ambushed by god

Having finished my day's duties at Warwick University today, I did the sensible thing and held off heading back into Coventry and went to the student union bar for a couple of pints. Perhaps I am vainly trying to recalibrate wasted days of my youth, but I like hanging around students, watching them and calculating the differences between us. Today, I wanted only to drink my pint and read my book but sitting down, I felt strangely lonely - one of those moments where you just want company. Happily, company swiftly arrived courtesy of two extremely nice young men who wanted to canvass my opinion for a survey on belief they were carrying out. It turned out, of course, that they were representatives of the Warwick University Christian Students society, and what began as a ten question survey swiftly became a theological debate (or as close to that high-falutin' concept as we were capable of getting).

The first thing that struck me, besides the obvious youth and impeccable politeness of the pair, was the extent to which I have changed over the years. I've gone from 'god squad' stereotyping to establishing a rather keen interest in the pull of religion, and while every question they asked was met with a determinedly secular answer, I felt a lot of sympathy for their (ultimately fruitless) quest to establish jesus as the son of god, and a personal liking for them too. But what a strange approach they took! The irony is that all the major religions, despite their (often historical) flaws, contain a tremendous amount of valuable, extensive and emotive writing on subjects that are dear to the heart of every good humanist or socialist. A young Christian might move mountains by talking up alms for the poor, charity, loving thy neighbour, social justice and tolerance - but instead I was dumbstruck to find the conversation dominated by obsessive adherence to the (dubious) notion of truth.

Do you accept Jesus as the sun of God? If not, are you saying he was a liar?

What a depressingly literal translation of one of the outstanding stories of man. Heaven, damnation and punishment, rather than the simple worth of doing good, were the watchwords for a belief system which appeared obsessive, unyielding and largely irrelevant. Here's a question - "what are we here for?" I would have bet that any Christian would say 'to do good', but my encounter with these two charming, intelligent - and good - Christians left me feeling deflated, depressingly unable to confirm that. Rather, they intimated, we are here for God, to recognise God, to give praise to god. What a shocking waste of a belief system with real value.

It's funny feeling old - I hope I didn't patronise them, but how easy it is to tease the devout and the youthful. True morality, true devotion, should be oriented towards the good of man not the promise of heaven. Moving on, I asked - glibly - what they thought of abortion and homosexuality. Their answers made me want to shake them, drag them into adulthood - I'm left with a frustrating question. Will two handsome, clever, well-meaning young men grow up into tolerant, open-minded grown-ups, or will they become zealots, unconcerned with the fate of humans on earth?

I liked them both very much, so I hope it's not the latter.

somebody's unholy hoax

Two great letters from The Guardian follow. First, Helen Brown's hilarious assertion that it is impossible to be good without belief in God, and then Claire Raynor's beautifully terse response. Great stuff.

"Julian Baggini's article on sin (G2, May 9) misunderstands the significance of sin. There is in fact no distinction to be made between doing something contrary to God's will, and doing something contrary to our own good. The Aristotelian guiding principle of human happiness, to which Baggini refers, is not intrinsically without reference to God's will - if human beings have been created by God, then the happiness of the rational animal will involve conformity to God's will, as only God can satisfy the human body and soul.

Of course today's youth is not amoral as such; young people are still human and capable of thinking about morality. But a true rejection of God is ipso facto a rejection of good: you cannot have the latter without the former.

Without the knowledge of God, one can neither fully appreciate the calamitous condition of fallen mankind, nor make fully informed moral judgements, nor by grace attain beatitude. To reject God's will is not to reject the arbitrary rule of a tyrant, but to reject the most loving overtures of the creator who has made us for the only lasting happiness, eternal happiness with him.
Helen Brown
Edinburgh"

"The arrogance of Christians like Helen Brown is breathtaking (Letters, May 10). To state as she does that it is not possible to be good without believing in a supernatural being domiciled in a supernatural heaven, who keeps his (never a her, of course!) worshippers in line by reminding the faithful of a disgusting hell ruled by another supernatural being, is positively juvenile. Indeed, by saying so I insult the many children I know who have a far clearer view of the real world than she does. I hope they will forgive me.

I am as offended as must be the many hundreds of thousands of other secular humanists who share the view of Thomas Paine - a real, breathing man, and not in the least supernatural - who, when quizzed by one of the sort of person that Helen Brown is and represents said: "My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." Like him, today's atheists need neither heavenly carrots nor hellish sticks to persuade us to be moral, ethical persons who love our neighbours as ourselves simply because it is the right and good thing to do, and not because of supernatural flummery.
Claire Rayner
London"

Seeing as we're talking about both letter-writing and God, let's end with a quick verse from XTC's terrific 'Dear God', shall we?

"Dear God, don't know if you noticed, but
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book...
That us crazy humans wrote,
you should take a look.
'Cause all the people that you made in your image
still believe that junk is true.
Well I know it ain't, and so do you, dear God".

saccharine sanctimony

American TV is a sight to behold, but I didn't see as much of it as I might while I was over in the US because half of the TV channels seemingly shut down their output to concentrate on the death of the Pope (and, absurdly, the marriage of Charles and Camilla - which I watched on my return and thought was, radical republican that I am, rather nice).

The Americans love the fact that the British public are in two minds about Camilla, but watching American TV you'd never guess that people have have mixed feelings about the Pope, too. Judging by what Vic tells me, there was a similarly one eyed outlook in the british media too, which can be largely summed up thus: the pope was a great bloke he was very religious he helped bring down communism with reagan who is great too we now realise and the pope was firm on morals whereas the rest of us just shilly-shallied around with stupid ideas like being gay or listening to women or condemning child-abusers. Great.

So let's ignore all the fucked-up rubbish he talked on contraception, abortion, women, homosexuals and modenity. Polly Toynbee wrote, while I was away:

"He was a good, caring man nevertheless, they say, as if it were a minor aberration. But genuflecting before this corpse is scarcely different to parading past Lenin: they both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost. How dare our prime minister go there in our name to give the Vatican our approval for this? Will he think of Africa when on his knees today? I trust history will some day express astonishment at moral outrage wasted on sexual trivia while papal celebrity and charisma cloaked this great Vatican crime."

Now, let's be clear. I have no problem with the world mourning the loss of a world-figure who affected many (we'll leave aside the Africans who were infected with HIV because of his teaching), nor with Blair attending his funeral. Doubtless if I were a Catholic (and there are plenty of moderate, liberal ones about) I too would be upset at the death of a figure I would have grown up listening to (if not obeying), and I see no reason why those people should not be represented by their Prime Minister (especially as he's practically a Catholic himself these days).
But I do have a real problem with the conflating of the Pope's death with the notion that his kind of extreme conservatism was palatable by virtue of his profound religiosity. I have a great deal of respect for people from the Church community, but that doesn't mean I'm prepared to tolerate rampant bigotry and backwardness - both things which should be lastingly associated with the deceased Pope's reign. Toynbee finishes:

"Today's saccharine sanctimony will try to whiten the sepulchre of yet another Pope whose obscurantist faith has caused pointless suffering; it is no defence that he was only obeying higher orders."