Category Archives: culture

Reasonable atheism (6): what is acceptable to the humourless atheist?

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“People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them – that does not occur to them.” (Wittgenstein, 1939)

I want to explore the comment I ended my last post on the topic with, that atheism of the humourless variety not only is aspect blind to something crucial, but that, in a very real and concrete sense, the salvation of our society rests upon our being able to shift away, as a culture, from the tenets of humourless atheism. Clearly this requires some further explanation.

Let’s begin by taking an example of atheist criticism of religious language, Stephen Law’s criticisms (eg here). Stephen finds the resort to mystical language ‘cobblers’ and comments: “The appeal to mystery and the mystical has of course been a bog-standard technique of cultists and other purveyors of snake oil down through the centuries whenever they are accused of talking cobblers.” I want to ask: what would count as not being ‘cobblers’? In other words, what sort of language meets the standard that is being applied? I take Stephen to be a representative of the Humean tradition (if I’m wrong I’ll amend this post!) so as a guess I would have thought that at least two forms of language would meet Stephen’s criteria for not being cobblers: language of mathematical and symbolic logic, and language that was supported by empirical science. Do other forms of language have anything other than emotionally-expressive value (that is, it makes us feel good but has no other cognitive weight)?

If we take poetry for example, it may well be that poetic language and verse has a useful function to play within a human society, as something which gives pleasure to people, but which is of no wider interest to those concerned with ‘truth’. Poetry can function in the way that football functions – it is entertainment, and might end up being economically significant, but as a discipline with the capacity to teach us truths about human nature and our place in the world it is without merit, and must give way to more scientific investigation.

My problem with this Humean perspective, however, is that it is impossible to teach wisdom with language that is acceptable. In other words, it is impossible to teach wisdom with language that is only a) logical, b) empirical or (at a stretch for the Humean) c) emotionally expressive. In order to teach wisdom – and for our civilisation to survive this crisis – we need something more.

Two good articles on the financial bust

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I read various economic blogs regularly (another aspect of my general geekiness) and thought you might be interested in these two articles, as they are comparatively clear about our current mess.

Number one: “The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. The real problem is the contractual ability of investors in mortgage bonds to require banks to buy back the loans at face value if there was fraud in the origination process. And, to be sure, fraud is everywhere…”

Number two: “When big operators take on a lot more risk than they otherwise might — they drive faster, perhaps, because they know their car has anti-lock brakes — it tends to raise the danger stakes for the system as a whole. Millions of dollars of losses can break the bank at a few unlucky firms. Billion — or even trillion — dollar failures can bring down the whole house of cards, especially given the dense network of dependent relationships that exists in the global financial arena.”

I do think the sub-prime fiasco is the trigger for the fourth turning.

Eager longing (December Synchroblog)

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We have three small children – the eldest just five and a half – and you can imagine the sense of anticipation that is building as Christmas hoves into view. Now, given my views on commercial culture (see my LUBH talks) you might think that the way in which the children are so focused on ‘presents’ is something to be repudiated or frustrated. And yet, there is something here that is worth redeeming. And that is hope.

For what the kids are doing is looking forward to something. They don’t know quite what it is – they’ve had all sorts of hints – but they are excited by it all, and it all seems a little bit magical. And then there is the day itself, with lots of celebrations and opening of presents and lots and lots of fun.

Now it may well be that the attention given to presents – most especially the attention given to the receiving of presents, rather than the giving – is something that needs to be grown out of. But what is now clear to me is that this time is all about the hope and longing for something to come into a life – and that it is very important and healthy to nurture that hope.

Imagine that such things were squashed and made pious; that such longings were replaced by more acceptable and formulaic religiosity. Something utterly essential would be lost. For that eager longing is something needed in our world. Some sense of possibility – that things will soon change – that we can achieve or obtain what we most desire – that seems to me to be healthy, and the adult expression of it – what we need when we consider the state of our world, what we need in order to deal with the state of our world – that is built on the foundations of small boys filled with eager longing for a castle, or a digger, or an Action Man.

We need to nurture our eager longings. That way we might one day be revealed as children ourselves.

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A synchroblog is when a number of different bloggers agree to write on the same topic at the same time (I missed that last element this month).
Redeeming the Season is the Topic for this month’s SynchroBlog. Now there are a variety of seasons being celebrated at the end of each year from Christmas to Hannukah to Eid al-Adha and Muharram, from the Winter Solstice to Kwanzaa and Yule. Some people celebrate none of these seasonal holydays, and do so for good reason. Below is a variety of responses to the subject of redeeming the season. From the discipline of simplicity, to uninhibited celebration, to refraining from celebrating, to celebrating another’s holyday for the purpose of cultural identification the subject is explored. Follow the links below to “Redeeming the Season.” For more holidays to consider see here

Recapturing the Spirit of Christmas at Adam Gonnerman’s Igneous Quill
Swords into Plowshares at Sonja Andrew’s Calacirian
Fanning the Flickering Flame of Advent at Paul Walker’s Out of the Cocoon
Lainie Petersen at Headspace
The Battle Rages at Bryan Riley’s Charis Shalom
Secularizing Christmas at JohnSmulo.com
There’s Something About Mary at Hello Said Jenelle
Geocentric Versus Anthropocentric Holydays at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
Celebrating Christmas in a Pluralistic Society at Matt Stone’s Journeys in Between
The Ghost of Christmas Past at Erin Word’s Decompressing Faith
Redeeming the season — season of redemption by Steve Hayes
Remembering the Incarnation at Alan Knox’ The Assembling of the Church
A Biblical Response to a Secular Christmas by Glenn Ansley’s Bad Theology
Happy Life Day at The Agent B Files
What’s So Bad About Christmas? at Julie Clawson’s One Hand Clapping

Humanist institutions

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Time to keep pushing this one!

Neil said: “Why is it necessary to have “special” institutions that pass on humanistic belief? Surely it would be done from a humanist to his family, his workplace – sounds like evangelism! Schools and Universities would be the best example of humanist/secular “institutions”. Art and Media is then influenced by humanism, which we see presented on television, the internet, etc etc. So there’s no humanist churches. And there’s no special humanist “institution”, but does that mean that humanistic beliefs and attitudes do not influence society at large?”

If I might say so, this is a classically Protestant response!! But what I wanted to pick up on was the example of universities. These do indeed have a particular aim and ethos, and they are very good at instilling particular practices and habits in the students that attend (and later teach) at such institutions. So they could be called – with a nod to Robert M Pirsig – the ‘Church of Reason’. I would even go so far as to accept that they teach particular virtues, eg commitment to the truth and to honesty in research (which, by the by, shows up one of the dependencies of “scientific” research on moral culture). Yet would it be generally accepted that the universities produce people who are ‘more moral’ or ‘more good’ than the average? To go back to Scott’s summary of my quest, “I want to know where humanism is building up society in such a way that more people will tend to do good rather than evil.”

In addition to that, the universities and schools, especially in this country, are obviously dependent upon the Christian tradition for their founding and initial establishments and ethos. What is a) the distinctive humanist contribution to academic study, and b) what is the benefit to the good of society from that contribution.

The same thing applies in other fields. Think of hospitals and medical care generally – where, again, the Christian influence is pretty explicit. In terms of training of nurses or doctors today there are certainly institutions which – in theory – can shape people to work for the good of society. But what does humanism bring to this? Especially now, when the UK health care system has been overrun by the meddling mediocrities from Whitehall, and what matters is the meeting of some abstract ‘target’ rather than the healing of an individual person. (And there are issues lurking behind this as well, to do with the healing of the whole person rather than simply the ‘broken mechanism’ of their body).

Where is the humanist institution that is concerned with creating better people? (And it begs the question: what are people FOR?)