Fluff
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.
“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…”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1599503,00.html
“Secularists who dismiss Christianity as the choice of the stupid should turn their critical gaze a little closer to home, says Giles Fraser”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1646099,00.html
“Religion’s insight that human beings are essentially flawed gives it the edge over secularism, writes Nicholas Buxton”
To criticise secularism on the grounds that it doesn’t recognise that humans are flawed is ludicrous.
The fact is that secularism as such doesn’t commit you to any particular view of human nature. You can believe, like many of the enlightenment theorists, and many of the modern left, that human beings are made the way they are by society, and are in principle perfectible, or you can believe, with Dawkins and others, that aggression and other nasty characteristics (as well as many nice ones) are encoded in our genes and are probably not changeable – though they can be controlled.
All secularism does commit you to is the belief that such issues should be resolved by reason and evidence.
“To criticise secularism on the grounds that it doesn’t recognise that humans are flawed is ludicrous”
Off topic a bit, but as ludicrous as a further accusation made elsewhere(but made often) that non-beleivers / humanists face a crisis in understanding the human condition because we/they cannot come to terms with the concept of ‘evil’. Stalin was evil. Pol Pot was evil. The great Crusades and Inquisitions were prosectued by evil men. It’s not hard really.
I thought we roundly trounced Nicholas Buxton ages ago. It seems the best he can do is to imply that people who, not in spite of, but in total accord with, the evidence don’t believe in a higher power somehow lack humility. What we lack is the arrogance to claim that because we went along with the herd and believed, we will forever live on in spirit.
Has Buxton figured out why we haven’t all flung ourselves from cliffs in a fit of nihilistic despair?
As for a ‘protected space’ where theists can advocate their theories free from the nasty experience of being challenged and questioned, why, that is no more than they have always asked. Up until relatively recently they enforced their space (everywhere) with blood and fire, then with ruthless social and legal sanction. Now they are trying sweet reason.
Humans not flawed? – not flawed? Are we living in the same world? We can’t possibly be talking the same language. What on earth can they mean by it? After all, it can hardly be at all likely that those are our thoughts when we all know that although some of us are too polite to say so – most of us think that they’re a bunch of shitheads.
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Stewart wrote
“What we lack is the arrogance to claim that because we went along with the herd and believed, we will forever live on in spirit.”
Not to mention the arrogance that the creator and master of the universe did it all for us, that he reads our minds and gets his feelings hurt when we don’t love him enough, and that he’s looking forward to spending eternity with us in his big house in the sky once we’re dead.
Interesting that Judge Jones pointed out that the ID crowd repeatedly lied. ‘Lie’ he said – that was the word he used. Not waffle or fudge or prevaricate or muddy the waters – but lie. I’ve been trained never to use that word, because of libel laws, but judges of course get to use it. But that’s what it all boils down to, isn’t it, as all the above comments point out. The religious crowd has no evidence and few if any good arguments, so all that’s left is lying. So that’s what it does – day in day out, in the Guardian and the NY Times and on the Beeb, it tells lie after lie after lie about what atheists think and say and write. And then Guardian editors and BBC producers given them ‘protected space’ to go on telling lies in. Perverse, isn’t it.
I’ve just had an exchange of emails about this column with Stephen Bates and Ian Mayles at the Guardian. I’m too much of a gentleman to forward them without permission, but the executive summary is that Bates and me are not each other’s number one fans.
Well done, Chris. I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of Stephen “Protector” Bates myself.
“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.”
Just to nit-pick, because I agree with every other little bit of the post, I’m a bit confused by this paragraph. If both clauses are true then the opposite of a set of badly warranted ideas is abstinence from that particular set of ideas, implying that the opposite of something is nothing and further implying that a bowl of cornflakes has the opposite to religion. This seems implausible to me. The opposite of a thing, if there can be said to be an opposite, must surely be some other related thing; such that those things can be imagined as opposite on some axis. It seems to me more plausible that the opposite to a set of badly warranted ideas is a set of well warranted ideas, so that they are in fact flavours of the same kind of thing with the axis, or flavour, in question being warrant and the kind of thing in question being sets of ideas. At the near certainty of labouring the point, natural materialism would seem to be closer to the opposite of religion than would a bowl of cornflakes, so the second clause is not true. Ho hum.
Hmm. Fair point. I think this idea needs further thought.
“I’ve just had an exchange of emails about this column with Stephen Bates and Ian Mayles at the Guardian.”
Did it involve disparaging references to fellow columnists perchance?
None from me or Mayles… Maybe we need to probe the limits of my gentility in a 20 questions stylee.
“None from me or Mayles… Maybe we need to probe the limits of my gentility in a 20 questions stylee.”
I imagine it was pretty similar to my exchange with the man. While I won’t post what he wrote, here’s part of my reply to him, his response involved a reference to motes and beams, so you can guess what sort of content it had:
“I think it is somewhat disingenuous of you to use Polly Toynbee’s dismissal of religion in her opinion column as evidence to support your contention that atheists and secularists would be unable to adhere to the Face to Faith guidance that they should not be polemical or attack the beliefs of others. Toynbee is writing in her own column, and has no editorial limitations on attacking others, nor does she represent the entirety of atheists and secularists.
Furthermore, I am not aware that Toynbee does in fact engage the kind of polemic you ascribe to her. Certainly her recent article on the Narnia film was far from your caricature. I have read through a few recent columns by Toynbee (indexed by the Guardian search engine with “Polly Toynbee” and “religion” the search terms) and I do not recognise the picture you paint of her, even in a column with the provocative title “My right to offend a fool”.
I note that you tacitly admit that Fraser and Buxton attack atheism and secularism, despite your claim that your instructions mean “not attacking the beliefs of others”. Far from being courteous, Giles Fraser says that “atheism is prone to a self-satisfied smugness”, refers to the “self-congratulatory piety” of secularists, and says that “atheists remain trapped in a 19th-century time warp…that harks back to an era of fob-watches and long sideburns”, and “…atheism is about as alternative as Rod Stewart. [Many atheists] think of themselves as agents of some subversive counterculturalism. This is ridiculous to Da Vinci Code proportions”, while Nicholas Buxton says that “…for much of the last century, atheist regimes pursuing enlightenment ideals inflicted massive suffering on their own people. Perhaps we’d actually be better off if we were all a bit more, rather than less, religious.”
These are exact complements to the kind of arguments you are objecting to in your characterisation of Polly Toynbee.
In short, my charge is that you are hypocritical in maintaining that atheists or secularists should not be contributing to the Face to Faith column because they will be unable to refrain from polemic when you allow attacks against atheism and secularism. If you wish to keep the column as a protected space for religious views then you should be good enough to admit that, rather than attempting to smear secularists as unable to refrain from attacking others.”
Well done, PM. Brilliant job.
Unfortunately not, since it apparently had no effect on the man whatsoever. I assume he’s a believer because his attitude was intensely partisan, basically ‘you just think atheists aren’t nasty and mean because you are one’ (which I never said I was).