Preaching to the (un)converted
A few weeks ago, PBS ran a two-part series called The Question of God, presenting the whole god question against the stories of two lives, that of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, and interleaved dramatised events in their lives with some talking heads around a table discussing the issues. Two things about that show were interesting. First, that they used Freud as the example of a "scientific" world view. Maybe for the time he was, but it sure doesn't look that way from here and now. Freud dressed up a lot of stuff in science, but to me he seems to be as much mumbo-jumbo as the religious side of things; where he succeeds is as kind of a fantasist, I think. The second thing was the shallowness of much of the talking heads stuff, which repeated some very tired theistic arguments which were less good arguments than proofs that those voicing them hadn't done much research. Still, it was an interesting experiment, these days, to actually take a good look at what religion says about the world, instead of just blindly promulgating "faith."
Today Paul P. sends me a link to this piece from The Sunday Times of London, about a new TV Series that Jonathan Miller is producing. Though they're chopping it down to 3 parts, and shunting it off to a BBC backwater, this is a good step. That someone is even discussing atheism on television is a plus. I hope it gets to BBCA so I can watch it on DirecTV, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't.
[Y]ou can’t keep a great brain down, even by confining it to three episodes. From Miller’s declaration that “God, for many Anglicans, is nothing more than an awkward geriatric relative who might embarrassingly come downstairs, incontinently, and cause trouble”, to his description of Israel as “the largest outdoor lunatic asylum in the world”, this is television likely to make the devout of many faiths steam with indignation.
Making the devout cringe, even if only briefly, and even if not many see it, is entirely a good thing!
Miller, enumerating the massacres committed in the name of God, declares it “inconceivable” that the September 11 atrocity could have been “done without religion”. His argument is that “only with some assurance of a permanent life after death would someone willingly undertake such an act in the certain knowledge that they were going to die”.
Didn’t the kamikaze pilots of the Second World War act in that suicidal certainty? “But their actions were also quasi-religious,” Miller counters, “because the Japanese saw their emperor as a supernatural being.”
And what of the many atrocities — indeed, wholesale genocides — committed by atheistic regimes such as Stalin’s? “Yes, the Stalinists and the Nazis were prepared to kill millions,” Miller agrees. “But their deeds were also propelled by millenarianism, this time of a political nature. It seems that we human beings have a large capacity to allow monstrous things to happen if we are promised some infinitely postponed paradise, either political or supernatural. But until you get to the totalitarian movements of the 20th century, most of these excesses of killing were done in the name of a supernatural being.”
But the bottom line, in a nutshell:
His real objection to belief in God — or, as he fastidiously puts it, “in a supernatural agency” — is much more fundamental. He simply thinks it is an intellectual nonsense. And nobody is better at articulating the cold, unemotional logic of hardline atheism. Whatever human consciousness is, he argues, it exists only inside our brains. In other words it is grounded in matter. Take away that matter (as when we die), and there can be no consciousness. Therefore, no afterlife. No paradise. And no “paranormal” or “supernatural”. All that, too, is literally “in the mind”.
I love this Zola quote: “civilisation will not achieve perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest," and Miller concedes that religion can be associated with some positives:
“I also have to concede that many families who behave very law-abidingly do so precisely because they are committed Christians, or Muslims or Jews. There is a deep sanction in favour of decency in such families, and it would be dishonest and dishonourable not to acknowledge that religion has played a very significant part in moralising people. But I still think that our capacity to behave generously is achievable without having to believe in the supernatural.”
Indeed. Because many -- even most -- religious people are good, or do good things, that doesn't mean that they do it because of their religons. But read the
There's lost more good stuff in the Times, piece covering religous art and more. But will we get to see Miller's show in the states?
The email from Paul also got me thinking about the audience for this program, and also for my favorite recent book, Sam Harris' The End of Faith. Paul said he had ordered it, and I'm glad to hear that; this book deserves a wide readership. But Paul agrees, I think, with Harris' point of view going into the book, as did I. I wonder how many of the faithful will read the book? Judging from the Amazon reviews, opinions on it seem to break depending on preconceived attitudes. Maybe that's totally to be expected. I know I've heard my share of religious preaching, you can't live in this society without it. I wonder, though, how many of the faithful will challenge themselves?
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