On Friday 11 March 2011, a dreadful earthquake struck Japan.

The scale of the disaster was shocking and disturbing.  Perhaps equally disturbing, however, were the messages which appeared on Facebook and twitter in the aftermath of the earthquake, suggesting it was ‘payback’ or some kind of karmic reaction to the Japanese alliance with Nazi germany during World War II. Specifically, they claimed, it was due to the unprovoked Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

My initial response to this, and this is meant sincerely, is “fuck you, you obnoxious pig fucker”.

For one thing, there is no such thing as ‘karma’.   For another, even if there were such a thing as ‘karma’, as described by the Buddhist tradition – it doesn’t work like that. And even if there were such a thing as ‘karma’, and even if it did work like that, the people injured and killed in the Tōhoku earthquake are not the same people who attacked Pearl Harbor.  They merely happened to have been born in the same country, some decades later.

To punish the people who live in Japan today for war crimes committed by their forefathers is not only unjust, it’s nonsensical, unless you subscribe to some kind of “the sins of the father shall be visited on the son” bullshit.  In which case, fuck you. Oh, and fuck you, you fucking pig-fucking, dick-fuck, fuck face.

Other messages were more positive, but equally as useless, such as #prayforjapan posts which appeared Facebook and Twitter. While this undoubtably represents a more positive sentiment, sentiment is unfortunately all it offers. You cannot clear debris, or cool nuclear fuel rods, with prayers.  This unfortunately exposes the impotence of Christianity. Faced with tragedy on this scale, they hit their knees and clasp their hands, begging their imaginary friend to intercede.  That intercession, if it comes at all, always seems to take the form of real people getting in there, and getting their hands dirty.  Though He was quite hands-on in the Old Testament, God likes to take a bit of a backseat these days.  He could, any time he chose, wave His giant hand and stabilise the nuclear reactors, clear the debris, resurrect the dead and give everyone their lives and homes back.  But He hasn’t done that.

Maybe God thinks this is payback for Pearl Harbor too.

It was while reading around this notion of “Pray for Japan” that I came across the website of a Christian Apologist named Kevin Childs.  Kevin published a blogpost on March 15 titled “God and Japan“, asking where God was during the Tōhoku earthquake.

Who ISN’T asking “Where was God when tragedy struck Japan?”

I’m not.

I’ll be honest: Any attempt to offer comments, spiritual insight, or anything else seems cheap and intrusive. It’s a little like passing out church brochures to weeping families you don’t know at the ER. It doesn’t feel right. Thank the Lord that Pat Robertson hasn’t said anything stupid… so far. And I don’t want to do so either. A tragedy on this scale shouldn’t be used just to “make a point.” But here are some thoughts.

No comment.

Pray for Japan. If you’re like me, I’m not exactly sure HOW to pray. What do you pray for those who have literally lost everything, and don’t even know if their family is at the bottom of the ocean, or under mountains of debris, or anonymously cremated, or taking shelter?

Fortunately, Childs has some suggestions on what to pray for.

Pray that God would comfort them and find ways to provide for their needs. Pray that those in authority would make the best possible decisions about relief and rebuilding.

I’m fairly sure that those things are best achieved by people – who definitely do exist – and not a God – which may or may not. Real people should be in there, providing support and comfort, catering for the needs of those unfortunate enough to have been caught up in this.  And the decisions made by those in authority in Japan are their own decisions.  To suggest that any good decision is actually guided by God, or that without God’s help they may come to some sub-optimal decision, is a grave insult.

Pray that God would use EVEN this for His glory. Pray that Christians would shine in all this, and Japanese people would be brought to Christ through it.

This comment actually made me sick to my stomach. “Pray that God uses this event to glorify Himself.” Presumably He will do this by absolving Himself of responsibility for those injured and killed, claiming credit for the survival of the rest, while also claiming credit for any good decisions made by those in power.

Childs also asks that Christians should “wrestle with the deep questions”. He says:

Where was God? On His throne where He always is, ruling the world. The twitterverse and blogosphere are buzzing with the told-you-so’s of skeptics. Many of them seem delighted to insist that if there WAS a loving God, such things couldn’t happen.

I can honestly say that I didn’t see a single skeptic or atheist take delight in insisting that, if there were a loving God, such things wouldn’t happen.  I’m not saying those comments weren’t made, only that to use the word “buzzing” may be overstating it somewhat.

It is a long-standing philosophical problem, known as the Problem of Evil. The argument runs along the lines of: God is all loving; God is all powerful; God is all knowing; Shit happens.  These four statements cannot logically exist within the same universe. Either God didn’t know shit was going to happen – in which case He can’t be all knowing. Or God did know shit was going to happen, but did not have the ability to stop it – in which case He can’t be all powerful.  Or God knew shit was going to happen, could have done something to stop it, but neglected to.  In which case, He cannot be all loving.

Childs says:

My response: WE are the ones who brought sin into this world, and wrecked it. No sin: no tsumani.

Again, I find this to be an abhorrant view, not too dissimilar to those of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.  Although Phelps and his ilk hang their hats on homosexuality being Root of all Evil™, and therefore the root of all tragedy, Childs takes a wider, though philosophically identical view.  The people of Japan – and presumably of the world – brought this upon themselves. Somehow this was just or right, because they were “sinners”. Whatever the fuck that means.

Childs admits:

And for those who reject God in favor of only “natural” explanations, some questions of my own:  Why do you care about this at all?

Me, personally?  I care because of this thing called “empathy”.  Innocent people are suffering and dying – an idea I find distressing.   I wouldn’t like that to happen to me, and if I were caught in a similar situation, I would like to think other people would care enough to help me.  It makes sense to foster an empathetic culture, where we look out for each other. It works out better for everyone.

Isn’t this just evolution culling the herd?

By “evolution” I assume Childs is referring to natural selection.  And to some extent, that argument could be made. The people of Japan will survive if they’re strong enough to survive, etc. But while natural selection does accurately describe the diversity of life on the planet, that doesn’t mean that it’s a sensible philosophy to live by. “Is” does not imply “ought”, and just because I accept that natural selection is the most likely mechanism to explain the diversity of life on our planet, that doesn’t mean that I think it should be applied as a social or foreign aid policy.

Alternatively, it could be argued that the very empathy and social nature of our species is in itself a phenotype, albeit one which is perhaps partly memetic rather than purely genetic. The fact that our species expresses empathy is one of the reasons that we have survived, and continue to survive. We help each other out. Human instinct and empathy are just as much a a part of natural selection as tsunamis and earthquakes. If we survive because we help each other survive, there is nothing anti-evolutionary about that.

In a purely materialistic universe, there is no meaning or purpose. Even love and grief are sentimental illusions resulting from chemical processes. Right?

Wrong.  In a purely materialistic universe (which, incidentally, I don’t claim to be the case — the most I would claim is that the material universe is all we can demonstrate to exist), there is perhaps no “ultimate” meaning or purpose; and no meaning or purpose imposed upon us by some external entity.  However, we bring our own meaning and purpose to our own lives.

My purpose, right now, is to try and contribute in some positive fashion to the world we live in. In whatever small ways I can, I want to make this a better world for everyone. Not because I think there is some ultimate purpose or ultimate reward, or even some ultimate punishment if I don’t. I just think its the right thing to do.

I was once asked – specifically of the 10:23 Campaign – “Why do you do it? What’s the point?”.

“Because people are dying,” I replied.

“Yes,” she said “but aside from that?”

I was stunned. “There’s an aside from that?!”

What more reason do you want? People are suffering and dying, and maybe I can do something about it. So I’m going to try.

Leaving that to one side, however, even just recording our podcast is a contribution. I shouldn’t think that we change many minds on the show, or save any lives.  It’s a skeptical show aimed at a skeptical audience, and most of the audience will already agree with everything we’re saying.  Maybe we will tell them something they didn’t know.   Maybe next time they encounter some quack or some religious evangelist, they’ll have just a slightly better grasp of the arguments they’re likely to encounter. Maybe some people will have their ideas challenged.  Maybe I’ll challenge a few of my own. But even if all we can do is make some people laugh every couple of weeks, even if all we’re capable of is brightening someone’s day by talking bollocks about bullshit, that’s something positive that we’re contributing.

That is the meaning and purpose that I bring to my life. It might not be good enough for Kevin Childs and his friend Jesus. But it’s enough for me.

Please take a few moments to make your own positive contribution, by donating to the Japan Tsunami Relief Fund.

Your New Facebook Profile Photo

With the coming of a very low-key, very gentle pro-atheism awareness campaign on facebook in ‘A’ week (http://www.aweekonfacebook.com/, Facebook event, #aweek Twittertag ), I’ve been reminded of the hesitation that many atheists feel towards the promotion of atheism in any way. Talking about any type of promotion or advocacy in favour of atheism as annoying because “this is the sort of thing that X-, Y- or Z-ians/-ists/ers do” may not be exactly how the majority of atheists feel, but I’d say, and only from my own feeling (not very skeptical, but still), that a large majority of atheists either couldn’t care less in trying to spread ideas and grow our mostly merry, but sometimes quite grumpy band of disbelievers, or are very uncomfortable with the thought of trying to actively or passively win people over to the idea that, maybe, they should give up the idea of an invisible Daddy In The Sky who grants wishes a little less frequently than you see the evil evidence of His Divine, or more humanly – if not humanely – divined, Will

But when you see the damage that religion does, and the toxic effect that a supreme, unquestionable authority and unquestioned afterlife can bring – from the banality and stupidity of the penny candle, crap wine and drain-filtering devices (pieces of The Christ’s Holy, suspiciously bread-like, Flesh must be saved from the insult of the sewers) of Catholicism (though after 2000 years on a bread and wine diet, I’m certain Jesus could make excellent use of modern facilities) to the horrendous tradition of wife-burning in Hindu ‘Sati’, thankfully both illegal and much reduced in modern India, or the unholy union of extreme Christianity in demonising a contraceptive layer of latex that could do so much to help the AIDS crisis – doesn’t this, shouldn’t this drive anyone with a rational bent and compassion for humanity towards doing what we can to reduce the influence of The Beast, even to simply kick the giant’s toe?

I can understand that being an atheist-in-practise and technical agnostic in a theist or desperately-wanting-to-believe world soaked in a steady stream of pap-filled, infuriating pamphlets, preaching and priests can be a frustrating existence, but to turn around from this and in that frustration deny to rationalism in general, or your rationalism in particular, the weapons of the battleground of ideas, the modern tools of marketing and persuasion, and give all the ground to fight for over to theists is to stop kicking the giant’s toe and take a gun to your own.

The argument that people should be left alone to find their own path, free to decide without coercion is, firstly, to deny that massive pro-theist coercion is out there, all day every day, not to fight against that tide is to resign the game. Secondly, it strikes of a high-handedness that’s quite prevalent in Buddhism, in my opinion, but without the necessary element in Buddhism of what is called ‘skilful means’, the art of manipulation over the long-term…

It’s with this in mind that I offer you, gentle reader, this parody of a pretty famous anecdote in the world of Zen:

A: Tell me, B, of this Atheism, this acceptance of the overwhelming probability that there is no supreme creator, no divinely-ordained purpose to the existence of every particle and person, no will to bend our souls to…

B: I know not of this Atheism. I cannot breathe of what I accept as truth, for this will inevitably influence your biases towards what would be your own internal outcomes… Yay, I decry the Dawkins and the Sagans of this world for their petty, insolent meddling in the minds of others. There should be those things left to monks and priests and dress-wearing men of every shade or stripe, every colour and complexion. We, WE have a very, VERY high horse upon which we sit and cannot be seen to enter into the arena of ideas with those of such trivial notions of idealistic fancy. Truly, it is a shame we cannot live without air and alimentation, for the foul believers indulge in these earthly, despoiling pursuits also.

A: But B! I’ve seen you chuckle at the Holy Men! I’ve seen you! You mock them! You do not go to the temples as other men, you prefer to sit with Dostoevsky, or a little light Kafka splayed upon your lap! Tell me! Show me the way that you take!

B: I cannot behave as the priests do. They take your hunger and feed you themselves… I leave you to feast upon yourself. Let your chips fall where they may.

A: Please! I beseech you! In the name of Pedagogy!

B: No.

A: An idea! A sign! A Symbol! Anything!!!

B: Have you finished your porridge?

A: I have. I HAVE!

B: Then wash your bowl.

–

Easter is based on a beautiful, empirical, scientific scheme – The first Sunday after the full moon (The Paschal Moon) following the Vernal Equinox – and is a picture of the lack of divine influence in the universe. Why not take this event, this year as the chance to express to the people who know you, the people who may be vulnerable at the moment, to say to the people who may be tempted (link NSFW: Swearing) to celebrate the death and resurrection of a Jewish Carpenter by telling children that a giant bunny left chocolate eggs in the night, to tell the people who will be influenced to even a tiny degree by your choices that you choose reason, you choose a life without a manic-depressive divinity pouring over every detail of you life – especially your sex life and pig-eating habits – and that you openly, unashamedly, staunchly reject giant bunny rabbits with the lock-picking skills of a cat burglar bringing chocolate eggs to the bedrooms of our children in the night.

Don’t get me started on Santa.

Come on!

Go get the A.

Upload and set it to your profile picture.

Post a status update: “rejects giant bunny rabbits with the lock-picking skills of a cat burglar bringing chocolate eggs to the bedrooms of our children in the night.” (or something similar)

Tweet your support!

I’m very much a supporter of seperation between church and state, and believe secular states (of which Italy, perhaps surprisingly, is one) are a progressive way forward into a less ideologically narrow world future. Coming from that viewpoint, this seems to be a reasonable judgement. One which will cause consternation to a large number of people (which I’ll come to later), but a rational and wise judgement none-the-less. At the same time, whenever I hear about rulings of this kind, I feel slightly uneasy. I suspect it’s the language used by the judges when they give their verdicts. For example:

“Its presence [the crucifix] could disturb children.”

‘Disturb’ implies an air of threat or unease, something which constantly distracts and worries. Now, a naked dead man in a torture pose probably isn’t the greatest image to expose your nation’s children to, but is it really going to disturb them? Children aren’t that easily disturbed when it comes to graphic violence (remember watching Robocop as a kid and loving it?), and in the home country of the Vatican, Catholicism’s particular brand of torture porn is everywhere anyway. You can’t walk down a street in Italy without seeing a crucifix. In fact it’s more likely to engender indifference or annoyance than anything else. I’m not sure ‘disturb’ is an accurate word in this regard.

Of course, saying a crucifix might mildly annoy non-Christians is not going to sound very impressive in a court ruling. The judges need to show they have strong reasons for their judgements, and their language has to be sturdy. A certain aggression is needed: your icon is disturbing us, therefore we will remove it. The same goes for the comment that “it violates pupils’ rights”. In everyday usage, your rights are things like being able to walk down the street without being stabbed, or going the toilet without a crowd watching and laughing. Things which affect you directly. ‘Violate’ seems too strong a word to use for ‘rights’ regarding a pupils’ eyeline in a classroom. The judges, however, need to show due cause for their verdict. The verdict is based on a legal case of infringement of rights, and they need to show this clearly and forcefully.

Nevertheless, I still find the language somehow… well, ‘disturbing’. It feels like an attack by one group against another. Which is a shame, because that’s not what is happening. Unfortunately, that’s how it looks: it looks like atheists bashing Christians, and it has generated the usual knee-jerk responses. There has been a lot of rants (guess the newspapers which printed them) about unaccountable officials showing no respect for individual cultures, despite the fact that you could very easily interpret the presence of a crucifix in a multicultural classroom as doing that exact thing. There has also been the usual complaint that Christianity’s rights are being trampled on, as if they are the only people whose rights matter. This is a weighing up of the rights of different people of different faiths. You can’t expect one faith to have more rights than the others. It’s about respecting as many people as possible, and concessions have to be made. To top things off,  bishops have denounced the ruling as another sign of Europe’s ‘degeneration’ into secularism. It’s all so familiar.

Ignoring the contentious notion that secularism is somehow a ‘degeneration’ and not a step forward, these arguments are bogus anyway. Church and state were formally seperated in Italy in 1984, so classrooms have no special right to display a crucifix. All this ruling effectively does, is take away Catholicism’s special privilege. You could, if you wanted, even view the hanging of crucifixes in classrooms as a leftover from the days of fascism under Mussolini, who made Catholicism the state religion. In that light, the notion of continuing the practise feels much less noble.

Personally, I find it misleading to link this issue to fascism. It is also a little close to Reductio ad Hitlerium for my liking. There are cultural factors to consider here, too. Italy may be a secular state, but it is one with a long history of religion. (Though not the first country to have Christianity as its official religion, as I mistakenly implied on ‘Skeptics With a K’ recently. That honour goes to Armenia). Religion has been central to Italian life for centuries: it is inextricably bound up with the culture. Its myths, ideas, images and tropes are in the language, the architecture, the literature, in Italian life in general. You could easily consider crucifixes as simple cultural decoration, like china teacups in England, or cowboy hats in the USA. If that is the way you see it, then this ban could genuinely be interpreted as an attack of some sort.

Besides, if you take the ideology of Christianity away, and view the crucifix as simply an object, is anyone truly offended by it? I don’t think I would be. I was never offended when my primary school made me sing hymns; I was just bored shitless.

But that’s me. Maybe a lot of people are offended by it. Presumably, that is why this went to court in the first place.

At the very least, the ruling doesn’t seem to have had the desired effect. Italy’s government is appealing against it. Local mayors are pressing schools to hang crucifixes regardless. The same is happening in civil servants’ offices and high street stores. Even the Greek Orthodox Church, who don’t agree with the Catholics over the specifics of all this iconography business anyway, are calling on Christians of all sects to unite in protest. All this over a naked dead man wearing a convenient scrap of cloth over his genitals. What would Jesus think? Apart from ‘ow’.

So, how to sum up this hokum? I was struck by the opinion of a bishop from the Greek Orthodox Church, Bishop Nicholas, who apparently lamented that “at this rate youngsters will not have any worthy symbols at all to inspire and protect them”. This irked me. Jesus is not the only inspirational mythical figure ever to inspire people, and won’t be the last. His removal from a classroom wall isn’t going to remove his religion from the culture either.  If he’s so inspirational, you don’t need to keep reminding people of his existence. Also, what about the the currently alive role models? The politicians, thinkers, artists, philanthropists, charity workers… there’s no shortage. Christianity does not have a monopoly on inspiration.

What exactly is the crucifix supposed to inspire anyway? Martyrdom? Is that truly a worthy idea? What about getting someone else to absorb all your sins by proxy, who then gets mutilated and killed for things that you have done? Is that something you want your kids to be inspired by?

Maybe this ban was the right decision.

First, a little background.  The Atheist Bus Campaign was launched by the lovely Ariane Sherine, the comedy writer and blogger who recently spoke for us at Liverpool Skeptics in the Pub.  After spotting an advert on the side of a London bus proclaiming something along the lines of  “Join the Jesus Fan Club or Burn Forever™” (I may be paraphrasing slightly) Ariane devised a campaign to fund similar ads promoting the slogan “There’s Probably No God”.

Although the campaign slogan was criticised from some quarters for being “wishy-washy” and “indecisive“, the Atheist Bus Campaign took off in a way that nobody really expected, raising enough money to fund the “No God” adverts, not only on London buses, but also on buses up and down the country.  Copycat campaigns sprang up around the world, the Christians got very upset, other ads appeared saying “There Definitely Is A God”… it was loads of fun!  I’ll confess that I’m slightly saddened by the fact that I never got to see an actual bus carrying the slogan, although I understand they did run in central Liverpool.

Even after all this, however, there was money left over.  So with the last of the cash, the British Humanist Association has launched the “Don’t Label Me” campaign, which is now appearing on billboards.  The message of this campaign is one I first heard articulated by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion.  In Chapter 9, Dawkins talks about the absurdity of labelling a child with a religion when that child is actually far too young to have any idea what they believe.

Our society, including the non-religious sector, has accepted the preposterous idea that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny children in the religion of their parents, and to slap religious labels on them – ‘Catholic child’, ‘Protestant child’, ‘Jewish child’, ‘Muslim child’, etc. – although no other comparable labels: no conservative children, no liberal children, no Republican children, no Democrat children. Please, please raise your consciousness about this, and raise the roof whenever you hear it happening. A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents.

The sentiment is one which I wholeheartedly endorse.  Unfortunately, I’m unable to extend the same unqualified support to the “Don’t Label Me” billboard campaign.  While I’m in complete agreement with the campaign’s aims, there is a niggling problem (largely semantic) which I find rather bothersome.

Before we get on to that however, I want to look at why – at least in my opinion – it is incorrect and unfair to label a child as “Christian” or “Muslim”; “libertarian” or “communist”.

Active Members

There are about as many different definitions of Christianity as there are Christians, but for the sake of argument I’m going to simplify things a little.  Let us define a “Christian” as “someone who accepts the tenets of Christianity”.  I don’t think the definition is unreasonable, although I understand it’s a bit more complicated than that.

What those tenets actually are is irrelevant to the structure of the argument… my point is that, in order to be a member of the set we call “Christian”, you must accept the tenets of Christianity.  That is a positive step which you must take before you can be considered a member of that set.  The same is true for political ideologies.  To be a member of the set “Communist”, for example, you must accept the tenets of Communism.  The same for Buddhism, Capitalism, Islam, Libertarianism, etc.

The take-home point is that membership of these sets is dependent upon some positive action which you must take.  You cannot fall into one of these sets by default.  You could describe membership of these sets as being “active”.*

For this reason, it makes no sense to label someone as a “Communist child” or a “Christian child”.  The child has not taken the positive steps required to be considered members of those sets.  A three year old boy doesn’t accept the tenets of Christianity – how could he?  Therefore it makes no sense to label him a “Christian child”.

Passive Members

Conversely, there are some sets into which you can fall without having to take any active steps.  Take gender, for example.  I was as much male when I was born as I am today.  No positive steps were required on my part to become a member of the set “Male”, I was just born that way.  There is nothing active to do to become a member of that set.

Arguably nationality is a better example as, unlike gender, national boundaries are arbitrary.  But there were still no positive steps required for me to become a member of the set “British”.  I just happened to be born in Britain.

You could describe membership of this type of set as “passive”.*  Unlike the members of active sets, it is meaningful to describe someone as a “French child”, or a “female child” or even a “blond child”.  It is not unreasonable to identify children as members of passive sets.

What is Atheism?

Perhaps the best way to understand the meaning of “atheism” is to first understand the meaning of “theism”, so I’m going to approach this section backward.

Theism, in the broadest sense of the word, could be said to mean “a belief in the existence of a god or gods”.  As with the other religious positions we’ve talked about, this is a set which requires active membership.  To be a theist, you must accept as true the claim “god exists”.  You do not fall into this set by default, you must have been convinced somehow that such a being is real.

Where would the world be without Venn diagrams?

“Atheism”, therefore, is everything which does not fall into the set “Theist”.  This is an important point, so I’m going to repeat it.  An atheist is someone who does not accept theism. There are dozens of ways you could exclude yourself from the set “Theist”.  Perhaps you positively assert there is no god; maybe you’ve heard the arguments supporting the existence of a god but do not find them compelling; or perhaps you are a chimpanzee and haven’t the faintest idea what a “god” is.

Now, at risk of complicating things further, I understand that not everyone agrees with this definition of atheism.  Some people would insist that to be an atheist you must be able to positively assert “I believe there is no god”, a position sometimes called Strong Atheism.  This isn’t the position I take, however, because to assert “there is no god” is a positive claim which carries an associated burden of proof – a burden which has not, and perhaps cannot, be met.

Atheism, defined as “lack of theism”, carries no such burden, it is a response to theism only.  It says, “I have not yet been convinced there is such a being as god”.  This is the intellectually honest view, the skeptical view, the “innocent until proven guilty” view.  The burden of proof is with theists to convince me that their god is real.  Until then, I do not accept their position.  I lack their theism.  I am an a-theist.

Get on with it – what’s the problem?

So, there are active sets and there are passive sets.  To be a member of the former you must take steps, the latter is something you can fall into by default.  In which group sits atheism?  Well, it’s obviously the latter.  Membership of the set “Atheist” is passive, there are no positive steps required to be a part of that group.  Quite the contrary, if you haven’t taken the positive steps required to join the active set “Theist”, then you automatically fall into the passive set “Atheist”.

But looking at the “Don’t Label Me” campaign poster, I can see the phrase “Atheist child” alongside Christian child, Marxist child, and the other active sets.  Didn’t we say that identifying children as members of passive sets is okay?

I’m sorry, but I think that child is an atheist child – in the sense that she is not a theist.  The label “atheist” is descriptive, it makes no positive assertions about what the child believes.  She is as much an a-theist as an a-capitalist and an a-marxist.  She lacks acceptance of the tenets of theism as much as she lacks acceptance of the tenets of capitalism.

Now I can see why, politically, putting “Atheist Child” on the campaign poster could be seen as the right thing to do.  Without it, you leave yourself open to accusations of special pleading.  It’s inclusion makes it clear that you aren’t attempting to carve out any special privilege for your own religious position… and on that basis, I have no objection at all to the poster featuring “Humanist child” alongside other inappropriate labels.  Humanism is an active set and no child could be reasonably labelled a humanist, as they have not accepted the tenets of Humanism.

But featuring “Atheist Child” and “Agnostic Child”, both what I would consider passive sets, implicitly endorses the common straw man view of atheism as a position which dogmatically asserts “There is no god”.  While its omission from the campaign poster could have attracted accusations of special pleading, I would have welcomed such accusations as an opportunity for debate.  It could have helped tackle the common false equivocation of “Atheism” = “Strong Atheism”.

Perhaps if more people knew and understood that atheism isn’t about dogmatic denial of god then we could more readily make intellectually honest statements like “There’s Probably No God”, without attracting accusations of “indecisiveness”.

* I’m aware I may be totally mangling set theory here. But hey. Fuck it. It’s my blog, I’ll mangle what I like.

Humanist Dave with beard and taped photo

Last month, MSS member Chris jetted off to a bright future and a new life in Canada. I think. I mean the brighter future bit, not the Canada bit – I know he’s in Canada. Or at least he said he is, I’ve no real hard evidence. Hmm. Anyway, in his first overseas missive, Chris introduces us to the Canada Humanist scene and their own Atheist Bus Campaign…

Greetings from Canada! Coincidentally, just as Ariane Sherine prepared to make her way to my old stomping-ground in Liverpool I attended my first meeting of the Humanist Association of Ottawa (HAO) at which the topic was the Atheist Bus Campaign. I thought it worth mentioning not only because of the fact that it was relevant to a Merseyside meeting, but also because it raises some issues that haven’t been so important in the UK.

David of the HAO gave a talk on Humanism as a whole and also, more specifically, the way that Humanism has been represented in Ottawa. While I disagreed with some of what was said (“Humanists are all atheists”, “Humanists only believe in what can be proven”, “Humanism is not a religion”) this was largely a matter a semantics. The most interesting side of the talk was what the group had been doing to spread awareness of Humanism and represent the non-religious in the city. So far they have been accepted onto interfaith panels in the city which contribute to the development of council policy. However, they have not been successful in getting involved with religious newspaper columns and the wider media. The group have also had a presence at gay pride parades and festivals, running stalls and distributing leaflets. However, an initial application to run the Atheist Bus advertisement (the same as has been running all over the world) was initially turned down by the city’s transport authority, OC Transpo.

It was this latter campaign that spurred the group into action. They saw three potential avenues to fight the decision: (i) through the law, (ii) by submitting a complaint on the basis of restriction of freedom of speech, or (iii) politically. The legal and human rights approaches were both deemed to be too expensive and too lengthy for a small organisation like the HAO and so they opted for politics and publicity as their weapon of choice. Turning up to the next OC Transpo meeting in specially-made t shirts and with duct tape covering their mouths (and with the media forewarned), four bold members of HAO made their presence felt (calmly and politely). Two HAO members gave presentations as to why they felt the advert should be run. In response, a member of the audience gave a presentation outlining why she felt that the advert should not be run (focusing on Hitler and Stalin being atheists and, therefore, if we run the advert we will inevitably have another holocaust…).

OC Transpo stated that it was their policy that “if in the opinion of the management an advertisement may offend some readers, we will not use the advertisement”. Clearly there is enough wiggle-room in this policy to (appropriately) fit a bus. Two letters of pre-emptive complaint had been received and this was enough evidence for them to decline the advert. This was in spite of 90% of the media coverage and the majority of local church groups actually being in support of the advert.

Dave with atheist bus ad

The next step was to take the matter to the City Council. Here 20 HAO members made an appearance in the public gallery, proudly sporting their Atheist Bus t shirts and attracting even more media attention. Bizarrely a counter-protest was organised outside which involved teachers and pupils from a local church-run primary school. Clearly it was more important that the children learn how to be “good Christians” than learn anything useful in the classroom. Having said that, David made the point that everybody (including both protests and the city council) conducted themselves in a civil manner. During the meeting the council voted 18:5 to overturn OC Transpo’s ban on the advert – a strong decision in favour of the HAO.

However, there are a few little details that made for interesting hearing… The first is that one council member decided to vote against overturning the ban on the basis that she was exercising her freedom of speech. The lady did not seem to see the irony behind using her free speech to ensure that others did not have the opportunity to exercise theirs… Secondly, these people were politicians and a number of individuals were careful to state that, although they were in favour of running the advert, it was not because they agreed with its message or even that they thought that free speech was that important, but simply because they saw a lengthy lawsuit coming and wanted to save taxpayers’ money. Very principled! Finally, and possibly the most outrageous, was the action of the mayor of the city who voted against overturning the ban. Only the previous day he had been present at a meeting of the Ottawa interfaith group where representatives from all the major faiths had agreed that they had no problem with the advert.

In the end, though, the OC Transpo decision was overturned and the advert ran on 30 buses for 4 weeks at a cost of CAD$7,000. However, David was pleased to point out some “bank-of-the-envelope” calculations that he had been doing which had estimated the value of the media coverage over the affair as being worth somewhere in the region of CAD$400,000-500,000. Subsequently the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that (to paraphrase) “Canadians do not have the right to not be offended”. Also in terms of free-speech, the Supreme Court announced that a criterion that should be used in deciding whether to permit controversial material such as the Atheist Bus campaign should be whether the benefits of releasing it outweigh the costs of not doing so. Clearly the correct decision has been reached in Ottawa, although along the way the inherent reluctance of those in power to permit the basic human right of freedom of speech has been laid bare. Whether this stems from individuals acting on the basis of their own conscience and particular beliefs rather than out of a desire to serve their electorate’s needs or whether politicians are simply afraid of losing votes by alienating the religious element of the electorate is unclear. Whatever the answer, the Ottawa Atheist Bus campaign stands as a good case study of how Humanism and Atheism have been successfully promoted despite initial opposition.

Anyway, in tribute to the book and Ariane’s upcoming talk (which will be fab, so please come along!), I thought I’d stick my oar in and have a bit of a blog about atheism myself. As far back as I can remember, I’ve never believed in a God. Lately, I’ve heard and read a lot of stories by people of their conversions to athiesm, or from atheism to theism, or of their struggle to ‘come out’ as an atheist, particularly in religious households; but I have no such story to tell. No-one in my family is religious or cares much either way about whether a God exists or not, and the friends I grew up with seem to have been in the same boat, so far as I know. It’s simply never been an issue for me, to the extent that I’ve never even really thought of myself as an atheist. It would be like giving myself a label based around the fact I have arms, or have never owned a chicken.

Yet, the more people I meet in the Skeptical community, the more I realise that I may have been lucky. Maybe the town in which I grew up is simply a godless island in a sea of Church of England style passive-aggressiveness. Maybe stories of atheistic struggle are playing out all over the country and I just never noticed.

That said, the Skeptical community is only small, comparitively speaking (though growing considerably all the time), and is probably not a fair representation of atheistic and religous tribulations nationwide. Still, I do wonder.

Back in my primary school days (cue the sound of sweeping harps amid a slow dissolve back to the eighties) I remember one Christmas when Santa Claus himself arrived at out school to deliver presents to all the children. I can’t remember how old I was, though I was still young enough to have some residual belief in Father Christmas, albeit tempered by suspicion and doubt. I believed Father Christmas might exist, but that all those people who looked like him in shopping centre grottos were just his servants, and the nubile girls in skimpy costumes clearly weren’t elves either, but just there to grab the dads’ attention. See how sophisticated my beliefs were? Ahead of my years, I was!

But… this particular Father Christmas? Well, according to our teachers he was the real deal. He lived at the North Pole (or Lapland, or wherever the hell it was. It was cold anyway), was married to Mrs Christmas, owned reindeer and had a fondness for mince pies and brandy (such a terrible role model, drinking and driving over the festive period like the office knobhead after a Christmas party; no wonder he legs it to the North Pole afterwards, he’s dodging the police. Do we have an extradition treaty with the North Pole? Maybe we could get the penguins to arrest him? Do penguins even live at the North Pole? Have I ever read a book? When will this pointless tangent end?).

Where was I? Oh yes, the real Father Christmas. The REAL Father Christmas had come to our school. Apparently, he was on a special visit just to our class before he had to go and get ready for his Christmas seasonal work of breaking into people’s houses and leaving stuff on the living room floor. I, like all my fellow credulous pupils, believed every word the teachers told us about this magnificent man in his stupid red dressing-gown. I bought it hook-line-and-sinker, like the good, ignorant child I was.

Then I saw the elastic on his beard.

It wasn’t even that well hidden, looking back. There it was, a clearly visible white line of elastic, stretching from his ridiculously white cotton wool beard, up and over his cheek, and disappearing under his frankly disappointing attempt at a Christmas hat. I glanced at my classmates. They were in a world of their own, dazzled by the great bearded one’s handing out of brightly coloured presents. I stepped over for a closer look. It was clearly, undeniably elastic. The beard was fake. ‘He’ was a fake.

He wasn’t the real Father Christmas!

At that moment, I had one of those small but incredibly important epiphanies that litter childhood, like a small bulb (probably an LED) going on inside my head. The teachers had lied to us! Obviously, I knew Father Christmas couldn’t be everywhere at once, and often sent out servants in his place; but the teachers had informed us plainly that this man in front of us right here was definitely, definitely, definitely the real Father Crimbo. I was crushed under the terrifying weight (about two ounces) of the knowledge that those in a position of authority over us had abused our trust. This man – this badly clothed man saying “Ho-ho-ho!” over and over again like some kind of deranged alien pirate – was an imposter!

Feeling like a moral crusader (if I’d known the song back then, Saturday Night Fever would have been playing inside my head, just like it is now for absolutely no reason at all), I pulled aside a couple of my classmates and told them the shocking truth about the filthy, lying ‘beard’. I was expecting outrage at this affront to our persons, solidarity for my moral cause. Nothing but the real Father Christmas will do for us! You can’t pull the wool over our eyes! We’ve been conned! It was clear that the great man himself had been too busy to come to our school, and the head had roped in somebody else at the last minute to pretend to be him, probably a supply teacher. He wasn’t even fat and jolly!

Unfortunately, there was one problem. The other kids didn’t believe me. Or rather, they refused to believe me. They looked at me like I was mad. I pointed to the elastic, but their eyes just glazed over, then they called me silly and went back to playing with their new toys. They simply didn’t want to know! It wasn’t even like I was saying that Father Christmas didn’t exist, just that this wasn’t him. The evidence was right there in front of us for us all to see, in all its elasticy fakeness! However, for them the evidence didn’t wash, and from that point on for the rest of the day I was cast out to the fringes of our little mini Santa-church, a metaphorical atheist at the last supper (“Ignore him Jesus, he doesn’t believe in you - can I have some more wine?”). Maybe I should have attacked Faker Christmas, pulled his beard off and waved it above my head, howling in primal victory. Sadly, that is not my style. Or so people tell me.

At this blanket refusal of my discovery, even more lightbulbs (or LEDs) came on in my mind. I realised that not everyone around me was happy to accept the facts of the world around them, like I was. In fact, they were quite happy to just blatantly ignore them and believe whatever the hell they liked. To top it off, they seemed to be having a much better time of it than I was. Bastards. Ignorance really is bliss.

Looking back, I can see the similarities between the thinking of my fellow pupils and people who believe wholeheartedly in God. I don’t know whether my classmates believed in God or not, but this kind of thinking is everywhere. Truth be told, an awful lot of people simply don’t care what the facts are, they are going to believe what they want to regardless. This is fine for them, for the most part, but it’s not so fine for those of us who don’t think that way, who interact with the world more self-consciously. We’re not killjoys, it just takes a bit more to get us to believe something (hell, if the guy who visited our class had actually had his own beard, I might have been convinced). Both kinds of thinking can usually exist alongside each other quite happily. I personally don’t care who believes in God, as long as we all respect and get on with each other. The problem is those occasions when the two kinds of thinking do clash. On the small scale, it may be an annoying, whiny child called Colin complaining about a false beard. On the large scale, however, it could be the stress of somebody telling their parents they’re an atheist, and being treated differently because of it. Those parents might not be particularly religious (those kids in my class weren’t that bothered about the reality – or lack thereof - of Father Christmas either, until the situation was there on a plate in front of them), but when their child suddenly seems to have a view fundamentally at odds with their own, then quite unexpectedly their reason runs and hides, and they can often have genuine difficulty accepting what, to my mind at least, should not be a big deal at all. Being an atheist is a perfectly reasonable and logical position to come to, and it does worry me that it can cause so much consternation to some people. It is this strange strain of magical, wishful thinking that causes it. If something upsets the status quo, cognitive dissonance sets in and the person confronted refuses to see the metaphorical elastic on the metaphorical beard. Suddenly we seem to be on a different gameboard, and the rules don’t make that much sense anymore.

Where does this thinking come from? Part of me thinks that it’s a necessary function of the human brain, one that simply helps us all get along with life and with each other. Certainly, it seemed to benefit my classmates a lot more than it did me. Maybe my brain’s just wired wrong. Most of the time, this thinking is harmless. It could be that I am just a killjoy after all, incapable of shrugging my Skeptical shoulders and diving into the deep end of the pool with all the other humans. Maybe I think about things too much and have crossed the line from Skepticism to Cynicism, as has been suggested to me a couple of times.

Personally, I don’t see myself as cynical at all. I would love to live and let live. Let us all believe what we want and leave it at that. However, I still hear stories of people struggling to have their atheism accepted, of having their rationalism questioned because it’s led them to a conclusion at odds with what other people ‘want’ them to believe. Having a problem with this isn’t cynical. It astounds me that this happens in the twenty-first century. I don’t know whether it’s a sign of a rise in Skepticism, or in magical thinking, or both. Maybe the two feed off each other in a strange way. Maybe I’m just noticing these things more now because I’ve drifted into the Skeptical world. I really don’t know. I really don’t.

But can’t you see it?

It’s right there.

There!

The beard! It’s fake – can’t you see the elastic?

…

Oh, forget it, just pass me a mince pie.

This was difficult and I tried not to say “The Creed” out loud, mouthing it instead. I knew I was a fraud in a cassock. I was about 13.

I have believed in things that I no longer do. Ghosts are a good example. It always seemed plausible that the spirit was so powerful it could defy death. And hearing various theories of parallel universes crossing over and strange quasi credible time theories seemed to open up at least the possibility of ghosts really existing. Something that shouldn’t be ruled out. Something that I should be open minded about.

But now I’m absolutely the wrong person to talk to if a close relative just died. Recently I was faced with an elderly relative whose son had just died, tragically and too young, from cancer. She was, still is, understandably distraught. She asked me whether I believed in the afterlife. Conversationally. Not to provoke a meaningful debate. So I should have just said “yes” and “you’ll be with him again soon” shouldn’t I? I didn’t say that. I said “No. He’ll live on in all our memories though, until we also die”. She wasn’t comforted in any way. Was I wrong?

I don’t believe in God (none of them), ghosts, miracles (not literally anyway), psychics, acupuncture, reiki, reflexology, phrenology, the afterlife, spirits, mediums, tarot, aliens visiting (not the same as aliens existing), conspiracy theories in general and 9/11 theories in particular, gremlins, gorgons, demons, devils, heaven, hell, Roman Gods, the River Styx, chanting, ranting, …need I go on?

So what do I believe in? First off, do I really need to have some deeply held existential belief in order to function in society and be a productive and acceptable part of it? No, I don’t. In fact there are plenty of people who fit into that category. Some people just aren’t bothered about a higher level. And they’re absolutely fine, most of them. Even if they go through the motions of being spiritual, religious or whatever.

It is, however, good to have beliefs, as protection from the absolute drivel we are occasionally asked to believe. And it does seem to me that we have a belief system that needs feeding. For example, if I didn’t believe that there is no God, how can I protect myself from the attempted indoctrinations of any mystical messenger? Without opinion how can I raise sufficient energy to attempt repelling psychic boarders and their snake oil? Agnosticism just isn’t enough sometimes, I find. It’s a paradox really because I’d like to be more moderate and considered. But sometimes I just want to shake people really hard. Often by the neck! That just makes me feel guilty and pompous as though I think I am the possessor of some mighty and revelatory information that only the enlightened few can understand (sound familiar?)

Lack of conviction seems to equal vulnerability to the acceptance of illogical claims. Or at least their tolerance. Is this because we have a belief system that is effectively shelves waiting to be filled? If you don’t believe in a point of view on a subject, then anything could be true. You’ve not ruled anything out. The shelf needs filling. So an idea comes along, even a ridiculous one, and inhabits that shelf, perhaps on a temporary basis. Then, because that idea is on that shelf and doesn’t get dislodged early (remember that the person wasn’t looking for a belief in that area and may not get round to challenging it) it gets reinforced instead and when the topic comes up again that’s all they have in the cupboard and so they argue from that position. People just don’t seem to say “Well to be honest, I don’t really think I know enough about that to form an opinion.”

There are other problems to be dealt with in critical thinking too. Especially if, like me, you only started putting flesh on the skeptical bones recently. There is the potential that friends who you previously thought would be friends for life turn out to be raving woo peddlers. Every time you bring them to mind you’re having to battle with the growing opinion that you are having less and less in common with them as time progresses. Increasingly you get frustrated and you want to persuade your friends to your critical point of view. But they’re not listening. Because it’s not important enough to them to think critically. What to do? There was nothing wrong with your friendship before, was there?

I’ve come up with a mathematical formula to describe vulnerability to woo. I’m calling it the woo ranking

Where b is Credulous Belief, l is Lack of Opinion, t is time, w is Exposure to Woo and a is Apathy,

Therefore: Credulous Belief = Lack of Opinion x Exposure to Woo x Apathy / Time

As a skeptic the matter to be addressed is the apathy. This is where we should expend our efforts. Building narratives that cause the spider senses to tingle. Stimulating interest with soundbites and then having a quick and accessible way to put the main point across.

Effectively we need to get people to revisit that time when they first filled the gap with woo, and just loosen it slightly. Then give them a bit more information that prevents them from considering that a proven belief. Then stop. When that topic arises again it’ll be harder for them to maintain the woo position. Woo is based upon belief. All we really need to do is stop it being a belief and start it being only a possibility. Raising doubt is the objective. Not winning the argument.

It is important to me that I am true to myself, so it is unlikely I will permit woo peddlers to go unchallenged when I encounter them. However that cannot be the focus of my effort. Based on the formula above what I really need to do is figure out how to make people care about being a critical thinker. (wrong language for most people BTW. Sounds like you need a degree to do it)

I can start the ball rolling if you like. If you take a 125 ml homeopathic preparation that costs $16 and is a 12C formulation, how much water do they have to throw away in its preparation? And what are the disposal guidelines?

Or to a God believer “which are you favourite bible stories, the miracles or the incest?”. Ok maybe that one’s a bit inflammatory. Perhaps, “I quite like some aspects of the Bible. Miracles are very uplifting and morally informative. But it’s difficult for me to be inspired by them because of the incest and stuff. What do you think about that?”

They’re just two ideas and not necessarily good ones. We need to come up with better ways to loosen the apathy all the time. Not arguing point by point. Killer questions, if you like. Rather than carefully considered arguments.

Right, I’ve just finished watching Chloe’s sterling performance for AHS on the BBC’s “The Big Questions” (it’s on iPlayer) and am chewing my own arm in frustration. I am absolutely sick and tired of the sheer amount of time wasted on programmes like this dealing with basic, basic misunderstandings about atheism and weak poorly-reasoned arguments that have been bludgeoned to death about a million times in print and on television. Enough! From now on, if you ever want to discuss religion with me – or just generally – you should take these three points as read. They are done, over, talked to death, and repeating them will make you look like an idiot.

1) “Atheism is intolerant because it sees itself as a neutral position, and wants to remove religion from the public sphere”

Your problem here is just common-a-garden ignorance of basic terminology. What you’re describing there is a natty thing called secularism, which protects people of all denominations by not privileging any. Removing the ten commandments from courts, stopping faith schools getting public funding, campaigning for an end to bishops in the House of Lords – discrimination against Christians? No, it’s stripping away centuries of privilege. Really, for it to be discrimination, you’d have to be losing rights that other people have rather than losing ancient feudal powers resulting from hundreds of years of total cultural dominance. Consider it this way. In a free society you are able to choose to support any of hundreds of political parties, from the Lib Dems to the Monster Raving Loonies, even to the BNP if you really feel the need. So, say the Tories are in power and they decide that from now on they’re going to have 26 Conservatives permanently sitting in Parliament who cannot be unseated, and have all the voting rights of regular MPs. Public outcry would undoubtedly follow, but can you honestly say with a straight face that Tories would have a genuine reason to be offended by this? Do you honestly believe that removing these 26 unelected partisan figures from Parliament would constitute anti-Tory discrimination? Of course you wouldn’t. This is pretty much the situation with the bishops in the Lords and it shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone – not to atheists, not to Christians, not to people of any other faith; it shouldn’t even be acceptable to the bishops themselves, and they’d say so if they weren’t enjoying the extra power.

So to sum up:

• Atheism: no belief in a God
• Secularism: not allowing any religious belief or lack thereof to be privileged in government to protect them all. It prevents the passing of laws that restrict the freedom to worship and stop one sect being able to legislate itself into permanent power.

If secularism were the same as atheism, we’d be pushing an atheist agenda instead of one where the state has no opinion on the whole debate. When was the last time you saw a recklessly secularist government pushing for atheism as opposed to just taking away unwarranted privilege?

2) “Atheists say religious belief can make people do evil things, but so can atheism! Just look at Pol Pot/Stalin/Hitler etc”

Fucking hell. This one is buried and rotting the ground and has been for years. It seems like no matter how many times you explain this to people, they just tune it out and keep on repeating it. It’s like a goddamn virus! Let’s put it simply:

• Atheists: follow their own conscience, aren’t told what to do by a supernatural entity, personally responsible for their own actions
• Religionists: are given rules that they are not allowed to break by a supernatural entity, which allows the absconding of responsibility to someone else

Dictators like Stalin and Pol Pot did not carry out their atrocities because they were atheists. They did not do them in the name of atheism. They did what every dictator does and dismantled opposing sources of power for their own ends. In many cases the alternative source of power was organised religion, but this was not out of some atheistic imperative to wipe out the religious! Compare this to religious texts, many of which demand blood sacrifice, genocides and all sorts of discrimination. The crusades were carried out in the name of Christianity. The oppression of women and homosexuals in Iran is carried out in the name of Islam. The genital mutilation of millions of babies is carried out continuously in the name of Judaism. Millions of people across the world are HIV positive and will die of AIDS in the next decade because the Catholic Church believes that contraception is sinful.

Here are some stories that have recently been in the news, where awful crimes have been perpetrated and then justified with religious belief, or have been carried out because of religious belief. I see about three of these every day. I challenge you to find similar cases where people have committed crimes in the name of atheism, or because Richard Dawkins told them to.

• Mom of dead girl: Sickness was test of faith
• San Antonio baby found stabbed, decapitated – Police say mother, whose bail is set at $1 million, told them devil made her kill newborn
• British Humanist Association: Anti-witchcraft conference attacked by Christian church in Nigeria

3) “Your arguments are infantile because you know nothing about theology”

Sorry guys, I know you’ve spent your life studying it, but if you don’t believe in God then theology is a crock. It doesn’t matter how intricate and powerful your ‘discoveries’ might be but to paraphrase PZ Myers: “science doesn’t care”. I could posit the existence of living, breathing Haggises in the wilds of Scotland. I could write books about the quality of their tartan, their mating calls, explanations of how they are able to hide from human eyes due to excellent camouflage. I could describe with pinpoint accuracy their ability to use complex tools, their fondness for water and their average weekly diet. But you know what? If I couldn’t provide even basic evidence that they existed at all then the rest is just bullshit. If you reject a premise because it is entirely unsupported by evidence, then everything you have deduced and developed over the centuries is unsupported too. It all rests on the question of whether God exists or not; if he doesn’t then theology is bunk. This one also seems not to die, but it needs to be put down swiftly. It’s a rubbish argument.

It absolutely boggles me that these three arguments get rolled out even on TV programmes by people who are meant to be seriously intellectually committed to this debate. So next time, take these three lines of arugment as read, because atheists are sick of them. They’re lazy, and ignorant, and really really boring to counter. It just eats up time that could be spent debating more interesting issues.

Personally, I’d really test the fella, see how far he could go.  If I could sell my soul for, say, a guarantee that hell would stop being such a crappy place to spend eternity, I think that would be a decent deal.  You know, scatter a few cushions, stick in a pool table, get rid of all that fire and brimstone and gnashing of teeth, and Hades could really be a decent hang-out.  It’s essentially a bit of an eternal fixer-upper.  Plus, I can imagine I’d get some serious respect from the population of Hell for putting an end to their eternal damnation and torture, so that would really start me out on the right foot, socially-speaking.

So, with this in mind, what would you enter into a Faustian pact with the horned-one for?  What would you trade-in your immortal soul for?  And what impact might that have on your day to day life?

Leave your answers, as weird, wacky and wonderful as you like, below the fold.

What do you know about Freud?

Good. That’s more than me. Probably. I know very little about Freud. What I do know is a mixture of his beliefs, and the caricatures of his beliefs that others have presented me. In essence, it is this: young boys lust after their mothers and want to kill their fathers, a perversion that leads to a large part of the malaise and despair intrinsic to being a grown-up. Young girls are broken and weird, a perversion that leads to a large part of the malaise and despair intrinsic to being a grown up.

There. That’s it.

Andrew Brown!

What do you know about Andrew Brown? All I know is a mixture of his beliefs, and the caricatures of his beliefs that he so bizarrely and inanely presents to Guardian readers on the occasions when another fantastical grudge against atheists springs into his mind. In essence, it is this: Andrew Brown is part of the malaise and despair intrinsic to being a grown up. Plus he thinks that new atheists are broken, weird and perverted. Or something like that.

I’m therefore approaching Andrew Brown’s recent blog post without a great deal of expertise of the subject I’m dealing with.

Luckily, if he doesn’t need expertise, nor do I.

Andrew Brown has re-read Freud, for the first time in years. It must also be the first time he’s read Freud since the incident with the very cute ducklings, the cement truck, and the combine harvester driven by an atheist (NOOOOOoooOOo!!!!!! He’s lost control and is veering into the Sisters of Mercy Home for Gentle Orphans and Kittens With Poorly Feet!!! STOPPP HIIIMMM!!!). At least, I assume that it is the first time he’s read it since some cataclysmic accident involving an evil atheist, because this time around, he sees that Freud is an atheist and ATHEISM IS WRONG!!!

Both him and I acknowledge that Freud was wrong on many matters (I don’t quite know HOW many, but I’ve heard his science roundly dismissed on many occasions by those who know more than me).

What I didn’t know, however, is that this means that WHATEVER ELSE FREUD EVER SAID OR BELIEVED IN IS AUTOMATICALLY FALSE! FALSE FALSE FALSE!

That, in a nutshell, is Andrew Brown’s position – there, I’ve saved you having to read his article.

At least, that’s the impression I get. Mr Brown has decided that, since A) Freud was an atheist, and B) Freud was incorrect in his hypotheses on sexuality, therefore C) atheism is incorrect.

[Freud's attack on religion] states very clearly one of the central New Atheist rhetorical moves. This is to define religion as the belief system of ignorant fools.

Andrew Brown has nominated Freud as the new figure head for Nü-Atheïsm (no-one can tell me what that is, so no-one can tell me how it’s spelled), because of this ‘rhetorical move’.

Just to get things straight, I’m probably what one would describe as a ‘new atheist’ (I’m a good few decades younger than Prof. Dawkins, for instance), and am a bit confused by this. I believe that religion is an ignorant and foolish belief system (all religion, though in degrees), but by no means is it the ONLY ignorant and foolish belief system – some people still use Microsoft Windows after all (OOOOoohhhh!!!) – indeed, atheists can be ignorant and foolish too. However, atheists, new and used, old and young, vary immensely. Many don’t see religion as a bad thing at all. A very few even think it is beneficial, but simply can’t buy into it.

I’ll give Andrew Brown the benefit of the doubt. I’ll assume that by ‘new’ he doesn’t mean new (Freud? ‘New’?), but rather ‘vocal in their disapproval of religion’ – and that by ‘the belief system of ignorant fools’ he means ‘a foolish and ignorant belief system’. I’m willing to let him off on these points. After all, the semantics here are small fry compared to the silliness of his grander conclusions.

He then quotes Freud’s view of what “common man understands by his religion”

…the system; doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here. The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father. Only such a being can understand the needs of the children of men and be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse.

This may seem like a fair description of the Abrahamic god: a caring father figure, looking over us, explaining the mysteries of life and promising an eternity of paradise, but Andrew Brown accuses Freud of “Having set up a system in which only fools could believe…” – he mustn’t be going after the Church of England crowd, then.

Freud is quoted again, ‘point[ing] out that only fools could believe in [this description of religion]‘.

The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able rise above this view of life.

And yes, I agree with Freud here. Well, actually, I haven’t the friendliest attitude towards humanity, but I do have a passion for knowledge and understanding, and it is painful to think that an enormous proportion of the world’s populace will be content with the lies they are fed, or lack the resources to clear their ignorance, or simply do not care enough to find out. However, I don’t believe that only fools could believe in it. People are, by and large, indoctrinated into religion – it is a culturally accepted form of ignorance. Intelligent people often hold one or two silly or contradictory views. Religion is just a common one – and this quote doesn’t argue otherwise, either.

Freud apparently then settles on a No-True-Scotsman-type conclusion – what isn’t “what the common man understands by his religion” (Freud mentions doctrines, worldly explanation, guidance, future compensation and a father figure) oughtn’t bear the name of religion – it is merely a whispy shade, an impoverished ghost that lacks the courage of its convictions and will shy away wherever science shines a light towards it.

Andrew Brown disagrees with this, whilst also (once again) indirectly and accidentally arguing that the ‘common man’, believer of the faith portrayed by Freud, is a bit dim and uncouth:

Intelligent, cultured and brave believers do pose a real problem for atheists, but it’s not one we honourably solve by simply denying their existence. Freud goes on to dismiss anyone with the brains to see that a God who is merely an enormously exalted father can’t be worth worshipping – yet who still isn’t an atheist.

How do these people pose a problem to atheists? I’ve never noticed. I’ve never said religion makes somebody automatically stupid, uncultured, or cowardly. As I said earlier, people may hold a stupid belief, but still be intelligent – I know lots of people who prefer Oasis to Blur (OOoohhhh!!!) – they may may still be cultured (last I checked, religion and culture were pretty close – music, architecture, art?), they may still be brave (I’m sure as hell too cowardly to strap myself with explosives and blow myself into a jig-saw puzzle in exchange for an after-death paradise). Religion is undoubtedly ludicrous and credulous, but it also resides in a great spectrum of human beings and their attitudes. This is no problem for atheists, and never has been.

It seems in Andrew Brown’s world, atheists are good at scaring off the crows.

Anyway, the way in which Freud ‘dismisses’ the deistic, apologetic believers is to point out that they cannot see that religion is ‘untenable’, and defend it ‘piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions’. He accuses them of thinking ‘they can rescue the God of religion by replacing him by an impersonal, shadowy and abstract principle’, effectively taking the lord’s name in vain, and asserts that the ‘great men of the past’ who did do this were forced to because of fear or cultural norms.

Now, I don’t know about you, but Andrew Brown’s entire article seems, to me, to be a ‘series of pitiful rearguard actions’, trying to ‘rescue the God of religion by replacing him by an impersonal, shadowy and abstract principle’. So too does the attitude of such ‘theistic scientists’ as Francis Collins, and indeed, the attitude of EVERY (Abrahamic) religious person who claims to have no quarrel with science. Freud seems to have got it spot on this time.

However, Andrew Brown manages to counter Freud’s position with one of the most powerful tools available to the writer. He writes something that makes no sense to me.

Okay, I’m a bit tired, so it may well be my fault. But in response to Freud saying that “if some of the great men of the past acted in the same way, no appeal can be made to their example: we know why they were obliged to.” Andrew Brown responds:

Well actually, we don’t. If he means to imply that they were liberal theologians out of fear, he knows nothing of the history of religious persecution during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, in which the liberal or latitudinarian was as dangerous to strict orthodoxy as the atheist, and a damn sight easier to catch and persecute. If they were orthodox out of fear, they were not liberals.

OK, I can see that he’s saying it was as dangerous to be a liberal theologian as it was to be an atheist. It’s the last line that gets me: “If they were orthodox out of fear, they were not liberals”. Right, so – someone writing liberal theology must have believed it, to risk writing it. But if they were orthodox out of fear, why couldn’t they be liberals? Were liberals not scared too? What about pretending to be orthodox prevents you from being liberal? If liberal theologians were genuinely liberal theologians, how does that also mean that no orthodox theologians were liberals in disguise, in order to escape persecution? And how does the inaccuracy of Freud’s belief that they were obliged to be liberal and deistic affect his overall argument? I don’t see why it should be unusual for a ‘great mind’ brought up in a time when ALMOST EVERYBODY believes in a god to believe in a liberal god. As I’ve said, people can hold stupid or contradictory views. What is unusual about somebody living in a god-saturated time, with a great many gaps in human knowledge for that god to reside in, believing in a liberal god? Freud may not approve, but so what?

Frankly, I don’t give a damn. I just don’t care in this instance whether or not believing in a deistic god is more or less intellectually dishonest than believing in a theistic god. Yes, Freud found it ‘humiliating’ how many people made excuses for a god. So do I. Why should it be important whether in the past such excuses were made by ‘great’ people out of fear of persecution or not? The important part is surely the silliness and vacuity of making such excuses? Freud is pointing to the lengths it is necessary to distort religion to make it fit in with reality – from talking snakes and large-scale foreskin theft, to ‘guiding evolution’ or influencing quanta. Surely, that is taking the lord’s name in vain, whoever does it? Would the god of 100AD recognise himself at a Church of England dinner party as he guided, imperceptibly, the brewing of the tea?

In his last two paragraphs, Mr Brown does little more than waste the reader’s time with whatever ideas float through his mind.

“It is the utter refusal to grant that his opponents may be sincerely mistaken which strikes me here”.

From his own quoting of Freud, the only time Freud seems to suggest this is the line “And if some of the great men of the past acted in the same way, no appeal can be made to their example: we know why they were obliged to.” Hardly utter refusal, and hardly the strongest statement Freud could have made. I don’t think that Freud, or anybody else, has seriously been trying to say that liberal believers are actually atheists in disguise!

Yet, from this, Andrew Brown seems to claim that ‘something changed’ in the turn from the nineteenth to twentieth century, which made it ‘necessary to ignore and disparage liberal religion in a different way to the treatment handed out to the conservative stuff.’… What?! I thought that one of the most common arguments against ‘new atheists’ is that they’re too vicious, too willing to attack ALL religion, be it geocentric bunker-ranch in Texas, passing-round-the-orange-squash religion, or vague, floaty ‘spiritual’ crystals-and-Jesus religion!

And, finally, Andrew Brown sums up his article with a reference to Dawkins (who he says also wants Freud ‘utterly discredited’ intellectually) and a single, brilliant sentence. A sentence that sums up everything that is wrong with his article, with his style of thinking, and with his completely misinformed caricature of atheist philosophy:

But if Freud was wrong about everything else, why assume he was right about religion?

Yes, Andrew Brown can’t get his pathetic, pseudo-sagacious intellect around this fact. Atheists AREN’T atheists because of Freud. They don’t ‘assume’ he’s right about religion. They reach religion for their own reasons, from their own investigation, and it just so HAPPENS to be (for some) the same viewpoint as expressed by Freud.

Let me illustrate my point. Before the comments have even started, let me Godwin this blog post.

I agree with Hitler’s belief that the ground was solid. Look at any picture of Hitler standing on a podium, walking about, or driving in his car. Does he look terrified that he will fall through the ground, into the very fiery bowels of our planet itself, where he will be burnt to a crisp by the scorching caress of magma? No.

“But… but…” I hear Andrew Brown cry, “But… Hitler was a BAD MAN! He got things WRONG! If Hitler was wrong about everything else, why assume he was right about the ground being solid? I’m not walking ANYWHERE in case I plummet to my fiery demise!”

That’s right, Andrew. Hitler was a bad man. He was very, VERY wrong on many issues. He was, in fact, an utter bastard, perhaps the biggest bastard of the twentieth century, with premium-grade wackaloon ideas to match.

Yet people who are generally wrong can be right sometimes, and vice-versa. We should look at statements based not on who made them, but on their own merits. Hitler would have been stopped a lot earlier if the German population had, in 1933, said ‘I know Adolf’s got a great rep and all, but why exactly are Jews inferior?’.

Freud was wrong about many things, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right about religion. It’s not that surprising. I had never heard Freud’s views on religion, yet those quoted seemed fairly similar to my own. I, and others, ‘assume’ that he is right about religion because it matches what we already knew.

However wrong a person is normally, they can still be right sometimes.

Don’t worry Andrew; we’ll wait as long as it takes you.

—-

- The Freudulent Colonel Molerat

*STOP PRESS! EMERGENCY-SUPER-CONFUSED-LAST-MINUTE-PRE-POST-EDIT!!!!!

Waaaaiiiiit a second….

I’ve been reading through the comments on the blog post, and ‘ballymichael’ has pointed out that Andrew Brown

…self-identifies as an atheist in this thread, “Intelligent, cultured and brave believers do pose a real problem for atheists, but it’s not one we honourably solve by simply denying their existence” as in most others.

He’s an atheist?! How odd! Looks like my point that

Many don’t see religion as a bad thing at all. A very few [atheists] even think it is beneficial, but simply can’t buy into it.

has been proven!

Although, I must say, I do get images of Andrew Brown self-flagellating each night before bed, screaming “Oh Lord! Have mercy! Why won’t you let me believe in you?!? Why, Lord, WHY? WHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!