“The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist”

It’s quite often noted that Dawkins and the rest of the fanatical “New Atheists” are not very highly thought of by more ‘reasonable’ atheists. Given that Dawkins has never come across to me as anything other than a complete idiot, however, I still find it fun to read what they have to say about him… if simply as evidence that my own opinion of him is not solely due to my theistic bias, but may actually be because he is – ontologically – an idiot.

As such, I offer the following article at The Guardian, by atheist philosopher of biology, Michael Ruse:

“Dawkins et al bring us into disrepute“

Enjoy!

Eagleton: Ideology

A poem by Thom Gunn speaks of a German conscript in the Second World War who risked his life helping Jews to escape the fate in store them at the hands of the Nazis:

I know he had unusual eyes,
Whose power no orders could determine,
Not to mistake the men he saw,
As others did, for gods or vermin.

What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology.

_{From Ideology, xiii.}

Žižek: Ideology

I’m still a relative newcomer to Žižek, having only read him on and off for about a year now. But I found this dialectical discussion of ideology helpful, even if it is very typically Žižekian, simply because it is so straightforward. It comes from the first of his essays in the Mapping Ideology book I mentioned in the last post:

“‘Ideology’ can designate anything from a contemplative attitude that misrecognizes its dependence on social reality to an action-orientated set of beliefs, from the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure in false ideas which legitimate a dominant political power. It seems to pop up precisely when we attempt to avoid it, while it fails to appear where one would expect it to dwell.

When one procedure is denounced as ‘ideological par excellence‘ one can be sure that its inversion is no less ideological. For example, among the procedures generally acknowledged as ‘ideological’, definitely the eternalization of some historically limited condition, the act of discerning some higher Necessity in a contingent occurrence (from the grounding of male domination in the ‘nature of things’ to interpreting AIDS as a punishment for the sinful life of modern man, or, at a more intimate level, when we encounter our ‘true love’, it seems as if this is what we have been waiting for all our life, as if, in some mysterious way, all our previous life has led to this encounter…): the senseless contingency of the real is thus ‘internalized’, symbolized, provided with Meaning. Is not ideology, however, also the opposite procedure of failing to notice the necessity, of misperceiving it as an insignificant contingency (from the psychoanalytic cure, in which one of the main forms of the analysand’s resistance is his insistence that his symptomatic slip of the tongue was a mere lapse without any signification up to the domain of economics, in which the ideological procedure par excellence is to reduce the crisis to an external, ultimately contingent occurrence, thus failing to take note of the inherent logic of the system that begets the crisis)? In this precise sense, ideology is the exact opposite of internalization of the external contingency: it resides in externalization of the result of an inner necessity, and the task of the critique of ideology here is precisely to discern the hidden necessity in what appears as mere contingency”.

He then goes on to give a number of other examples of how this works, the best being a comparison of the media treatments of the (first) Gulf War and the Bosnian war. With the Gulf War, rather than paying attention to the complex social, political or religious trends and antagonisms which informed the situation in Iraq, in the media the conflict was ultimately reduced to a personal quarrel with Saddam Hussein, “…Evil Personified, the outlaw who excluded himself from the civilized international community” (Žižek, quoting Renata Salecl [nope, never heard of her either]). The true aim of the war, as the media portrayed it, was Saddam’s own humiliation. That this functions ideologically is pretty obvious. Conversely, however, the media coverage of the Bosnian war (other than the occasional vilification of Slobodan Milosevic) consisted predominantly of accounts of the complex ethnic, religious and cultural background to the war, and the many unresolved historical antagonisms which gave rise to it. In contrast to the deeply personalized coverage of the Gulf War, media coverage of the Bosnian crisis, in an apparent reversal, invoked a definite distance from the conflict, the implication being that, “it is not possible to take sides, one can only patiently try to grasp the background of this savage spectacle, alien to our civilized system of values” (Salecl, again). Though this would initially appear to be more a considered, reasonable and informed account than that of the Gulf War, Žižek’s point is that it too functions ideologically. Indeed, it does so with “more cunning”, the evocation of complex circumstances and a certain distance delivering the West from any responsibility: “The comfortable attitude of a distant observer, the evocation of the allegedly intricate context of religious and ethnic struggles in Balkan countries, is here to enable the West to shed its responsibility towards the Balkans…”. The significance is that this latter, even more poisonous, kind of ideology is also better veiled, less obvious, more insidious than the former, almost caricatured kind. Very clearly, Žižek helps us to see how the most pernicious ideology is not always where it’s most expected… far from it, in fact.

_{(Indeed, later in the essay Žižek illustrates how the most [apparently] blatant forms of ideology sometimes fail to function ideologically at all, which obviously ties back in to his first paragraph at the top).}

Why America Needs A Monarchy: Some Vague Thoughts On The US Healthcare Debate

I’ve recently been reading a large book on the ‘History of Modern Political Thought’, and came across a section entitled ‘The Federalist’, which refers to a series of newspaper articles published in New York newspapers between 1787-88. The articles sought to persuade New Yorkers to vote in favour of a new constitution drawn up over the previous summer in Philadelphia, which sought to fix problems with the ‘Articles of Confederation’ – the original document defining the collective identity of the new American states following the War of Independence (…or something like that).

Anyway, apparently one of the problems with getting the new constitution agreed to was the general suspicion among Americans with regard to anything resembling strong central government. This suspicion is pretty understandable given that the Americans had just fought a war against the British to GAIN liberty from a strong, central (albeit overseas and imperial) government. The new American States weren’t about to give that liberty away again by acceding to another strong central government, even if it was this time on their side of the Atlantic.

While describing this background, however, the author of my book threw in a random aside which got me thinking about America’s big healthcare debate. (It’s worth noting, if you don’t know, that a lot of opposition to Obama’s public healthcare proposals are on the grounds, broadly, that too much central government power is dangerous and interferes with individual liberty). My author pointed our, that a major contrast between the public perception of governmental authority in Britain and America in the late 18th Century had to do with the recent history of the two countries. I quote:

“Because the British had used the supremacy – or at least the independence – of Parliament twice in the seventeenth century to overthrow royal absolutism, they tended to identify parliamentary supremacy with political liberty itself. Because the Americans had suffered under the actions of an unrepresentative imperial parliament, and had fought against its authority to achieve their liberty, no such identity was possible. Liberty was identified with rights held against government…” (p.204)

Now, I don’t mean to overplay this historical point (fear of an absolutist monarchy is not particularly potent in Britain these days), but it does seem to encapsulate something of the differences between Britain and America ideologically, and perhaps explains a little of the pre-rational, presuppositional ‘background’ which is shaping the American healthcare debate – a debate which has been, at times, quite unintelligible on the British side of the Atlantic.

William Morris’ Socialist Ideal

“…what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all – the realisation of the meaning of the word COMMONWEALTH.”

from ‘How I Became A Socialist’ (1894), in News From Nowhere & Other Writings, p.379.

_____________________
_{N.B. Morris was ambivalent about just how to pursue the ideal, and was caught, it seems, between the Ruskinian hope of changing the system from the inside-out through moral pedagogy, and the Marxist call for overthrow of the system through bloody revolution.}

Some Weber

“The Puritan wanted to work in a calling: we are forced to do so [...] In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ’saint like a cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment’. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage [...] Today the spirit of religious asceticism – whether finally, who knows? – has escaped from the the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer [...] In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually gives it the character of sport. Of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilisation never before achieved’”

(The Protestant Ethic & The Spirit of Capitalism, p.123-4).

SOME COMMENTARY: Max Weber is obviously most well known for the connection he drew between the ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ (notions of vocation, calling etc.; privileging of the active life over the contemplative life; rejection of monasticism) and the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’ (utility; profit as an end in itself). I’ve been reading for review a book by a guy called John Hughes, and he points out that Weber’s account of the connection between these two was not as simplistic or (apparently) reductionist as it is sometimes portrayed. It seems that Weber was at least partially aware of the effect of secularization on the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’. Protestantism may have played a crucial role in the birth of the capitalist spirit, but modern capitalism has ruthlessly thrown off its religious heritage. Even in the worst, most Puritan context, the Protestant work ethic was tempered by a concern for the spiritual. Unhooked from this spiritual dimension via secularization, however, we have slowly emerged into the vulgar, suffocating ‘iron cage’ of the modern capitalist society.

On a related note, the ongoing collusion of the Religious Right with today’s vulgar (stultifying, dehumanizing, profiteering, exploitative) mode of free-market, secular capitalism remains a complete and utter mystery to me, and ridiculously (insanely, absurdly, farcically, disturbingly) hypocritical given all their high-handed and somewhat obsessive moral rhetoric in other areas. I’m of course aware that this is not a new insight.

The Poet Laureate vs. Politics (with a hint of Augustine)

Carol Ann Duffy, the new Poet Laureate, has chosen for her first royal composition to attack politics. The 14 line poem positively spits with disgust at the corrosive effect the political machine apparently has on individual politicians, making “of your face a stone… of your heart a fist”. It is a chaotic rant capturing very well the prevailing sense of public anger at the political system in the wake of the expenses scandal. Towards the end she invokes the Blarite mantra “education, education, education” and Gordon Brown’s “moral compass” with utter disdain. “The poem’s technique is that of someone almost speechless with rage – a great tumbling catalogue. No time for structure”, says John Sutherland, a professor at University College, London. The poem, entitled just Politics and published in The Guardian, suggests Duffy won’t be afraid to tackle the high profile topics during her 10 year tenure as Poet Laureate. Here’s it is:

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.

For me, the poem articulates the lingering suspicion, I think widely held, that even the most idealistic and hopeful of young visionaries, once they enter the murky waters of party politics, will inevitably become tainted and corrupted. That’s not a very optimistic picture, but I think it encapsulates the cynicism held by many of my generation especially, when it comes to such matters. The apathetic attitude to, and disengagement from, the political by many in British society are just symptoms of this deeper cynicism, which recent events will only ingrain further. In fact, perhaps there is a little Augustinianism in Duffy’s poem, which echoes his deep scepticism in the politics of the earthly city as essentially destructive and divisive; always bound to fall short of expectations, because of wrongly ordered and wrongly directed loves. A dose of this kind of realism can never be a bad thing, though neither should it necessitate a complete withdrawal from the political; indeed, from a Christian perspective it makes even more necessary our participation in earthly politics, as faithful advocates of the Good who are nevertheless free from bondage to this city and this system, because citizens of a different (heavenly) city founded on a different love.

There is a discussion of the poem here, at the Guardian, and here, at the BBC.

Who’d be a Politician?

Take a long hard look at this picture:

These are four MPs instigated in the latest ‘expenses’ scandal, having supposedly exploited the system for their own benefit (read HERE). Now, I’m pretty sceptical about the moral integrity of our politicians, mostly because their lives are so rigourously divided between what’s ‘public’ and what’s ‘private’ – the point being that when acting publicly they are supposed to uphold strong moral standards, but what they do in private is ‘their own business’. This is obviously absolute stupidity, as moral character, like religious faith, is either all or nothing – it is who you are, not what you do. The idea that you can turn ‘on’ moral standards when acting publicly, if you don’t have them privately, is so ridiculous as to border on lunacy.

Nonetheless, I want to open up another front of attack on our beloved politicians. Looking at the picture above, who the heck would want to become an MP if you end up looking like one of them? You can positively see the slime dripping off them. The word ’smarmy’ doesn’t quite do it justice.

A Reading Binge

I’ve been on something of a reading binge for the last few weeks in the run up to two essays I have due in May. For the first time in my life I’ve actually got into a reading routine (which has a lot to do with the fact I am otherwise unoccupied throughout the day, as I continue to look for a job that fits round my studies in this stupid recession). Nevertheless, here is the fruit of my labours, both completed and ongoing, and some I will be starting imminently:

Books Completed:

Ivan Illich - Tools For Conviviality. A staple of Illich’s corpus which extends the thesis he set out in Deschooling Society, that the institutionalization of the West – in terms of education, healthcare, transport, technology etc. – has done far more damage than good, acting as dehumanizing forces which make us slaves to the very things that were supposed to help us. Illich was something of a phenomenon in the 70s, but his work was rather neglected from the mid-80s on. However, the theological foundations of his work – the argument that modern society is essentially a corruption of Christianity – has recently been retrieved by Charles Taylor.

John Ruskin – Unto This Last. A scathing critique of the political economy of 19th Century Victorian society from what might be called a ‘theo-aesthetic’ and romantic perspective. Ruskin has been of interest lately to the likes of John Milbank and Jamie Smith, and has been cited as inspiration for the (related) political sensibility known as ‘Red Toryism’, with which Philip Blond is identified. I found Ruskin had much to say to our current economic situation, even though he was addressing a social context quite different (in some ways, not others) from our own.

The Return of Theology – Times article

Just came across this excellent article over at The Times on the return of theology to academia and the public sphere, focussing on Radical Orthodoxy and featuring an interview with John Milbank - <CLICK HERE>

John Ruskin – ‘A Biting Retort’

I recently checked out a volume entitled A Book of Ruskin from the University Library. It is a small pocket-size compendium of excerpts from John Ruskin’s writings, published in 1927. It has a heavily worn, navy blue, hardback cover which seems to be falling off at the binding. The pages are aged, a little crumpled and rather yellow. It smells very, very musty. It is the kind of book I like.

In it, are a selection of Ruskin’s letters, both private and public, and I came across one which I particularly enjoyed, entitled ‘A Biting Retort’. By way of background, Ruskin was a staunch critic of the laissez-faire economics of his day. Part of his argument was that modern capitalism turned the lower-class factory worker into little more than a human machine – simply a means of production for the national economy. The working class were given simple, repetitive, menial jobs, with long hours and low pay, in terrible conditions, and this was said to be their fair lot in life. In addition to the obvious social injustice issues here, Ruskin argued that this robbed working class ‘work’ of any pleasure or beauty, because it destroyed its creative element (see his essay ‘The Nature of The Gothic’ in The Stones of Venice). Ruskin saw this as a deep injustice at the heart of modern, Victorian society, that was dehumanizing and anti-life. The following exchange comes in this context, and concerns a misunderstanding of Ruskin’s critique as concerned simply with an attack on machinery. I will quote in full from the book:

“A somewhat impertinent critic once wrote to Ruskin:

Since you disparage so much iron and its manufacture, may it be asked how your books are printed, and how is their paper made? Probably you are aware that both printing and paper-making machines are made with that material.

To this Ruskin replied as follows:

Sir,

I am indeed aware that printing and paper-making machines are made of iron.  I am aware also, which you perhaps are not, that ploughshares and knives and forks are.  And I am aware, which you certainly are not, that I am writing with an iron pen. And you will find in ‘Fors Clavigera’, and in all my other writings which you may have done me the honour to read, that my statement is that things which have to do the work of iron should be made of iron and things which have to do the work of wood should be made of wood ;  but that (for instance) hearts should not be made of iron, nor heads of wood – and this last statement you may wisely consider when next it enters yours to ask questions.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

J.Ruskin

(Corpus Christi College, Oxford. February 10, 1872)”.

Superb!

Dust & Light blog

Nearly a year ago me and two friends of mine came up with the idea of starting a collaborative blog. After much procrastination, we have finally got around to starting the thing. ‘Dust and Light’ will provide a platform for theological interaction with philosophy, culture, politics, art, etc., and is intended to provoke conversation and discussion.

You can visit the blog here: http://dustandlight.wordpress.com

I made my first post on the blog today, entitled “On What It Means To Be Free”. In it I make the point – obvious to some, less so to others – that the dominant ‘liberal’ notion of freedom we have today is basically contrary to any Christian notion of freedom.

Jeremy Clarkson on the PM

While being interviewed by journalists in Australia, Jeremy Clarkson had this to say about Britain’s current Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

“…we’ve got this one-eyed Scottish idiot. He keeps telling us the world is fine and he’s saved the world and we know he’s lying, but he’s smooth at telling us.”

Mr. Brown has responded by saying the comment is ‘unforgiveable’, which Clarkson is probably relieved about, and apparently some Scottish people have got upset. Good old Jeremy!

Obama, RO and the State as Parody of the Church

Listening to Barack Obama’s victory speech the other night honestly gave me tingles down my spine. The man is a fantastic rhetorician, and the speech itself was beautifully crafted. Here’s a pertinent snippet from his final paragraph:

“This is our moment. This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can.”

And yet I couldn’t help but feel somewhat uncomfortable about the whole thing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I genuinely think Obama is a vast improvement on Bush, and I don’t deny that his election marks a truly historic moment in American (and global?) politics. But I was left uncomfortable nonetheless, and this evening, while sat in Starbucks, I think I may have found the reason why – but it first requires some context…

§

Part of my reason for wanting to study in the theology department at Nottingham is my interest in Radical Orthodoxy (RO), which perhaps has it’s strongest base in the Centre of Theology and Philosophy, located here and headed up by John Milbank and Conor Cunningham (though not everyone in Nottingham’s theology dept is in the ‘RO camp’, of course). RO is a broad ‘movement’ which, since its inception, has created quite a splash on the British theological scene, and increasingly in the States as well. It has many supporters, but also many detractors (there is a surprising mix of both among the staff and students at the University of Nottingham). One of my aims whilst here is to ‘make up mind’, as it were, about RO; to see how far I can or would like to align myself with it.

One aspect of the RO critique of secular modernity (this critique may be RO’s central thesis) which got me thinking today, however, has to do with the assertion that the modern secular State, while portraying itself as areligious/neutral etc., is at its root a ‘parody’ of the church. While claiming to exist in a public, political realm beyond religious concerns, the RO authors contend that the secular State is actually quite the opposite, offering an alternative religious account to that of the church, and a deeply heterodox one at that. It is said that the state offers an alternative story to the Christian one, and an alternative path to salvation (albeit an earthly, immanent salvation):

“The modern state is best understood [...] as a source of an alternative soteriology to that of the church [...] The body of the state is a simulacrum, a false copy, of the Body of Christ” (Cavanaugh 1998:182).