Category Archives: atheism

TBTM20080509

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Cardinal says faithful must respect atheists.

God is not a “fact in the world” as though God could be treated as “one thing among other things to be empirically investigated” and affirmed or denied on the “basis of observation”, said Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor. “If Christians really believed in the mystery of God, we would realise that proper talk about God is always difficult, always tentative.

What seems to often be the trouble, though, is that humourless atheists won’t let the religious BE tentative…

Reasonable Atheism (17): Preventing the supernatural

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I’ve been putting off writing this post because I wanted to do some more research, but I think that’s not the wisest course, and I don’t want to let go of this sequence. So here is my take – in unresearched and unreferenced terms! – of what ‘the supernatural’ might mean. Click ‘full post’ for text.


There is a wonderful prayer in the BCP that begins: Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings…. This isn’t asking God to stop us from doing something – it is asking God to ‘go before us’ and allow or enable things to happen by grace, because that is what the word ‘prevent’ meant at the time the BCP was written. It’s a good example of a word that has changed its meaning over time. The trouble is, the same thing has happened to the word ‘supernatural’ – but fewer people are aware of this.

In the medieval period the word ‘supernatural’ had its sense within a particular anthropology, a particular understanding of what it meant to be human. The human being had certain natural qualities and capacities (eg of body and mind) and was created in the image of God. Consequently it found its fulfilment in a supernatural end, the beatific vision, and those things which prevented that supernatural end were sin. Sin prevents us from achieving our created end; grace enables us to achieve our created end. So: the word supernatural took its meaning from a particular way of talking about human nature and human behaviour; it was a way of describing the meaning and purpose of human life, and integrating that into a larger moral framework. So a supernatural miracle, one might say, was, eg, a charitable act. Our sinful nature would tend against doing good deeds; doing a good deed was a product of grace enabling us to act charitably and thereby fulfil the intentions that we were created for. Those who spent their lives caring for the poor and sick were living supernatural lives. Hence that BCP prayer, in its full form:

Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings with Thy most gracious favour, and further us with Thy continual help; that in all our prayer and works begun, continued and ended in Thee, we may glorify Thy Holy Name, and finally by Thy mercy obtain everlasting life. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Who livest and reignest with Thee, in the Unity of the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Now the word supernatural as we use it commonly today means something completely different. That medieval construction has vanished, and in its place, I suggest, is something like this: the world is amenable to scientific investigation, principally through the understanding of the ‘hard’ physical sciences like physics, chemistry and biology. This is the natural world, what can be studied by the natural philosophers. That which is not amenable to scientific analysis is ‘supernatural’, it is beyond the natural. Dependent on the person doing the categorising, this can include: psychic phenomena like telekinesis or telepathy, the occult, various superstitions and, of course, religious beliefs of various sorts.

The underlying mental construct is that only that which can be measured independently of the person doing the measuring can count as ‘real’. Only this can be ‘objective’ and safe for the realm of public knowledge. The alternative to this objectively real knowledge is the subjective realm, of feelings and intuitions and other sentimental woolliness.

Which flags up a rather crucial point: this underlying mental construct has itself been abandoned by the hard physical sciences. Reality doesn’t fit into that ‘subjective-objective’ model. Unfortunately the cultural influence of that now-discarded image is still strong, and most references to ‘supernatural’ that I come across in my conversations with atheists presuppose this framework.

What this means is that, in almost all cases, the word ‘supernatural’ has no specific intellectual content, it merely functions as a sort of swear word or insult, along the lines of ‘you’re a moron for believing this’.

In other words, a mark of the division between the humourless and the sophisticated is whether the word ‘supernatural’ is given some definite and agreed meaning, which can serve to illuminate the matters under discussion. Personally I think that we need to take a holiday from the word completely, and maybe in a generation or two it can be rehabilitated.

UPDATE: in response to the early comments. The principal source for the medieval perspective is Henri de Lubac’s ‘Surnaturel’ (see also here or here) which, I should point out, I have not read(!) However I’ve read a fair bit of work derived from it, and I think I’ve got the gist of his argument. (He’s influenced the Radical Orthodox, for example. Milbank’s ‘The Suspended Middle’ is on my bookshelf but not yet read – it was what I wanted to read prior to writing this post, but I felt a need to put something up rather than let the sequence grind to a complete halt.)

Falling in love with Frankenstein

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This is a sketch for a much longer essay about science fiction. Click ‘full post’ for text.

One of the dominant themes of Modern culture is the Frankenstein conceit – what you might think of as the ‘mad scientist’, or, more profoundly, the Faustian bargain. A man (and it normally is a man) is so consumed by his rational intellectual pursuits that he unwittingly provokes disaster and his own death.

As I see it, this is the way in which humanity’s soul has digested and absorbed the impact of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment project is precisely that which has elevated one element of our human nature falsely above the others; it has insitutionalised asophism; and thus we are in the midst of ecological crisis. The devil has come to collect his due.

Being a fan of sf, especially visually, I am struck by the way in which this theme has been subverted and then overcome within the world of fiction and film. I see this as a creative analogue of the way in which the Enlightenment project has itself been undone from within. (This is, I believe, why there is such an efflorescence of angst-ridden writings from the humourless atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens et al – they are aware in their bones that they are being left behind.)

Three examples of this shift:
1. The Matrix trilogy. The first Matrix was pure Frankenstein – the intellectual products of humanity turn against their creators and destruction follows; human liberty and salvation lie in battling against the machine. However, the second two films explored something more creative – the machine is not monolithic, it has variety (and therefore more dramatic interest of course) – there is a possibility of an alliance between human and mecha.

2. Battlestar Galactica, the new series. Whereas in the original series we are facing highly efficient automata (rational products of Enlightenment) now the cylons are riven with their own competing needs and desires. The Cylons are now just like us; we can even breed with them.

3. The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The original Terminator film is a real classic, and a classic description of the Frankenstein – a totally remorseless source of death and destruction ‘it absolutely will not stop until you are dead’. With the films a little first, but now much more with the series, we have much more creative ambiguity. This crystallised for me in the recent episode where Summer Glau starts to learn ballet. A vision of beauty – and whether it is human or mecha falls by the wayside.

(I’ve also been put in mind of this by recently finishing Dan Simmons’ Hyperion cantos, but I’ll write about them separately.)

I believe that what we have in this medium – film and television science fiction – is the creative resolution of the human conflict created by the Western idolatry of reason. As our society moves beyond the Enlightenment, so too does our fiction. Robots who are pure products of reason are no longer very interesting – the robots need to have more to them – and this is simply a mirror for how we see ourselves. In other words, there is more to humanity than the remorseless application of reason.

I find this encouraging and exciting.

Reasonable Atheism (16b): a bit more on bloody hands

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One of the sticks used to beat the faithful about the head is the notion that ‘religion causes violence’. There is a particular historical genealogy behind this line of argument – it arose as a consequence of the seventeenth century wars of religion in Europe – but despite not being true it has become a persistent urban myth. It came up in some of the comments, most explicitly in CC’s words “I have yet to witness a scientist strapping explosives to himself and blowing up civilians in honor of a theory or torturing someone to death because they would not subscribe to their view of gravity”. I think this is worth a thread all of its own.

First of all, let me emphasise that I do believe that some people pursue violent acts because of their particular religious beliefs. Clearly Sayyid Qutb has generated precisely that ideology in radical Islam. Yet such religious beliefs are comparatively rare, and not only are they rare they are often in contradiction to the expressed teachings of the founder, not least in Christianity. Christianity was functionally pacifist for the first three hundred years of its life, and it reveres as teacher one who explicitly renounced the path of violence in his own life. If Christianity is inherently violent, isn’t it a little odd that this wasn’t shown for so long?

Which leads rather naturally into the second point that needs to be made. Christianity only stopped being pacifist when it became an official ideology of state power – and as soon as this happens, then you have the situation where religious language is being used as a cover for secular motives. This is how I read something like the Inquisition – it was a struggle for power that wore religious clothes, in just the same way that the “wars of religion” had very little to do with religious belief as such. Human beings will resort to violence to succeed in their aims and endeavours. That is the nature of the beast. The issue is: what will help the beast to be tamed? If you understand Girard you’ll get a pretty persuasive argument that it is precisely religion that tames the beast, and the demolition of religion in the western psyche that caused the beast to be unleashed in the twentieth century.

The flip side of ‘religion causes violence’ is that ‘no scientist inflicts suffering in order to advance (or defend) scientific research’. This seems manifestly untrue. Let’s begin with the non-human world and consider vivisection. When a scientist carried out an LD50 test, for example, how does that not qualify as the infliction of suffering in order to discern truth? Second, consider the notorious example of Mengele in WW2. How was his work not scientific? Third, more profoundly, consider how far the Nazi ideology had its origin in acceptable scientific notions in broader Western society, eg social darwinism and eugenics (another link to mystic bourgeoisie is needed). The problem here isn’t to do with wicked individuals, it is to do with a whole pattern of thought.

What that brings out is that sometimes scientific language is also used as a cover for secular motives, or, to put that differently, sometimes people can do the worst of things with the best of motives. We’re back to the nature of the beast – human nature can be pretty awful – and we need to be very careful when we use language like ‘science is morally neutral’ in case, by doing so, we are giving a free pass to a nutter. Just as with religion, it is what we do with the words that matters.

There is one final aspect to this. I think you could make an argument that nobody kills for a scientific theory – all you need to do is define ‘scientific’ in the right way. Yet the consequence is that science is trivial, that nothing which science provides actually matters to our life. Nobody is killing for it, and nobody is prepared to die for it either. All that is most important to us is blind to that sort of science by definition. The biggest difference that I see is between those who accept that definition, and still believe that science is the highest form of knowledge, and those who don’t.

Consider a new drug that cures pancreatic cancer; and another drug which tries to do the same but doesn’t quite work. Why does the difference matter? Because we care about people and don’t want them to die unnecessarily. Is that a scientific value? Is compassion for our fellow human beings something which science actively teaches and cultivates (science, not scientists)? It seems pretty clear to me that science rests within a much larger culture, derives legitimacy, values and purpose from that wider culture, and does its best work as a servant of that culture.

Whenever there is a plea for the independence of science from social control, and the rhetoric of ‘science is morally neutral’, I reach for my gun.

At least, I would if I had one 🙂

Reasonable Atheism (16): a response to the Chimp

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I’m going to pick out some elements from the Chimp’s recent comment. My remarks in italics.

Yes, very sophisticated. Proclemations made with no support. Science is the absolute antithesis of faith. In adopting the scientific method, nothing is believed to be true without evidence.

This isn’t true. For implicit in the method, even as you describe it, is the construct of ‘evidence’, which contains assumptions about what is allowed to count as evidence. This notion is embedded in a whole patchwork quilt of assumptions from empiricism. Once these assumptions are brought out into the open the scientific endeavour starts to look much less pristine.

Faith is the exact opposite. The suggestion that science is in some way a faith position is ingnorant and misleading. It seems to me that anything half-hearted that states nothing concrete is ‘sophisticated’.

No, I think what is sophisticated is being able to step aside from the culturally acceptable rhetoric about science, and recognising science as a cultural construct itself. That’s why Ian and I can have productive conversations.

We ‘humourless’ Atheists are ‘humourless’ because we refuse to leave any wiggle room for religious fantasy.

Rather, I would say the humourlessness comes from not recognising a) the non-fantastical elements of religion, and b) the fantastical elements of science.

As for the end of faith, I have yet to witness a scientist strapping explosives to himself and blowing up civilans in honor of a theory or torturing someone to death because they would not subscribe to their view of gravity.

This is silly.I’m quite sure that if we were able to work out some sort of utilitarian calculation on which set of beliefs had had the most malign consequences – religious exploration and teachings, or scientific exploration and teachings – then science would end up with by far the most bloody hands. In other words, I’ll trade you one Torquemada for your chemical warfare.

Science represents civilization, cooperation and the free expression of ideas.

You missed out motherhood and apple pie 🙂 Those values existed before the rise of science and are maintained apart from the maintenance of science. What I would want to ask you is: can you give a scientifically acceptable explanation of those values?

Not all ideas are defacto accepted as equal. Some ideas are bad ones, they are discarded in favour of good ones.

How is this different from a religion?

There is no ‘holy’ text that cannot be contradicted.

Perhaps not a text, but certainly a network of culturally embedded assumptions. As Kuhn points out, what makes scientific practices change isn’t some semi-mystical notion of ‘reason conquering ignorance’ but simply a generational change when those established scientists who don’t ‘get’ a new theory die out and are replaced. Reason has very little to do with it (aesthetics is much more important).

Religion runs into this problem constantly. This leads to ‘sophisticated’ theology. That being bullshit dressed as being sensible. When the ancient books, full of hate and intolerence conflict with modern ethics, excuse making, obfuscation and meaning twisting begin in earnest. If the bible were a scientific document, it would have been discarded long ago.

Thank God it isn’t – because I completely agree that as a scientific text it’s worse than useless. But that is the mistake that fundamentalists make, and in saying it you show that you share a fundamentalist attitude. Besides which, where do you think ‘modern ethics’ came from, if not from Christian roots? Or do you think it sprang out new born from John Locke’s head, like Athena from Zeus?

Harris’ point is that if many people believe the end is coming, and a worryingly large number seem to think so, imagine what they would do with a nuclear arsenal. Many fundamentalists of all stripes actually look forward to the cataclismic ending of the world, day of judgement and all that.

I agree with him on that, and have been teaching and preaching to that effect for a while now.

His point simply is that the world can no longer afford ‘faith’. Our technological development coupled with much freer access to information will empower believers to literally destroy the world over their fantasies. ‘Sphisticated’ theism is complicit in that it suggests these types of beliefs are reasonable and justified.

On the contrary, the only hope of humanity is good theology outcompeting the bad. All that humourless atheism achieves is the disarming of the last best hope we’ve got. If you don’t understand what religion is, how it functions and why it appeals – if both good theology and bad theology is equally nonsensical – then the only future is a violent one, and my point above about the scientists having the bloodiest hands will be vindicated a billion-fold.

Reasonable Atheism (15): Western atheism as a Protestant sub-culture (1)

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This theme will have a few parts to it. Here I just want to sketch out the logical/historical link between Protestantism and the abandonment of Christianity.

The essential claim of Christianity is the incarnation – that Jesus is 100% human and 100% divine. One of the consequences of that claim is that the material world, the flesh, can be a vessel for the sacred, that it can communicate the transcendent, that it can be a means of grace.

This is the foundation for a sacramental theology, ie that through the water used in baptism, through the bread and wine of communion, God actively engages with the faithful and works to their healing – here the signs and symbols employed mediate God’s grace.

Consequently the historically orthodox churches have all emphasised the centrality of sacramental worship – baptism as the rite of entry into the church, communion as the central act of worship renewing and sustaining the church. This pattern is common across the vast majority of Christianity in time and space: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran etc. However, it is a pattern that broke down after the Reformation in some Protestant churches, and which became culturally influential.

In England, for example, the downplaying of the altar, and the raising up of the pulpit to a position of great prominence, can be tracked architecturally. Whereas the historic faith had been sacramentally centred, the post-Reformation church reduced the sacraments to simple signs – and beyond that, they were signs that were optional for faith. The essence of Christianity became “faith”, as in being “justified by faith” – and this became reduced to a matter of right belief. If you believe that Jesus Christ is your personal saviour then you have a saving faith.

So, in a great many Protestant churches today, what is most central to Christian worship is right teaching. You have to have the right attitude to the Bible, and the teachers of the Bible have to teach the right thing. Those are the essential elements for ensuring salvation.

However, note what has been lost in this transition. Where the sacraments have become optional or redundant, and teaching takes its place, you no longer need Jesus to have been God incarnate. He just needs to have been a good teacher. Where salvation is a matter of right belief, then Jesus’ prime purpose is to teach that right belief (despite the fact that Jesus never uses the phrase “justified by faith”).

So in the countries dominated by Western Protestantism, where the sacraments were downplayed or ignored, the idea that Jesus was simply a good teacher was implicitly first taught within the churches themselves. Of course, a major corollary of this trajectory of Protestantism was that church itself eventually becomes redundant. For if salvation flows from right belief, and right belief is a matter of rightly understanding the Bible and what it teaches – then that is something that can be obtained by private reading, private study of the Bible. Which becomes: “you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian”, a refrain still commonly heard on English streets when talking to the vicar.

At this point – when the church is redundant, when Jesus is simply a good teacher – the mental effort required to move to rejecting Jesus as a principal teacher is not very far.

This brings us on to questions of God, which I’ll cover in another post.

Put that in your bong and toke it

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Recent arrivals to this blog may not be familiar with this site, which is truly one of my favourites – and another example of sophisticated atheism at work, along with a a warped and wonderful sense of humour….

The project that the writer has embarked on is an important one. I hope his book gets published soon. His next book, that is.