between real and fake knowledge.  If you swallow things like Adam and Eve, the Resurrection, or transubstantiation, then you’re already halfway to denying global warming and evolution.  For the faithful, truth is not what’s supported by evidence, but simply what they want to be true.

Of course, it’s not quite this simple. They may want certain things to be true, but they think they have a reason to believe that these things are true. and that is precisely where Uncle Karl fails to oppose them. He still obviously thinks that there is every reason for believing that evangelicalism is true. He just doesn’t think this forces them to cut science adrift. He puts the point with exemplary clarity:

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The Purpose of Suffering, Victim Souls and the Farcical Nature of Catholicism

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Two or three years ago I came across an article entitled “‘She Offered Herself Up’: The Victim Soul and Victim Spirituality in Catholicism” (abstract available here). Published in the scholarly journal Church History (vol. 71, no. 1, March 2002, pp. 80-119), which is in turn published by Cambridge University Press, the article gives us a glimpse into a bizarre world of baroque spirituality, in which people, both lay and religious, cultivate victim status in order, vicariously, to share in Christ’s suffering, and offer reparation for the sins of others. At the time I first read the article I simply set it aside as one more example of religious idiocy; and while I have not changed my mind about the bizarre, almost comical, beliefs, fostered by this movement — which even had Pius XI’s blessing in his encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor (Our Most Merciful Redeemer), an encyclical which urges the faithful to cultivate devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus — it seems to me now that this semi-mystical devotion centred on suffering, in which the suffering person celebrates and even invites suffering so that their suffering can be seen, like Christ’s, as redemptive for others, is much more closely related, than I had thought, to Roman Catholic moral convictions regarding assisted dying or abortion.

The victim spirituality movement prompted the creation of journals and magazines, confraternities and sodalities, associations, leagues and unions — all devoted to the adoration of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and the victim spirituality which was associated with this peculiar devotion. One of the central animators of this form of piety was Joseph Kreuter, a priest of the Benedictine Order, an immigrant from Germany to America, and author of the Guide for Victim Souls (an electronic version of which is accessible by clicking on the link). It is exceptionally, even distressingly, sickly sweet, cloying piety. Consider the following regarding the benefits of being an Associate of the Sacred Heart (the treat awaits you under the fold):

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Steel Walls, Margaret Somerville and Evading the Truth

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Margaret Somerville, trying to convince her students that euthanasia is wrong, encountered a steel wall. They weren’t buying it. Indeed, as one of them said, Somerville was overvaluing the community and undervaluing the individual. This was not, however, as Egbert pointed out in a comment, an occasion for rethinking her own biases, but instead for redoubling her efforts to convert her students to her way of thinking. She may have encountered a steel wall, but she was determined to cut through it, or go round it. She started off with an acetylene torch, but the steel was hardened, so, finally, she decided simply to forget her students and appeal directly to the public. If you can’t get through, go round.

As Ophelia Benson says: “Hooray for that steel wall!” And I agree. But there are ways to avoid the steel walls of intellect. If people who know how to reason won’t agree, the next best thing is to play on the emotions of people who aren’t trained in reasoning. So Somerville immediately started to write about how serious a problem her students were. That she could not convince them is, she told readers of the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post, as well as the Quebec consultation on assisted dying, a serious social problem. It means, she says, that the protection of human life that it has taken generations to achieve is being undone by careless thinking. The bonds of respect for human life are weakening, she alleges, and the outcome will undoubtedly bring disaster.

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