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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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Date: 2009-12-22 03:21 pm (UTC)One was a muslim who (ok, gently) berated a north-african patient for not being a practising muslim. She asked him a few times why he drank and why he didn't go to mosque. I thought this was incredibly bad form.
The second one was an evangelical christian who asked a patient with liver mets if he prayed as she believed in divine intervention. For a start once you have liver mets it is pretty much game over, and also it's just NOT comforting if you aren't a believer. It actually makes you face up to things that maybe you don't want to think about - ie death, the idea of eternity, even 'shit, what if I'm wrong?'.
Patients are a very vulnerable group of people, often unsure of what's happening to them, in pain, confused and scared out of their wits. The staff have a duty not to freak them out any more. Of course if the patient instigated it, and the nurse was also of the same religion then fine. But I thought after these scandals that nurses would be far more careful about pushing their agendas - and I saw it happen twice in two weeks on the same ward, so it's obviously not isolated cases.