Dreams can certainly be more inspiring than facts: In defence of decent atheists

I had a dream recently where I found myself in a church; in some sort of general, relatively secular meeting. The vicar was an earnest man of substantial yet indeterminate age with surprisingly youthful vigour and a powerful sense of religious conviction. Though certain of his own opinions and attempting to persuade others of the correctness of his thinking it was not a faith borne of unquestioning adherence to dogma, more in the vein of a self-assuredness of his own self knowledge.

As is often the case with dreams my recollections are of a vague, almost shifting nature, though something left an impression upon me. The subject under discussion blurs away, the vicar encouraging me to attend his church on non-secular occasions and to engage in religious conversation with a likely hope of conversion.

I politely, but with a hint of condescension, deflect his invitations and enquiries and make my leave. What I am struck by is, for want of a better phrasing, his faith. I personally hold a number of ideas to be true that have led me to become an irreconcilable (but polite!) atheist. Such ideas on their own, used in trains of evidence-based argumentation can be as empirically and logically convincing as any argument but they can lack the dream that shone from that vicars’ eyes to make them truly compelling.

At present there is a vigorous ‘New Atheist’ movement making its voice heard in public discourse which I think suffers from a deficiency in persuasiveness as well as other flaws. Such names as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins spring to mind. The flaws in their approach lie not in the arguments they make for the non-existence of deities but the personal prejudices they conflate such arguments with and their lack of understanding of the need for facts to inspire new dreams.

For example, Christopher Hitchens, whist a fine raconteur with an encyclopaedic knowledge of religion that could blast any religious apologist out of the water was also excruciatingly blunt to the point of plain rudeness. In his later years he also appeared to focus all critiques of religion at one in particular whilst getting rather too cosy with some rather ‘hawkish’ neocons who were more than happy to utilise his influence to promote a rather questionable political agenda. As far as I am aware he also never appears to have debated with a woman which is something I would also allege of many of the other New Atheist crowd which is very much a boys’ club; and a white, straight, upper-class one at that.

Having been inspired by some of Hitchens’ works and his dry wit to discover much of his hypocrisy and slow decline into incoherent alcoholism I found particularly sad. Another prominent New Atheist, Richard Dawkins, is, I would argue, an excellent biologist but a poor philosopher and a terrible anthropologist. In the heady world of academia removed from the everyday experiences of human beings it is very easy to play intellectual football with ideas and poor scorn on those with which you disagree. It is quite something else when you put yourself forward as an ambassador for biology and atheism and then proceed to act like a total jackass!

I call Dawkins a poor philosopher because he often falls on crude socio-biological explanations of human behaviour. This matters; how human beings are viewed percolates through to political discourse and affects the nature of society. Self-aggrandising, rude comments about people’s religious beliefs can serve to act as a sounding board for existing prejudices and scapegoating.

On a purely pragmatic level viewing human beings as hard-wired shaven apes using overly reductionist sciences such as evolutionary psychology to explain our behaviour provides an inaccurate and incomplete picture of our nature, public policy derived from which is likely to create greater harm than good. 
You can, after all, no more describe a human being as ‘simply an ape’ than you can describe a Monet as some dried paint.

Dawkins' poor anthropological skills relate partly to the points above and also to his lack of understanding as to what religion actually is and what purpose it serves in human experience. It is one thing to argue that deities do not exist and quite another to be able to engage with the religious and open up a discussion about what future dreams we would like to weave for human societies that might indeed be preferable to the current mythologies that constitute much of their functioning apparatus.

I use the term 'dream' as the best definition as to what religion actually is I have come across is by the 20^th Century anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard:

“A system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, persuasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men [ed. and women] by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”

The points I make above are of course allegations and my own opinions, but there are wider issues at stake than the conduct of such individuals: I regard atheism [in the sense of a lack of belief in supernatural entities of any description and the conviction, based on evidence, that such entities are the products of human culture] to be of profound philosophical and moral importance. For clear discussion about such ideas a move needs to be made away from vitriolic shouting matches and the cult of personality to veins of enquiry much more of the vein of thinkers such as Raymond Tallis who wittily and humanely analyses arguments with the goal of seeking out truth.

If we do truly live in an atheist universe and religion in its many incarnations is a product of human cultural life (which fulfills genuine needs but much of which is potentially harmful to the individuals involved and surrounding society) it is quite reasonable that a debate be launched, or rather developed, about such issues and the promotion, potentially, of secular atheism. 
Currently there is nothing revolutionary about the ‘New’ Atheists and they offer no dreams with which we can work, we all deserve much better.

Oh Joss...

This week I thought I would cover an issue that has been somewhat irking me, the uncritical adulation of a certain well meaning bald guy..

I thought I would remain silent on this issue for a while until the hype around the idea had subsided. Late last year, Joss Whedon, with some ceremony, as if some great revolutionary, said that he prefers the term ‘genderist’ to ‘feminist’. Now I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Joss is clearly no misogynist but there are definitely some problems here:

White, heterosexual, middle-class men have a relatively limited contribution to make to discourses about feminism. I generally would call myself a feminist, or supportive of it if the person I was talking to was uncomfortable with the idea of me being one. Joss, likewise, could quite reasonably do something similar. However, to stand up at some sort of televised address and redefine feminism on behalf of everyone is at best illegitimate or even just plain silly!

I write articles about things that interest me, Joss writes about things that interest him and turns them into TV shows and movies. We both lack any legitimacy to make such statements or to say we can redefine the issues.

To use the term ‘genderist’ is also to miss a vital point; gender-equality is not an inevitable state of affairs. Mr Whedon has an almost endearingly naive view of the nature of history; he talks in sweeping terms that we have now moved beyond racism, that it is of course abhorrent and that we now in turn need to do the same with gender relations. He dislikes the term feminism because it implies that "the idea of equality is just an idea and that it's an agenda". My response to that would be that of course it is an agenda, as was the movement to ban the trans-Atlantic slave trade, something about which many people were perfectly okay with at the time in many Western countries. It took a morality expanding effort on the part of the conscientious to achieve what was by no means an inevitable historical process. 

Feminism was and is a politically active social movement for equality and to put an end to various forms of subjugation. It has some problems such as the lack of consideration of many middle class white feminists to consider women of different ethnic backgrounds, class relations and cultures. There are also nuances and complexities such as the issue of intersectionality; a concept used to describe the ways in which different forms of social oppression  i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia etc. are interconnected and cannot be viewed in isolation from one another. The treatment of minority groups who are some of those most in need of representation within feminism such as trans women and sex workers illustrate well the need for greater reflexivity on such issues by some activists.

What is clear, however, is that Joss understands none of this and should politely be asked to sit down. 

I cannot absolve myself of the need to write (and nor should you)!

An article from earlier this year finally got round to publishing, following on from my last post wishing you all a Happy New Year and my thudding reality:

I have been wondering of late whether people have more time to be creative in the present day than they were in the past and to what extent any greater creative potential available in the age of digital media communications is mitigated by the technologically induced attention deficit disorder it appears to induce.

My own creative urge is to write, though my skill at the craft [if it can be called that] varies wildly! I have at times lacked any inclination to do so, often for months, and when I have tried during these periods what results is stilted and hardly consequential. There are of course different types or forms of writing; I do not mean the ability to produce i.e. a technical article on request about a specific subject and this may just be a personal creative flaw of my own. However, if I am to write something interesting, which in my case are essays of one sort or another, I must first have been inspired. The difficulty is that I cannot choose when and how often I am inspired and by what.  Thought provoking ideas come in many forms; from a song I have heard for the first time, or indeed a thousand times, a work of art, a new place I have visited or fresh insights I have from a book, play or film.

None of the above are exactly revolutionary points but I can’t help but make them for there is something wonderfully strange about the process of, and the urge, to write creatively. If I find that I am inspired to put pen to paper I don’t have much time for the idea will dissolve unless I start to give it concrete form and develop it. I also do not know what overall point I am making, if any, until I have at least captured the initial spark in ink.

What has put some wind in my sails lately is that I have had more time to stop and think about things and to read/see a feast of literary and cultural delights. In my case this has been due to being unable to do a great deal due to a fractured vertebrae but whatever catalyst gets you started treat it as a silver lining and seize it with both hands!

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to see an exhibition of Leonardo Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings and notes; his artistry was extraordinary but nowhere near as much as his insights. Using only pen,  paper, his eyes, and I assume some very sharp implements, he was able to map the human body with extraordinary accuracy making insights about the function and mechanics of organs hundreds of years before anyone else. Some of his work could still be regarded as cutting edge in modern science. For example, he ingeniously took a wax cast of an ox heart and made a glass replica from it. He then poured water containing grape seeds through it and observed the swirling patterns, or eddies, the sand made as it passed through.  Somehow, he worked out that these currents play a role in closing the valves of certain parts of the heart to enable it to pass on to the next part, something scientists only worked out very recently. Tragically, this incredible work was only published in 1900 as it would have utterly transformed the study of anatomy in Europe centuries earlier than it has actually developed. That being said it is a small miracle we know of it at all, the only copy sat in a vault for centuries and could easily have been lost, only to be published centuries later.

It seems to be a tradition that older people think the world is somehow “going to pot” and that people are less well informed that they used to be, that journalism is dead and politics is corrupt. There have of course always been corrupt politicians, rubbish journalists or political propagandists who seek to destroy language (the phrase ‘U-turn’ appears to be their favourite missile at the moment) and there will always be some things wrong with the world. What is certainly not the case is that we are less well informed than any previous generation.

The internet, along with the rest of IT, has increased the ability of people to find out about new ideas dramatically. It has also democratised the forming and expression of opinion on any subject imaginable hugely. This has meant that a substantial proportion of the internet is dedicated to subject matters of debates which are not necessarily interesting or important; who after all in their right mind (over the age of 12) really cares what Justin Beiber is doing!

I think that we get a rather stratified and distorted view of the past. Though far fewer people were able to be creative in a way that could be recorded; aside from no internet, most people were too busy just surviving to write a sonnet and may well have been ignored or even persecuted had they managed to do so. For every Milton and Keats we know of there may well have been dozens more whose work has simply not survived or who have been marginalised to the point of being forgotten, as many we do remember i.e. Keats very nearly were. There will also of course have been a great many more writers, poets, musicians, scientists and other creative types who were simply not very good!

This is the point I think people miss,  that no one will know or care who Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus are in 20 years. In 20 years there will be just as many new, unmemorable and talentless people who will in turn be forgotten. We will of course be left with a permanent digital reminder of Bieber et al. thanks to modern technology. However, there is vastly greater opportunity for talented people not to be missed, or even just to have the chance to be creative in the first place and I think that is a price well worth paying. 

Reality came crashing down with a thud

Happy New Year!

An indeterminate period of time ago I wrote an introductory piece to revamp and reboot a little project of mine, this blog. Unfortunately, as ever, life gets in the way of living bit after my call to “down your coffee, grab a pen and join me on a whirlwind tour of intellectual possibilities!” I somewhat petered out. 

I have, however, for not all too positive reasons, been able to get my nose back to the grindstone and get some [hopefully] interesting writing done for my readers, some of whom, fingers crossed, may exist outside of my imagination. What stalled my regular life and reinvigorated my creative impulse was an unfortunate altercation I had with a spiral staircase with a handy pillar at the bottom. Unsurprisingly I came second and managed to fracture one of my neck vertebrae. Needless to say I have in fact been very lucky, no permanent damage was done and I am able to write this, neither of which were inevitable outcomes. I am extremely grateful to everyone for the help I have received and have tried to negotiate the difficulties such a situation presents with a good sense of humour, a healthy dose of bloody mindedness and ample patience.

A couple of days prior to my altercation I was writing some whimsical poetry in the mad coffeehouse atmosphere that is the Edinburgh Fringe during which I found myself asking that basic philosophical question, ‘is reality actually happening?’. I have often found that need to pinch myself to check that the incredible cacophony of experience known as reality is actually occurring and is not just some sort of dream. I would argue that such musings are made a great deal easier by having the necessities of existence readily provided by one’s circumstances i.e. knowing where your next meal is coming from. It seems that things most often seem to take on more of an air of sublime unreality when life’s essentials, at least temporarily, are satiated.

The answer to this type of question seems a lot clearer since losing my footing and receiving a thorough slapping from the combined effort of stairs, gravity and a pillar when reality came crashing down with a thud. There is of course the very small possibility that we are all living in the Matrix, that we are brains in jars in some alien’s experiment or that certain aspects of reality may be unknowable to us. Personally, I am content to accept the empirical pillar shaped reality in front of my eyes and leave such thoughts to better philosophers [i.e. A.J. Ayr in ‘the problem of being’].

What I am quite sure of, aliens and existentialist thoughts aside is, that with one slip, my easy happy little life could have escaped me and this has very much brought my intellectual lenses into focus.

With this in mind, and my enforced extra reading time, I can hopefully produce some thought provoking, relevant and above all interesting articles for you to read. I do hope you enjoy and feel free to comment!