An erudite thoughtful man by the name of Greg Craven, who is vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, has written an elegant, reasoned, careful piece on atheism and atheists in The Age. It would persuade anyone who read it with an open mind.
From time immemorial, this world has been troubled by plagues. From bogong moths in Canberra to frogs in biblical Egypt, unwelcome and unlovely creatures have the awkward habit of turning up in bulk. Just now, we are facing one of our largest and least appealing infestations. Somewhat in advance of summer’s blowflies, we are beset by atheists.
That’s a good beginning, don’t you think? Invoking plagues, comparing atheists to moths and frogs, saying we’re unwelcome and unlovely and turn up in bulk, calling us an infestation, then with a flourish comparing us to blowflies and complaining of being ‘beset’ by us.
Clearly I don’t keep up with the news from Australia as well as I should. Are atheists clogging all the sidewalks there, are they gnawing at the foundations of people’s houses, are they worming their way into the plumbing and turning it rusty and leaky, are they crapping on all the food? I had not heard.
[T]he great advantage of designer atheism is that you get to think of yourself as immensely clever. After all, you are at least much brighter than all those dumb-asses who believe in a supreme being, such as Sister Perpetua down the road, Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Newton and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Well there is always that risk, yes, but is that really our fault? (And even though it’s a risk, it’s not an inevitable outcome – it is possible to be an atheist without thinking of yourself as immensely clever. One very easy way to insure this is just to read a page or two of a book by someone really clever.)
For some reason, contemporary Australian atheism seems to consider itself terribly funny. Its proponents only have to wheel out one of the age-old religious libels to lose control of their bladders. To outsiders, of course, it is a bit like watching a giggling incontinent drunk at a party.
Jeez – he’s really very vulgar, isn’t he. I think I’ve had enough.
A credit to his university, he is.
Comments
22 responses to “Piety and wit combined”
What an outrageous slur! Bogong moths are not at all unlovely. Some people just have no sense of wonder.
The only answer to this is the horse laugh.
Nice to know it’s getting to him, though.
I love PZ’s take on this, that if the Biblical plagues were all sent by God to warn and chastize his people, then where must this plague of Atheists have come from?
Of course this libelous piece of Australian dung has all the evidence he needs to back up his spewed frothings, correct?
We keep hearing that this or that religious apologist is brilliant and would easily demolish the likes of Dawkins or Hitchens in a debate. Yet when the apologists write, what do they produce? Crap like this. They can’t win debates because they are third-rate thinkers. And religion today can’t attract even second-rate thinkers because…? Gosh, tough question.
If Dr. Craven doesn’t want people to call him stupid and bigoted, then maybe he should stop writing stupid, bigoted things.
What’s especially laughable about that article is that it’s also equally demeaning to pretty much all non-Catholic Christians. His article basically boils down to, “Atheists are stupid and evil and mean to me, and the only reason they go after Catholics is because we’re so much better than all the other Christians.”
He’s like the Australian version of Bill Donohue.
Except Bill Donohue isn’t a vice-chancellor. That aspect really is rather staggering.
It gets worse. I was not aware of this, but ACU is also a PUBLIC university:
So he’s like what you’d get if Bill Donohue managed to get appointed to a position of actual power and influence.
Yikes, I didn’t even know there was such a thing.
huh. He appears to think that attacking christians isn’t funny or clever. But attacking everyone else and comparing them to plagues etc. is not only clever but academically clever. Yes, very vulgar. Also not nice about incontinent people. Where is the famous compassion, I wonder?
Just today at my public university I passed by a guy with a huge sign that said “Trust Jesus.” And he was arguing with a young man who claimed that people who wear cotton/polyester blend clothing will go to hell.
The details of all this Christian stuff are just as confusing as they were when I was in 11th grade. It was a lot better when my mother told me it was all a bunch of stories. . .
When compared directly to this particular bit of erudition from the eminent (and well-named) Vice Chancellor Craven, I’ve had bowel movements that were immensely more clever.
You see what I did there? I used highfalutin’ language combined with crass vulgarity to mock Greg Craven’s essay of same. I thought I’d better explain that, on the slim chance that Mr. Craven should happen to run across this posting, because he’s obviously very dim and might not pick up on it. Whoops! Did it again!
Wes: “So he’s like what you’d get if Bill Donohue managed to get appointed to a position of actual power and influence.”
Fortunately, away from their institutions, most Vice Chancellors in Australia don’t have that much actual power or influence (some do).
In any case, as an article bagging athiests, it failed miserably:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2009/11/04/greg-cravens-god-awful-own-goal-against-the-atheists/
One of the comments from the article Keith McGuinness linked to:
Jesus titty-fucking Christ. This is what you get when someone wastes what might have been a good mind by expending all of its efforts on nothing but a thesaurus and a bunch of indie rock records.
Actually that article is so stupid its funny. Australia is a dominantly atheist society and taking the piss out of religious types is a risk-free strategy. The Age is almost ‘Grauniad on the Yarra’ so I suspect this twaddle got a run because the Editor saw his/her model newspaper was running this line.
Some of the comments are great – for instance, Andrew McIntosh’s:
“Mr Craven, this is one of the most astonishing and ridiculous articles I’ve read in The Age in a very long time. It would take much, much more than the small space allotted to the comments section here to reply to it all. All I can say is that this is a paranoid and trivial piece that does absolutely nothing to justify a belief in god, the history and present status of the Catholic church and the allegations that Catholics are victims of hate crimes from atheists as you alledge. The least you could have done was provide a few solid examples! I just hope, for the sake of the students, that the education standards at ACU are higher than the standard you’re setting here.”
Well yes, designer atheism is great. But for a plague, unfortunately, you kind have to settle for off-the-rack one-size-fits-all atheism. So you only get to think of yourself as rather clever.
(Personally, I don’t see this column going over so well with the general public; we Aussies are not a very religious people even if only a minority of us are declared atheists).
Also:
That is a puzzle. How to explain why we would get so excited about some people over there who just happen to believe in the existence of some entity for which there is no evidence, but who is their BFF?
You would almost think that the people with said belief had also accreted a bunch of other even stranger beliefs about, say, the views of this entity on birth control and homosexuality, and that (oh I dunno) they were insisting that everyone else live their lives according to these strange beliefs.
Nah. That can’t be it. Catholicism is so polite and harmless.
I sampled Greg Craven’s cartload of concentrated thought on The Age website this morning. But then, I decided to look on the bright side. We Australians like a challenge, and I reckon our neanderthal deists are equal to any.
And Greg Craven? He’s a bloody ripper; a real bobby dazzler. World class. World class!
I hope they make him Pope.
Greg Craven for pope! That would be fantastic.
I know Greg Craven very vaguely (although I doubt that he remembers me).
When he taught constitutional and administrative law subjects at the University of Melbourne, in classes I attended in the late 80s and early 90s, he was a bit of wunderkind. He was young – a bit younger than me in fact, as I did my legal study after a lot of other stuff – didn’t have an especially wonderful initial law degree, but then had obviously made up for it rapidly as a very active researcher once he started his higher degrees. He did some great historical scholarship on the Australian Constitution. He must have done a lot of his important research when he was only in his twenties. No wonder, I suppose, that he wound up in a series of high academic positions in middle age.
Greg appeared to be very conservative politically, especially on states’ rights issues, but was an excellent teacher – well regarded by the students.
It’s sad to see him sinking to this level. As Catherine Deveny observed in one of the comments, he found his own petard.
Jennie Louise: “…and that (oh I dunno) they were insisting that everyone else live their lives according to these strange beliefs.”
Exactly!
The “wonderful” thing about Craven’s article (aside from how incredibly juvenile it was), was how it utterly and completely failed to deal with any substantive criticism of religion; especially the catholic religion.
“Are atheists clogging all the sidewalks there, are they gnawing at the foundations of people’s houses, are they worming their way into the plumbing and turning it rusty and leaky, are they crapping on all the food?”
The short answer is: YES!
Really?! I’ll pack my bags.