Blair v Hitchens
The New Statesman has a lot of articles on religion. This is old news; I just thought I’d mention it.
It has a lot of Name people saying why they believe in god. Why? Because
In our increasingly secular society, many religious people feel their voices are not heard.
So the Staggers hands them a microphone. The bishops in the House of Lords and all those “faith” schools aren’t enough; their voices have to be even louder.
Cherie Blair, barrister
It’s been a journey from my upbringing to an understanding of something that my head cannot explain but my heart knows to be true.
See…that’s why we get irritated. Her heart doesn’t know it to be true. Hearts don’t know things. She means something else – not literally heart, but something like the bit of her head that doesn’t feel like doing joined-up thinking. But whatever bit of her anatomy it is, it doesn’t know what she says it knows. She has a woolly “understanding” of something she can’t “explain” yet somehow the woolly bit of her brain “knows” it to be true. The hell it does.
Peter Hitchens, journalist
I believe in God because I choose to do so. I believe in the Christian faith because I prefer to do so.
Now that I don’t mind so much; it has the virtue of honesty. One doesn’t have to peel away annoying bullshit about knowing with your heart.
(You thought I meant the other Blair v Hitchens, didn’t you. Good joke eh?)
And what, dear sir, is the reason for your particular preference?
“Because I feel like it” may not be satisfying to anyone else… like Saikat Biswas for example. :) But it also can’t be argued with, and as long as they don’t try to push it on anyone else what can you really say or do? It isn’t an argument that can be torn apart, it just sits there, like a well-trained puppy.
“I believe because I want to” is the only honest reason I have ever heard for believing, I can’t help but wonder if Peter Hitchens has been beaten back to this position by exposure to his brother.
From the follow-up:
It is far more intellectually difficult to accept that we cannot claim to know what cannot be known than to insist that we know that one particular myth tradition explains all of history? The man has an odd understanding of intellectual difficulty.
Well, see how it is necessary to have lots of titles, celebrities, scientists and professionals all endorsing the message?
Andrew Zak Williams (three names are more important than two) describes them all as leading public figures, see leading? And prominent too, in his next article: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/04/god-existence-universe
All that fine presentation preparing the way. And then he plays his trick:
See, it’s now so many, giving the impression that he hasn’t selected those people. But as we all know, most scientists are not religious.
And then he plays the trick yet again:
Consensus? But you’ve selected those people!
Ahh see, we’re back to the debate, and beliefs. And yet, PZ Myers has remarked that debate is pointless, it only gives equal respect on the same platform, while Sam Harris dismisses intelligent theists as intellectually dishonest.
We’re now beyond debates, that’s old atheism. It’s not about their beliefs being justified, it’s their special status to push their faith on everyone else and silence criticism, as well as the atrocious track record in human death and suffering.
I’m not sure what is going on with the New Statesman and its growing interest and obsession with New Atheism, with articles such as the above, Jonathan Derbyshire’s profile on Sam Harris and the cringefest from Russell Brand, but I think they’re trying to understand or frame where we fit in on the ideological political spectrum.
I seriously flove that bit about the “heart.” I am so sick of that analogy and it needs to die.
This is how much religious people’s voices are not getting heard: Today an auto claims adjuster harassed me about not going to church and told me that I should accept Jesus while I was waiting for him to finish my unclef**king damage estimate! Grrrrrr… Their voices are so loud right now they are practically noise pollution!
Egbert:
Well, of course, in the lexicon of us courtroom brawlers, “leading” is a bad word—it means that you’re not letting the witness think or speak for him/herself.
There’s an analogy in there somewhere.
@7… I underwent an endoscopy about a month ago, and after I was undressed, with an IV in place, ready to be wheeled into the procedure room, my gastroenterologist walked in ….
And asked me if it was OK if he prayed.
Well, I was too stunned to do anything but nod…what was I to do? Tell him to fuck off? Walk out, IV in place?
And so he prayed OUT LOUD for god and Jeebus to help him perform this procedure of sticking a flexible tube down my throat so he could get pictures of my aching tummy. I seriously wondered if he thought so little of his own skills that he needed supernatural guidance, why in the world should I let him do this procedure.
I just got the bill…I’m seriously considered knocking off at least 10% from my payment — since god clearly “guided” his hand. After all, why should I pay this guy, when god did all the heavy lifting?
My next visit to this guy will be my last — I’m going to transfer to another GI specialist.
Wow Kevin. That is like 100 times worse since you were trusting that man with your own body! All I can say is that if I were rich I would sue the living daylights out of people like the ones we encountered, and I wouldn’t put up with it in the first place. As it was, I had no choice but to avoid upsetting the guy any further through small talk, and I seriously effed up that effort by asking him when he started going to church (since he was prying into my past I thought he might like me asking him about his). Instead of being friendly, his eyes widened and he almost angrily huffed out that he had been going to church since he was in his mother’s womb!!! as if I had just accused him of not having been a Christian in his early life. I narrowly recovered from that misstep by telling him that it was something we had in common then since my mother had surely gone to church while I was in her womb, too.
That’s seriously fucked up, Kevin, and it warrants a letter of complaint to your doctor’s practice and to your insurance company (if you’re in the US).
That’s a good position.
I choose to believe in free will and some sort of moral code that all people should follow.
I wonder if he accepts the consequences that flow from his admission, i.e. religion should not be privileged in any way, since it’s just a fashion statement?
Thank you!!!
“Heart” means that she has a feeling about this topic. But feelings are not knowledge. They are not even beliefs. That she has a feeling about it proves nothing, and as a lawyer she should bloody well know that.
Isn’t it just! “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it’s something my head cannot explain, but my heart just *knows* that this man is guilty…”
Come on, people. When Jesus or Paul talked about the heart they weren’t speaking metaphorically. Back then people actually thought the heart was the seat of emotion, if not of cognition, and possibly the site of the soul. The notion that the heart is a pump was not to come for another fifteen hundred years. Even now it’s a common belief that a heart transplant leads to a personality change.
bad Jim —
Heart transplants can change the personality of the recipient — but it’s mostly to do with brain damage during the operation.
This reminds me of the superstitious robot peasants from Futurama “I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe”. And the arrogance of it, as if the universe care what we think of it. Things are what they are, what we choose to think is utterly irrelevant.
@Felix #12
You’d think so given some of the things he says, but if anyone caught Laurie Taylor’s recent interview with him on Sky Arts’ excellent In Confidence will know, he does think Christianity should be taught as truth in British schools, under some convoluted reasoning that our laws have a Christian basis, and the only way it can be expected for citizens to understand and therefore obey those laws is to teach Christianity as fact. That our laws have adapted and changed over time, often in contradiction to Biblical teaching, and there are many versions of Christianity to begin with, doesn’t seem to loom large in his way of thinking.
There’s a clip from the interview here. In it Hitchens doesn’t talk about the stuff I mentioned above, but he does ask the timelessly muddled question, ‘Why do atheists not want there to be a God?’ His reasoning that he believes because he wants there to be a God and a purpose to everything seems to lead him to think that atheists disbelieve in the exact opposite way – that atheists may be led to their atheism through assessment of the evidence and regard their own wishful thinking one way or another as irrelevant is, again, something that doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.
Peter Hitchens said:
My reply:
We know there is something. Why assert something that we don’t know is possible, and then assert something else we don’t know is possible to explain it?
Well this may be what he thinks but the fact is that law dates back to the code of Hammurabi at least, so schools really should teach the worship of Baal. Legal codes descend from other legal codes but they all started there. English law is the descendant of roman law – that’s one reason why they use so much latin. The law of christianity is canon law, not roman law, and only applied to clergy and religious issues (such as heresy….). One reason why even today the senior executives of RCC Inc are so desperately reluctant to bring themselves to let ordinary criminal law deal with priestly criminals.
I do not believe in doG because there is no evidence for its existence. I do not believe the christian faith because its premises are patently absurd.
With regard to that Hitchens follow-up: does he actually <em>prefer</em> to believe that the universe is run by a vicious sadist than that it is without purpose? I don’t believe in god, but if I did, I would despise it: an allegedly omnipotent being that creates things like Tay-Sachs disease and sickle-cell anemia. A deity who gives people disabling strokes, and ongoing problems managing their brain functions with imperfect meds that don’t always work together.
I am much more comfortable with the idea that our bodies evolved in this somewhat kludge-like way, and our science is getting better but isn’t all the way there yet.
I have non-emotional reasons for being an atheist, but that particular emotional argument really doesn’t work for me. Some people are thinking of gods as “Daddy will take care of us,” but all I can see is that he isn’t.
Egbert quoting Williams:
Not at all. Skeptics know all to well that everybody believes in wrong and unjustified things. Now, if god really were necessary to explain anything, that would surprise us.
~*~*~*~*~*~
bad Jim:
IIRC, it’s that there were multiple souls and the heart held the one that did higher thinking–“higher” meaning the sort of thinking that separated you from beasts and connected you to god.
Kevin………words fail me. I echo the people who say sue or at least pitch a fit. That is beyond disgusting. “Hello, you with the IV in your arm; do you mind if I cast a spell before shoving a tube down your throat? Hmm?”
Surely Cherie Blair and Peter Hitchens are saying the same thing. “We like it, we want it to be true, so it’s true”. Blair says it with gush and ooze (attracts nods and smiles from all those sincerely feely types) and Hitchens just says it: admiration for masculine no-nonsense and decision? maybe, or maybe he’s just being honest, but stupid (and thanks, uberd00b, Ken and Felix).
So he wants it to be true. No problem.
Therefore it’s true, and should be taught in schools as true (thanks DaveJL). Oh bugger.
The Argument from Personal Preference must be the worst possible. If he wants to impose his personal preference on innocent children he must show that he is right. And his statement (“I believe it because I want to”) is a confession that he can’t, so his gambit will not protect him from criticism after all. As for Gushy/Goshy/Oozy BLARE, if she weren’t a JP she could, perhaps, be ignored, but as it is, she is a danger to society (“I would let Bin Laden off with a light sentence: after all, he’s very religious”). No doubt she is being a good Muslim wife, faithfully supporting her dear Husband: never mind the law, we know what Allah/God has decreed. Or something. And it’s just so nice, of course.
Should be taught in schools = EVERYONE should believe it, simply because he wants to…
I am getting the curious idea that the Argument from Personal Preference underlies all the others.
Yes. My preference for the honesty of Hitchens minor was limited to that one comment. It’s a contemptible reason for claiming it should be taught in schools.
Sailor, I’d like to know where you get the idea that British law is the descendant of Roman law. A lot of the “Latin” is Norman French, though there is some mediaeval Latin (and Anglo-Norman and mediaeval French, and you should be forgiven if you can’t always tell the difference). If you’re thinking of the Roman occupation of Celtic Britain, it has no relevance to modern British law.
Kevin, the next time I saw that doctor I would check my watch and ask if he minds if you pray. He might even offer to join. Then pull out a prayer rug and ask which way Mecca is.
You might be able to help him see that his immediate reaction was the same thing he was putting his patients through, during a procedure that is already uncomfortable enough.
I don’t see this as honest and disingenuous: I see it as frightening … because I suspect I know the assumptions behind it. I don’t think he’s only admitting that his faith is a personal preference like any other matter of taste. Peter Hitchens doesn’t think choosing to be a Christian is like choosing to watch Star Trek, a non-moral choice. On the contrary, it’s a very moral choice indeed.
I think he’s pulling from the old (and revered) idea that deep down, we all know the Truth. People who want to believe in God then have a different underlying essence than people who don’t: they are being magically drawn to God by embracing their god-like, god-given nature. Those who feel no particular affinity for God or Christianity are different in nature from those who do. They have the sort of nature that rejects God by not wanting God enough to prefer to believe in God.
This to me is creepier and more disturbing than someone insisting that the evidence points towards the existence of God as a rational conclusion. That’s the language of persuasion, of common ground. But you can’t argue someone out of being the wrong sort of person. I think that tack divides in-group from out-group in a way that can’t be fixed. So I’d rather he just brought up Fine Tuning or something.
@pittige maki: I agree. Just like “I look in my heart and I can see that it knows something”: sensible people know that such perceptions cannot be trusted. “I choose to do so” is exactly what one would say if one had never had a choice.
As Lt. Hauk so memorably put it : “Sir, in my heart I know I’m funny.”
Believers go on a lot about “god speaking to the heart”. There is an important idea that god does exactly that, and the person’s response is what divides the sheep from the goats. As Sastra says, it is frightening. It is the justification for believing what one pleases and for denying the essential humanity of unbelievers. We atheists are all spawn of Satan: not really proper people.
Isn’t that the same thing that Jason Rosenhouse recently referred to as “religious truth”? I still don’t quite know what to make of that…
It’s perfectly straightforward. There’s no such thing as religious truth. It is a myth, a misunderstanding, a lie.
Egbert:
Oh, it’s just their annual “God” issue, which they’ve produced every year around this time for quite a while now. They do it, of course, because it sells a lot of copies. Always has “God” in big letters on the front.
Last year, they seemed to suggest that the sales figures disproved secularization, or atheism, or something. Except of course people like me always buy it too, and I’m an atheist. I just happen to be interested in the subject. Not all atheists are, or religionists come to that. So I think they make too many assumptions.
If it proves anything, it proves that there is an interested constituency; I for one would welcome more serious discussion of religion. I remember the late Nicolas Walter of the Rationalist Press/New Humanist regularly making the same complaint about the lack of seriousness with which religious topics were covered in the media. Didn’t do our cause any good either, was his point.
Dan
Not necessarily so muddled. There is a strand of atheist thought which does say, “I wouldn’t want there to be a God, it would be horrible.” Thomas Nagel said it, or something like it, in a footnote in one of his books. Christopher Hitchens has said it. But usually, you’re right, it’s code for “atheists are not as rational as they make out.”
Dan
Accidental? As an atheist, I wouldn’t say I necessarily have a strong attitude about the origins of the Universe, as it happens. Certainly I prefer a nontheist account than a theist account. But I don’t think I would describe the Universe as “accidental”.
For example, whether you are persuaded by him or not, Bede Rundle’s attempt to answer the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, is to say that “something” is necessary, or inevitable.
As for “without purpose”, I’m not aware that any religious genius has yet come up with an Ultimate Purpose for the existence of Something rather than Nothing. So we’re in the same boat there.
Dan
@GordonWillis: I got that idea from Sherman’s “Roman Law in the modern world” a well-annotated overview of roman law and its effects on modern law in many countries. Of course roman law is not the only antecedent of english law but it is safe to say that it is the major one. BTW the latin used in law these days is truly latin not norman french. Norman french hasn’t been used since the days of Edward III.
Thank you for that, sailor, it’s useful to know. I was perhaps taking your words too literally. Of course, I know that the Latin in modern legal terms is real Latin, but I thought you were speaking historically.