What’s That in Your Eye, Phil?
Hitchens certainly was busy while he was in the UK. Multiple talks at the Hay Festival, Start the Week, and finally Night Waves. Did I miss any? Did he also fill in for Melvyn Bragg on ‘In Our Time’ and do the weather report on ‘Today’? Did he open Parliament and drive the number 85 bus? Did he announce the trains at Victoria and carry a sandwich-board up and down Oxford Street and sell tickets for the Eye? Was he, like, everywhere, or only almost everywhere?
Whatever, he was on Night Waves, and it’s quite – no, very – interesting. But there’s an irritating bit near the end where Philip Dodd tells Hitchens with much emphasis that he has one enormous blind spot: religion. But he doesn’t do much of a job of explaining why Hitchens’ attitude to religion is a ‘blind spot.’ Maybe he thinks it’s so obvious it doesn’t need saying – but it isn’t. It needs saying clearly and spelling out, because as I’ve mentioned a time or two, it’s not obvious, why religion should be treated with deference or piety or respect or any of the cant.
But it’s not a huge surprise that Philip Dodd thinks it should be. He’s the one who hosted that annoying Night Waves with the ‘postmodernist theologian’ Philip Blond as well as Julian Baggini, Norman Levitt and A S Byatt in April. He’s the one who said ‘Maybe it’s time to call science’s bluff…[to Blond] Do you think science is overly revered at present?’ and the one who let Blond do way more than his share of the talking – who in fact let him dominate the discussion, do most of the talking, interrupt the other participants, and generally carry on as if he had the upper hand and the platform and the right to run the show. Kind of a put-up job, I call it. Kind of a ‘the fix is in’ situation. So he would think Hitchens has a ‘blind spot’ about religion, but I don’t think the clarity of his vision is much to boast of.
Sorry about the spacing, I haven’t used your type of comment box before.
I recoil somewhat from people who profess to believe in the Yeti or the Loch Ness monster. If they were to profess that the yeti, or Nessie, offered them a sound moral basis for their conduct and/or created the world in six days you wouldn’t see me for dust.
I don’t know many believers in the Loch Ness monster who use this belief as justification for blowing up innocent people who happen to believe that the Loch Ness monster died out millenia ago, murdering women who don’t dress as the Loch Ness monster might (or might not) have said they should or removing any books from schools which dare to suggest that there isn’t a Loch Ness monster.
Hitchens does explain, in various places. I think the onus is on Dodd to explain, because he brought it up, he used quite aggressive language, he didn’t bother explaining what he meant, and his position is the default, majority, public opinion, socially approved but never justified one. ‘Respect’ is just demanded and expected, in many places and contexts. But why? We’re not expected to ‘respect’ belief in Tinkerbell or Spock or Santa Claus, so why are we expected to respect belief in the kind daddy in the sky? There must be reasons – people seem to believe so firmly that that respect is owed – but I still haven’t figured out what they are. People don’t explain – they just reiterate. But I’m not asking for reiteration – I get the basic idea – I’m asking for explanation or justification. It never turns up.
Orwell refers (in As I Please, March 3, 1944) to the belief in the immortality of the soul as “one of the props of western civilization” and concludes: “One cannot have any worth-while picture of the future unless one realizes how much we have lost by the decay of Christianity.” So even if God is dead, perhaps respect for the corpse is in order? Burke says he wrote A Vindication of Natural Society in order “to show that, without the exertion of any considerable forces, the same engines which were employed for the destruction of religion, might be employed with equal success for the subversion of government.”
Maybe Burke didn’t prove his contention, but thanks to the Jacobins his viewpoint gained widespread acceptance.
“Hitchens does explain, in various places.” Maybe he does. The only place I have looked is his website, where I found this gem: “the true problem is our failure to recognize that religion is not just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it.” If that’s an explanation then okay, he explains.
Hmm. Well, I don’t agree with Orwell about that, so no, I don’t think respect for the corpse is in order. (I could go into detail about why, but would rather do that on the main page.) I don’t agree with Burke either. Both your quotations are just assertions, and not particularly persuasive ones.
It’s not a matter of proof, but it is a matter of justification – of something more than assertion.
Hitchens doesn’t actually have a website – there is a site but it’s run by someone else. Yes, there are places where he says why religion is incompatible with morality. The bit you quote doesn’t explain, true, but the bit you quote isn’t all there is.
“Both your quotations are just assertions, and not particularly persuasive ones.”
Of course. All I mean to say is that many writers have regarded religion as a kind of cement for society. Even Machiavelli, no Creeping Jesus, considered it advisable for the Prince to nurture it. Obviously if Hitchens has demolished the lot of them that’s an interesting fact which ought to be more widely known.
Oh – I get you. Sure. Cicero is another fine example.
But Hitchens is not likely to be a fan of imposing illusions on people in order to keep them in order. The ‘religion is good for social control’ view is well known, but so is the opposition to that view – Hitchens isn’t being particularly eccentric in not subscribing to it.
And I have to add, if that’s what Philip Dodd had in mind, he certainly didn’t say so. I don’t think it is what he had in mind – but then he didn’t say.
Hitchens said this in an interview last year. Sorry, I’ve lost the web link:
Listen, if a child tells me he’s seen a ghost, I’ll say, “Well, I’m sure you did, but I don’t think I’ll be able to see it myself, and I don’t think it’s really there, though I do think you must have a very vivid imagination.” However, if a grown-up says “I’ve just a heard a voice telling me what to do,” what they really mean is “I can now tell you what to do.” That’s what I don’t like. What I noticed when I was a kid wasn’t just that what the headmaster was preaching at sermon time was rubbish (which was easy to see), it was also that it seemed very important that the headmaster be able to invest his otherwise rather feeble authority with religious authority. In other words, I could see already when I was eight that religion is used to say, “You better listen to what I say. My power is not just of this world. I have divine right.” That’s where you have to say, “Say that again and I’ll burn your church.” That’s fascism. I loathe it. And I tend to loathe the people who believe it, because they are making a claim on me.”
Hitchens on Religion: Doesn’t he explain rather clearly his belief that if literature were to replace religion society would be better served? Poetry still affords the individual his private moment, “aesthetic” if you will, beyond thought or word. Religion, on the other hand, which makes so much of “the ineffable, the subline, the unutterable and the holy”, is bitterly and endlessly divided on whether the individual (a) has any right to such a private experience at all, and (b)if he does, does he then enjoy any right to intrepret it outside “approved” doctrine. Any wonder Hitchens is out of patience with it?
Yes, I remember reading that passage. In fact the link is probably here somewhere.
Just so about the ineffable thing – it’s only ‘ineffable’ when that’s convenient, but when they want to throw their weight around, all of a sudden it’s very effable indeed. Well which is it!
Both, of course. Ineff whenever we try to say ‘yes but how do you know all this?’ and eff whenever we try to say ‘Well we’ll just ignore it then.’ Heads I win tails you lose.
Not only was Mr. Hitchens commanding the streets, airwaves, bookshops and train stations of the Old Country, he commanded the airwaves in the Antipodes too:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lnl/
7th of June he was on with Australian political analyst Robert Manne to discuss their respective shifts around the political spectrum: “Left, right, left” as it’s fittingly titled on the website.
And prior to that direct discussion with Hitchens on the show this week, he was a kind of fulcrum around which an interview with Tariq Ali was conducted. The Ali one was a few weeks ago (26th May).
It may still be streamable (or Podcastable, if you’re into that kind of thing):
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lnl/index/default.htm
Does Hitchens come in pill form yet?
‘To someone who believes in God it surely is obvious.’
I believe and I accept and enjoy challenges to my beliefs. It isn’t worth having to me if it doesn’t stand the challenges.
Thanks for those links, BG.
Just think, I’ve been on the same radio program that Hitchens has. Fancy.
[…] part of what I did find that I said about that Hay appearance – it was in 2005. Hitchens certainly was busy while he was in the UK. Multiple talks at the […]