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webofevilWhen did atheists become so damn fragile? I thought the whole point was that atheism wasn’t just another faith, to be filed along with Zoroastrianism and Voodoo. As a non-believer, you’re supposed to be able to remain untouched by the belief systems that others profess; your rationalism makes you immune to whatever they’re breathing. But to race to the authorities at the first hint of a well-intentioned prayer smacks of massive insecurity rather than of disagreeing with a belief from any position of strength. Could your atheism really crumble so easily in the face of someone believing extra hard?
Partly, of course, this is down to the irascible Dawkins. His increasing impatience with and intolerance for believers, while understandable in a man who has spent his life immersed in scientific study, has long been in danger of overwhelming the value—and, importantly, the essentially positive nature—of his message. The more he has shifted from demonstrating how the world has not been designed and is amazing in its own right to explaining to anyone who does not understand this, carefully and painstakingly, why they personally are a scrofulous moron, the more he has alienated people whom he might once have reached and the loyal choir he has ended up preaching to has become ever more militant.
Which is why, at Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People (the idea of which might sound as if it should be up for a Rory Bremner Award for Sledge-Fisted Satire, but it’s actually excellent) at Hammersmith on Sunday, I was impressed with any performer who was prepared to say that, while they were happy to criticise and satirise religion, they didn’t actually despise people who were religious; in front of a righteous “right-thinking” crowd and especially with Dawkins in the building, that’s veering close to heresy.
It’s kind of nuts that I feel driven by this and other similar cases to turn and face the massed ranks that I usually find myself travelling alongside, especially at a time when so much faith-related nonsense abounds. Feeling beleaguered in a secular society, some Christians are so desperate for validation that they can find virtue in anyone professing a faith at all—witness the idiot bishop to the armed forces subsequently having to apologise for admiring the Taliban. Tony Blair often makes similarly profound pronouncements about just how great it is that people around the world have some faith, any faith, so long as it’s faith. (Presumably it’s even better if it’s somehow modern faith, right, Tony?) But criticising a religion, dismantling its superstitions and pretensions piece by piece, does not have to equate to being stung by its every manifestation in other people’s everyday lives. Someone offering to pray with you for your child, be they Christian or whatever else, is reaching out and offering support. What the hell is wrong with just taking that as it’s meant and declining with grace?
If asked “How tolerant are you?”, a huge majority of Sunday’s Nine Lessons crowd would probably have replied “Irreproachably”. But I’d like to know how many of them, faced with someone expressing their beliefs around their children, would start hysterically calling for them to be sacked.
If someone’s proselytising at you and trying to make you sign up to their holy book, it’s only natural that you’ll vigorously resist. But if someone is expressing heartfelt support using the language and symbols of their own belief system—such as offering to intercede with their gods on your behalf—then it’s churlish, at best, to try to punish them for it. What’s that, Sooty? “It can be a fine line between ‘offering support’ and evangelism”? Yes it can, which is why I recommend we use those rational processes that we advertise so proudly to work out what’s happening at the time, respond accordingly and settle the fuck down.
Partly, of course, this is down to the irascible Dawkins. His increasing impatience with and intolerance for believers, while understandable in a man who has spent his life immersed in scientific study, has long been in danger of overwhelming the value—and, importantly, the essentially positive nature—of his message. The more he has shifted from demonstrating how the world has not been designed and is amazing in its own right to explaining to anyone who does not understand this, carefully and painstakingly, why they personally are a scrofulous moron, the more he has alienated people whom he might once have reached and the loyal choir he has ended up preaching to has become ever more militant.
Which is why, at Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People (the idea of which might sound as if it should be up for a Rory Bremner Award for Sledge-Fisted Satire, but it’s actually excellent) at Hammersmith on Sunday, I was impressed with any performer who was prepared to say that, while they were happy to criticise and satirise religion, they didn’t actually despise people who were religious; in front of a righteous “right-thinking” crowd and especially with Dawkins in the building, that’s veering close to heresy.
It’s kind of nuts that I feel driven by this and other similar cases to turn and face the massed ranks that I usually find myself travelling alongside, especially at a time when so much faith-related nonsense abounds. Feeling beleaguered in a secular society, some Christians are so desperate for validation that they can find virtue in anyone professing a faith at all—witness the idiot bishop to the armed forces subsequently having to apologise for admiring the Taliban. Tony Blair often makes similarly profound pronouncements about just how great it is that people around the world have some faith, any faith, so long as it’s faith. (Presumably it’s even better if it’s somehow modern faith, right, Tony?) But criticising a religion, dismantling its superstitions and pretensions piece by piece, does not have to equate to being stung by its every manifestation in other people’s everyday lives. Someone offering to pray with you for your child, be they Christian or whatever else, is reaching out and offering support. What the hell is wrong with just taking that as it’s meant and declining with grace?
If asked “How tolerant are you?”, a huge majority of Sunday’s Nine Lessons crowd would probably have replied “Irreproachably”. But I’d like to know how many of them, faced with someone expressing their beliefs around their children, would start hysterically calling for them to be sacked.
If someone’s proselytising at you and trying to make you sign up to their holy book, it’s only natural that you’ll vigorously resist. But if someone is expressing heartfelt support using the language and symbols of their own belief system—such as offering to intercede with their gods on your behalf—then it’s churlish, at best, to try to punish them for it. What’s that, Sooty? “It can be a fine line between ‘offering support’ and evangelism”? Yes it can, which is why I recommend we use those rational processes that we advertise so proudly to work out what’s happening at the time, respond accordingly and settle the fuck down.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 12:45 pm (UTC)And if this is actually the case then my point still stands.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 01:25 pm (UTC)It would be awesome if this story turned out to be based on confusion between Pascal's theorem and Pascal's wager.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 01:32 pm (UTC)I bet you’d let Dawkins shit in your fridge. If only to get an anecdote out of it.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 01:41 pm (UTC)Although maybe there's an angle where they'll desperately try and get her to talk about triangles just so they don't have to listen to another boring parable (a parabola??!?!??!?!?!).
no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 02:01 pm (UTC)The thing with the nurse was someone else within the NHS overreacting to something a patient had told them because they were worried about violating some guideline or other IIRC.
I think they introduced some new teaching guidelines that included this sort of stuff a while back that upset a load of religious types who were upset that they wouldn't be able to teach children that sex before marriage was wrong any more. (Or more like OH NOES TEH GOVERNMENT EXPECTS ME TO TEACH ALL MY STUDENTS TO BE HOMOSEXUALISTS? IS THIS THE USSR?)
no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 10:00 pm (UTC)lovely place, it's the only ground in the premier league where the teams have to bathe together whilst sodomising fairies.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 06:51 pm (UTC)