The Truth About Cats and Dogs
Archbishops are very presumptuous, aren’t they.
The Archbishop of Canterbury says even watching his mother’s slow, painful death did not persuade him of the arguments for euthanasia…But despite this experience, he is still against assisted dying “chiefly on the grounds of my religious commitments – the conviction that life is a gift from God that we cannot treat as a possession of our own to keep or throw away as we choose,” he said.
Well that’s a stupid argument. Those grounds are not good grounds – not for a public debate, especially not for a public debate that influences legislation, they’re not. Life is not a gift from ‘God’ any more than it’s a gift from Krishna or Aphrodite or Baal or Mr Potato Head. If the Archbish wants to think it is for his own pleasure, fine, but he has a hell of a nerve making the rest of us die a slow painful – agonizing torturing degrading – death when we don’t want to on the basis of his belief in a fictional being. He has a nerve telling us that we cannot treat our lives – our lives – as possessions of our own, because he thinks they’re a prezzy from The Big Guy. He has a colossal nerve telling us we cannot keep or throw away (i.e. end) our own lives as we choose simply because he thinks they were a valentine from the deity. There are other reasons for saying that, or something like it, but they are secular reasons. The reason he gives is unadulterated blither, and it’s disgusting that he is allowed to impose it on everyone else. There is a debate to be had about euthanasia, there are secular, rational reasons to cite against it as well as for it, but allowing pious untrue cant to clutter up the subject is 1) not helpful and 2) a ridiculous, coercive intrusion.
We would know that if the wording were just a little different. If he said ‘chiefly on the grounds of my religious commitments – the conviction that life is a gift from Wallace and Gromit that we cannot treat as a possession of our own to keep or throw away as we choose’ – the worthlessness and intrusiveness would be obvious. Replace ‘Wallace and Gromit’ with Lucille Ball, or Spock, or Yosemite Sam, or Widow Twankey, and the worthlessness and intrusiveness remain just as obvious. But replace it with a different fictional character, and people become blind to the worthlessness and intrusiveness. It’s accepted that archbishops have something of value to say on the subject – something extra (deep, profound) that secular reasoners don’t have. But they don’t. They think they do, but they don’t. They have emotive formulas about gifts from God, and that’s not something of value, it’s nonsense. Nonsense that causes people not to change their minds even when they watch people die painful deaths. We don’t watch our dogs and cats die painful deaths, but people? Well, their lives don’t belong to them, unlike those of cats and dogs.
Mr Williams makes a valid point when he questions how much ‘wishing desperately for it all to be over’ reflects our own distress, but the assumption that his position within a religious hierarchy should make his ‘convictions’ a major consideration when framing laws for the rest of us is anachronistic and arrogant.
Personally I favour a more humane (although still hyper-cautious) approach to euthanasia, although I respect some of the counter arguments. But most of us have some fairly clear avenues if we want our views to affect legislation; we can seek to persuade through writing and speaking on the subject, we can support issue-campaigns, we can seek public office on a clearly stated agenda.
To by-pass all of that and use a position of influence derived from an historical anomaly simply emphasises the urgent need to get religious belief out of public life.
And since you mentioned Wallace and Gromit, how long before someone concludes that the Ardman fire was a sign of God’s wrath about graven images and cheese worship?
Yep, nonsense. And what’s that bit about our lives not being “our own to keep”? I guess our death is God-given too. In which case, no euthanasia and, presumably, no life saving medical treatment. Isn’t that nihilism?
OB,
Learned a new word while reading the Pandas Thumb today – drogulus. Invented/discovered by A.J. Ayer, it means “Something the presence of which cannot be verified, usually a disembodied being, because it has no physical effects.”
You could replace ‘Wallace and Grommit’ (or God) with ‘drogulus’ if you choose.
Ex: “I guess the ‘infallible drogulus’ which Lords over the people of England did not give Man the right to end his own life. Oh well, the doctors say I’ll have to put up with my drogulus-given incontinence and joint pain for another three months. Blessed me!”
You are all forgetting that under Britain’s absurd and archaic “unwritten” constitution, the Archbishop of Canterbury is ex officio a member of the House of Lords, the upper house of Britain’s parliament. So he has every right to sound off in public on any issue brought before that legislative body, such as this euthanasia bill. And he can do so in language befitting an Anglican divine since it is precisely because he is an Anglican divine that he gets a parliamentary vote.
Don wrote: “And since you mentioned Wallace and Gromit, how long before someone concludes that the Ardman fire was a sign of God’s wrath about graven images and cheese worship?”. No way. Have you not seen “The Life of Brian”? Do you not know that the gourd is holy?
Actually, Paul, far from forgetting it, that was my point. Hence the words ‘position of influence derived from an historical anomaly’. Quite agree with you, absurd and archaic.
Let’s see; absurd, archaiic, anachronistic, anomalous … and we’re only up to the ‘a’s.
Stupid? Really? What should we expect from an Archbishop? Dr Jonathan Sachs had something similar to say on Radio 4’s aptly named ‘Thought for the Day’.
Apt because what we usually get is a series of non-sequiturs rather than a reasoned argument, something along the lines of ‘You should do this because God’.
“Religion. Giving people hope in a world torn apart by religion.”
-Jon Stewart
Yeah, not forgetting. The House of Lords absurdity was part of my point.
Jonathan Sachs – did he – I read somewhere that he’d sounded off on the subject, but it didn’t say where. Somebody transcribe it for me!
Try this link –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/documents/t20051010.shtml
Ah, right, they provide the transcript, I forgot that. Thanks Mike.
What a horrible piece. Frankly.
I know what you mean Keith, my friends have always known that I’m an atheist, but they are consistently surprised when I tell them that I don’t believe the Bible to be infallible.
What’s even more amusing is when “skeptics” ask me whether their criticism of religion offends me, and I tell them not in the least, I’m an atheist, and they back away and inform me splutteringly that, hey, they don’t go that far, you know. As if lightning bolts were gonna fall from the sky and incinerate me.
(Here, watch this: Dear Scumbag God, if you exist, I defy you to strike me dead right here and now! …See? Still here.)
At the risk of sounding defensive, the original blog began “Archbishops are very presumptuous”. I do not see how a member of parliament is being presumptuous when giving his views on a piece of proposed legislation when those views are a major part of the reason he is a parliamentarian. By all means attack the system but do not vilify a man faithfully carrying out his public duty within that system.
‘the conviction that life is a gift from God that we cannot treat as a possession of our own to keep or throw away as we choose,” he said.’
Isn’t a gift yours forever once it is given to you? If you give me a gift for Christmas it is mine correct?
I can do with it what I will.
Apparently it’s more like a loan.
Have a week and a half of B&W to catch up on, having just been in Italy, where my experiences this last Sunday can be described as a little cornucopia of fashionable nonsense. This seems the best Comments thread to tack them onto (and if it isn’t, then there’s also a very tenuous Aardman connection to the trip). In four parts:
a) I spent most of Sunday in a small city in the north, where a big fair was going on. A friend who has several strains of irrationality co-existing in her head was going to have a stand there selling the stones that have beneficial effects on one’s life because of their colours. She doesn’t think that her recent embrace of Buddhism will prevent her from enjoying the blessings of her Catholicism. I am, needless to say, her friend in spite of, not because of, any of this.
b) Though my Italian isn’t even rudimentary, I was able to understand the display put up for “renewal of the holy spirit.” Half a dozen pictures illustrated reasons not to think of god: too young, too self-confident, too rich, too happy and a coffin with a cross on it illustrated the punchline: “too late.”
c) Opposite this stand was an easel with a large piece of paper on it. To the left was a young woman with a North American accent painting and explaining in English; to the right was another young woman translating, line by line, into Italian. Four circles were turned into four faces: happy, sad, mean and smart. Maybe, the woman suggested, we were one of these ourselves, or maybe we knew somebody who was. All four had one thing in common: a heart full of sin, illustrated by a black heart shape. Then she rendered a little dark dot on a hill-like line and a small yellow dot a short distance above it. We were the little dark dot; the yellow one was god. There was only way we could reach him. She connected the two dots with a line and then turned the line into a cross. Only then could she add a red heart shape, full of love, as it ought to be. The public was then invited to ask questions, in the unlikely event that there were any that had not already been answered by the clear diagram showing how everything worked. I was gratified that, towards the end, the translator had had to raise her voice, as the members of all the Vespa clubs in Italy had finished their lunch and were remounting and revving up their engines.
d) Since this was a city I had visited before, I was able to note that the premises formerly occupied by the most convenient fast pizza joint were now emblazoned with the word “Dianetics.”
To close a little nearer to the euthanasia question, the remains of a 1919 film I saw earlier in the week contained an intertitle in which a priest is trying to talk a young man out of suicide to escape his problems (the main one is he’s just discovered that the Jew he’s been baiting is his biological father). That’s not the Christian thing to do. The Christian thing to do, the young man is told quite explicitly, is to survive and suffer. He kills himself…
“happy, sad, mean and smart. Maybe, the woman suggested, we were one of these ourselves, or maybe we knew somebody who was.”
No. Not a one. Too exotic for me.
“We were the little dark dot; the yellow one was god.”
Boy, I really like that. It kind of makes everything clear, which it never was before.
Thanks, Stewart. Pretty funny!
OB,
Knowing you occasionally check back for late additions: my snapshot of this all-encompassing work of religious art, rivalling anything produced in centuries past, has been developed and scanned. If you’d like to see it, just let me know which address to use.