“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!

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.

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_{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.}

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.

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>

Speed, Noise and the Asceticism of Ivan Illich

Modern life for those of us in the West is lived at breathtaking speed, a speed which would have made little sense in previous epochs, and which still makes little sense to many other cultures around the world. Time is money, and as such Western society seeks to eradicate those portions of time which are not spent productively. Our society is built upon what Charles Taylor has called a principle of ’simultaneity’; society runs like a vast, time-tabled machine of extreme temporal and spatial co-ordination, where many different things (e.g. the turning on of streets lights, opening of shops, collection and delivery of post etc.), must happen simultaneously in many different places for society to function. The speed at which all this takes place has been and will continue to accelerate until we can squeeze the very most out of our 24 hour days. As a result of this, our lives are also lived amidst tremendous noise. As the speed of life increases – as more and more things happen, simultaneously, at faster and faster rates, in more and more places – the background noise which accompanies our lives rises to a deafening clamour. It is hard for us to conceive of life separate from the incessant speed and unyielding noise of modern life.

Ivan Illich, the Catholic social theorist and theologian, was a fierce critic of developments such as these. His work suggests that they are symptoms of the way in which we have become subject to the very tools, processes and institutions which were intended to serve us. For example,

“It has taken a century to pass from an era served by motorised vehicles to the era in which society has been reduced to virtual enslavement to the car.“

_{[Tools for Conviviality, 1973, p.7]}

Our tools and institutions have caused us to become domesticated. From school onwards, our society breeds individuals intended to fit like a cog into the clamourous mega-machine of modern society. And for most of us, we cannot even envision anything different. For Illich, we have been dehumanised, and the only way to rediscover what has been lost is through a process of selective asceticism and renunciation. Asceticism is something of a dirty word these days, but Illich did not mean it in the sense of the needless renunciation of good things (such as sex, certain foods and drinks etc.), of which Nietzsche (and Paul) were critical. Rather, he advocates an asceticism which does precisely the opposite, and enables us to experience and appreciate the good things more fully:

“We have to engage in the asceticism which makes it possible to savour now-ness and here-ness – here is a place, here is that which is between us, as the Kingdom is – in order to be able to save what remains in us of a sense of meaning, of metaphor, of flesh, of touch, of gaze.“

_{[1986 interview - to get the full weight listen HERE]}

Our modern way of living has caged us in a world of breathtaking speed and deafening noise. For Illich, in order to live with hope, meaning and depth in our age, we need to make certain renunciations. Renunciations which enable us to withdraw from the speed and noise and clamour of our modern lives to a place of solitude and quietness, within which the voice of God can be heard (and the voices of our neighbours and friends), and within which the beauty and goodness of life can be properly savoured and reflected upon – and lived.

Ivan Illich was a remarkable man who, though a high-profile academic, sought a simpler existence. He was a traveller who, in an era of jet-age transportation, preferred the measured speed and humbler energy efficiency of the bicycle. He never wore a watch, believing it needlessly forced an artificial structure on life. And towards the end of his life, he sought more traditional treatments for a serious facial tumour, so as not to become a cog in the medical machine. These kinds of renunciation may not be for everyone, but for those of us who sense that the modern ‘rat-race’ drains and degrades life, Illich offers a different way. I get the sense that there is a profound wisdom to Illich’s asceticism, that deliberate and occasional acts of renunciation can give us the space to rediscover and reflect on the ordinary goodness and beauty of life. 

Amidst the speed and the noise of modern life, in order to have hope, perhaps what we need is stillness, simplicity and silence.

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_{[Before reading Illich, I seem to have been echoing these sentiments in} this post _{on the value of Evensong.]}