When was this thing last renewed?
Andrew Anthony zeroes in on the problem.
All the subclauses in the world can’t disguise the intention that underpins these positions. In seeking to incorporate a disputed deity’s authority (which, by the way, it is blasphemous to question) into the common law, and by challenging the principle of equality under the law, Dr Williams launched a strategic attack on secularism.
A disputed deity’s authority. Just so. And it’s not only the deity that is disputed, it is also that deity’s authority, and the content of the resulting commands, and above all how and if anyone knows any of this. This is the theist four-step I talked about last year. We tend to think there’s just one step – believe in God or not – but in fact there are at least four, and it’s the whole package that is both so coercive and so weak as a matter of knowledge. It’s coercive because the package is: there is a God, it is all-good and all-powerful, it has told us how to be good, we know those three things beyond a shadow of a doubt. That’s coercive because (if it’s true, which of course it isn’t) it closes off the exits. It’s weak as a matter of knowledge because we don’t know any one of the four, much less all of them – yet that doesn’t get pointed out all that often. The archbishop can talk about a covenant with the divine and no one says like a rude eight-year-old ‘How do you know?’ But it is a real question. How does he know? The answer of course is that he doesn’t – but because no one says so, he gets to go on pretending he does.
The archbishop says says there is a ‘covenant between the divine and the human’. Well, is there? How does he know? There is no evidence of such a covenant. There is no crumbly old bit of parchment in the British Museum with God’s signature on it. There’s no anything – there’s only a chain of assertions going back many hundreds of years. Well that doesn’t count, especially in such a momentous matter as this. If there were a covenant – would this God make it once, five thousand years ago or thereabouts, and then never again? Leaving no trace? Is this God so thick that it doesn’t know that humans can forge documents and invent stories? If God really wanted to make a covenant with the human, wouldn’t it make some arrangement for succeeding generations to have genuine, valid knowledge of said covenant? God didn’t do that. God apparently expected us all to be as credulous as newborn babies about this one thing – and most of us have obliged, but maybe it’s getting to be just about time to stop being quite such easy marks. When the archbishop talks as if he has reliable knowledge of this covenant between the divine and the human, he is playing a con game.
Well… that’s not quite fair. His Muddledness the Archbishop is not the perpetrator of a con: He is rather the quintessential rube, the ultimate sucker – deluding others only because he is so thoroughly self-deluding, eyes squeezed tight and hands in ears singing LA-LA-LA as loud as he can to preserve his fantasy. He is not a con artist, merely a fool.
And what choice does he have at this point? He’s devoted his entire life and career to utter and complete malarkey – and his proclivity for shifty double-talk and thinking himself into absurd corners is probably a sign that, somewhere deep down inside, he knows it. What’s he supposed to do, shrug and cop to it? “That whole God thing? The Covenant between the human and Divine and all that? All rubbish. Sorry. My bad. I’m going to retire now. Maybe devote more time to my gardening.” It’s a bit much to expect of the old man, innit?
No, Williams isn’t a con man. He’s the victim of a con, and a very old and prestigious and widely accepted con at that – and he can’t own up to it because it would be far too painful and embarrassing for him to do so. His unwillingness to recognize or admit that he’s been conned still doesn’t make him a willful liar or a con artist in his own right.
It just makes him a coward as well as a fool.
Well, the shifty double talk as a sign that he knows it is just what I had in mind, G. I think he’s suspiciously careful to avoid spelling certain things out. Maybe all clerics are, maybe they have to be, but…I can’t help suspecting some awareness of what they’re hiding.
‘I think he’s suspiciously careful to avoid spelling certain things out. Maybe all clerics are,…’
Oops, hit send by accident.
Some clerics are more open about their core beliefs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2008%2F02%2F13%2Fnbeast113.xml
I think (hah; see below) that it’s even worse than Ophelia says. If you can bear any more of his double-inspissated mud, look at the whole sentence:
Well, stone me, I can be both a regular down at the Bookbinders Arms and a member of the Public Library. I would never have thought of that without his Graceship’s subtle scholarship. ‘Most fundamental and non-negotiable level of reality’? Whaaat? How can any kind of reality [my italics] be ‘established’ by a ‘covenant’ as in any kind of ‘thinking’, that is, parent to priest to child mindless repetition of unverifiable folklore?
Well exactly – and it’s all like that – all seven fokking pages.
You forgot ‘as relating to.’ Whaaat? What does it mean to say a set of relations or mode of belonging is regarded as relating to a level of reality? ‘This set of relations is regarded as relating to this level of reality.’ Wot? Wotcha mean, guvna?
He seems to have picked up the annoying pomo habit of saying ” x is regarded as,” ” x is thought to,” “it is recognised that x” instead of just saying “I think x”
G. I am so ticked at the arch bishop that I am not even going to defend him, you can stick it to him without fear!
“Well, the shifty double talk as a sign that he knows it is just what I had in mind, G. I think he’s suspiciously careful to avoid spelling certain things out.”
But who is he being careful to avoid spelling them out to?
His audience?
Or himself?
(lurker de-lurking here, hello, how are you all?)
Somewhat off-topic, but I just discovered an anarchist defense of the sharia law proposal by our friend the Archbishop on this blog, whose host is apparently an affected self-important twit: http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/
(Scroll down to the post entitled “Security Blanket”)
I found it by cruising around blogs with left-libertarian/anarchist tendencies, since I have some sympathy for those tendencies. But every so often I’m reminded that most people committed to these views are ivory-tower morons with a PoliSci101 understanding of the world.
My favorite part was when one commenter pointed out that a truly libertarian system would allow women opt-in to their own radical feminist courts, if they so chose, or Muslim women to opt-in to their own feminist Muslim courts, and why isn’t the Archbishop respecting that social identity? Well, because it’s not an identity made up by bearded men thousands of years ago, of course!
The host got all huffy and implied that the commenter was missing the point. Or at least, that’s what I think he (of COURSE it’s a ‘he’) was implying. He, like many other defenders of this proposal, has problems with clarity.
Yes, and–crucially–he’s declaring a monopoly on that con-game for those with conservative Judeo-Christian beliefs. I’d have fewer problems with it if it were a game open to everyone. For one thing, it would make it more obvious that it is indeed a con-game and not the Truth. (If everyone is allowed to declare they know what the covenant with God is all about, it becomes real obvious that no one actually knows. If only a handful of powerful men are allowed to do so, people tend to get the idea that they have some authority behind their declarations).
But the Archbishop would never allow Rastafarians, for instance, to have their own courts to celebrate their covenant with the divine.
Ack. Before the sentence “Yes, and–crucially–he’s declaring…” I meant to put quotation from the original post:
When the archbishop talks as if he has reliable knowledge of this covenant between the divine and the human, he is playing a con game.
That’s what I was responding to in my last two paragraphs.
Greetings, Serafina!
Good idea – and atheists would be able to claim that we know what nogod wants. Nogod wants girls to go to school, nogod wants Saudi Arabia to turn secular, nogod wants peace in Darfur and an end to mass rape in eastern Congo. This is written in our nogod Holy Book.
Serafina: I would only respond that Ioz is a very funny self satisfied twat. But, that was not one of his finest hours. Although, his broader point-that devolution of the State would not lead to peace and freedom but might still be on balance better than the millions killed by centralized State power-is convincing. (Although, others on the thread pointed out the net violence might be the same-just spread among a myriad of tiny little conflicts between clans, criminal organizations, cults, gangs, and mini-states.)
Twit. She said twit.Sexist epithets not wanted, thanks.
Why not? do they offend some belief?