Month: April 2011

I wanted to say a few words about the pope’s Easter chat yesterday but I had too many words to say about too many other things so I didn’t get to it. Others have said a few words about it now, but I’ve only glanced over them so far because I wanted to say whatever it was that formed in my head when I first heard (in translation, on the BBC World Service) the salient passage, first. See? I know it’s old news; I’m late; but there was something I wanted to say.

It starts with the usual thing about the Logos. In the beginning was the. You know.

The creation account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason. Hence it tells us that, far from there being an absence of reason and freedom at the origin of all things, the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and freedom.

No it doesn’t. It’s some words in a book. It purports to tell us something, but it doesn’t actually tell us in the sense the pope means. It’s some writing. I can say “In the beginning was the Ice Cream”; that doesn’t make it true; no more does the gospel of John make what it says true. It sure as hell doesn’t make it true that the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and freedom.

Here we are faced with the ultimate alternative that is at stake in the dispute between faith and unbelief: are irrationality, lack of freedom and pure chance the origin of everything, or are reason, freedom and love at the origin of being? Does the primacy belong to unreason or to reason? This is what everything hinges upon in the final analysis.

The pope’s god has nothing to do with freedom, and damn little to do with reason or love. Again it’s just words – just logoi. Words are good but they’re not magic. Popes treat them as if they were magic. That’s their trade, I suppose.

As believers we answer, with the creation account and with John, that in the beginning is reason. In the beginning is freedom. Hence it is good to be a human person. It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it.

Yes it is. And that itself is an extraordinary and inspiring fact. The pope doesn’t know what he’s missing.

Outraged privilege squalls again. Outraged privilege wants even more privilege please, and no grumbling.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has used his Easter message to attack “aggressive secularism”…Cardinal O’Brien said the enemies of Christianity wanted to “take God from the public sphere”.

Whereas the cardinal and his all-male gang want to fill up the public square with their imagined god who endorses all their nasty encrusted hatreds and panics and secret bum-gropings. Well of course they do: that way they would have even more power than they already have. If they had enough power they could even shut up the journalists and bloggers and survivors who keep talking about all that child-rape and child-slavery.

The Cardinal said: “Perhaps more than ever before there is that ‘aggressive secularism’ and there are those who would indeed try to destroy our Christian heritage and culture and take God from the public square. Religion must not be taken from the public square. Recently, various Christians in our society were marginalised and prevented from acting in accordance with their beliefs because they were not willing to publicly endorse a particular lifestyle.”

Yes yes yes, they were “prevented” from throwing gays out of hotels and yanking their adopted children away on the vicious grounds that “they were not willing to publicly endorse a particular lifestyle.” Right – consensual relationships between adults evil, child-rape by priests a little rude perhaps but nothing to fret about.

Dr Evan Harris, a campaigner for the separation of Church and state, branded the Cardinal’s remarks “paranoid and unjustified”.

He said: “It is not ‘aggressive’ to call for an end to religious privilege in society and many people of faith agree with the call for the state to be neutral in religious matters.”

Andrew Copson also retorted.

He said: “What these attacks ignore is that campaigners for secularism in our public life are overwhelmingly motivated, not by anti-religious prejudice, but by a positive desire for equality and an equitable public sphere.

“These alarmist speeches, designed to stir up the faithful and foster a false narrative of persecution, are divisive and sectarian.”

Such attacks “obscured” the reality of the situation, he said. “The churches are seeking to defend a level of influence and privilege totally out of proportion to their significance,” Copson added.

Damn right.

I’m still faintly surprised by some of the reactions to Sam Harris’s book, and to the criticisms of it, so I re-read some this morning. I didn’t slap my brow and say “gosh it’s way better than I thought.” Nope.

Consider, for instance, p 199 n. 11.

…many people assume that an emphasis on human “well-being” would lead us to do terrible things like reinstate slavery…Such expectations are the result of not thinking about these issues seriously. There are rather clear reasons not to do these things – all of which relate to the immensity of suffering that such actions would cause and the possibilities of deeper happiness that they would foreclose.

That’s a terrible “argument” – it’s not an argument at all. It’s one of the many many places where he simply doesn’t make an argument, perhaps because he expects us to supply all the missing bits ourselves.

It is not self-evident that slavery would increase suffering overall – it is self-evident only that it would increase suffering for the slaves. Harris doesn’t even manage to say that much – and if he can’t manage that, what can he manage?

His defenders seem to think all that kind of thing is obvious. It isn’t.

Slavery doesn’t exist because people think “Aha, if some people were slaves, then everyone would be happier.” It exists because people think “If some people were slaves then we would be happier.” Harris’s note simply jumps right over that. He does that all the time, and that’s why the book is so irritating.

Take a look at pp 40-1, where he belatedly admits that “genuine ethical difficulties arise when we ask questions” about what’s good for other people as well as for me. He clears up that little difficulty as briskly as if it were a bit of lint on a sweater. Consider Adam and Eve. Surely they could have figured out how to maximize their well-being. There could be lots of ways to thrive, and ways not to, but they can do it

and the differences between luxuriating on a peak of well-being and languishing in a valley of internecine horror will translate into facts that can be scientifically understood. Why would the difference between right and wrong answers suddenly disappear once we add 6.7 billion people to this experiment?

Seriously. That’s what he said. I’m not making it up. Look for yourself.

A priest named Roy Bourgeois publicly supports the ordination of women, and participated in the ordination of his friend Janice Sevre-Duszynska, for which the Vatican promptly excommunicated him. Then he went to a film festival that showed a movie on the subject, so the Maryknolls are kicking him out and plan to ask the Vatican to laicize him, i.e. take away his priesthood forever.

This swift and unequivocal action has never been the response of these same church leaders to the rape, sodomizing, sexual torture and torment of children — from infancy through adolescence — by thousands of male Catholic clergy worldwide.

It’s always interesting to see what the Vatican considers important and what it doesn’t.

Anthony Grayling is going to be on The Colbert Report on Tuesday to talk about The Good Book.

That’s hitting the jackpot when it comes to promoting a book. It’s also likely to be pretty good fun in itself – like going on tv to have a chat with Alan Bennett, or Jonathan Miller, or John Cleese, or Michael Palin. I would be quite happy to do any of those things, or all four of them, and I would also be quite happy to go on tv to chat with Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

By all accounts, Colbert is a very nice guy. I’ve met someone who once worked for the Report – she had gone from that job to being an admin at CFI. Julian and I were having dinner with her about the fourth day we were there, and she told us she’d worked for Colbert. Julian was a bit startled when I exclaimed “You worked for Colbert?” I had to try to explain to him the significance of Colbert. Anyway – she said he’s a truly nice guy, and very considerate of the employees.

Hey up for philosophy for the people, eh? A philosopher does Colbert; not bad!