Breaking my silence?

‘It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.' – Alice in Wonderland

I’ve always felt an affinity with French-Moroccan author Marcel Benabou, who wrote a book-length treatise on why he hadn’t written more books: Pourquoi je n'ai écrit aucun de mes livres. In the same spirit, this is a blog post about why I haven’t written any blog posts recently – well, nowhere near as many as I used to write (only 20 posts in the past three years, whereas in 2009 alone I wrote more than 200).

My principal excuse for inactivity is that this is primarily a political blog – and my political beliefs are currently in a state of extreme flux. So what’s new, you may ask? Hasn’t this blog charted repeatedly (and probably tediously) my movement from youthful Tribunite Labour left-wingery, through Gramscian Marxism, to critical support for New Labour? Didn’t I once claim, in my normblog profile no less, that I started this blog ‘to help me work out what I think’? And wasn’t it precisely the experience of writing this blog that helped me to clarify the anti-totalitarian liberal-social-democratic politics that has characterised my thinking for most of the blog’s life?

Yes, but this feels different. The change in my political outlook feels more seismic this time. I’m reluctant to articulate the change too precisely, for fear that the sands may have shifted again in a few months, and I’ll have to recant any positions I espouse here. So how to characterise the change? Maybe it’s enough to say that these days I find myself reading Standpoint and The Spectator more frequently, and with more pleasure, than The New Statesman; that I tend to haunt websites such as Front Porch Republic and Ethika Politika; that having hero-worshipped Thomas Paine for years I’m much more sympathetic to his nemesis Edmund Burke; and that I now find Chestertonian distributism more attractive than any form of socialism. 

That last item is a partial clue as to why my views have changed. My re-engagement with religious faith in the past year or two has certainly made me more 'conservative' on some social issues, and while my re-awakened faith has helped to keep my passion for social justice alive, it has also made me more open to different ways of imagining and achieving it. But it’s not just about religion. Another way of describing the change in my politics is to say that my growing disillusionment with certain aspects of contemporary leftism – whether it be kneejerk anti-westernism in foreign affairs or ‘big state’ paternalism at home – has led over time to a questioning of the foundations of progressivism per se.

To put it another way, and please forgive this brief philosophical excursion by someone who’s by no means an expert in these matters: it’s partly about questioning the adequacy of the Enlightenment tradition. Like many others who have featured in my blogroll sidebar over the years, I began blogging partly out of a sense of alarm at the rising tide of irrationalism and moral relativism in contemporary political discourse, particularly on the Left – manifested in contorted attempts to ‘understand’ terrorism, a refusal to condemn misogyny and racism if espoused by non-westerners, and the abandonment of a sense of universal human rights. In this context, post-Rushdie, post-9/11 and post-Danish cartoons, it seemed important to rush to the barricades (or at least, the blogs) to defend the gains of the Enlightenment. Indeed, it became something of a badge of honour when, in a burst of tortuous illogicality, Madeleine Bunting (‘Our Maddy of the Sorrows’, to quote the late great Norm), one of the torchbearers for the anti-rationalists, condemned writers of our stripe as ‘Enlightenment fundamentalists’.

But what if an appeal to Enlightenment principles is not enough to roll back the tide of postmodern relativism? And going further: what if the Enlightenment, rather than being the solution, was itself the genesis of the problem? On the first point: it could be argued that the Enlightenment, for all that it began as a critique of religious thinking, actually depended on unspoken but deeply shared religious foundations. For example, its defence of reason, liberty and progress was founded on certain assumptions – that history has a purpose, that every human life is of value – that are inexplicable outside a Judaeo-Christian worldview. It could also be argued that, as those shared religious assumptions have weakened in the last two centuries, so the Enlightenment principles that were (implicitly if not explicitly) founded on them have also been shaken. In a post-religious world, and in the postmodern marketplace of ideas, the principles of the Enlightenment appear no more and no less ‘universal’ than any others. Bunting is not alone in her critique: plenty of more serious postmodern thinkers have argued (spuriously, of course) that Enlightenment ideas are 'merely' a reflection of the interests of a particular group of privileged, white and probably imperialist men belonging to a particular (and particularly oppressive) society and culture.

Which bring us on to the second point: that the Enlightenment may actually share some of the blame for this descent into the slough of moral relativism. How so? Well, once again, I’m not a philosopher, but I was struck by this paragraph in Rodney Howsare’s brief introduction to the ideas of the modern Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar:

For Kant, and the moderns in general, the notion that the unifying center of a thing really does appear in the individual thing was denied. When I see this particular tree, therefore, all I see is the appearance of this particular tree. If any generalisations are to be made about it, they will have to come from the side of the subject. This means that the classical transcendental properties of Being—unity, truth, goodness, and beauty—must no longer be conceived as properties of Being, but as characteristics attributed to Being from the side of universal subjectivity. All postmodernity has to do to achieve nihilism, it would seem, is to deny any universal subjectivity. Postmodernism is not so much an alternative to modernism as its reductio.

We’ve strayed somewhat from our discussion of the direction of contemporary politics. But what I take Howsare to be arguing is that it was the Enlightenment’s denial of transcendence and objectivity that paved the way for the postmodernist critique that eventually sank its claims to universality: in other words, Enlightenment thinkers sowed the seeds of their own destruction. This makes it increasingly difficult to ground a critique of the creeping relativism and irrationalism of much contemporary political thinking in a call for a return to Enlightenment principles. What is needed instead, perhaps, is a deeper kind of return: to a way of thinking grounded in a sense of the sacred and of an objective moral order. (I can imagine the objections already being tapped out on the keyboards of my more secular-minded readers...)

These are the kinds of issues I find myself wrestling with these days, as I struggle to find new foundations for my political thinking, and an alternative to the Enlightenment rationalism that has been the source of my politics for so long. I’m going to make a determined effort to use this blog, once again, as a vehicle for working out what I think. You may notice some changes – in the kinds of themes and issues I discuss, the sources I turn to, and the links that appear in my sidebar. If you were a fan of the ‘old’ Martin In The Margins, you may not find the new incarnation quite to your taste, in which case you should feel free to move on and I shan't be offended. But I rather hope you’ll stick around and share the next stage of the journey.

Arab atheists and agnostics speak out

You may not agree with everything said about religion in this video, but in a week when religious terrorists massacred people simply because they held different beliefs, and a politician was murdered for saying that maybe those who criticised religion shouldn't be executed, these testimonies by Arab atheists and agnostics are brave and encouraging.

What I wish the Pope had said..

Despite the extreme lapsedness of my Catholicism, and my disagreement with Benedict XVI on a number of issues including gay rights and women priests, I have followed the papal visit to Britain closely, and confess to being quite affected by it. At the same time, despite my avowed secularism, I have felt increasingly hostile to the tone and content of much of the opposition to the visit.

Taking the latter first. I found many of the banners and chants at the ‘Protest the pope’ demonstrations distasteful and gratuitously offensive. In addition, I got the impression that many of the protestors started from a position of visceral anti-Catholicism, and then made a grab at any issue that lent support to their hatred. It was certainly odd to see liberal humanists making common cause with fundamentalist Protestants and Paisleyites.

Since there is no conclusive evidence that the current pontiff covered up priestly abuse, the whole ‘arrest the pope’ charade was pointless. The issue with which I had most sympathy was the church’s attitude to homosexuality, but that would have been more effective without the tasteless banners. And I couldn’t for the life of me see what Richard Dawkins and his band of atheists were doing at the protest. By all means disagree intellectually with Christians about the existence or otherwise of God, but don’t deny them their right to celebrate their faith. And that was my other objection to the protestors: they seemed like intolerant party-poopers whose aim was really to stop those they disagreed with from expressing their beliefs in peace.

Turning to the pope himself, obviously some of his comments about ‘aggressive secularism’ were unfortunate, to say the least, and the ‘atheism leads to Nazism’ quote was an unnecessary gift to his critics – and the headline-seeking news media. But if you listen to, or read, his complete speeches and homilies – whether at Holyrood, Bellahouston or Westminster Hall – they were rather more measured and thoughtful than you’d think, and much of what was quoted has been taken out of context.

Having said that, there are some things I wish the pope had said, but didn't, and if it’s not too presumptuous or disrespectful, I’d like to suggest a few of them here. For example, here’s what he might have said to his Catholic and Christian listeners:

My brothers and sisters, some of you seem unduly exercised by the outbursts and antics of various secularists and atheists in your land. I have heard your representatives talk repeatedly of ‘aggressive’ secularism, and of a ‘new’ or ‘militant’ atheism. But there is nothing new about hostility to the faith, and using such language makes it look as though you are trying to dismiss their criticisms without responding to them. The Church flourishes when it encounters healthy opposition: conversely, lack of criticism makes us lazy and complacent. So welcome these challenges, and be confident in your response to them. And before you criticise the 'aggression' of your atheist brothers and sisters, consider whether you too have ever been aggressive or intolerant of dissent in your own Christian faith.

Try, also, once in a while, to see things from your opponents' point of view. Ask yourself: why might atheism and secularism being enjoying a revival just now? Might it be because unbelievers have legitimate fears, following various terrorist outrages and death threats against writers and artists in the name of religion, about the growth of an aggressive religious fundamentalism that threatens their basic freedoms? You may protest that these threats do not come, in the main, from Christians: but how often have you rushed to 'understand' the actions of those who bomb, riot and burn when they feel religious 'offence', rather than standing up, alongside your secular fellow citizens, for the human values that you both share?

Then again, I have heard some of you talk of persecution and of your faith being banished from the public square. Frankly, I am astonished - 'gobsmacked' is I believe the appropriate word in your language - when I hear such talk. Here I am, in a country where the upper chamber of your parliament includes Christian bishops as of right, where your church schools are partly funded by the taxes of unbelievers, where your services and sermons have guaranteed slots on television and radio, and where your politicians make regular obeisance to 'faith communities' and 'faith leaders'. How Christians in some other lands - Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea - might wish for such 'persecution'! I endorse what my brother Christian, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote recently: Christians in the west should stop whining and campaign instead for believers who are truly persecuted elsewhere in the world. I seem to remember that Our Lord warned us to expect persecution, and went so far as to say that we would be blessed if men despised and rejected us. Can you imagine the martyrs of the faith asking for special privileges from the state, as some of you have done? In other words: dial it down a bit, my brothers and sisters, or as your own young people might say: just chill, OK?

And this is what I wish the pope had said to Britain's majority of non-believers:

My brothers and sisters beyond the Church, there is much that divides us, but as a guest in your land, I would not presume to lecture you. Instead, I want to emphasise today what we share in common - I as a Christian, you as atheists, agnostics, humanists and members of other faiths. I want to acknowledge the great good that you have done, and continue to do, and what your fellow non-believers have achieved over the centuries for the good of humanity. On this visit I have already praised the great Christian philanthropists of this land, such as Wilberforce and Nightingale, but it would be wrong of me to overlook the good work done by the secular heroes of your country, who have done so much to advance human dignity and equality. And yes, in humility I acknowledge that humanists have often led the way, for example in advancing the rights of women and minorities, in promoting freedom of thought and expression, in care for the environment, where we in the Church have followed belatedly and yes, have sometimes blocked the way. We need to learn from you, as much as you from us.

And although I have often criticised the secularisation of society, today I want to acknowledge the value of a true secularism, of a separation of church and state which guarantees freedom to believe, or not believe. For it is only in such an atmosphere of freedom that true faith, freely chosen faith, can flourish. My fellow Christians in other parts of the world, in countries where they are in the minority, know the value of such a secularism. And I want to humbly acknowledge the failures of my own Church in the past, our willingness to support authoritarian and oppressive regimes, whether in Spain or Latin America - regimes which some of you rightly campaigned against - simply because they bore the name 'Catholic', while they suppressed the basic human freedoms which humanists, whether secular or Christian, should hold dear.

Where we differ, of course, is that I, as a Christian, while holding that liberty of conscience and freedom of expression are fundamental and the precondition for a fully human life, believe that they are not sufficient. As Christians, we believe that secular humanism is not enough, that it cannot provide answers to the fundamental questions about our existence, its purpose and that of the universe. On this we must agree to differ, and indeed to continue to converse and to listen to each other. But let me end on a positive note, by thanking you, my secular humanist brothers and sisters, for reminding us believers of the great value of human freedom, and of the equality and dignity of all human beings, whatever their race, gender or lifestyle. I look forward, while I am here in your country, to a dialogue marked by agreement on what we have in common, and where we disagree, by respect for each other's opinions.

Here endeth the lesson.

A brief interlude, and some links

A brief interlude between absences (we're back from Cornwall, but off again on our travels at the end of this week, and away for half of August).

Just time to thank Bob for all the links/recommendations, and to make a couple of my own. Bob, who obviously has a very long memory, holds me to a promise I made more than a year ago, to return to Roger Scruton's piece on secularism, irony and forgiveness. I shall certainly do so, when I have a little more time. In the meantime, I'm grateful to Bob for providing links to commentary by others, specifically to posts by Ben Gidley, Kenan Malik and Francis Sedgemore, all of which I recommend.

Scruton's original article is accompanied by one of my favourite paintings, Rembrandt's 'The Return of the Prodigal Son' (above), on which Henri Nouwen's book of the same name, perhaps the only 'spiritual' book to have left any kind of impression on me in recent years, is an extended and endlessly surprising meditation.

Once upon a time in Afghanistan

Where do you think this photograph was taken: somewhere in Europe or America, perhaps, circa 1960? In fact it's a picture of a record store in Kabul, Afghanistan, at around that time. It's one of a remarkable series of images from a photobook of the country published by Afghanistan's planning ministry in the late '50s or early '60s, and bought in a market by an Afghani schoolboy, Mohammad Qayoumi, who emigrated to the States and is now president of California State University, East Bay.

Other photos (which you can see here) show mixed-sex groups of students and workers, in modern dress, at universities, factories, parks and cinemas. In case we're tempted to think this was some kind of sub-Soviet propaganda exercise, it's worth remembering that the pictures date from before the Russian invasion, which initiated the process of dismembering modern Afghanistan that continued during the civil war and Taliban takeover. Qayoumi uses the photographs to counter the myth, recently reinforced by Liam Fox with his 'broken 13th century country' jibe, that Afghanistan has always been 'an ungovernable land where chaos is carved into the hills'. Qayoumi begis to differ:

But that is not the Afghanistan I remember. [...] A half-century ago Afghan women pursued careers in medicine; men and women mingled casually at movie theaters and university campuses in Kabul; factories in the suburbs churned out textiles and other goods. There was a tradition of law and order, and a government capable of undertaking large national infrastructure projects, like building hydropower stations and roads, albeit with outside help. Ordinary people had a sense of hope, a belief that education could open opportunities for all, a conviction that a bright future lay ahead. All that has been destroyed by three decades of war, but it was real.

Qayoumi admits that the images were 'perhaps a little airbrushed by government officials', but they serve as a reminder that, even in a country ravaged by decades of conflict like Afghanistan, 'disorder, terrorism, and violence against schools that educate girls are not inevitable.' Some of the photos, and Qayoumi's comments on them which point up the contrast with the current situation, are incredibly poignant: 'Remembering Afghanistan's hopeful past only makes its present misery seem more tragic'.

There is an overpowering sense of generations of lost opportunity, of lives constrained. The images are a reminder, too, of the sheer barbarism of the fundamentalist ideology that laid waste to much of this burgeoning modernity, and the stupidity of a cultural relativism, present as much in pseudo-leftist posturing as in Fox's post-imperial condescension, which assumes that secular modernity is a 'western' phenonomen whose benefits are not relevant to the lives of people in other 'cultures'.

(Via Kenan Malik)

Well said, Archbishop

...and that's not a headline you'll often see on this blog. But the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has actually said something quite sensible. In his Easter ecumenical letter, he draws attention to the very real persecution of Christians in some parts of the world, describing the 'butchery, intimidation...and harrassment' suffered by believers in places such as Egypt, Mosul, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. This continuing reality, said Williams, should remind Christians who live in 'more comfortable environments' of the need 'to keep our own fears in perspective': 'It is all too easy, even in comfortable and relatively peaceful societies, for us to become consumed with anxiety about the future of Church and society'.

Coming only days after senior Church of England figures, including Williams' predecessor George Carey, sent a letter to the Sunday Telegraph complaining that Christians in Britain were being discriminated against, the Archbishop's statement is seen by some as a rebuke to religious leaders who encourage this kind of persecution complex and victim mentality. Instead, citing the example of murdered Salvadorean archbishop Oscar Romero, Williams suggested high-profile Christians would do better to use their influence to defend the rights of the poor and campaign for political change.

So two cheers for the Archbishop of Canterbury. There'll be a third cheer when he follows the logic of his own thinking, joining the dots to realise that almost all the examples of real persecution that he cites happened in countries dominated by one faith and where there is no separation between religious and secular law. Whereas what he describes as more 'comfortable' environments for believers tend to be those in which liberal secularism holds sway. Perhaps he'll remember that next time he's tempted to call for the introduction of Sharia in Britain.

The Pope, Cherie, and all that

I'm working up to a proper post on religion, secularism and the law, but I'm pushed for time right now and just wanted to splurge a few thoughts on the subject while they're at the forefront of my mind. I haven't even got time to find all the links but the people I refer to will know who I mean.

The occasion for my first ever post on this blog was my disappointment at finding a religious commentator whose work I liked, and who I had thought a reasonable and thoughtful person, using the label 'aggressive secularism' in what I considered a lazy and unthinking way. Nearly three years later, I had the same feeling last Friday, when I came across an editorial in the supposedly liberal Catholic weekly The Tablet (you should see how much conservative Catholic bloggers despise it) describing the National Secular Society as 'aggressively secularist' because of its response to the Pope's attack on Britain's equality legislation.

It occurred to me that the linking of 'aggressive' and 'secularism' by religionists has become one of those predictable combinations, rather like the pairing of 'militant' with 'feminist' or 'homosexual' a couple of decades ago. It has the same effect - of closing down any possibility of dialogue, since the individual or group thus labelled is viewed as motivated by anger and hostility rather than having cogent arguments worth debating. And it springs from the same sense of resentment, implying that secularists (or feminists, or gays) are to be tolerated, as long as they don't make a fuss about it. The same kind of rationale underlies the denigration of Dawkins, Hitchens, et al., as 'new atheists'. The implication is that the old atheists were all right, since they kept quiet and didn't raise awkward questions, whether about scriptural inconsistencies or the challenge posed to religion by modern science, that upset the status quo.

As to the issue under discussion in the Tablet editorial, it's obviously not a straightforward one. I'm a keen supporter of gender and sexual equality, but I'm not sure the state should get involved in determining who the Church ordains. On the other hand, I don't think anyone is suggesting that (as one Catholic blogger put it) the government is about to impose 'priestesses' on Catholics (though the sense of horror behind the use of that word tells you a great deal about the gender and sexual hang-ups of many opponents of women's ordination). And I think the Pope is playing a dangerous game, not only intervening in political debates in a sovereign nation, but also choosing this issue on which to pick a fight. Does the Church really want to cast itself as the enemy of equality and the supporter of discrimination and exclusion?

The other religion vs secularism issue that's been causing a lot of froth in the comment columns and on the blogs lately is Cherie Blair's decision, as a judge, to be lenient to an offender because he had shown himself to be a 'religious' man. Secularists are up in arms, while some religious commentators have (absurdly) seen this reaction as a threat to religious freedom. I happen to think Cherie Blair was wrong to do what she did - or at least to give the reason that she gave (I have no objection to judges using their discretion and demonstrating leniency, if appropriate). As critics of her judgement have noted, religious affiliation should not be privileged above other beliefs in such cases. How would we feel if a judge let someone off the hook on the grounds that he was a 'good socialist' or a 'good Conservative'? The privilege afforded to religious belief in this case appears to arise from a sense that being religious somehow equates to being 'good', and that faith inspires good works. But as recent history has shown - whether we're talking about Islamist or Francoist terrorism - the exact opposite is often the case.

I suspect Cherie was indulging in a bit of spurious multi-faithism - she's a Catholic, and the accused was a Muslim - and making some kind of point about how Islam can be a force for good, etc etc. But the courts are no place for such superficial and misjudged exercises in 'social cohesion', which, though apparently trivial, undermine the already fragile separation of church and state which is the basis of true religious freedom.

Oh, and then there was the Archbishop of Canterbury saying that Tony Blair was 'weak on irony' and hadn't done enough soul-searching. This, from the man who thinks sharia law would be good for Britain. I mean, come on...

Splurge over.

A propos of the Cherie case, this from Mr Bowie seems appropriate:

A couple of quotes on humanism and secularism

First, Austin Dacey (via B&W) on the futility of seeing secular humanism as a replacement for religion:

Humanists are right to think that there is more to life than atheism, but wrong to think that they are the ones to provide it. It is not the job of religion’s critics to organize a replacement.

Just to show you how serious I am, I’ve christened a new fallacy to give a name to this mistake in thinking: I call it the fallacy of decomposition. The fallacy of decomposition is the mistake of supposing that as the estate of religion collapses, there must be a single new institution that to arises to serve the same social functions it served—that the social space vacated by religion must be filled by a religion-shaped object. Instead, it could be that in the lot once occupied by faith there springs up a variegated garden, a patchwork of independent institutions, each of which fulfills one of those functions. Out of one, many.

Thus, for our education, we attend the university; for cosmological clarity, we visit the planetarium; for therapy, the therapist; for beauty, the museum, the concert hall. Good stories? We read the Good Book, sure, but also the good books.

After all, it was something like this phenomenon that characterized the secularization of Western Europe. The dramatic drop in regular church attendance in Europe was not accompanied by a dramatic spike in the membership of organized atheism or humanism, which remains marginal. For post-religious Europeans, the point was to not show up anywhere once a week to seek absolution, but to stay out late on Saturday nights and sleep in late on Sunday mornings.

When you think about it, organized humanism is a hard sell. Do you like paying dues and making forced pleasantries over post-service coffee cake, but can’t stand beautiful architecture and professionally trained musicians? If so, organized humanism may be for you. Greg Epstein (the “humanist chaplain” at Harvard and the author of Good Without God) is a lovely person, but I’ve heard him sing, and I think I’ll stick to Bach, Arvo Pärt, and Kirk Franklin for my spiritual uplift. Do we really need an institution for people who find Reform Judaism and Unitarian Universalism too rigid? Yes. It’s called the weekend.

Dacey concludes:

The promise and the peril of the open, liberal democratic society lies precisely in the possibility of a civility and a solidarity untethered from any unitary philosophy or community—it doesn’t all have to hang together. The secular house has many mansions.

Second (and I missed this when it appeared earlier this year), Thierry Chervel on the canard of 'Enlightenment fundamentalism'. Responding to the pessimistic fulminations of John Gray, Chervel asks:

Is there such thing as Enlightenment fundamentalism, a mirror image of Islamic fundamentalism? Is there a danger that these fundamentalisms will drive one another into a spiral of violence until a clash of cultures ensues?

He takes on on the argument that utopian political movements of the twentieth century were as fundamentalist as some religions:

But if real existing socialism was a fundamentalism, it certainly wasn't Enlightenment fundamentalism. It practised dogmatic exegesis like religious fundamentalism. It just used a different book. Fundamentalisms try to model reality according to a truth pronounced in a text. Anything that doesn't fit the model is lopped off. They promise a return to original purity, redemption from the corruption of alienating market developments, proximity to God, care in the community instead of the sad, isolated recognition of one's own mortality. No responsibility is accepted for collateral damage on the path back to this blessed state. Some want to reach it through terrorism, others content themselves with isolating a particular community and directing the terror inwards.

There is nothing in the reaction of Western societies to Islam or Islamism which bears any resemblance to such discourse or behaviour. There is intolerance, certainly, and indifference, racism, discrimination and a whole repertoire of grievances which not only Muslims are forced to endure every day. These cannot be called enlightened.

How is it possible to equate the Enlightenment with fundamentalism? Its principles are aimed precisely against the belief in fundamentals. It is only by "thinking for oneself" that one emerges from self-imposed immaturity. By thinking for oneself one frees oneself of dogmas and seemingly eternal truths which are imposed by the clergy. Thinking for oneself also means thinking about oneself, self-reflection, self-relativisation in relation to others. This is why the motto of the Enlightenment is often paradoxical: "Freedom is the freedom of dissenters." The Enlightenment does not believe in any automatism on this path to self-awareness. That would make it a progressive philosophy which turns people into marionettes of some externally-steered process.

As for the cultural-relativist argument that Enlightenment values are simply a 'western' imposition:

The ideas of the Enlightenment are [...] not meant as "Western values" that stand in opposition to Islam. For a start they presuppose a distance from one's own religions and traditions. Paradoxically, the democracy that was born out of the Enlightenment became the only regime which allows a coexistence of religions. Of course the Enlightenment throws doubt on beliefs of every kind, but it also allows them as a freedom of the dissenter. Belief becomes a personal avowal, quite separate from tradition or priestly compulsion. It is the freedom to lapse that makes belief real.

This freedom to practise religion – rather than "Enlightenment fundamentalism" – is what really attracts the hatred of the fundamentalists. They are not interested in religion but in the control of the individual. In the case of Islamism, the most powerful symbol of this will to power is the headscarf. Of course women are free to submit, as long as they do so of their own volition.

Camping it up

I've got a lot of time for Richard Dawkins, but every once in a while he comes up with a rather silly idea. One example was his suggestion that non-believers should describe themselves as 'Brights' (oh dear). Now he's organised an atheist summer camp, apparently to rival the 'faith camps' to which the children of religiously-minded parents are shipped off every year. The idea is a mistake on so many levels. Firstly, it contradicts Dawkins' own nostrum that imposing parental beliefs on children is a form of child abuse: is instruction in atheism any different, and do you really think any children are going to sign up for this without parental prompting? Secondly, spending your summer doing philosophy is going to sound pretty naff to all but the geekiest kids.

But most of all, the idea is wrong because it's another instance of atheists and secularists apeing the religious, and trying to get a piece of their action, rather than doing their own thing. Other examples of this include humanists campaigning for a slot on Thought for the Day (as if any philosophy worth its salt could be summed up in a trite five-minute sermon) and (going back in history a bit) nineteenth-century radicals setting up 'Socialist Sunday Schools'. It plays into the hand of those who characterise atheism as just another 'faith', with its own received dogmas and fundamentalist adherents.

Instead of consigning their offspring to a spell of godless indoctrination during the holidays, why don't atheist (or secularist, or humanist) parents simply take them along to art galleries, museums and concerts, or to the beach, or the countryside, to show them the (natural and human) world in all its glory - and to demonstrate that you don't need a faith, or even a substitute anti-faith, to find life meaningful and worthwhile.

Still, at least Dawkins' atheist camp is infinitely healthier than what's on offer for Gazan children this summer:

Children in Hamas summer camps reenacted the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit in the presence of top Hamas officials, according to pictues obtained by The Jerusalem Post.

According to Israeli defense officials, more than 120,000 Palestinian children are spending the summer in Hamas-run camps. In addition to religious studies, the children undergo semi-military training with toy guns.

At a recent summer camp graduation ceremony, the children put on a show reenacting the June 2006 abduction of Schalit.

Now that really is child abuse.

(Via The Contentious Centrist)

Five words

Bob is peeved that I haven't responded to his 'five words' meme. My excuse? I was away last week, and anyway, his invitation was buried in a comments thread which I've only just found.

Anyway, here are the words that Bob has chosen for me, and my response to each of them:

Soul

One of the interesting aspects of this game is trying to guess why your 'tagger' has chosen the words that s/he thinks say something about you. So I'm not sure if Bob is responding to my habit of linking to tracks by classic soul singers, such as Solomon Burke and Sam Cooke, or to my continuing, conflicted interest in religion and spirituality. Since religion comes up later, I'll opt for the former. When I was a teenager in the Seventies, a white grammar-school boy on an Essex housing estate, soul music was definitely not de rigeur. First we were partisans for progressive rock, then for Bowie and glam, and finally punk - all very white and (as the NME used to say) 'rockist'. I didn't really get into soul and black music generally until the Eighties - when I was working in a mostly-black area of north London. Then it became a matter of working my way through the racks of 'best of' CDs - Al Green, Percy Sledge, Marvin Gaye, and so on. I'm sure the reason my teenage son is such a soul aficionado (though, like the rest of his generation, he insists on referring to the music as 'R 'n' B', an appellation that my generation associates with Muddy Waters, BB King, et al), is that this was the music we were playing around the time he was born (playing a certain Percy Sledge track is guaranteed to reduce H. and me to tears, evoking as it does that precious time).

Saramago

I used to say that the veteran Portuguese writer was my favourite novelist, until I remembered that I've only ever finished one of his books. However, that book - The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis - ranks as one of the best (if not the best) works of fiction that I've ever read. In this phantasmagoric exploration of Lisbon, Saramago's usual quirky and meandering prose is held in check by an intriguing plot and aborbing sense of place - not the case in the other novels of his that I've tried. When I first read the book some fifteen or twenty years ago, its author's politics - he's a lifelong Communist - were an added enticement to me. That was before my own disillusionment with 'democratic centralism', and before I discovered that Saramago's involvement in the Portuguese revolution, far from being heroic, revealed the Stalinist tendencies of his (and his party's) politics. Not to mention my disappointment that a writer capable of such great prose and historical imagination could make such foolish, naive and offensive comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, as he did notoriously on a trip to the West Bank. A shining illustration, then, that creative genius and political stupidity can and often do co-exist.

Lisbon

It was reading Saramago, and then moving on to the writings of Fernando Pessoa (Ricardo Reis was one of the latter's many 'heteronyms') and thence to other fictional depictions of Lisbon that made me fall in love with the Portuguese capital before I'd even visited it. Our visit there a few years ago, to celebrate a special birthday, only deepened my attachment to the place - and to the language, music, literature and history of the city and the country. OK, so I had my camera stolen while riding on a tram to the Alfama, and there are other aspects of Lisbon that leave a lot to be desired - the number of disabled people begging in doorways is (or was then) truly shocking. But the faded beauty of the tree-covered squares, the jumble of back streets, the mournful sound of fado, entered into my soul.

Buddhism

As I've mentioned on this blog a number of times, I had a brief flirtation with Buddhism a few years ago, and though I was quite deeply involved for a while, in the end it didn't 'take'. From time to time, when I'm particularly stressed or under pressure, I remember some of the meditation practices I learned, and still find them helpful. But the underlying philosophy - of detachment from the world and heroic, individualistic spiritual effort - finally clashed with my deeply-rooted interests in politics, history, culture. I think a lot of westerners who are attracted to Buddhism are like me: refugees from the 'Abrahamic' faiths looking for a purer, simpler, less cluttered version of the religion they've rejected, and projecting their own needs on to a thought system which is actually hostile to taken-for-granted western ideas, such as notions of historical progress. And I now find the influence of Buddhism, and the 'New Age' generally, on disciplines in which I have some involvement - such as psychology - generally negative.

Humanism

Having run the gamut of Christian denominations (baptised a Congregationalist, brought up a Methodist, attended Anglican churches, then became a Catholic) and then explored eastern alternatives (see above) I finally realised that what I am, deep down, is a humanist. That's not to rule out the possibility of a return to religion - as regular readers will be aware, I have a continuing love-hate fascination with Christianity, and particularly with Catholicism - but it would have to be a Christian humanism that I espoused. I have a great respect for the tradition of Christian (and Jewish) humanism, and one of my arguments with much contemporary religiosity is that it seems to have forgotten this heritage and sees humanism not as a partner for dialogue, but as a sworn enemy. The same thing goes for secularism, which is a close cousin to humanism in my book. One of my constant themes on this blog is that secularism, rightly understood (as allowing faith and civil society their separate, rightful spheres of action) is essential not only to the flourishing of a humane, tolerant, dynamic society - but to the health of the religious sphere also.

Bring back Blair?

This seemed like a good idea, recalling what I said here, but then this made me think again, reminding me of this criticism of this speech.

Scandals and secularism

The revelations of industrial-scale child abuse in Catholic-run institutions in Ireland are truly horrifying. The victims have been made to suffer terribly, firstly as children who were physically and sexually abused, then as adults, trying to have their stories believed and the perpetrators held to account. Needless to say, the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is a massive body-blow to the reputation of the Catholic Church. Not only did clerical and lay church personnel commit unforgivable crimes against defenceless children, but their superiors covered up their offences and did little to stop them.

However, I disagree with those who regard the scandal as evidence for atheism. One of my bugbears, as regular readers will know, is the tendency of contemporary religious apologists to defend faith on the grounds of its personal and social usefulness, rather than its truthfulness. And one of my criticisms of some anti-theists is the way they muddle up arguments against the claims of religion with endless lists of the shortcomings of religious individuals and institutions.

To me, this has always seemed like a pointless and unresolvable argument. For every scandal I cite, you can produce a saint; for every rabid fundamentalist I mention, you will point to a thoughtful religious philosopher; for every authoritarian reactionary, a nice Christian liberal, and so on. But if we’re going to argue that the example of saintly believers doesn’t prove that Christianity is true, then equally we have to accept that the existence of wrongdoing by some believers - even wrongdoing as dreadful as revealed in the Irish child abuse scandal - isn't a clincher for unbelief either.

I don't say this very often, but Madeleine Bunting has actually written a half-decent article about the whole sorry affair, from the perspective of a Catholic whose faith has been sorely tested by this and other recent clerical abuses. She writes: 'For years now, I've had an intermittent conversation with an admirable and devout relative: How long can we hang on? When do our fingernails break?' A number of commenters on the article urge Bunting to let go and make the break with Catholicism. But surely the only valid reason for leaving a religious organisation is that you no longer agree with its core beliefs, not because of the antics (however terrible) of some of its representatives? In this sense, a church is unlike a political party, where beliefs have to be shown to 'work' to be valid. When Krushchev revealed the crimes of the Stalin era in the 1950s, thousands forsook Communism because the revelations demonstrated (in their eyes) that this political creed led not to liberty but to tyranny. Religious faith, by contrast, depends on the acceptance of core beliefs about the nature of the world and the purpose of life, and these aren't necessarily invalidated (though they may be tested to the limits) by the actions of its adherents.

However, even if it's not an argument for atheism, the Irish child abuse scandal is certainly an argument for secularism. One of the reasons why the abuse was able to continue for so long, and be covered up so effectively, is that the state virtually contracted out the care and rehabilitation of troubled and troublesome children to the Church, and allowed the values and priorities of the Church to stand in for those of the nation. The scandal should give pause to those who argue for 'faith-based' welfare as a viable alternative to state-run services.

As well as reinforcing calls for a stricter separation of church and state, the affair might also have the positive outcome of inducing a little humility in religious spokespeople, especially those who have the gall to suggest that secularists and atheists are 'not fully human'. Come to think of it, that's a pretty good description of those devoutly religious people who beat and raped children in Irish children's homes.

The Catholic blogosphere has been strangely silent about the whole affair so far. I'd be really interested to read the reflections of thoughtful Catholic bloggers, such as Martin M and Maria, on this sorry business.

Footnote

When I wrote the above, I hadn't read Martin Meenagh's post here - apologies.

A reasoned response

As an antidote to the muddled thinking scrutinised in the last post, here's something to welcome with open arms. The Reason Project is a new nonprofit foundation 'devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society'. It 'draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.' And if that's not enough to make you want to sign up, then perhaps some of the names on the advisory board will. They include Salman Rushdie, Ibn Warraq, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Anthony Grayling, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ian McEwan.

In the interests of balance: a cautious welcome to the project, with some thoughtful caveats, is offered by Philip Hall here.

(Via Nigel Warburton)

A second helping of Fish

I'm not sure I can be bothered with this, and those with a better philosophical training will probably make a better job of it, but here goes anyway:

Stanley Fish has written a sequel to his casuistical article in defence of 'faith'. As in the first instalment (and like the shifty rhetoric of his inspiration, Terry Eagleton), Fish's argument once again twists and turns, refusing to be tied down to supporting an actual position, and firing scatter-gun insults at assorted secularists and rationalists. Reduced to its bare bones, his argument seems to be that the 'evidence' against religion put forward by Dawkins, Hitchens et al can't be taken seriously, not because it's faulty, but because:

Evidence, understood as something that can be pointed to, is never an independent feature of the world. Rather, evidence comes into view (or doesn’t) in the light of assumptions ... that produce the field of inquiry in the context of which (and only in the context of which) something can appear as evidence.

This is the standard post-modernist, anti-realist position: there are no facts 'out there', only different ways of looking at the world, shaped by the assumptions and world-views of those who hold them. As I've noted before, this relativism enables you to trash the views of those you disagree with, not by disproving their arguments, but by showing that their opinions are influenced by the wrong kind of world-view, as Fish does in this paragraph:

But suppose, you think (in the manner of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault) that the idea of the individual author is a myth that emerges alongside the valorization of property and property rights so central to Enlightenment thought? Suppose you believe that the so-called author is not the source of the words to which he signs his name, but is instead merely a site transversed by meanings neither he nor any other so-called “individual” originates? 

This is the familiar po-mo 'guilt by association' move again: Enlightenment notions of individual freedom and autonomy are discredited because they had the misfortune to come to the fore at the same time as nasty capitalist individualism. Note the weak, unsupported causality of 'emerges alongside', and the reductivism involved in claiming that the author is 'merely' a 'site traversed by meanings'. Of course, Fish would never do anything as straightforward as state that this is his view of the world: 'I am not affirming this view', he goes on, 'I am just observing that there are many who hold it' . (Of course you are.)

So faith can't be subjected to the cold light of reason, since 'reason' is just another kind of faith (neat). The way Fish goes on to develop this argument is both simplistic in the extreme, and at the same time wrapped up in the kind of post-modern verbal trickery that makes it look as though he's saying something clever. Rather than responding to his critics by arguing for the validity of religion's claims, Fish sidesteps their arguments by casting doubt on all notions of objective reality. Falling back on philosophical relativism is a strange way of defending belief systems that claim to hold the key to Absolute Truth, and the anti-rational evasions of Eagleton and Fish discredit the very cause they claim to defend.

Update

As before, Fish's rhetorical contortions have sparked a lively debate - see the comments below, and over at Butterflies and Wheels, in addition to a mention of my post, you can find a link to Brian Leiter's dissection of Fish's philosophical incompetence. And see here for John Casey's analysis of Fish's equivocations.

...and there's more from Norm here.

Christianity under threat in the Middle East: secularism the answer

To mark the Pope's visit to Israel, yet another article on the decline of the Christian community in the Middle East:

Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the Palestinian movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions.

But now, 'a region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian is about 5 percent today and dropping.' The cause? Emigration, as a result of 'political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam.' On the latter: 'With Islam pushing aside nationalism as the central force behind the politics of identity, Christians who played important roles in various national struggles find themselves left out.'

The verdict of Sarkis Naoum, a Christian columnist for the Lebanese newspaper Al Nahar, is telling: 'Unless there is a turn toward secularism in the Arab world, I don’t think there is a future for Christians here'. Christian leaders in the west, like Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, who see secularism as the enemy, should take note, and be careful what they wish for.

Fishy rhetoric

One of the pleasures of reading the New York Times is that it's relatively free of the anti-modern, anti-western pseudo-leftism that currently infects its British liberal counterpart, the Guardian. You'll search long and hard in the pages of the Times to find the equivalents of Madeleine Bunting, Seumas Milne, Jonathan Steele, John Gray, et al.

But there is one exception: his name is Stanley Fish, and he writes a regular blog on the NYT website. You can find out more about Fish and his po-mo take on subjects such as free speech here. (I love Camille Paglia's characterisation of him as a 'totalitarian Tinkerbell'.) Last year, he wrote a piece arguing that Random House's decision not to publish Sherry Jones' novel about Muhammed's child bride was not censorship, at the same time sneering at Salman Rushdie as a 'self-appointed poster boy for the First Amendment'. (Incidentally, don't these anti-liberal leftists just hate it when non-whites refuse to follow their script and instead stand up for 'western' values? Remember Seumas Milne excoriating Ed Husain as a 'neocon pin-up boy', and Jonathan Pilger dismissing Barack Obama as a 'glossy Uncle Tom'. Gosh, if you didn't know better, you might be inclined to detect a note of neo-colonial elitism, or even - whisper it if you dare - racism in these remarks.)

The other day Fish devoted his column to a spirited defence of that other master of rhetorical evasion, Terry Eagleton. Ironic, given that the latter once described Fish's 'discreditable epistemology' as 'sinister'. But in the new war against Enlightenment liberalism, pro-faith universalists and post-modern cultural relativists find themselves on the same side: a fact that Fish acknowledges, without noting the irony, in this article. 

Fish's piece is virtually a precis, laced with generous quotes, of the first chapter of Eagleton's latest book. Both Eagleton's original argument, and Fish's uncritical commentary on it, repeat many of the points made in the former's Guardian article last week. There's the same defence of religion, not because it might be true, but because of its social value, and the same sneering at 'liberal dogmatists, doctrinaire flag-wavers for Progress, and Islamophobic intellectuals', while once again declining to engage with their criticisms. 

Have you noticed that the new breed of anti-secularists always have to add a damning qualifier to the characterisation of their opponents? In their looking-glass world, atheists are always 'militant', secularists 'aggressive', liberals 'dogmatic' or 'muscular', and believers in progress 'doctrinaire' or 'fundamentalist'.  I find this strategy, like the habit of condemning any criticism of a certain religion as 'Islamophobic', profoundly anti-intellectual and unworthy of those, like Eagleton and Fish, who claim to be scholars and academics.

Reading the article, you can understand why Martha Nussbaum described Fish's writing as 'sophistry' and 'rhetorical manipulation'. He and his former antagonist Eagleton have much in common.

Update

Via B&W: Read P Z Myers' hilariously insightful account of being stuck on a plane for 8 hours with nothing to read but the Eagleton book fawningly reviewed by Fish. Plus Crooked Timber and Jason Rosenhouse on Fish. (And thanks to B&W for linking to this post.)

Further update

Russell Blackford (just added to my blogroll) has an epiphany and conjures up an Eaglefish at war with 'Ditchkins'.