136 - God or no God
I finished
my July book and I better report on it before I start Bill Bryson’s A Short
History of Nearly Everything, all 3cm of it (just the Notes, Bibliography &
Index are 92 pages).
Over the
past few years I have indulged in questions of God or no God. Richard Dawkins
kicked the debate off with The God Delusion, followed closely by Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great, complemented by Phillip Adams’ Adams vs God, Michael Onfray’s
The Atheist Manifesto and a droll collection of quotes: The Atheist’s Bible (“Just
think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt”, Clarence Darrow.) And
for good measure The Dawkins Delusion by Alister McGrath … and now The Rage
Against God, by Peter Hitchens. Yes, another Hitchens, Christopher’s brother.
The two
latter books both work the faith angle, the belief in God as the only source of
true morale and ethics. They argue that wordly, secular ethics are subject to
pollution, bias and opportunism. P. Hitchens goes to great length providing us
with his proof steeped in his knowledge of the Soviet system of atheism and great
historical detail about atheist structures gone awry, like Communism, Nazism
and other totalitarian systems. His book is well researched, he seems a journalist
of great ability and conviction. This aspect of his writing is fascinating.
I have three
problems with his book, two small problems, one really, really big one. It
doesn’t jell with me that he accounts for the evil religious people may do as an
aberration from the righteous path of their religion, where they do the evil ‘as
humans’, not as the good Christians they otherwise are. Secondly, his belief in
God and God’s ethics is founded in fear, ‘the fear of religion itself.’ I can’t
go to that place with him.
But the
biggest problem is like an elephant in the room, one that he - just like all
other religious people I have spoken with - cannot address: The fact that there
is no God. There is, of course, the belief in God or a concept of God … and
obviously there’s nothing wrong with that. But as facts go, it is clear there is no God (if there was a factual God, we would have proof, that’s the
nature of facts: They can be proven. The fact is, if there was a God, we would
know about it and we would live in a fundamentally different world.)
In this context this is a huge problem, of course; the fact that God’s ethics - as well as all religions,
all belief systems, all philosophies - are man made. And thus God’s ethics, as
preached from the pulpit, are just as fallible as secular ethics. We can’t get
past this point, just ask Russell, Spinoza et al.
Let me be quite clear about the point I wish to make: The
central tenet of both The Dawkins Delusion and Rage against God, the arguments
against the point that religion arises entirely within the human mind, are
utterly unconvincing, they simply can’t be sustained. And to base religion's - Christianity's - credibility on the perceived monopoly they hold on ethics - the main theme in Hitchens' book - is tenuous at best, in my view a dead-end argument and at worst manipulative … interesting reads, though - Hitchens' more than McGrath's. (Btw, there is a note in Hitchens' Introduction that endears the writer to me: "My book, like all such books, is aimed mainly at myself. All polemical authors seek to persuade themselves above all." I can so relate to that.)
Oh, incidentally, my favourite book on this topic is André Compte-Sponville’s The Book of Atheist Spirituality. He provides the
most eloquent, the most erudite, the most touching, simply the most impressive
account of a mystical experience; it moved me to tears.
All without the help of
God or Jesus. And without fear.