Violence and Hate Speech

Richard Dawkins says that he isn't violent and has never acted violently towards anyone because of his beliefs.

However his hate-speech against believers has always seemed to me likely to incite violence against them and will lower the bar as to how likely it is believers will be subject to violence.

I am reminded of Mel White's campaign against religious bigots in the US who preached hate of gays - they weren't actually acting violently against gay people but incidents of violence against them went up after they turned their hatred from communists to the LGBT community - there was a link between the speech and the acts.

I'm therefore not surprised to hear a recent BBC news item about attacks on vicars.

National Churchwatch produces personal safety advice for the Church of England and Church in Wales.

The organisation's Nick Tolson said in 2007 about 12% of Anglican clergy had suffered some form of violence and he thought that figure remained unchanged.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17059909

There is also a disturbing report from the University of Exeter on the increase in attacks on Muslims:

http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/emrc/publications/IAMHC_revised_11Feb11.pdf

Of course all this can't be blamed directly on Dawkins, he is part of a culture of secularism that stereotypes believers as extremists, fools, ignorant and dangerous - while believers are portrayed in this manner in books, films, soaps and dramas the violence will continue.

Update - while searching on this topic I came across this fascinating article

http://www.thinkingchristian.net/C1983916159/E20071017100620/index.html

It seems to suggest disturbing links between these lone shooters in the USA and atheism:

A fight broke out at a Cleveland school last week. The fight was about God. We don't know nearly enough about what happened there, but we do know that it was the student who did not believe in God who brought back a gun and shot four people before killing himself. The Columbine shooters tried to get Cassie Bernall to recant her faith in Christ--she refused to do it--just before they killed her. 

Thoughts on Dawkins - 5 - Philosophy and Theology

Well I was going to continue in a similar vein to the previous posts, showing that Dawkins is really writing within the scope of theology and philosophy, and therefore needs to act in a "scientific" manner insofar as he should equip himself with a knowledge of the subject - an awareness of what the academic community are saying in the area he is addressing.

Insofar as he clearly hasn't a clue about either subject, how are we supposed to take him seriously about religion ignoring "science" when he is guilty of the same crime? It seems it is not ok for creationists to write about Dawkins' subject with no awareness of the academic community, the history of the subject - no qualifications in the appropriate areas etc etc - yet Dawkins can do the same for philosophy and theology and it doesn't matter. Hmmm.

This of course was shown clearly in his debate with Rowan Williams chaired by Anthony Kenny. Now Dawkins and Williams didn't engage - more on that later - but Kenny and Dawkins did and it was clear - indeed he himself admitted it - that Dawkins didn't have a clue about philosophy.

Anyway, my point actually isn't really going to be about this after all, as I have realised - and this came to me following watching the film Paul - that it isn't actually about God or religion or Christianity at all, it is really all about the creationists - and I guess also the Intelligent Designers. That is who Dawkins has in his sights - admittedly it takes up his whole view, and he sees them as somehow pretty much the whole deal (although he also throws some dirt at random other targets, Islam, liberal Christianity etc) - Fundamentalists are who he wants to bring down.

Well if that's the case we know why Rowan Williams and Dawkins didn't engage, because Dawkins in fact only has a problem with Fundamentalists and really hasn't anything of substance to say to other believers - basically because he doesn't know what they think. He stopped believing at what - the age of 12 or something - so he has a 12 year old's view of Christianity, and the only extra stuff he has taken on is the creationism. So we know he can debate that, let's just let him get on with debating that.

I guess most people who know Fundamentalists are aware that they leave when they are ready to leave. They don't leave when someone argues with them, so whether Dawkins will really make a lot of difference who knows, but if he can, well good luck.

Thoughts on Dawkins 4 - Debate

Dawkins and Debate

When we look at Dawkins giving his opinions on how we define religion, what the meaning of the Bible is, the psychological basis of religious belief, religion as a cause of violence, his views in relation to philosophy and theology and so on we can see that in every area he is giving views that relate to a specific area of study and expertise, yet he himself does not engage with that area - he does not acknowledge other views in the areas he is opinionating on - why is this?

There seem to be two obvious reasons.

Firstly, in engaging with other opinions he would have to show some humility and lose some arrogance as clearly he doesn’t have all the answers, and would have to acknowledge that where genuine issues exist in these areas of study and expertise he has no more answers than anyone else. Yet of course he doesn’t want his opinions to appear as one among many - his opinions are different to everyone else, as he is right and they are wrong.

Secondly he would have to make it clear how little he knows in each area - in addressing arguments by the experts of a given field - theology, philosophy, biblical studies, psychology etc -  he would have to actually read up in the given area, yet his arrogance tells him he doesn’t need to do this. He isn’t engaging with the field of religion in order to understand it or learn more about it, he is engaging to show everyone his shallow and ill-thought through opinions are right and everyone else is wrong.

So Dawkins isn’t really interested in any sort of debate or discussion - for him the only purpose of debate is to show his opponent how wrong they are, he isn’t there to listen, he isn’t there to learn anything. Although he pays lip-service to liberal ideas of respecting the opinion of others, his arrogance and refusal to learn anything about the areas he is speaking about prevents him actually being able to engage in genuine dialogue.

By contrast religious groups are typically much better able that Dawkins and the New Atheists to collaborate and work together. Religion by default creates multiple patterns of belief. Where there is no hierarchical structure (often imposed by the state) within a religious group, beliefs and practises multiply. Even within the Catholic church many different orders and groups established themselves (different orders of Monk - Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians, different order of Nun within the Benedictine order alone are Benedictines, Cistercians, Camaldolese, and Trappists, among others). Amongst Protestants there are thought to be around 30,000 different denominations.

The fact that the vast majority of the time religious groups live peacefully side by side belies the idea that religion is the cause of much division in the world. There are many different versions of Hinduism, yet they have all lived together in general very amicably. Even in the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades, Christians, Jews and Muslims were living together quite happily until the Crusaders came along and attacked all of them (Christians included).

So hatred and violence can pick up on almost anything to stir up conflict - but there are plenty of examples through history of religions living together, listening to each other and learning from each other.

Thoughts on Dawkins - 3 Religion and Violence

3. Dawkins - Religion and Violence

One of the arguments made by the New Atheists regarding “good” religion and “bad” religion - e.g. the Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi and Bishop Tutu type of religious people, and the Jerry Falwell, Osama Bin Laden and Ayatollah Khomeini  type of religious people is that the good religion - while it may not be totally bad in itself - nevertheless serves to support and defend bad religion, therefore for that reason all religion must be abolished.

Clearly this is an incredibly bad argument. It seems to be claiming that if any group or organisation has some undesirable outcome or elements, the group itself should be removed. Thus we would have no drivers to prevent drunk drivers, we would fly no aircraft to prevent planes crashing, we would have no politicians to prevent corrupt or evil politicians, we would have no banks to prevent bank crashes and so on.

Nevertheless it is the case that some people feel religion in itself is a bad thing, no matter what religious people actually do.

In the book The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence and Reconciliation by R. Scott Appleby the author writes at the beginning of the book about a presentation he makes on the role of religion on global conflicts.

Here he is describing his audience:

“Assembled in the cavernous auditorium of the National Defense University were 200 officers representing the various branches of the US armed forces along with policy analysts from the State Department and a smattering of foreign diplomats and visitors”

At the end of his presentation in which he has tried to show that religion can play both positive and negative roles in areas of global conflict, he writes this:

“... as the audience filed out of the auditorium, one of the officers remarked that my presentation had confirmed his previous opinions about the topic, “religion is a powerful medicine” he offered, “and it should be administered in small doses if at all”. This book is a rejoinder to that statement and to the broader sensibilities and opinions it represents. Specifically I refute the notion that religion, having so often inspired, legitimated and exacerbated deadly conflicts cannot be expected to contribute consistently to their peaceful resolution.”

The book then provides numerous examples to support the role many religious people play in seeking to resolve conflicts. The idea that these people in working towards a peaceful resolution to conflict in their region are actually supporting violence simply by being religious cannot be in any way supported by the evidence.

Also note that the comment “religion is a powerful medicine that should be administered in small doses if at all” is self-contradictory. If religion was a powerful medicine then of course it should be administered in whatever dose is necessary! Whoever heard of a medicine so powerful it should not even be administered?

When detectives are seeking to solve violent crimes - for example murder - they look for motives. Typically these motives will be money, thrill seeking, sex/passion, seeking status or fearing loss of status - the idea that religion is the major cause of violence is not supported by the evidence.

In fact it seems from reviewing history and human psychology that these types of motive are generally the real motivating factor in violent acts including wars. Wars are almost always fought as “politics by other means” (Carl von Clausewitz) in other words to further political influence and expansion, rather than religious differences. In Northern Ireland Catholics and Protestants didn’t start fighting over doctrinal differences but due to the abuses of civil rights, the Taliban didn’t arise as a result of religion, but due to the acts of aggression and repression by western powers in countries such as Afghanistan.

The idea that if we got rid of religion we would have a more peaceful world is nonsense - peace comes through justice, while powerful people are acting unjustly they will always be resisted, while nations exist they will compete for global resources - sometimes violently, while the powerful abuse their power there will be violence and unrest. The idea that all this would magically vanish if everyone was a secular atheist is absurd. Indeed to focus attention on religion instead of the injustice being perpetrated around the world simply serves to confuse and obscure the real issues.

Thoughts on Dawkins - 2 - The Bible

2. Dawkins and the Bible

Dawkins is selective over how he defines “religion” and is similarly selective over his reading of the Bible.

Dawkins view of the Bible is that is should not be used for providing moral instruction, that the lessons it teaches are either already obvious to the reader (e.g. the prohibition against murder) or actually immoral (e.g. killing in the name of religion). Therefore while the Bible may be studied as literature it should not be read as teaching how to lead a good life.

As with the subject of “what is religion”, when reading the Bible Dawkins appears to make no reference to any authorities on the subject and just makes it up as he goes along. For example he cites examples from the Old Testament about Israel attacking other tribes in the region, and sees this as a justification for genocide. He provides no other authorities to support his reading or any indication that Biblical studies is an academic discipline that requires years of study, instead the implication of his actions is that this is a topic that anyone can have serious opinions on even with little or no study on the subject.

First, let’s take the example of the “genocide” texts. Biblical scholars point out that there are at various layers of textual sources for these Bible accounts - called “E”, “J”, “D” and “P” - further reading on this topic can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

The point is that some sources encourage peaceful cohabitation (typically “E” texts) with other tribes, while other sources (typically “J” texts) are more warlike - it isn’t the case that a single view can be derived from the different sources, still less that random texts can be quoted in the manner of Dawkins to “explain” what all the texts are about. As with any ancient text an accurate understanding requires a very close reading of the material.

Dawkins may argue that he isn’t trying to accurately explain the meaning of the texts, but how they might be interpreted by a modern reader. He may claim a modern reader coming to the text could read the warlike sections and see these as a justification for oppression of the Palestinians today, for example. Such a claim raises many questions.

1. Even given some texts that suggest a warlike stance, there are others that support a peaceful co-existence with other nations, so there is no compelling argument that random reading of texts will necessarily give a bad moral compass.
2. Texts supporting one nation living in one particular location is surely better than teachings that support a nation conquering many other nations and keeping them in servitude which is what the “pagan” nations of the time such as Assyria, Egypt, Media-Persia, Greece and Rome were doing, and which many nations today appear to continue to believe is a justified course of action.
3. Dawkins idea that destroying any “spoils of war” is somehow bad needs to be contrasted with the view that if a nation is allowed to keep the “spoils of war” this encourages going to war. If Israel is not allowed to keep any spoils of war (as in the case of the “sin of Achan”) then why would they go to war? Surely only to defend themselves, not to gain the wealth of other nations - so there is certainly more than one way to interpret the “bad” texts Dawkins cites from the Bible.
4. More generally how a religious text is interpreted is through the religious tradition, not from some random reading of texts, so Dawkins really needs to show that interpretations of Bible texts have never had a good impact on morality, rather than finding some texts that he can interpret in a negative manner. As most people will recognise, Bible texts can often be used to justify all sorts of actions - both good and bad, it is just not possible to show they are always negative in their influence.

Rather than cite verses out of context what is important in any reading of a text is to look at the broad, general trajectory of the story. Dawkins needs to give an account of what the Bible is broadly teaching and to show that this is immoral - even then of course it will be his reading against anyone else’s reading - and given he does not appear to have any qualifications on the subject it will be doubtful how factual or accurate a reading he would provide.

Broadly the message of the Old Testament is of God’s acting to save Israel when they were slaves in Egypt, God chose them to be his people so that through them all the nations of the earth would be blessed. In the scriptures of the Old Testament God tells his people to care for the poor, the oppressed, the widow and orphan, to show love and compassion, justice and mercy, and a future hope that in the future all nations will live together in peace. This doesn’t appear an immoral message, but one that encourages those who follow the teachings of the Old Testament to look after and care for their fellow human beings, working together for a better world.

Similarly the broad message of the New Testament is of God sending his Son Jesus to give humanity an example of selfless love, to bring about a kingdom of peace, love of enemies, turning the other cheek and hope of new life. Again, Dawkins may wish to quote certain texts out of context, but the broad teachings of the New Testament encourage people to live better lives.

One final point - Dawkins claims the Bible can be read as literature, but not as a moral guide. Great literature is great because it teaches us about the human condition. A great work of literature which had a shallow, even immoral view of humanity would be very unusual. To claim the Bible can be read as literature - and therefore a set of stories to teach us about our humanity - and yet have no reference to morality is to misunderstand what great literature is about.

Thoughts on Dawkins - 1 - What is Religion?

It is a while since I read the New Atheists but I was having a discussion with someone recently about them and a number of thoughts came to mind about their arguments that I thought I'd put down here.

This is really to help me clarify my thinking - I find I don't really know what I think until I put it down on paper and have a look at it.

Here goes with the first post.

1. What is religion?
Reading the New Atheists there appear to be all sort of skewed definition of how we define religion. If you read social anthropology or writers about different religious traditions you’ll see it is actually pretty difficult to come up with a broad set of categories to define religion, it is actually quite complex with lots of debate.

However as is typical of Dawkins he appears totally ignorant of any of the facts or issues in this, and just comes up with his own definition at the start of The God Delusion in which he separates out a belief in a non-personal God and a belief in a personal God. He doesn’t even consider the issue of the Greek conception of the divine as being beyond time and space, being all good and all powerful and so forth, in relation to the Judaic notion of a personal God who appears to exist in time has emotions such as regret - both descriptions co-exist within Christianity but how they relate is the topic of a long tradition of theological and philosophical thought, it which it could be argued it is better to see the two as poles on a sliding scale of conceptions about God, or even different ways in which we relate to God, rather than two opposites.

He certainly doesn’t attempt to address how the issue relates to eastern notions of religion - Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism etc - nor even how it relates to the Islamic notion of God as totally transcendent.

In any case, Dawkins simply assumes the two notions can be defined in opposition to each other and simply separated out, he then proceeds to bracket off any belief in a non-personal God as not a “true” belief, irrespective of whether such a belief has been accompanied with what we might term traditional religious practice - in other words someone “being religious”, and pronounce that the rest of the book would concern only the notion of a personal God.

Hitchens can be even more cavalier in his definition - claiming that religion is simply superstition and the irrational, therefore anyone who acts irrationally is religious - and by this definition manages to include the ideologies of Marxist states such as the USSR and China in spite of their clear adherence to atheism.

Sam Harris similarly distinguishes early on in his book Letter to a Christian Nation those who simply have mystical experiences and are not dogmatic in their religious assertions, with “real” religious people who are.

In each case the author clearly tacitly acknowledges that religion as commonly understood is not going to conform to the sort of criticisms that are going to be thrown at it in the subsequent argument, therefore they have to re-define religion in such a way that it now becomes not what most people call religion, but some new definition of “religion” invented by the author, which can of course only lead to mystification and confusion when they then start making pronouncements about religion, because of course it will only be about their own made-up definition of religion they are talking about, whereas it will read as if it is referring to what is commonly understood as “religion”.

This really seems a sort of “double-think” strategy to allow the sympathetic reader to simultaneously keep both definitions in mind. For most of the time they can think that the arguments apply to the public definition of religion, but when cornered with counter-arguments and evidence or when the claims become too preposterous, they can switch back to the second definition.

I would also add that such a definition that in-effect means when I speak of religion I only mean the bad things in religion, seems to conform to any sort of bigotry or hate-speech. When the Nazi’s wished to define the Jews they did so with a combination of definitions, which included images of rats and vermin. Similar arguments can be made over other racist language and definitions - how for example gypsies/travellers are defined/presented by those on the extreme right. An analysis of this sort of hate-speech in terms of how the enemy is defined is distressingly similar to how the New Atheists define their “enemy”.

Honest Doubt - Feedback

The last "appearance" of Honest Doubt was on the programme "Feedback" where listeners can comment on programs.

A number of listeners who were perhaps usually more cold towards religion felt the program was fascinating and worthwhile, while those who were more traditional Christians detected too much scepticism in the content.

I was reminded of the psychotherapist M. Scott Peck who was puzzled at how he saw patients come to him with problems who had a religious background, and left with their problems resolved but no longer religious, while he would also have patients with the same problems, with no religious background, leave with their problems resolved but now following a religious path.

How come the same treatment, from the same therapist, could result in such different outcomes?

His answer was that we are all on different spiritual paths and what is right for one person may not be right for another at that particular time in their lives.

It may also be that the usual picture of believers is of those with no questions or doubts, and for Richard Holloway to show how many believers have lived with doubt challenged stereotypes and perhaps made the religious option more believable for some people, or at least made religious people more normal.

At the time of writing there is a lot of excitement about the discovery of the Higgs boson "God particle". In science there is a clear distinction between the evidence and the explanation. Even with the discovery there is no final explanation, scientists are already talking about this opening up a whole new field of enquiry.

In science the whole notion of "certainty" is different - there are probabilities of evidence at this level, but statistically the evidence is highly probable, but the explanation is only just beginning, and it seems the explanations will go on and on.

If we have no more certainties in science, in life we have very little explanation that is certain either - there is all sorts of evidence that we have to weigh up and make judgements on. So it really is not unusual for spiritual or religious life to be any different. The issue is can we live with uncertainty, not can we avoid it.

Honest Doubt Part 20 - Tears in the Rain

This final episode didn't seem to have too much doubt in it - there was a lot about the certainty of the values of love and kindness, of finding joy in affliction and forgiving your enemies. There was also a nice poem from Andrew Motion (Simple - copied below).

It was a fascinating series and good that it focussed as much on poets, writers and artists as on philosophers, but I wasn't convinced the conclusions were warranted from the previous arguments.

There seems a huge difference between faith and doubt. Neither have all the evidence, neither is knowledge, but with faith comes hope and action, while generally we associate doubt with despair and inaction.

What are kindness and love without action? There is no peace without justice. The eulogies to love and forgiveness reminded me of a discussion I listened to between two Christians regarding Rosa Parks and the American Civil Rights movement. One argued that it was the duty of Christians to forgive and to suffer without complaint - and therefore those engaged in civil rights protests were not acting in a Christian manner - the other felt it was the duty of Christians to speak out and act for the oppressed.

I'm not suggesting Richard Holloway is supporting inaction but the attempt to make doubt rather than faith a key part of a Christian's world-view seems to weaken the claims of those engaged in fights for justice.

In the two versions of the Ten Commandments we have in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 two reasons are given for the Sabbath. In one, the Sabbath is a remembrance of creation and therefore a day of reflection, in the other it is a remembrance of coming out of Egypt, freedom from slavery - and hence a day of liberation.

For Jesus it was clearly the liberation side of it that he followed, and any acts of love and forgiveness have to be tied into the hope of liberation.

Simple

Men came from the sea
with their unusual catch -
one hundred and fifty three.
A fire burned on the beach.

They had expected nothing,
now there was a glut,
and also this man waiting.
The charcoal was white hot.

But was the man there?
One moment it seemed so,
the next he was not.
Master, they said, don’t go.

Like thin air shimmering
when powerful heat bakes it,
he continued his waiting.
Indefinite. Definite.

The fire burned on the beach
with their unusual catch.
They had expected nothing.
Now there was too much.

– Andrew Motion

Honest Doubt Part 19 - On Presence and Absence

This talk considered how God can be experienced both as present and absent at the same time, exploring the idea through three post-war poets - Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and RS Thomas.

Having listened to the programme I wasn't convinced that the poets had looked particularly hard for their absent God. I was reminded of Dawkin's point about a scientist not being content to sit in the presence of a mystery but wants to get to work on it, analyse it, break it down, study it, measure it, question it and so on, so that even if there is still a mystery left at the end of it, it is at least much better understood.

I got the feeling that the three poets, having been touched by the absence of God, rather enjoyed it, like a romantic Victorian catching TB, and didn't much care to look for the cure.

The interesting thing here is not the presence of doubt, but the acceptance of living with doubt and absence - why where these three people content to stay in that state? Another analogy - suppose you try to encourage a child to take up reading, and they reply that they tried a book once and didn't like it, we don't look in detail at that book to try to understand what was wrong with it, we ask why didn't they want to keep trying different books until they found one they liked?

We need to look at the history of doubt the way we look at a history of the future. A history of the future means how was the future imagined at different points in history, a history of doubt would similarly look at what doubt has meant at different times. Today a scientist doubts, but that doesn't mean they are torn by existential angst, it means they looking enquiringly and sceptically at an explanation to see if they can improve on it.

So "doubt" seems perfectly healthy if it is part of our natural process of change and development, but it seems unusual to stay permanently doubting one particular thing without doing anything about it - there would seem to be something damaged about that type of doubt.

Betjeman wrote a poem "The Conversion of St. Paul", in response to a radio broadcast by humanist Margaret Knight, but Knight's representation of Christianity wasn't engaging with modern theologians such as Bultmann or Tillich but with some pre-modern version of Christianity which of course was (and still is) very common. Similarly Betjeman's response was within this pre-modern schema.

This points to the problem of communication. A sociology of communication would probably show that top-down organisations - by their nature - pick up change from the bottom very badly. A Tim Keller talk about church plants addressed the point "why do we need to plant new churches when the existing ones are nearly empty?" by pointing out that the existing churches are resistant to change and that is why they are nearly empty.

He talks about how the USA in the nineteenth century had a large number of immigrants from Germany, but very quickly they adapted to speak English with one exception - in church. For many years the German churches in the USA continued to speak German even while most of the congregation had learnt English - illustrating a very important point about how churches are slow to change.

How are ideas communicated? Typically through organisations. Ideas of evolution were promoted and communicated through scientific communities, in which scientists were listened to when they spoke and wrote  because they were representing the ideas of the community. "Rogue" scientists who existed outside of the community would have had much less of an audience.

Similarly it is the responsibility of religious organisations to communicate religious ideas, but all too often - at least in the West - they haven't. Modern responses to Christianity are not communicated by the church so it is no surprise that people either don't know about them or don't listen to them when they are represented as the views of individuals and not a community.

There have always been individuals who have given genuine religious responses to the questions raised by science, the enlightenment and secularism/humanism but the church in general has not been helpful in spreading the communication of those ideas, but instead has been stuck in a loop of disengagement and head-in-the-sand-ism. It really is no surprise then if many within the church responded to its stance with a reciprocally similar disengagement and left.

Honest Doubt Part 18 - Darkness made visible

This program was on God and the existence of evil and suffering. The 18th century philosopher David Hume  formulated the eternal questions about God and the presence of evil: "Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

The program also looked at the work of the Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan, and the French Resistance writer Andre Schwartz-Bart.

John Stuart Mill ''To say that God's goodness may be different in kind from man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good?''

Of course there isn't a simple answer to the question of God and evil, and any attempt to explain away evil or justify it or legitimise it seems morally unacceptable, yet this isn't a simple QED end of argument as we still have to deal with the existence of good and with the possibility that things may just be a lot more mysterious than we can actually comprehend. It takes some sort of faith either way - whether to believe in God and the good, or to believe in meaninglessness and nihilism.

Tim Keller quotes Tolkien when he asks "is everything sad going to come untrue?" - I guess we have all had the experience when we heard some bad news or imagined something terrible had happened only to discover that what we originally believed was not really the case, what we feared to be true in fact never was.

The whole Christian (and not only Christian) idea of the God who suffers, who takes suffering into himself, who dies yet who returns from death seems to point to a mystery at the heart of suffering perhaps bound up with the mystery of God.

The message of compassion, forgiveness and loving your enemies is all caught up in the experience of suffering and evil - there is some sort of message of love shining brightest in the deepest darkness.

Beyond that, when we have finished contemplating the monotheist responses to suffering and evil we still have not yet started on all the other various religious responses - the pagan, polytheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Jainist etc - Hume himself believed in God, just not in the Christian God, so the question of evil may change our conception of God or the Gods, it does not have to destroy it.

Honest Doubt Part 17 - Saving Doubt

This program looked at James Joyce, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene and how doubt can help an institution survive through change. He contrasts doubt and change with repetition and changelessness, and how the latter is basically a form of hell.

The program seemed to come close to suggesting that change was in itself something good, rather than something that was sometimes necessary. The primary model we have for change is evolution - and related to that capitalism, which seems to me a form of evolution. Here we see change through whatever wins - I think Dawkins identifies the conditions of evolution as replication of a body, the possibility of change within that replication, and the battle for survival within those replicated bodies. Here "doubt" operates as the possibility of change, and is clearly therefore necessary for this form of change to occur, but it doesn't mean it will always be a change for the better.

We identified earlier that it is the common condition for religion to change and diversify, but how do we identify if it is a change for the better?

In some layers of the Bible - in the Old Testament - there is the idea that Yahweh exists as one God among many Gods. "You shall have no other Gods before me" says the first of the ten commandments, implying that there are many Gods and Yahweh should be the one chosen for worship. This is actually consistent with a polytheistic culture - although people acknowledged many Gods existed, they would only actually worship or follow a few of them. In this commandment Yahweh is saying that he should be the God that is followed, and if more than one are followed, he should be given the greatest respect - no one should come before him.

It was only in other layers of the Bible - such as in Isaiah - that we get the idea that God is the only God that actually exists and there "is no other". It seems healthier to acknowledge that there are many Gods and that indeed we may follow more than one God, but - perhaps if we are persuaded - Yahweh is the best one to follow. If we are not persuaded of this - as in a marketplace, or through the mechanism of evolution - we choose another, better, God or Goddess.

This doesn't mean change is better than stability - if we are unhappy with our God then we should change - but if we are in a good place and happy with where we are spiritually, then why go seeking something else?

Honest Doubt Part 16 - On the Edge

This had a poem by Emily Dickinson talking about life after death as a riddle, there was also Ludwig Wittgenstein saying that 'even when all possible scientific questions are answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all' and similar thoughts from Einstein and Roger Scruton.

But is there really such a huge gap between science and religion? I can think of the following overlaps between the two:

1. Science has to operate in an open, enquiring manner taking note of evidence, using collaboration - there seems to be some moral underpinning of how science has to work effectively that must relate to morality generally and therefore to religion.

2. The facts of the universe have to be taken into account by religion. It is not irrelevant that many religions have creation stories, and generally they don't include the actual creation story of vast lengths of time, the huge distances of space - if you are thinking of a traditional creator "God" such a being has to be understood as someone who makes these vast times and distances and that cannot but help make him strange and alien in some way.

3. The facts of religions - that there are many religions, they vary in different ways, they a generally geographically located, this has to be taken into account by a religion.

4. Generally the facts as we know them about humanity. Religion claims to tell us about ourselves, to have a "wisdom" on how to live a right life, to reveal the truth about ourselves. In so far as science also tells us about ourselves - what makes us who we are, what helps us grow, what distorts us - then there is also a connection with religion.

Basically in so far as science deals with evidence and reason, and religion claims to deal at least in part with evidence and reason, the two must have an overlap and be able to inform and speak to each other. That isn't to say that either can have the last word on the other, but it seems disingenuous to say there is no overlap at all.

Honest Doubt Part 15 - Godless Morality

This episode looks at Dostoyevsky as an answer to Nietzsche. Dostoyevsky features "Nietzschian" characters in his novels, as those who believe themselves to have gone beyond Christianity, and to be the new "over-man" who create their own morals.

In "Crime and Punishment" Raskolnikov tries to enact this new morality but finds he cannot follow through. In "The Brothers Karamazov" the character of Ivan is the bearer of the new morality, but it is his illegitimate brother Smerdyakov who puts his ideas into practise in a way Ivan cannot stomach.

So what is the answer? Train ourselves to ignore the old morality? Perhaps that is what the Nazis tried to do and indeed perhaps that is what any who think violence is a legitimate solution are trying to put into practice?

What is the alternative? To simply will to do the moral act for no reason? Perhaps this is what Kierkegaard was suggesting with his leap of faith, in places it is what Dostoyevsky seems to hint at - there are times that his religious characters speak of being a Christian even in the knowledge that God is dead.

It seems modernists put on glasses that rendered religion invisible. Religion is about stories, about humanity telling itself stories over and over again, round and round in a million variations, to learn about ourselves, to tell us who we are, to discover who we are, to give us hope and inspire us. Modernism seemed to think that because religion wasn't a science it wasn't anything - whereas it was what it had always been -  a tradition of storytelling. We need to keep telling and retelling ourselves the stories to discover the religion that will speak to us today.

Addition
Well of course religion isn't really anything other than religion - it can't simply be storytelling, religion has music and dance and ecstatic experiences and madness and lots of other things, but it is close to storytelling, where we can somehow enter into the story - like Alice going the other side of the looking glass.

But something else religion is like is the idea of the nation. Religions are geographical - you get herds of followers of a religion within a particular area, like members of a nation. In that sense a religion isn't like a philosophy which you choose, but a nationality you are born into.

Different nations tend to choose to stand for some good ideal - for freedom, or liberty, or siding with the underdog, or being stylish or even good food perhaps, or hard work or toleration. Nations often used to imagine they had some divine purpose, a destiny - some even had their own gods, so beating the nation in war was also a sign that your gods were stronger than their gods.

Religions living together can be similar to nations living together. No one particularly wants a super-state, nations will continue with their own identities, but the idea that a nation was special or set-apart or different either can't exist, or can't be allowed to let that nation try to dominate and do battle with other nations. We need to live in peace.

Honest Doubt Part 14 - God's Funeral

This program looks at Nietzsche and Thomas Hardy. Nietzsche of course wrote about the "death of God" and "living in the ruins of God", while Hardy wrote poems "God's Funeral" and "The Oxen" on the same theme.

The idea behind these ideas is that with God we have some objective moral basis, when we are describing morality, we are describing some external, objective fact. But for Nietzsche and Hardy without God this external foundation of values vanishes, and we are left like someone in a cartoon who has walked off a cliff and only just noticed, remaining for a moment suspended in the air before falling to the ground.

This is a useful observation to make, because at last we can see that religious language is much more about values and ways of life, than being about some supernatural method of accessing information about geology or history.

If I was to try to convince someone to adopt a different set of values, to change the way they live their life, the language I would be using would be some sort of religious language - even though how it is articulated today may be very different to how it was expressed two thousand years ago.

If someone decided that the best way to live was to be as selfish as possible, to not worry about anyone else, to only look after number one - how would you try to break them free of that perspective? There is no scientific, empirical way to do it. I'm sure science has a role - for example part of what we say may well be about looking after our environment, and we need science to tell us what is happening to our planet, but science doesn't give us morality.

(Although I believe there is an ethical aspect to science - if we define science as being evidence-based, about logic and reason, about being about to communicate and repeat our findings, and to some degree being able to anticipate the future based on laws and statistics, then this implies a global community working together, sharing, listening, supporting, correcting, explaining. There is something tentative and provisional in scientific knowledge that should keep us humble and willing to listen to others).

So where did Nietzsche look for a new set of values? He looked to the will - but how can the will create value? In his book on "Zarathrustra" the format is of a religious text - and here we can see the true source of value, from the depths of the unconscious, we have to wait on the ancient wisdom to arise and speak - we can't will it, but must wait, contemplate, meditate, listen and let the voice of God be heard once again.

Honest Doubt Part 13 - A Post-Mortem

This looks in more detail at ideas critical of a certain type of Christian Orthodoxy - Charles Darwin and geologist Charles Lyell, whose discoveries undermined the creation stories of the Old Testament.

The emerging tradition of 'biblical criticism', which began in Germany, started to strip away the supernatural elements of God.

George Eliot translated the work of the German critics, and began to believe, as the German philosopher and atheist Ludwig Feuerbach suggested, that God may be a human construct - a creation of the human mind.

Perhaps the problem here is that some sciences had not yet come into being - we have at this point no anthropology to show us how religious language works. Nevertheless, it must have been clear to Lyell and Darwin that the Genesis account of creation was not based on empirical studies. The two accounts in chapters 1 and 2 aren't an attempt to look at the geological and fossil evidence and provide a "best fit" of the information available, the method of producing these accounts is totally different.

We are reading here poems, stories that come from the human imagination - or more, that come from the depths of the human unconscious, perhaps telling us deep truths about ourselves, but certainly not some proto-scientific explanation.

Similarly did Eliot not realise that the language of the prophets, of parables and religious tales was not history? We have here a different kind of language, it isn't an attempt to look at the historical evidence and provide some "best fit" of the sources. There is no "well X said that this happened, and Y said that this happened" and then attempting to weight up the evidence and provide a probable fit, we don't see any of that.

Now - of course - this is a very strange experience because no one generally had really at this point actually thought about what sort of language we have in the Bible, and what the significance of that was. To say religious language is highly subjective, has come from ecstatic religious experiences, or the reflection on symbol and psychic-legends, that it is about a way of life, about moral values, ways to experience God, techniques to let God speak and so on  - no one had really thought about that much before.

Yet what seems to happen is the conversation is almost over before it begins. Very soon the debate about what religion really means is replaced by a gap between those who believe and those who don't, and no one much seems to want to engage with the other.

Honest Doubt Part 12 - Believer's Doubt

Richard Holloway speaks of the "Victorian nervous breakdown" and looks at the lives of four people who were affected by this affliction: Cardinal Newman, Robert Browning, Arthur Hugh Clough and Matthew Arnold.

I guess many students of literature will have studied the religious struggles of the poets - indeed I guess that anyone with some knowledge of the history of ideas will be familiar with problems that seemed to sink the ship of Christian orthodoxy in the 19th century: critical studies of the Bible as history, Darwin and evolution attacking the idea of God as a designer, the long history of the earth conflicting with the age of the earth in the Bible and so on.

In the previous program it seemed that some thinkers responded to the opportunity to think for themselves with the holding of a variety of religious views - Schopenhauer for example  was influenced by eastern religious thought, yet in this program it seems that other thinkers felt that if Christianity wasn't right, the only alternative was atheism - they never gave another thought to other religious ideas.

It seems strange that whilst a set of very specific religious views was being shown to be wrong, the response wasn't to look at what other religions had to say, or even to consider whether a new religion needed to be formed, or older religions revived, but instead to mourn the loss of religion as such.

Honest Doubt Part 11 - Embracing Uncertainty

This was about the romantics - Keats and Shelley, although it begins with a brief mention of Blake.

At this point in the story there appears to be a lot of variety in responses to new views of God. As has been mentioned earlier, it seems natural for religious views to multiply and vary - perhaps we should always be wary of the word "natural", but within the society of the 18th and early 19th century where people were being encouraged to think for themselves, to be individuals - produce unique creations - it was certainly the right environment for different responses to arise to religion.

This was by no means a simple yes or no to God. To some extent the problem with the series is that it takes a very specific view of the Christian God and then asks what the history was of doubts about this particular conception of God. Whereas clearly there have been many ways of picturing God and what ultimate reality is like, and what we are getting in these programs is the variety of answers people were coming up with.

It wasn't like Blake who made up his own religion - although he was a particularly severe case - but I can think of Wordsworth for example who has this idea of our pre-existing our time on earth as souls in heaven, we come down to earth "trailing clouds of glory" and our time here is a forgetting of what went before.

This comes from Plato but Wordsworth is playing with ideas and mixing experiences he has had with different streams of religious thought.

What seems strange is how this variety and mix of religious views failed to carry through - secularism in society is a general distrust and distance from any religious view. At the present time with the program we can see different religious ideas flourishing - most enlightenment philosophers for example believed in God, just not the traditional Christian God.

It seems likely that at other times in history, this type of religious questioning would have seen the rise of a new religion, it seems like the birth of some new set of beliefs, but instead it seems to have produced a dull repetition of a very unadventurous orthodoxy from the few combined with general indifference from the many. I wonder if the following programs with explore how that happened.

Honest Doubt Part 10 - Caught in the middle

This was about free will. We heard from Spinoza (again), Schopenhauer and Freud. Are we free? Are we determined? Are we somewhere in the middle. Spinoza felt we were determined apart from when we understood why we did something, and then we were able to change the "cause". Sounded a bit convoluted and not actually logical - but anyway the suggested conclusion was we are somewhere in the middle.

I'm not sure quite what the point of the program was - religion can go either way on determinism (Calvinism etc) and free will (Arminianism, Pelagius etc). Even if determinism is true, that doesn't really tell us how to act - it could really only lead to some sort of fatalism, but even that is illogical as we think we have free will, so we have to act as if we have choices anyway.

What is more interesting is weakness of the will - why do we do things we don't want to do? Is there some way to help us have more will power? Do we really know what we want anyway?

If religion was actually able to show people how to follow through with their plans it would probably have more impact, I don't doubt there is probably some spiritual tradition that is helpful - in fact this would really prove the value of religion if it could be shown there are spiritual techniques that strengthen our wills - but could we be bothered to do them?

The other aspect of "free will" is political - what choices do we have? Poverty, inequality, crime etc all contribute to people being unable to develop themselves and become who they could be. Someone born in poverty will have far fewer choices and options than someone born into wealth - this is the more important aspect of free will.

Addition
At the start of this program the example is given from Blade Runner in which a replicant discovers they are not a real human, but something different, programmed to resemble humans but to last for only four years.

Perhaps a similar example is the science fiction film The Island in which the inhabitants of a large colony are told they take part in a lottery to see who will live on a beautiful island, but in fact they are human generic clones of rich people, created in case the original person needs body parts from the clone. The "winner" of the lottery is in fact killed and their organs used as replacements for the original. So again the people are not who they think they are.

This is the backdrop to the rest of the program - suppose we think we have free will but in fact we don't? Suppose we are different to who we thought we were ?

This seems to link back in to later in the program with Freud's idea of the id, the ego and the super-ego. All this way of thinking seems to assume we have some single essence or identity, which may or may not be free or determined.

In fact this is remarkably similar to the Biblical idea of being caught between the "flesh" and the "spirit" where the "flesh" equates to the id or unconscious, and the "spirit" equates to the super-ego, with the "self" or soul caught somewhere in the middle.

Perhaps the truth is somewhat different. We seem in fact to be many roles or people, rather than one single identity - we get our identity from all sorts of places, I might be male, English, middle aged, Christian, a father, a football fan, a Green party member... and so on. We change roles through life and work our way into and out of roles. Whether one of these roles or identities is behind all the others or is in some way more real or more true seems doubtful.

Perhaps what is important is the way the roles relate to each other, that they aren't in conflict, even - possibly - that they tell a single story.

Honest Doubt Part 9 - Paying the Price

This program looked at how religion in the west has dealt with opposition by banning books and excommunicating heretics (when they weren't being killed). The program in particular looks at Spinoza, the 17th century Dutch-Jewish philosopher whose radical views caused him to be expelled by Jewish religious leaders and his books placed on the Papal Index of Forbidden Books.

I'm concerned at the "othering" of religion in this program. When we listen to it we are encouraged to think we would never do these things now, how terrible that those in power should physically punish people and materially ban books just because they don't agree with the ruling ideology.

But are we really so different? We don't have a list of banned books which people aren't allowed to read, but we have a list of banned drugs that people aren't allowed to take. The "bad ideas" it was decided would stop people functioning successfully in society and so they should not be allowed to consume them and the books and those who provided the books should be banned. By the same token drugs today - it is decided - would stop people functioning in society and they are therefore banned - are controlling states of mind and controlling ideas really so different? I'm not saying all drugs are good, I'm pointing out that perhaps there is more of an overlap between our ways of thinking and those in the past than the program wants to acknowledge.

The same argument could be made about excommunication and prison. Today we put hundreds of thousands of people in prison, for the same reasons that people were excommunicated - that they would in some way cause damage to society. Indeed it could be argued that in some ways excommunication was better than prison, so again, are we really so different in how we treat those we deem "outside" of society?

Intolerance come from an inability to listen, and to listen we need to identify places of engagement with the person speaking. If we "other" religion and make it something totally alien and different to ourselves then we lose the ability to listen to it, and so become intolerant of it, something I don't think was really the aim of the programme. Religion needs to become more puzzling and fascinating to us before we will discover how to listen to it again.

Honest Doubt Part 8 - Vacating Heaven

This program was the perhaps frequently told story of the way science overcame religion. In the beginning religion said God was in a heaven that was a little bit above the clouds, then science came along and proved religion wrong. Along the way religious people persecuted the scientists because they had pissed them off for being right.

Well, of course is a unique phenomenon. Even scientists didn't expect science. The first scientists - around the Elizabethan times - such as John Dee saw science as esoteric knowledge, like a special type of magic that would give power to those who studied it.

Now we think of science as being about objective, rational, empirical knowledge that in many cases allows us to make accurate predictions of future phenomena based on scientific laws.

But of course there is still much of the world that can't be predicted. In that case "science" just hopes to provide an explanation that will "save the phenomena" of what we know. But what if the subject being studied is linked to human action? Can that ever be accurately explained?

Here we have two solutions. Some scientists have argued that human behaviour/reality can be explained in simple terms - the sex drive, the drive to power, our social environment, lack of chemicals in the brain. This is the view that humanity - although appearing complex - is actually composed of very simple drives that can easily be explained. Such a "reductionist" view might believe that mental health issues can be solved by administering the right drugs for example.

The other solution - it can still be "materialist" in the sense of not believing in supernatural phenomena - believes the human reality is irreducibly complex and cannot easily be explained except in its own terms - in terms of the dignity of the human subject, in terms of morality and - yes - spirituality. In this sense you can't explain "morality" in terms of where it comes from, you can only explain it on its own terms, and the same is true of spirituality.

So has science overcome religion? The program suggested that the two are entirely separate. Well, that isn't historically true, it certainly was the case that for a significant period of time the two clashed, and we still haven't really understood what to make of a religion that is consistent with science. Yet it doesn't seem as if science will solve the problems addressed by religion, so for a while at last the two should be allowed to co-exist.

Honest Doubt Part 7 - The Agony and the Ecstasy

Thsi program looks at the doubts expressed in the religious writing of John Donne, John Bunyan and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

It just seems to me strange that anxiety should feature so prominently in this series. It seems similar to Kierkegaard that  our loss of certainty, the inability to prove God, or even worse our ability in many cases to disprove him, should be so central to the religious enterprise. It sounds like a psychological disorder, as if a husband was constantly worried that his wife didn't love him and was having an affair, or that having left the house you may have left a tap running or the front door unlocked.

John Bunyan seens a strange choice to include - Pilgrim's Progress isn't exactly full of anxiety and fear. I wonder if some of this spiritual worry is related to the fear of hell ? Certainly this seems to have been a very cruel and unnecessary doctrine that has caused a lot of anxiety among Christians, but any simple examination of the hell will show that it isn't Biblical and certainly isn't an essential part of the spiritual life.

Similarly I thought Hopkins took great delight in nature and experienced it full of awe and wonder as pointing to a creator - not in a scientific sense of explaining anything, but at the sacred oneness of what we are a part of.

I guess any person goes through moments of doubt and questioning - perhaps these poets are able to give good specific examples of such worries - but I don't think anxiety is central to the spiritual life and I'm not convinced these poets thought so either.

Honest Doubt Part 6 - Breaking Up

This episode was about the Reformation - the thought of Martin Luther and John Calvin and the formation of Protestantism. It showed both how the Reformers sought to create a more authentic Christianity with a return to its origins, but opened a Pandora's box of dissent that could only be confronted through violent persecution.

Because religious experience is so subjective, it seems natural that it takes many different forms. Only when there is a strong political power to prevent difference does religion retain any semblance of orthodoxy and consistency. Prior to the Reformation the Roman Catholic church had allowed many different expressions of spirituality in terms of religious ways of life, even if the words used to express religious doctrines were carefully controlled. The Catholic church would probably have been able to include within itself something like the Reformation - in terms of a Christianity more faithful to the early believers - if the Reformers hadn't so clearly attacked the financial income of the church.

As it was the Reformation created numerous divisions of belief and only violence was able to reign in the different expressions of faith. This contradiction of the Reformation - that one's conscience should be the final arbiter between an individual and God while at the same time murdering those who disagreed with whichever Protestant sect had control of the state - led to the Enlightenment, where religious dissent pushed for the logical political expression of freedom of conscience - toleration of different beliefs by the state.

The question of toleration is therefore essential for religion - given that the nature of religion is to generate difference. It is arguable that the notorious "genocide" texts of the Old Testament are more political than religious, as there are other texts that encourage toleration:

Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:21)

The same law should apply to both Hebrew and stranger:
One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you. (Exodus 12:49)

The stranger should rest from work on the Sabbath the same as the Hebrew:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: (Exodus 20:20)

The basic argument is that the Israelites should remember that they lived in the land of Egypt, and they should treat others who live in their land how they would have wanted to be treated the Egyptians to treat them.

Similarly in the New Testament "love your enemies" might reasonably be assumed to include toleration of difference.

It is similarly interesting that Calvin uses the doctrine of "election" to separate out "saved" from "damned" but in the Bible it could be argued that God chooses individuals to benefit the community - Joseph is chosen to help his family, Moses is chosen to lead Israel out of slavery.

It could therefore be argued that the final expressions of tolerance within western secular society that we see today at least partly have their roots within the practical religious need to value those who are different to ourselves.

Honest Doubt Part 5 - Mystery

The idea of this program was that a religious mystery wasn't like a murder mystery which can be solved, but was something that couldn't be solved and we had to learn to live with - we had to realise we wouldn't be able to give a definitive answer to the mystery. There was a nice quote from Robert Runcie that he feared Christianity was getting to be like a swimming pool where all the noise was coming from the shallow end.

There was also talk of mystical experience and how the mystics sometimes expressed the mystery of God in ways that went outside of the language of the church - Meister Eckhart spoke of "taking leave of God".


The ultimate and highest leave taking is leaving God for GOD, leaving your notion of God for an experience of that which transcends all notions.

I think you have to be careful with "mystery". Too often the church talks about mystery but when you start to explore the religious experience you suddenly find things aren't quite as mysterious as first claimed. The trinity might be a mystery, but try changing the formula and suddenly you are a heretic - so exactly how mysterious is it ? When the church uses "mystery" to stop questions and assert its authority, that just looks like a smokescreen. The "mystery" just means "don't ask questions", but if they have a formula for it, then it seems as if something can be said about it after all, doesn't it?

So providing mystery still allows us to explore and ask questions and accept we will always have provisional answers that will do for a while until we get to thinking of more questions, then that sounds fine. There are lots of mysteries - the world of science is a mystery that we will keep on exploring, love is a mystery, faith is a mystery  - mystery often means "both... and... " thinking, holding two notions that might not sit easily together in some tension, because they are both important.

Too often in this series ideas seem to be expressed in a negative way. The word "mystery" seems to contain an element of puzzlement or bewilderment - some anxiety that a closure that would be welcome is not forthcoming, like a murder that can't be solved. But existing in an open-ended discourse, speaking about something where we may not be able to ever have the final word, can be a life-affirming and joyous experience. Life is about growing, changing, experiencing, enjoying - in this sense closure and "the final answer" would be some sort of death - instead of mystery can't we just realise life is a super-abundance, a river of life that never stops flowing ?

Honest Doubt Part 4 - Revelation

The program seemed to focus on revelation in the Bible - how whatever was said originally can't really be known as it has been edited and changed around, and anyway we don't really know what life was like in those times.

However this seems to look at revelation as something scarce, whereas revelation is happening all the time. The Oracle at Delphi was always available for revelations in the ancient world, and many people since then have had revelations from God or the unconscious or however you want to describe it.

We just need to be aware of revelation, and attuned to it as a possibility. Revelation is roaring at us from the realm of the sacred but we don't hear it - we aren't listening. If we look up at the night sky, look out at the ocean, meditate on questions such as "what is love?", "what is happiness?", "what is forgiveness?", "what is desire?", "what is attachment?", sit quietly and listen for God, meditate to music, or just expect to be surprised from someone or something outside of ourselves, we can experience revelation.

In terms of the Bible, the revelation isn't in the words, it is in the reading. That's why the editors were happy to change it round - it wasn't some painting that couldn't be altered, it was an experience that was always changing every time someone read it. God speaks to us through the Bible or the I Ching or nature or a poem because our mind is ready to listen.

Honest Doubt Part 3 - Idols

The program looked at idols - how from the earliest times religion has been "overturning" old views of God with new ones - from golden calves to invisible Gods, and ends with the idea that perhaps after we have thrown away all our idols we won't have anything left.

The program mentions how Judaism identified material images of God as somehow wrong - hence the pejorative term "idol" - instead wanting to work only with words and language. Simone Weil points out that the concept of a "chosen people" can be just as much an idol as some material image.

If by "idol" we mean making something transitory into something ultimate, something temporal into something eternal, then of course this can apply to concepts as much as material  - but isn't it a dream that we can define the ultimate? That we can put some ring around some important concept ? Even in science - where what we are describing is far from ultimate  - we are always making provisional theories that tentatively approximate to the truth, theories that we assume will in time be superseded in the future. How then can we believe we will be able to make simple claims about the nature of ultimate reality? Isn't this idea just another category mistake that we discussed earlier, to trying to make an interpretation into a fact ?

So if we see the "overthrowing" of each successive idol as a march towards the truth, it seems likely that we will be left with an empty space, or exhaustion or a random stopping at some point on the way. It seems much better to see each "idol" both as necessary but insufficient.

Society today, then is of course massively religious - it is full of idols. From football to fashion to music, film, TV stars - all aspects of popular culture - idols are everywhere. This is not a flippant remark - we live in a world of  polytheistic gods -just as in ancient polytheist cultures we are drawn to people/images who symbolise a particular skill, value or ideal. Football provides many of the benefits of religion - the horror genre similarly provides many of the feelings we used to get from (some types of) religion.

For some their moral ideal will be their expression of their religious spirit. The New Atheists identify Marxism/Stalinism and Fascism as types of religion because they are "irrational" - well so is most of modern culture. Find what is rational and scientific in football, popular music, film, TV, computer games etc. Religion is alive and well, it is all just semantics.

If we throw out our idols we will throw out the baby with the bathwater. The "ultimate" in wrapped up in all this "irrational" stuff - all the spells and magic and morality around us today is part of the journey we go on. We engage with it, we can reflect on it, we can be puzzled and enchanted by it, we can find love in it and fear - we're never going to just be the logical, empirical scientists the New Atheists (think they) want us to be.

Honest Doubt Part 2 - Origins

This program was about how fear and superstition were the origin of religion and our belief in the gods and spirits.

Well - how about fear and love are the two primal ways we face the universe, we can experience fear and anxiety, we can deal with others in mistrust and perhaps even hatred and dislike, or we can trust people, we can show love, we can show grace and compassion.

In that, we have the deep experience of the universe, of gods and spirits, the divine and the demonic. It isn't all rooted in fear, it is rooted in our deep passions, and perhaps we might like to think that love and caring were as deep if not deeper than fear.

Honest Doubt Part 1 - Introduction

I'm going to try to make some brief notes about Richard Holloway's series Honest Doubt being broadcast on Radio 4.

This is about part 1 - the theme was about doubt - how the opposite of doubt isn't faith but knowledge, and there needs to be a bit of doubt in faith.

Well, "doubt" seems to treat religion different to the rest of life. Do we talk about "doubt" in other areas of existence? The point is - an interpretation isn't a fact - how we make sense of things, how we interpret them, is always going to be subject to change.

We are made to change - we use metaphors such as our life's journey, or growing through experiences, but the fact is the essence of being human is to change. To "doubt" something is just to recognise that we have choices, there are different ways to be - doubt is essential to freedom - to doubt something means we have a choice, and that is what is essential to being human.

Some people freeze in the face of choices - they don't know which one to pick - perhaps that is what Holloway is concerned about - this isn't doubt as such, it is indecision. Most people find a path they can follow, even if they know it is provisional and likely to change.

So what I'm saying is, doubt sounds negative, but it is essential to life, any interpretation is open to change and revision, what is wrong with that ?