The Death of Illusions: Posturing Atheism & Faith

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Alexander Pope "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot"

Quiet Atheism – A Personal Preamble

Despite an absurdly devout Anglo Catholic childhood, leaving the Faith was neither particularly difficult, especially dramatic nor in the least agonizing. If memory serves the moment of decision was made just after Mass on or around my 12th birthday. I recall that during the service there had been some stuff about weeping for Zion and this had struck me as more than a bit odd given that we were in Torquay and the congregation of Our Lady of the Assumption consisted largely of middle class shopkeepers.

“It’s all nonsense, isn’t it?” I asked as we left the church. After a moment’s thought, my father replied that it probably was and that I needn’t go along any more if I didn’t want to. That was more or less it. Downside was off, much to my relief, and I had to have a chat with a delightful old and strangely boisterous priest, the late and much lamented Canon O’Reilly. This exceedingly holy father confessor made a mild effort to convince me by using the design argument, but when I pointed out to the rose he was using as an illustration had black spot and thus didn’t say much for the Almighty’s gardening skills, he desisted and we parted amicably.

I look back on my early Catholic years and education with considerable affection. Being hauled off to confession most Saturday evenings was a bit of pain mainly because it got in the way of Dr. Who but otherwise I’ve no real complaints. The nuns in my first school were sweet and kind; I learnt a lot about art – true it was mainly bad, highly sentimental art – from the devotional cards they used to foist on us; and I picked up a lot of interesting stuff about saints, especially my favourite, Thomas Aquinas. As for the priests, there was one incident in which a priest expressed a fervent desire to brain me for causing an incense burner to explode over my fellow altar boys (see Pious Pirates and Swinging Thuribles); however, most priests were as kind as the nuns and, unless I have remarkable powers of suppression, I can’t recall being sexually assaulted or savagely beaten by either.

Doubtless had I been brought up in the reign of Bloody Mary, or in Spain during the Inquisition or even in Ireland under the Jesuits or Christian Brothers, my feelings might be different. As it is, I tend to regard my erstwhile fellow believers and members of the Christian clergy as slightly simple minded. Religion provides them with the same sort of comfort that a mother gives a weeping child when she tells him that everything is going to be alright. One doesn’t insist on revealing to the child that things are going to be very far from alright and mummy, daddy & he are sooner or later going to turn into insentient compost. Similarly, one doesn’t mock the dying believer by telling her that when she says her desperate prayers she is simply talking to an imaginary friend; or at least one doesn’t unless one’s name is Sam Harris (see the utterly fatuous and unspeakably vile Letter to a Christian Nation) .

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality” wrote Eliot in Four Quartets. This, I think, is largely true. The bleak reality that we are merely a rather tatty bunch of apes clinging to a rock in space or that our mothers give birth to us astride open graves is rather too much for most people. The death of a child or partner is beyond agonizing and would render most of us somewhat simple minded. Even at the best of times, religious faith is an emollient for the great mass of not especially bright men against the meaninglessness of existence and the certainty of extinction. Unless there is a good reason, it would be an act of great cruelty to remove this comfort.

Noisy Posturing Atheism – Dawkins & Co

Richard Dawkins always strikes one as a somewhat quaint or even faintly comical ersatz 19th Century figure. He has suddenly discovered there is no God and is so endearingly anxious to tell us all about it all. It is easy to imagine him gleefully chip-chip-chipping away at the bedrock with his dear little geological hammer or skipping manfully across some fossil-rich Dorset beach, oversized top hat in one hand, ammonite in the other and a maniacal, almost messianic glint in the eye. To complete the picture, there would have to be a beard (we'd give the little chap a clip-on one). They all wore them, those hideously relentless and dangerously naïve Victorian proselytizers. Charles Darwin had one, and so did Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Friedrich Nietzsche.

The Psalmist’s fool was there first. He was there well before Hume, he was there before Marx & Engels, and he was most certainly there before latecomers like Dawkins & Co. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”. Actually, the fool is right on two counts: first, there is almost certainly no God, or at least not in the naïve bearded, ‘something up there’ sense (pace people like Don Cupitt there may well be no other). Second, the fool is dead right in keeping this dangerous truth to himself. It is a truth to be spoken very, very softly in one’s heart; it is not something to be yelled from rooftop, pulpit or television studio. To be fair to Dawkins’s hero, Charles Darwin had some reservations about publishing his findings; not so the others. “God is dead” cries Zarathustra at the top of his voice “I teach the superman”. “Hear! Hear!” bleats little Dawkins from the platform of his utterly daft atheist bus.

The folly of these 19th Century proselytizers is and was to replace one blind faith or superstition with another. Liberate the masses from their illusions, smash the mind-forged manacles, take away the opium of the proletariat and all shall be well (one is tempted to add "and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well"). Having knocked off God, the bearded ones hoped to locate omnibenevolence or, at least, perfectibility in Man. They blithely assumed that with the removal of Original Sin, man’s natural goodness would ineluctably rise to the surface like some sort of richly nutritious cream.

With the 20th Century we moved from theoretical to applied scientific atheism; from the study to the test bench. There was little cream and the Übermensch was considerably less than super. Indeed, the only instance in which man proved himself in any way divine was in the creation of circles of hell. The liberated ‘blond beast’ did this on an unprecedented scale in places like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, the Soviet Gulags, My Lai, or – stretching blond a little – in Nanjing and in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. In the face of such evil one can only echo the words of Conrad's Kurtz:

He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath—"The horror! The horror!"

If the 19th Century saw the death of God, the 20th witnessed the demise of the apotheosis of Man.

Preserving the Noble Lie

Richard Dawkins notoriously described atheists as ‘brights’. Well, the tediously vocal atheist is slightly brighter than the average Christian but not by any appreciable margin. Part of the trouble is that his battle was won centuries ago; the blunt truth is that no one of any intellectual account is an old-fashioned theist. Given this and given that a moderately intelligent 12-year old can see through the teleological argument why does a pint-sized Zarathustra feel the need to waste so much ink refuting it? It is as though a pub bore were constantly wittering on about he had disproved the existence of Santa.

Christianity acts as a prop for the feeble minded (the vast majority of any population); it is a needless cruelty to attempt to kick it away. It comforts the majority by giving some sense of meaning to their otherwise empty lives and by assuaging the horrors of death and agony of bereavement. The claim that the unconsidered life was not worth living only holds true for those capable of sustained reflection on life; for others, a flat-pack cosmology supplied by Rome or Canterbury will more than suffice.

Mindless hectoring atheism is also exceedingly dangerous in that religious belief acts an instrument of social control – a kind of Noble Lie. Looking back at the unprecedented horrors of the last century and at the near total breakdown of order in our modern urban wastelands, it would seem that depriving the masses of their opiates was profoundly unwise.

Moral rules are obviously not grounded in the authority of a divine being. This is a point made over & over by the born again atheists and is entirely valid (such a shame it was first made over two and a half thousand years ago by Plato). However, there is a snag: the alternatives are somewhat intellectually demanding. A frenzied mob is unlikely to be particularly influenced by consequentialist calculations. Nor is it going to be especially easy to persuade it to embrace deontological ethics; Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is pretty heavy going.

Science cannot step into the breach as it is morally neutral. A scientist might be engaged in the quest for a cure for AIDS or developing higher yielding crops; he might equally well be weaponising anthrax or vivisecting Jews. On the other hand, religion can provide moral guidance even though this is imposed though irrational or false doctrines and a reward/punishment mechanism that is ultimately specious. The thug’s boot is poised over the pensioner’s head – does it really matter if he is restrained from kicking through a fear of hell fire or an internalised albeit artificial belief in the sanctity of human life?

The Rapier & the Blunderbuss

There is no doubting that Christianity has had a pretty chequered past. However, Savonarola and Tomás de Torquemada are long dead and, much as one might sometimes regret it, it is exceedingly unlikely that Richard Dawkins will be charcoal grilled à la Jeanne d'Arc . True there are things about the Church that raise politically correct hackles and it is doubtless deeply unfair that we are unlikely to see a lesbian Archbishop of Canterbury or a single mother holding the Keys of St. Peter for a good few years. Who gives a damn?

There are lies & there are damned lies. As I see it the born again atheist would be far better advised to forgo the blunderbuss and take up the rapier. Religious extremism and bigotry rather than religion should be the targets. Here there can be no quarter and no pusillanimous attempts at appeasements like the Incitement to Religious Hatred Act.

On Approaching Seneca

…But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Just Possibly a Preamble

Three O’ Clock in the morning is always the deep dark panic hour, a time of bug-eyed terror, mournful sighs and palpitations. A gnashing or at least a chattering of teeth is not unknown. Sometimes I worry about whether the Jesuits were right: perhaps Hell exists in all its horror, in all of its eternally crepuscular fury; perhaps Hieronymus Bosch’s only artistic failure was a lack of imaginative fecundity; perhaps St. Ignatius Loyola was giving a highly expurgated version in his Spiritual Exercises and glossing over the particularly nasty bits. I have so far avoided the temptation to disturb the sleep of the local Roman Catholic priest, but I keep his number to hand just in case. One can imagine the conversation:

Me: It is an emergency father.
Priest: The Last Rites, my son?
Me: No, St. Ignatius’ Book of Spiritual Exercises and – if it's not too much bother – St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul.

I omit the unfortunate sleep-befuddled priest’s rejoinder but I imagine that it would be delivered in a heavy Irish accent and would be to the effect that I should go forth and multiply forthwith.

More usually than not, the sweat inducing panic is over things I have omitted to do and that I might never have time to do now. Sins of Omission were always more terrifying than Sins of Commission because there were just so many things you could omit. At 48 and somewhat on the stout side, the SAS is out of the question and I don’t suppose the Americans would be particularly keen to have me in the Special Forces. In fact, given my propensity for improbable accidents, they would probably prefer that I joined the opposition. I grow old, I grow old … will I have time to become a famous novelist, read Dostoyevsky in Russian, walk the entire length of Patagonia or visit Bognor Regis before the Grim Reaper pats me on the shoulder or rather more likely before I inadvertently kick him in the groin?

Am I, as my ever cheery friend Mike suggests, an obsessive compulsive? This is another thought that constantly runs through my mind like a toy train spinning manically round a track to the rhythm of W.H. Auden's "Night Mail". Obsessive compulsive … Obsessive compulsive …. The thought plagues me on a nightly basis and it might well be true; on the other hand, the possibly Iago-like Mike is always applying some label to me. At another time he described me as neurotic. Another train joins the track: obsessive compulsive … obsessive compulsive … neurotic.

This time anxieties centred around post-Socratic Greek philosophy. Do I know enough to justify my existence when I meet my Maker? Might Charon not demand a drachma, sesterces or Euro but instead insist on a deconstuctive analysis of, say, Epicureanism before allowing me onto the ferry? I could face extinction at any moment. Deciding to start at once – that is, at 3.22 AM – with the Stoics, I hurled myself out of bed, picked myself up off the floor & made for the computer, pausing only briefly to apply some Savlon to the carpet burns. A few minutes later, Amazon was in receipt of a fair amount of my cash, and my salvation was on its way in the form of a number of standard texts. But still, there was at least a day to wait and anything might happen.

Quivering wimpishly before my keyboard and rubbing more ointment into my sore knees, it occurred to me that that a good dose of Stoicism might be just what I need.

To be continued (maybe) ...

Pious Pirates and Swinging Thuribles

Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man

For some, the heady scent of frankincense is richly redolent of Christmas, evoking nostalgic memories of holy and ivy, of the Journey of the Magi and of carols sung before the Crib at midnight mass in richly bedecked churches. For others – well, OK, just me – the smell elicits quivers of embarrassment and of guilt, fears of hellfire and horrific memories of heavy black boots and of the terrible swinging thurible.

No parents in their right minds and certainly no sensible Catholic parents would ever dream of sending their male offspring to a convent school. Mine did. The result was that by the age of eight I had become a child of absolutely revolting piety with two main ambitions. One of these was to become a pirate. We are not talking here of the conventional blood and guts type, but rather of the ‘shiver my timbers’ type who doesn’t steal or curse, maraud or plunder, drink or kill but who still manages to have a rollicking good old time by regularly reciting the ‘Hail Mary’, saying his rosary and dedicating the lives of himself and of his swarthy swashbuckling crew to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. You may not have encountered this particular sort of pirate but the Junior Catholic Truth Society Adventure Comic for Boys assured me the Caribbean was absolutely infested with them.

My other ambition was to become an altar boy. Lest this admission raise homophobic eyebrows, it should be added that was not for the chance of getting into a frilly surplice but rather for the opportunity of wielding one of the long brass candle extinguishers and above all for the chance of getting my clammy hands onto the mysterious smoking thurible. Would that my aspirations had reached no higher than to become a pious pirate! However, since the convent had no sloop, schooner, barque or even brigantine conveniently to hand, but did boast its own little church, becoming an altar boy was the more easily realisable ambition.

Of course, no sane or half-way sensible Catholic priest would so much as consider arming an inexperienced altar boy of tender years with such a potentially devastating item as thurible. And the truth was that our local priest didn’t. As I vaguely recall, a deal was struck with an older, much taller and seemingly much more responsible boy who acted as the official Thurifer, the bearer of the gleaming thurible. Doubtless the deal would have involved the exchange of a number of back copies of the Junior Catholic Truth Society Adventure Comic for Boys, the Fun Catechism for Young People or some minor division devotional cards (we are talking of such relatively little known figures as St. David of Wandsworth, also known as the Blessed Procrastinator; Michael of Shaftesbury, Patron Saint of Catfish; or the Blessed Rebecca of Pevkos) .

For those readers fortunate enough not to have been sent to a Roman Catholic convent at an impressionable age, I should perhaps describe a thurible, or censor as it is sometimes known. Bearing a somewhat sinister resemblance to an old fashioned hand grenade, the device is a brass sphere with a pattern of ventilation holes cut into its upper surface so as to facilitate the burning of the red-hot incensed charcoal within. Suspended by a chain which also serves to retain the lid, it is intended to be gently swung to & fro thus resulting in small clouds of fragrant incense wafting through the church.

The day of my initiation dawned – a normal week day and not even a famous saint’s day. At the time, I rather regretted the lack of a large audience for my debut and – as it turned out – final performance. In hindsight, given the total loss of faith suffered by some of the observers and by at least one of the main protagonists, this was fortunate. Receiving minimal instruction in the use of the thurible, I emerged into the church at the end of the procession, swinging the brass orb for all I was worth. Murillo’s Virgin gazed sadly but benignly down, soft Autumnal light filtered through the stained glass window above the altar, the priest advanced towards the congregation.

All went well until about half way into the mass. However, by the time we reached the end of the homily my arm had begun to tire. Being a good deal shorter than the official Thurifer, I had not only to swing the heavy brass orb but also to keep my arm raised uncomfortably high in order to allow it to safely clear the rich crimson carpet. By the close of the Nicene Creed, my arms were aching horribly, my eyes were streaming from the smoke and I had all but given up, concluding that possibly being a Thurifer wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and that the life of a buccaneer might be the easier option. It was at that point the priest noticed my diminishing efforts and gestured rather imperiously for me to resume.

Under the circumstances, I think I might possibly be forgiven for forgetting one small but significant procedural detail: the absolutely crucial importance of raising my arm. In one last manful effort, I gave the thurible a hefty swing, the smoking metal orb flew rather than swung up, rotated through a full 360 degrees before hitting the carpet with a loud clang, and bounced up again with open lid showering everything and everybody in the immediate vicinity with sparks and fragments of burning charcoal.

From here on all was utter pandemonium and my memory of events consists of no more than a few excessively lurid snapshots. One is of the elderly Mother Superior hitching up her habit and athletically vaulting the altar rail to extinguish the smouldering charcoal on the carpet. Another is of the priest’s heavy black boots as he jumps up and down savagely batting the sparks from his cassock (this particular image has haunted me ever since). A third is of the priest’s face, contorted with such rage as to resemble a pirate of the first, very much non-devotional variety; indeed, in my imagination, it could have belonged to Blackbeard's evil twin brother . Yet a fourth is of the other altar boys being doused with water. Finally, there is a shot of the nuns looking aghast as the priest mouths some blood-curdling, vaguely piratical imprecation at me. I don’t remember much else as at that point I fled the scene, singed surplice wafting in my wake.

As I recall, there were few consequences as far as I was concerned. Indeed, the nuns were very sweet and I don’t think I was so much as reprimanded. What I do recall is much use of phrases involving millstones being cast round necks and something about suffering children. I am not sure what happened to the unfortunate priest, but I believe he left the church. As for thuribles, I gave up on the wretched things. What I really wanted to get my hands on was a monstrance. Come to think of it, despite the lapse of time and of my faith, I still do.