Author: Ophelia Benson

Giles Fraser demonstrates Christian generosity and clear thinking.

Contributors to Thought for the Day mustn’t attack the beliefs of others. It’s a basic BBC rule. This is not a place where Christians can fire pot shots at Hindus or Muslims have a go at Judaism. Which is why it’s just not appropriate for atheists. Not that they haven’t important things to say. The problem is that atheism is defined by what it’s against, that it is not theism.

Even before we get to the substance, that passage is odd for a grownup writer. All those short sentences. When they could perfectly well be made into longer sentences. Surely Fraser is sophisticated enough to do that.

But leaving style aside, consider the content: the assumption 1) that atheism is fundamentally about theism as opposed to being about all kinds of things in the absence of theism and 2) that atheism has nothing to do but attack theist beliefs. That assumption is wrong on both counts, and especially so in the context of a program like ‘Thought for the Day’ which is about anything and everything, from a theistic point of view. There is no obvious reason why an atheist ‘Thought for the Day’ couldn’t be about anything and everything from an atheist point of view. Ronald Aronson’s book Living Without God is like that, for instance; it doesn’t attack theist beliefs, it discusses various issues and questions about life from a nontheist point of view.

As individuals, atheists may have opinions. But on TftD I speak as a representative of a body of opinion that has a definable literature, a major place in world history and billions of adherents.

The stupidity of that first sentence is so obvious (whether it means he’s allowing us to have opinions or is conceding that we may be capable of having them) that I won’t say any more about it. But as for the rest: we too speak as representatives of a body of opinion that has a definable literature and a major place in world history, and if we don’t have billions of ‘adherents’ that will be partly because atheism isn’t about ‘adherence’ any more than it is about submission or veneration or spirituality or transcendence or any other of the pious sludge that theists like to pour over their commonplaces – and partly because theists won’t allow it. So if that sentence is offered as a reason to continue to exclude atheists from ‘Thought for the Day’ it’s a train wreck.

Then he gets downright snotty – but no more cogent.

I wish atheists would get a life and stop following believers wherever they go, demanding to join in. Perhaps they are incapable of leaving us alone. For atheism is parasitic upon religious belief, united only by what it is against. Just as TftD should not include religious fundamentalists denouncing heathens, so it should not include atheists denouncing believers. This is a place for a very different, gentler sort of reflection – and that’s why so many people continue to love it.

Yes and I wish theists would get a life and stop telling everyone to believe that which there is no good reason to believe. We wouldn’t ‘follow them around’ (which I take to mean disagree with them and/or dispute theistic monopolies of public media outlets) if they weren’t always telling us what to do or how to think or both. And to repeat, atheists are perfectly capable of engaging in gentle reflection, and I would even say (since this is not ‘Thought for the Day’ and I am allowed to be ungentle here) that we do it better than theists do.

In any case, Fraser himself points out that it is ‘a basic BBC rule’ that Contributors to Thought for the Day mustn’t attack the beliefs of others, so the rule would take care of any putative atheist propensity to attack the beliefs of others, thus there is no need to exclude them as a category in advance. So…what’s his point? Nothing, apparently, except to be rude and muddled about atheism. Once again theism shoots its own self in its own foot.

And Caroline Petrie is the same kind of thing. She refuses to stop thrusting her religion on patients. The trust says she can pray over them if they ask her to – but that’s not good enough, she has to force it on them unasked, blind to the discomfort that this would cause people who don’t happen to be like her.

“It is me, it is a natural thing for me to do,” she said. “If I am nursing, I would offer prayer to somebody and I am not going to change.”…Yesterday the mother-of-two said she would behave in exactly the same way: “I cannot divide my faith from my nursing care, I have to be the person I want to be.”

Note the Telegraph’s none-too-subtle nudge – she’s a mother of two, therefore she’s a nice warm normal person, who shouldn’t be expected to divide her ‘faith’ from her nursing. Note also the self-centered appeal to Being Me and having to Be The Person I Want To Be – note that it’s about her, not about other people.

The trust said:

“It is acceptable to offer spiritual support as part of care when the patient asks for it. But for nurses, whose principal role is giving nursing care, the initiative lies with the patient and not with the nurse. Nurses like Caroline do not have to set aside their faith, but personal beliefs and practices should be secondary to the needs and beliefs of the patient and the requirements of professional practice.”

But no, that’s not good enough. It’s up to Nurse Petrie to decide what patients have to put up with from her, it’s not up to her employers. Nurse P has god on her side.

“If they said ‘please don’t ask patients to pray’ then I am sorry, I can’t promise that, so where do we go from there? I would have to contact my lawyer.”

Because theism is mandatory and freedom from theism is not allowed, and if you don’t agree, we’ll sue. Got that?

And believers keep wondering why non-believers get irritated with assertive religion. It’s because of the assertiveness. It’s because of the assertiveness combined with the lack of plausibility. The two together make an unpleasant combination. Having people always rushing around trying to compel us to believe nonsensical things that there is no reason to believe…gets to be wearing, and annoying, and something bordering on a grievance. If they kept it to themselves, that would be one thing, but since they refuse – we get sick of the sight and sound of them.

Three separate pro-God advert campaigns on the sides of London buses are set to hit city streets. Buses adorned with the slogan “There definitely is a God” are from the Christian Party…The adverts, which are unrelated, come a month after the British Humanist Association placed “no God” slogans on buses across England. Those adverts, which read: “There’s probably no God: now stop worrying and enjoy your life” prompted complaints from the group Christian Voice and from individuals…The Trinitarian Bible Society…has chosen the message from Psalm 53.1, which reads: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”…The Russian Orthodox Church plans ads on 25 buses that read: “There IS a God, BELIEVE.”

Now…the atheist bus campaign was inspired by existing Christian ads on buses that asked “When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8) and gave the url of a website that offers this pleasant warning

for anyone who doesn’t “accept the word of Jesus on the cross”: “You will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell. Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire which was prepared for the devil and all his angels (demonic spirits)” (Matthew 25:41).

In other words the atheist bus campaign was in response to a theist bus campaign that was at once dogmatic and vindictive, in other words it was in response to a combination of assertive falsehoods and vicious threats. The bus campaign was mildness itself, and it included no threats at all, yet believers greet it with outrage and ‘offense’ and all the rest of the panoply of truculent religious self-pity, and then they get busy supplying more assertive dogmatic falsehoods. There definitely is a God, it’s only fools who think there is no god, there IS a god, BELIEVE (implied: or else).

We hear a lot about what is ‘offensive’; well as far as I’m concerned this is offensive. It’s offensive in its aggression, its dogmatism, its willful blindness to the need for good reasons to believe things, its determination to force its unreasonable and punitve beliefs on everyone else. I’m getting more and more and more and more sick of believers forcing themselves on us at every turn; I’m getting more and more sick of this assumption that we have no right to be free of anti-rational truth claims anywhere we go. Next thing you know they’ll be at the door with arrest warrants.

The Times tells us that at today’s ‘prayer breakfast’ in Washington Tony Blair said how d’you do to Obama and ‘spoke passionately of his own religious faith.’ Well I suppose people who go to something called a ‘prayer breakfast’ have to be prepared for that kind of thing, but really, can you think of anything more emetic first thing in the morning? Lolling about among the Froot Loops and pop tarts listening to Tony Blair speak passionately about his religious ‘faith’? Because I can’t. My idea of the right thing to do first thing in the morning is to drink coffee while scowling quietly and staring into space. I suppose one could get up early and get one’s coffee drinking and quiet scowling out of the way first – but even then, my idea of the right thing to do at that hour is to drink more coffee while reading in peace, it is decidedly not to go somewhere and see a lot of people and listen to a sentimental and credulous ex-prime minister talk nauseating eyewash about his ‘faith.’ Especially not if he does it with passion, godalmighty fetch me the sick bag.

Mr Blair…delivered an impassioned address to an audience of political and religious leaders, telling them of his “first spiritual awakening” when his father almost died when he was still a child…”‘I’m afraid my father doesn’t believe in God,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ my teacher replied ‘God believes in him. He loves him without demanding or needing love in return.’ That is what inspires: the unconditional nature of God’s love. A promise perpetually kept. A covenant never broken. And in surrendering to God, we become instruments of that love.”

Oh, please. Of course ‘God’s love’ is ‘unconditional’; that’s because ‘God’ is imaginary so it is whatever anyone says it is because there is nothing to stop it being that because there is no real god to check such claims against. Blair’s teacher could just as well have replied ‘God believes in him and God hates him without demanding or needing hate in return.’ Or he could have said ‘God is a lobster and pickle sandwich.’ People say things about ‘God’; that doesn’t mean they’re true, and it’s a pretty ridiculous reason to get inspired – or at least it’s a ridiculous reason to stay inspired, and it’s a triply ridiculous reason to tell a bunch of adult politicians on the far side of the Atlantic about it, 45 years later. I can see how it would be very moving at the time, to a boy of 10, even if he didn’t believe it, because it was a compassionate and kind thing for his teacher to say. But then he should talk about his teacher, not about God. And at his age with his knowledge of the world he really shouldn’t talk crap about the unconditional nature of God’s love and a promise perpetually kept and a covenant never broken, because if God loves us all in that way then God has a funny way of showing it. Just ask some people in eastern Congo, or Zimbabwe, or Burma, or Darfur, or Gaza.

But even though he did not want to confuse “the realms of political and religious authority”, he now thought that faith, not secularism, held the key to inter-communal understanding. “Restoring religious faith to its rightful place as a guide to our world and its future is of the essence,” he said.

Back off, cowboy.

That’s so impertinent. So presumptuous. So backward. ‘Religious faith’ has no rightful place as a guide to our world because faith is the wrong way to think about the world. If you use ‘religious faith’ as a guide to our world then you set yourself up to get the world wrong, and how is that helpful? How is it of the essence? Why is it not rather of the essence to look at the world and see it as it really is, and then try hard to figure out how best to act in such a world?

Blair of course is the wrong fella to ask.

Simon Jenkins seems to like to show off a certain unreflective quality in his opinions.

I find distasteful the process by which an American clinic agreed to insert eight embryos in the womb of a disturbed mother of six. It is dangerous to all concerned. But I would not ban doctors from offering multiple embryo transfer or women from seeking it. The world still remains free for human error, just.

But if something is dangerous for all concerned, and 8 out of 9 of the ‘all concerned’ are future babies then children then adults, why does Jenkins so quickly and breezily say he would not ban anyone from causing multiple births? If mulitiple births cause greatly increased risk of premature birth and various kinds of physical and mental damage, as they do, then why not ban it? And what good is it to say, cheerily, that the world still remains free for human error? Error is one thing, deliberately risking the well-being of multiple babies is another. Accidentally tearing a shirt is not the same thing as intentionally risking congenital damage for one’s offspring.