Author: Ophelia Benson

Mush. Most people can’t seem to think or talk about this subject without resorting to mush. To inaccurate assumptions and woolly language and category mistakes and undefined terms that need defining. To mush.

Editing it today – 33 years later under the same title – is the Guardian’s religious affairs correspondent, Stephen Bates. He defends it enthusiastically. He said: “I am by no means averse to including humanist or secularist writers but I tell all would-be contributors that the column is intended, in my opinion, to be a space for non-polemical or philosophical reflection. This means not attacking the beliefs of others. In my experience, humanists and atheists find this very difficult…”

Well maybe that’s because they’re profoundly puzzled by the idea that philosophical ‘reflection’ ‘means’ not attacking the beliefs of others. Oh yeah? Ever talked to or read any philosophers has he? But that’s where the mush comes in. He probably has some special – i.e. mushy – meaning for ‘philosophical reflection’ in mind. That it means just kind of dozily dreamily driftily pondering this and that, with one’s eyes unfocused and mouth hanging open and a little bit of drool trailing down one’s chin. He also no doubt has a special meaning for the word ‘attack’ by which it means point out the great gaping holes in someone’s ‘reasoning’ or ‘argument’. And a special meaning for ‘beliefs’ by which it means that which must never be questioned unless of course it is the ‘beliefs’ of non-theists in which case of course anything at all may be said however dishonest.

Even more, the mushy idea throughout the piece is that religion and non-religion are the same sort of thing, in the same way that ginger ice cream and coffee ice cream are the same kind of thing. The truth of course is rather that religion is a set of badly-warranted ideas while non-religion is abstinence from that particular set of badly-warranted ideas, so that in fact they are opposites rather than two flavours of the same kind of thing. So all the way through there is this silly assumption that atheists have no business saying religion is epistemically feeble.

Who qualifies to speak from this small platform is, in the end, he points out, a matter for the editor. The editor, when I asked him about this, said he believed there was still a good argument for preserving Face to Faith as, to use his term, “a protected space”.

Right. A protected space. Protected from what? From the bad mean people who ask what all this is based on? From cruel heartless people who ask what the evidence is? From savage unfeeling people who ask who designed the designer then? Or just from the winds and turmoil of the everyday world? But either way, why is a ‘protected space’ considered necessary or useful or a good idea? Why should religion be protected? Why shouldn’t it be expected to take care of itself by this time? Why does it need Guardian editors bending over it and tucking it in and telling it not to fret? (Not to mention allowing it to talk unmitigated drivel week in and week out.)

Well, I don’t suppose the Guardian will answer those questions, but I would love to know.

The decision in Dover will be handed down soon.

Legal experts said the big question was whether Judge Jones would rule narrowly or more broadly on the merits of teaching intelligent design as science. Proponents of the theory argue that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them.

Here we are back at that legs question. That sentence does look so very silly. ‘Proponents of the theory argue that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them while somehow not being so complex that it itself requires explanation.’ ‘Proponents of the theory argue that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them which means that it requires explanation even more – in fact orders of magnitude more – than the living organisms it designed, but we’re not going to mention that because it would complicate things.’ ‘Proponents of the theory argue that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them which means that an even higher intelligence designed the first higher intelligence which means that an even higher higher – oh look, is that a turtle?’ ‘Proponents of the theory argue that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them which makes absolutely no sense because if the organisms need explanation because they are so complex then obviously so does the intelligence that designed them, being more complex, but let’s not talk about that, because the fact is simply that we find it easier and more cozy to think of the whole thing having happened because a big person made it happen rather than because it just happened, and of course that’s good enough for a court of law, woo! woo! woo!’

And there is this horrible item. Part of the heart-warming series ‘how can we make women’s lives more helpless and deprived and nasty than they already are?’

Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan have executed a school teacher in front of his pupils for refusing to comply with warnings to stop educating girls.

Well of course they have, because that kind of behavior interferes with the whole project. Sets it right back. What good is is for the Taliban to keep valiantly struggling to take away every single right and capacity and freedom and pleasure and opportunity and chance that women have, if evil thugs like this teacher are going to come along and educate them? Is he crazy? The whole point with women is to shove them into a corner and then everybody gather together and get on top of them until they are squashed down into something about the size of an acorn, and can’t talk or move anymore. Not to educate them! Duh.

“He had received many warning letters from the Taliban to stop teaching, but he continued to do so happily and honestly – he liked to teach boys and girls.”

How sickening. He liked to teach boys and girls, he liked to give them something, and make them bigger, and more able to make choices and expand and grow. What he should have liked to do, of course, is to stamp all that out, and make them smaller and more hopeless. That’s the right thing to do, that’s virtue and purity.

Under the Taliban interpretation of Islamic Sharia law female education was banned, along with female employment. Since the overthrow of the Taliban government by the US-led invasion of 2001, the Afghan government claims six million Afghan children have returned to school, many of them girls. However, Taliban insurgents in the south have repeatedly targeted schools, burning many to the ground at night or issuing beatings or warnings to teachers.

Good, good, good. That’s the way. High priority, burning down schools. Great. Afghanistan’s a poor country, it can’t just go re-building schools every ten minutes, so burning the nasty things down is the way to go. Very spiritual. Three cheers for religion.

What a lot of nonsense the hooray for theocracy crowd does talk. Distortions, omissions, fantasies, strawmen, non sequiturs, aimless babbling – no trick is too cheap, apparently.

Resistance to politically correct attempts to expunge Christianity from our culture – the conversion of Christmas into “winterval” is symptomatic – should be encouraged, but one can push the defence of Christianity farther by imagining what Western society would be like without it…It was and is a highly cosmopolitan and egalitarian religion, recognising neither Greek nor Jew, bond nor free. That, in addition to such novel ideals as charity, compassion and peace, and the status attached to women, differentiated Christians from a surrounding society based on cruelty, hedonism and organised slavery. Imagine yourself as a slave, rather than Caesar or Cicero, in Ancient Rome, and you’ll get the hang of it.

That is absolute crap. Self-serving self-flattering crap. It is not true. That word ‘cruelty’ for instance – that’s key. It’s a great myth now that Christianity has always been the enemy of cruelty above all, but that is not true. Cruelty is not, for instance, one of the seven deadly sins, and Montaigne’s great book was put on the Index partly because he argued against the cruel torture of heretics before their execution. And as for ‘imagine yourself a slave’ – well imagine yourself a slave in ancient Alabama, too! And then when you’ve done that, read what Seneca has to say about slaves, and ponder.

And then we move on to the ‘hedonism-materialism-consumerism’ moan that seems to be the last refuge of fools like this.

The stressed-out workaholic is a slave to work and the material things labour buys. Mindless hedonism, which Christianity once successfully eradicated or sublimated, is endemic on TV. As audiences, rather than commissioning editors, grow bored with images of sexual deviancy, how long will it be before this is replaced by the equivalent of the Roman arena? “Good idea,” thinks a TV Tristram! Dan Brown’s book, consisting of bizarre conspiracy theories, is the best-selling bible of credulous housewives.

Yes, and the actual bible is the best-selling bible of credulous godbotherers. What, exactly, is the difference? There isn’t any. Burleigh just prefers his bible to the other one. Well, fine, but what’s he getting on his high horse about? Where does he get off talking about credulity? And don’t overlook the veiled coerciveness in that bit about Xianity successfully ‘eradicating’ mindless hedonism. Beware of people who like to eradicate things. Especially when they’re theocrats.

Scruffy Irish pop stars and smart chefs are the new moral arbitors, while aspiring politicians vie to demonstrate their knowledge of Radiohead or Franz Ferdinand rather than two millennia of European high culture…blahblahblah whingebleatmoan…Scientists try to cut every corner regarding what Christianity established as the sanctity of human life, or they proselytise atheism with an evangelical fervour.

More coercion. Christianity doesn’t get to ‘establish’ things, especially things that don’t mean much, and it’s crap anyway, given the number of wars and executions that have been carried out on Christianity’s watch. And more ‘you don’t get to proselytise or be credulous or have bibles, only we get to proselytise or be credulous or have bibles.’ More silly childish non-argument.

People with little or no historical knowledge of Christianity are allowed to caricature it as divisive, fraudulent or oppressive.

Er – yes. They are allowed to do that. What do you propose instead, Mr Burleigh? A long term of imprisonment? Whipping?

By the same token, Burleigh is allowed to talk vacuous canting drivel in the Times, and I’m allowed to point out what vacuous canting drivel it is. So it goes.