As I was relaxing over a drink with friends I hadn't seen for a while, the conversation turned to religion. The three of us who were present are all atheists. We shared thoughts on books we'd all read, and recommended others. An air of easy common sense and reassuring rationality prevailed.
Sadly it wasn't long before accommodationism elbowed its way into the group. "I know a really lovely lady," remarked my old friend, "whose faith in God gives her great strength and support during difficult times of her life. Now that can't be a bad thing, can it?" My heart sank slightly as an explanation gradient swam into view before me, with 'belief in belief' engraved on the bottom step.
My friend had been seduced by that succubic, sugar-sweet coating so artfully exploited by the religion virus: its appeal to our sense of human empathy. (I suspect that it also appeals to our sense of superiority, insofar as someone else needs an imaginary crutch which we ourselves can manage without, but let's leave that aside for the time being.) The lady's beliefs had only positive effects, and therefore could only be good.
My objections are threefold. Firstly, to what extent does the lady believe that God is managing her life? I believe in lots of things without feeling the need to assert them to others. For example, I believe that my employer will give me a decent reference and an end-of-service bonus when I want to move on, although I do not feel the slightest inclination to state my belief out loud (except of course when citing it here as an illustrative example). I believe that my car will start when I go out later, even though it has been standing, unused and ungaraged, in mixed weather for three days while I was away on business. I feel not the tiniest urge to share my beliefs with others in conversation, so why does she need to spread hers around? I suggest that the lady has grave doubts about the influence and the existence of her divine guardian, and these doubts manifest themselves in repeated assertion, to convince herself as much as anyone else. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
This leads to my second objection. Can such a doubt-ridden belief system make its adherents truly happy? Rather, the niggling, anxious abrasion of worrisome uncertainty, twenty-four/seven, must surely become eventually as excruciating as physical torture. As Christopher Hitchens pointed out, religion's promise of eternal bliss does not appear to content its followers on the whole. And what about the risk of crashing disillusionment? While accommodationists like my friend applaud (and perhaps envy) the faithful their comforting blanket, do they think upon the potential experience of loss of faith? I suggest that the lady is at constant risk of developing a rational outlook on life, with consequent withdrawal symptoms upon divestment of a mindset which she would have been much better off without in the first place.
My third objection is to the superfluity of faith as a source of comfort. How do atheists deal with adversity, such as bereavement, job loss, or terminal illness of a loved one? We deal with these things like rational adults, sharing our human grief with other humans who are close to us, and doing the same for them in return. I have no time for the popular excuse that some people have no-one to go to. There are seven billion of us on this planet, and if someone has no-one to go to, they need to look just a little harder beyond the end of their nose.
"I respect you as a person too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs."
-Johann Hari
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-H. L. Mencken
Monday, February 27, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Free Speech Rules OK!
"He's a free speech martyr," sneered my close relative across the table. He said it in the same way he might have said 'flat-earther' or 'water diviner'. We were discussing David Irving's imprisonment in Austria, for planning to make a speech questioning the historicity of the holocaust.
I do not agree with David Irving, and I believe that the holocaust did happen. However, I was recently engaged in an email debate by a former colleague, who asserted that the evidence for the mass murder of six million people is extremely thin. I was quite indignant at first; unable to comprehend how an educated, well-read, former headteacher could earnestly make such a bold and ridiculous claim. I spent some time surfing relevant websites on both sides of the debate. I learned a great deal. Assumptions which I'd previously regarded as historical facts suddenly appeared differently. The points made by holocaust deniers deserved to be taken seriously, and rebutted with eloquent, corroborated clarity. I had previously carried a vague mental picture of fields full of buried bodies discovered by the Allies as they liberated Europe. This never happened, and there was much speculation in the immediate aftermath of the war regarding the whereabouts of the millions of murder victims. I must reiterate that I am not a holocaust denier, and my former colleague and I emerged from our robust yet civilized debate, both convinced that the holocaust is indeed reliable historical fact. However, exposure to counter-arguments gave me cause to unearth relevant evidence and to learn much of which I had been unaware.
That, I think, is a powerful argument in favour of free speech. Let the nutcases state their views, and let them give us pause. Let them question our comfortable, long-held prejudices. Let them set us surfing and clicking, reading and thinking. Let them impel us to examine critically and thoroughly that which we believe simply because we have been told repeatedly that it is true. Rigorously tested by healthy scepticism, history is reinforced and we gain a clearer, truer picture of what really happened. By simply assuming and never doubting, we become complacent, and find it difficult to expound the basis of our standpoint.
Making scepticism illegal is a very dangerous game indeed. It grants unwarranted respectability to the nutbar views of the deranged extremist. It diminishes truth, suggesting that truth cannot stand up for itself and needs the protection of law. It makes nauseating trash-speak like "free speech martyr" admissible at the dinner table. It creates a climate in which free speech martyrs can exist, and flourish. It is a myopic, backward step.
I am soon to read Nick Cohen's new book on censorship, You Can't Read This Book. I'm stimulated by commentaries I've read on the book, including a blog post published today by the author himself. However, I can't help tending slightly toward the stance of Devil's Advocate when reading his assertion that successful censorship must, by definition, go unreported and unrecorded. Nay, the censors who silenced David Irving advanced their cause, promulgating after-dinner air pollution of the type described above. Visibly successful censorship brings out the ovine liberal in otherwise intelligent adults. Complicity of sovereign governments in the suppression of scepticism buttresses people's innately perverse desire to gainsay the obvious and thereby score points in conversation. Legally condoned censorship changes the landscape subtly, and makes all censorship that bit more acceptable; that bit harder to argue against. Thus creeps the pernicious, contagious, darker side of the zeitgeist.
I do not agree with David Irving, and I believe that the holocaust did happen. However, I was recently engaged in an email debate by a former colleague, who asserted that the evidence for the mass murder of six million people is extremely thin. I was quite indignant at first; unable to comprehend how an educated, well-read, former headteacher could earnestly make such a bold and ridiculous claim. I spent some time surfing relevant websites on both sides of the debate. I learned a great deal. Assumptions which I'd previously regarded as historical facts suddenly appeared differently. The points made by holocaust deniers deserved to be taken seriously, and rebutted with eloquent, corroborated clarity. I had previously carried a vague mental picture of fields full of buried bodies discovered by the Allies as they liberated Europe. This never happened, and there was much speculation in the immediate aftermath of the war regarding the whereabouts of the millions of murder victims. I must reiterate that I am not a holocaust denier, and my former colleague and I emerged from our robust yet civilized debate, both convinced that the holocaust is indeed reliable historical fact. However, exposure to counter-arguments gave me cause to unearth relevant evidence and to learn much of which I had been unaware.
That, I think, is a powerful argument in favour of free speech. Let the nutcases state their views, and let them give us pause. Let them question our comfortable, long-held prejudices. Let them set us surfing and clicking, reading and thinking. Let them impel us to examine critically and thoroughly that which we believe simply because we have been told repeatedly that it is true. Rigorously tested by healthy scepticism, history is reinforced and we gain a clearer, truer picture of what really happened. By simply assuming and never doubting, we become complacent, and find it difficult to expound the basis of our standpoint.
Making scepticism illegal is a very dangerous game indeed. It grants unwarranted respectability to the nutbar views of the deranged extremist. It diminishes truth, suggesting that truth cannot stand up for itself and needs the protection of law. It makes nauseating trash-speak like "free speech martyr" admissible at the dinner table. It creates a climate in which free speech martyrs can exist, and flourish. It is a myopic, backward step.
I am soon to read Nick Cohen's new book on censorship, You Can't Read This Book. I'm stimulated by commentaries I've read on the book, including a blog post published today by the author himself. However, I can't help tending slightly toward the stance of Devil's Advocate when reading his assertion that successful censorship must, by definition, go unreported and unrecorded. Nay, the censors who silenced David Irving advanced their cause, promulgating after-dinner air pollution of the type described above. Visibly successful censorship brings out the ovine liberal in otherwise intelligent adults. Complicity of sovereign governments in the suppression of scepticism buttresses people's innately perverse desire to gainsay the obvious and thereby score points in conversation. Legally condoned censorship changes the landscape subtly, and makes all censorship that bit more acceptable; that bit harder to argue against. Thus creeps the pernicious, contagious, darker side of the zeitgeist.
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